ID :
94971
Tue, 12/15/2009 - 13:23
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http://m.oananews.org//node/94971
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Blair used deceit to justify Iraq war : former UK prosecutor
London, Dec 14, IRNA – Former prime minister Tony Blair used "deceit" to persuade the British parliament and people to support war in Iraq, according to the country’s former director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald.
Blair engaged in an “alarming subterfuge” with former US president George W Bush, and then misled and cajoled the British people into a war they did not want, MacDonald said.
He suggested that the former premier’s fundamental flaw was his “sycophancy” towards Bush and for refusing to accept that his decisions were wrong, saying that “Washington turned his head and he couldn’t resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him.”
Blair secured support from parliament for the Iraq war largely on the grounds of the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction that were later found not to exist.
MacDonald highlighted a remark Blair made in an interview broadcast by the BBC on Sunday about supporting the overthrow of Saddam regardless of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to explain why he thought the former prime minister was guilty of deceit.
"The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer,” he said in an article for the Times newspaper Monday.
“This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions, and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. that it was needed to remove weapons of mass destruction,” the former chief prosecutor warned.
With regard to the current inquiry into the Iraq war, he said that if it fails to reveal truth without fear, it will be “held in deserved and withering contempt.”
MacDonald retired as the country’s chief prosecutor last year. He was appointed by Blair’s government in 2003. He currently practises as a defence barrister at the same law chamber as the former prime minister’s wife, Cherie Booth./end
Blair engaged in an “alarming subterfuge” with former US president George W Bush, and then misled and cajoled the British people into a war they did not want, MacDonald said.
He suggested that the former premier’s fundamental flaw was his “sycophancy” towards Bush and for refusing to accept that his decisions were wrong, saying that “Washington turned his head and he couldn’t resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him.”
Blair secured support from parliament for the Iraq war largely on the grounds of the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction that were later found not to exist.
MacDonald highlighted a remark Blair made in an interview broadcast by the BBC on Sunday about supporting the overthrow of Saddam regardless of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to explain why he thought the former prime minister was guilty of deceit.
"The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer,” he said in an article for the Times newspaper Monday.
“This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions, and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. that it was needed to remove weapons of mass destruction,” the former chief prosecutor warned.
With regard to the current inquiry into the Iraq war, he said that if it fails to reveal truth without fear, it will be “held in deserved and withering contempt.”
MacDonald retired as the country’s chief prosecutor last year. He was appointed by Blair’s government in 2003. He currently practises as a defence barrister at the same law chamber as the former prime minister’s wife, Cherie Booth./end
