Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair Won't Accept Iraq War Inquiry Verdict

Edited by Pavel Jacomino
2016-06-09 17:41:40

Pinterest
Telegram
Linkedin
WhatsApp

London, June 9 (RHC)-- Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has indicated that he will not accept the verdict of the upcoming Iraq war inquiry report if it accuses him of committing London to invading the Arab country before he told parliament.

Sir John Chilcot, a former British civil servant, is due to publish his long-awaited inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath into the war on July 6.  The Chilcot inquiry report is expected to be highly critical of Blair and other political and military officials. 

According to a 2015 White House memo, Blair had agreed to support the war a year before the invasion even started, while publicly he was working to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis.  The document also disclosed that Blair agreed to act as a spin doctor for former U.S. President George W. Bush and convince a skeptical public that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which actually did not exist.

Blair told BBC he did not think anyone could say he did not make his position clear ahead of the 2003 Iraq war.  When asked if he would accept the Chilcot inquiry report, Blair said: "It is hard to say that when I haven't seen it."

The former Labor prime minister also said that he would appear on different news channels and defend himself after release of the Iraq war report.

The U.S. with strong UK backing invaded Iraq in March 2003 under the pretext that the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.  No such weapons, however, were ever found in Iraq.

More than one million Iraqis were killed as the result of the invasion, and subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.  The invasion plunged Iraq into chaos, resulting in years of deadly violence and the rise of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, which was a precursor of Daesh. 



Commentaries


MAKE A COMMENT
All fields required
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
captcha challenge
up