Really, Mr. Blair?
This is from "The Foreign Policy Center" a leading British progressive think tank.
February 26, 2010
...The coalition seems (click here) to have focused almost entirely on getting rid of the figurehead, with little attention paid to other leaders in Saddam’s Baathist party. As Blair told the enquiry, “the only commitment I gave [then-US president George Bush] was to deal with Saddam.” This narrow focus, neglected Iraq’s need to deal effectively with the wider Baathist leadership. This is reflected in the failure of today’s politics to move on.
Saddam was, of course, executed along with three key associates in 2006. But only a handful of the other 50,000 Baathists that the Bush administration estimated would not be suitable for integration into the post-Saddam regime have been tried – most simply dismissed from their posts and are still free. No one has been called to account for most of the crimes committed under Saddam.
Because there has not been formal justice process for former Baathist leaders, there has been no process of coming to terms with the abuses of the era. The whole issue is, seven years on, still raw and open to exploitation.
And with the election coming, this is just what is happening. This was illustrated recently by a ban on 511 candidates who were allegedly former Baath party members, by Iraq’s Accountability and Justice Commission. The commission presented no evidence of any crimes committed by these candidates. Most Baath party members (95% according to a US estimate in 2003) were obliged by their government jobs to join; yet no distinction is begin made in the widespread anti-Baath rhetoric now prevalent among all Iraq’s major political parties.
Anti-Baathism is being used as a tool to win votes, especially by Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki who has publicly embraced the bans. This is a polarizing trend, with Sunnis feeling targeted since they are often associated with the Baath party. The Baathist past has become so politicized that the need for accountability, truth and reconciliation has been forgotten....
I remember quite vividly a British Command Officer talking to a CNN correspondent on March 21, 2003, stating "We are interested in capturing all the Baathists that contributed to the instability we are now witnessing in Iraq." The Anti-Baathist theme was the favorite slogan of Bush to justify the USA in a forever war, but, his jargon was not as clear, he stated, "It is the dead enders."
The Iraq War was illegal, completely compromised the war in Afghanistan where many British soldiers were killed in honor of their country and the idea a secular government in Iraq was sustainable over time was a dreamscape carved out for politics and nation building. Tony Blair needs to stop denying the facts he knew more about the viciousness of the Rumsfeld Cabal and it's ability to even turn it's power on Europe as traitors to NATO. He should never deny the fact he knew full well there was no solid evidence to justify an invasion and in that reality he also saw the vulnerability of every other country on Earth.
There was no justified war into Iraq, no justification to sustain it and absolutely no reason to revisit it.
Iraq as a sovereign nation became a mirage for Western news and nation building on March 19-20, 2003. The protracted presence of The West's military only maintained a lulled war that was to dissolve Iraq into sectarian provinces and ultimately to see the end of it entirely.
How convenient the figurehead government of Maliki would serve the purpose of the Iraq image as a freely elected democracy only to be so weak in actuality it would require The West to wage the war to enforce a secular government all over again.
I don't think so. We are not returning to the status of Killing Machine again. That is what a military becomes when it loses it's purpose as a defense of a country.
