1-10-06, 8:56 am
Writing on the wall
THE writing must be on the wall for Tony Blair when such an Establishment figure as General Sir Michael Rose demands his impeachment for taking this country into the war against Iraq under false pretences.
General Rose is unequivocal that, while Mr Blair was banging on about weapons of mass destruction during the slide into war, 'he probably had some other strategy in mind.'
This chimes with the allegation made by anti-war campaigners from as early as spring 2002 that Mr Blair had agreed with the US president, during a meeting at George W Bush's country estate, that regime change was essential in Iraq.
Had weapons of mass destruction been the real concern, the warmongers would have stayed their hand until UN head weapons inspector Hans Blix had completed his investigations.
Such was the determination of Messrs Bush and Blair to precipitate an invasion that they would brook no opposition to their previously established date for opening hostilities.
This was for two reasons - first, that they had already deployed a host of troops and hardware in the region and had no intention of either repatriating them or leaving them to stew there indefinitely.
Such a conclusion would have undermined Mr Blair personally, particularly since he had identified himself with the so-called 'dodgy dossier,' which claimed erroneously that Iraq was capable of launching WMD at British troops in Cyprus within 45 minutes of an order being given.
In bald terms, a British Prime Minister ordered British troops into the gap of danger without a justifiable case for doing so.
He used this country's armed forces as pawns in his political game of putting himself alongside the world's only superpower, sacrificing their lives, to say nothing of 100,000 Iraqis, to his political career. As Gen Rose says, this is 'something that no-one should be allowed to walk away from.'
The desperate efforts of Mr Blair's official spokesman to defend the Prime Minister against the retired general's uncompromising statements boil down to the usual dog-eared justifications - four inquiries have backed the government's actions and Iraq is democratic now.
Neither holds water. Mr Blair set the terms of all the inquiries and worked with the security services to rig the evidence and it is misleading to call Iraq is a democracy simply because the occupiers have allowed elections to take place.
Polling in occupied Iraq has only one function - to assist the invaders in claiming that life is returning to normal while, in reality, the elections have served to entrench ethnic and religious divisions.
While Gen Rose believes that it would be wrong to leave Iraq now, even though he accepts that the continued presence of troops is achieving little, he is mistaken.
Bringing Britain's troops home and impeaching the Prime Minister are both essential to end this criminal episode and to prevent its repetition.
From Morning Star
