War Lies Go Unpunished

The United States and Great Britain lied to the public for seven years about their invasion of Iraq. Ex-Prime Minister Blair says he would do the same today.

Hundreds of journalists from around the world had gathered in Baghdad at the Iraqi Ministry of Information on February 5, 2003 to watch Colin Powell, then U.S. secretary of state, via television as he addressed the U.N. Security Council in New York. His intention was to deliver the final evidence proving Iraq had misled the nation and the world and not only possessed weapons of mass destruction, but was still producing them. Powell presented an intercepted telephone conversation purporting to be between two Iraqi military officers in which one told the other to ensure something not further identified disappeared before U.N. inspectors arrived. There were also satellite photos of what he described as mobile bio-chemical weapons laboratories. Subsequent to the U.S. invasion and before leaving office, Powell repeatedly expressed regret for those brazen lies he had presented to the Security Council in order to get approval for America’s invasion of Iraq. Since then, not one single person responsible for that decision has ever been brought into military court to answer for the damage done to Iraq, nor for the millions killed or crippled, made ill or turned into homeless refugees.

Great Britain, meanwhile, is investigating the events that led it to go to war against Iraq. The Chilcot Hearings are looking into the previous government’s actions and in particular into former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s part in them. The focus of the hearings is not the damage done to Iraq and its people, it’s principally about whether the British people were lied to in the run-up to and during the war itself. Their conclusions are expected to be made public in June of this year.

Blair testified he was convinced Iraq had produced and stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. The reports he read claimed that such weapons could reach Great Britain within 45 minutes and, although he felt that might be an exaggeration, he is nonetheless convinced to this day that removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right thing to do because, in Blair’s view, he was a “monster” who was a threat not only to the region, but to “the entire world.” He remains convinced “the world is safer today,” whether Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction or not. He concluded by saying he would make the same decision today.

In contrast to Blair, former Minister for International Development Clair Short testified on Tuesday that she resigned her position in May 2003 in protest over the decision to invade. She said Blair “and his mates” made the decision to go to war and that “everything was done on a wing and a prayer.” The Cabinet, she claimed, made no recommendations but just caved in and agreed to everything. Short claimed that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith was pressured to approve an invasion despite the lack of a U.N. resolution authorizing it. In January 2003, Goldsmith had described an invasion of Iraq as illegal, but after conferring with U.S. Congressmen and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, he did an about face.

Goldsmith finally gave the green light to a British invasion on March 17, 2003, three days before the invasion began. Short characterized Blair’s assertion that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had become more of a threat subsequent to the 9/11 attacks as “historically inaccurate” and that there was no evidence whatsoever that there was increased danger. She also said the Americans had been deceived into thinking Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaida. “Everybody knows that is untrue — that he had absolutely no links, no sympathy, al-Qaeda were nowhere near Iraq until after the invasion and the disorder that came from that.” Now the Iraqi people are exposed to al-Qaida terror as happened Monday in Baghdad when a suicide bomber killed forty and injured over a hundred.