Joana Ramiro
Tony Blair was branded a “demented warmonger” yesterday after the slippery former prime minister tried to rescue his reputation from the embers of the Iraq conflict.
Mr Blair argued in a long essay published on his website that Iraq would be a much worse place today if he had not ordered British troops to invade the country.
He added that the ongoing occupation of Mosul by jihadist organisation Isis could have been prevented with British intervention in the Syrian civil war.
Stop the War Coalition convenor Lindsey German condemned his discredited views and the airtime he was given to peddle them, including an appearance on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.
Ms German told the Star: “Blair has yet again been given a lengthy platform to promote his demented warmongering.”
And she said it was precisely the bombing of the country’s infrastructures 11 years ago that lead to “disastrous consequences which are still playing out to the cost of the Iraqi people.”
Ms German called on Mr Blair to step down from his role as Middle East peace convoy. She said it was a “a job for which he lacks a single qualification.”
Ms German wasn’t alone in her criticisms as politicians and the public piled into the ex-PM.
Former international development secretary Clare Short — who stepped down from her role over the invasion of Iraq — labelled her former boss as a “complete American neocon.”
Mr Blair’s opinions, she argued, were “absolutely, consistently wrong, wrong, wrong.”
“More bombing will not solve it, it will just exacerbate it,” she urged.
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond suggested the former Labour leader was suffering from “breathtaking amnesia.”
He said: “No reinterpretation of history will absolve the former prime minister of a direct line of responsibility for this sequence of disasters.”
Even security academics at the Royal United Services Institute weighed into the row, with spokesman Michael Stephens saying: “I think Mr Blair is washing his hands of responsibility.”
Journalist Owen Jones was among hundreds who took to Twitter to hit back at Mr Blair’s statement.
He wrote: “Tony Blair says we’re not to blame for Iraq disaster. Quite right. Him and his cheerleaders are.”
Source: Morning Star
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