New evidence; UK sought Iraqi oil

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/180177.html

Britain's decision to join the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq was made 18 months before the invasion in exchange for an oil “prize”, newly revealed documents say.

The secret documents - now released - shed more light on the UK government's motives behind joining the intervention.

British foreign intelligence service MI6 had said nearly 18 months before the invasion that the "prize" for removing the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam was "new security to oil supplies," said the newly declassified documents published by The Daily Mail on Friday.

According to the papers, master spies at the MI6 had talked out the issue with the then cabinet ministers, to which they openly supported “regime change” in Iraq. The plan included a coup to topple Saddam's regime, the secret papers said.

The documents, which Sir Richard Dearlove, the then head of the MI6 had discussed with then Prime Minister Tony Blair's top foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning on December 2001, even included plans, which could “head off” the US government from pursuing regime change in Iraq.

These documents add credibility to critics arguments that the real motive of the United States and Britain to go to war with the Iraqi regime was to control the country's vast oil deposits.

A Middle East expert at MI6 identified only as 'SIS4' had written one of the reports.

"At our meeting on 30 November we discussed how we could combine an objective of regime change in Baghdad with the need to protect important regional interests which would be at grave risk," Dearlove wrote to David.

The MI6 report also admitted three months after the 9/11 attacks on the United States that there was “no convincing intelligence (or common sense) case” that Iraq supported extremists, The Telegraph reported.

Without UN authorization, Britain joined the US in March 2003 in invading Iraq to topple the Saddam regime based on claims of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

More than eight years after the invasion, no trace of WMDs has been found, with hundreds of thousands of civilians killed and millions more got sick or dislocated from their place of birth.

'Blair created pack of lies on Iraq war'

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/180045.html

The new-documents released by the Iraq war Inquiry has confirmed that Tony Blair and his communications advisor Alistair Campbell made up a pack of lies to involve Britain in an illegal war.

Following the revelation of the top military intelligence official, Michael Laurie, that Iraq dossier was written to make case of war, analysts said that the Iraq Inquiry is aimed at finding errors which have been made by the UK officials in invading to Iraq, has been leading depressing affair.

They believed that the Chilcot Inquiry into Iraq war has already cost millions of pounds, and lasted for two years and exactly when the key witnesses stood at the Inquiry to give evidence on the disastrous Iraq War, the inquiry officials started asking imprecise and inadequate questions.

The devastating evidence by Major General Michael Laurie proves that Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell were slippery, unashamed and able to mislead not only the Inquiry but the families of about 200 British soldiers who laid down their lives in this illegal bloody war.

In a statement published on Iraq Inquiry website, General Michael Laurie who was in charge of commanding and delivering raw and analyzed intelligence, said, "I am writing to comment on the position taken by Alastair Campbell during his evidence to you … when he stated that the purpose of the dossier was not to make a case for war; I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given."

The evidence openly contradicted the claims of the former government about the dossier and perhaps more considerably, what the former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Campbell said at the time it was published right seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Laurie said he could remember that the chief of defense intelligence, Air Marshal Sir Joe French, was "frequently inquiring whether we were missing something" and was under pressure.

"We could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment that related to WMD [weapons of mass destruction], generally concluding that they must have been dismantled, buried or taken abroad. There has probably never been a greater detailed scrutiny of every piece of ground in any country."

Despite the uncovered lies, the treachery and corruption, the increasing violence of the state, the broken promises, breaking the law and order, collapse of the economy, there still remains a group of loyalists who have closed their eyes and speak sweetly of the so-called warmonger.

Iran calls for intl. court to try Blair

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/161692.html


Iran's top security official Saeed Jalili has called for an international tribunal to put former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on trial for war crimes.

The Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council told a press conference in Istanbul, Turkey that Blair should be tried as a war criminal at an international court for his complicity in the killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq.

In his second appearance at the Iraq War Inquiry in London on Friday, Blair unleashed an all-out attack on Iran, accusing the Islamic Republic of posing a “looming challenge” to the West by pursuing its nuclear activities.

The Iranian official reacted to the allegations, noting that “Blair should first save himself at the trial.”

“A dispute arises at this point over the fact that why some people allow themselves to violate the rights of other nations and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, but nobody neither issues a resolution against them nor questions them in this regard,” Jalili said.

Bringing up the question that why the UK government is the only nation that tries Blair, the top Iranian official stressed that “he attacked Iraq without United Nation's authorization, an act that contributed to the death of hundreds of thousands of people. But nobody questions him today.”

The former British Prime Minister and the then US president George W. Bush are complicit in the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Blair made all the crucial decisions that led Britain to become the second-biggest contributor of troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Dozens of anti-war protesters gathered outside the Chilcot Inquiry venue to demonstrate their mounting outrage over Blair's decision to take Britain into an illegal conflict.

British Press: 'Blair lied, thousands died'

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/161535.html


British newspapers have unanimously blasted former Prime Minister Tony Blair for acting as a pawn in the hands of the former US President by invading Iraq on March 2003 under his command.

Blair was grilled, for the second time on Friday, by the official Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war where he insisted he was deeply regretful for the loss of life in the conflict, sparking angry shouts of "too late" from dead troopers' families.

The Independent said Blair's "gung-ho" attitude showed the "folly" of his position on Iraq, adding that the "disastrous consequences remain clear for all to see."

The Guardian said "for the most part, the old stager belted out familiar tunes" in a display of "chutzpah".

"It is not a trial, but the inquiry must nonetheless settle whether the former prime minister swept three particular things away -- the truth, the law and proper decision-making. Of these three, Blair yesterday acquitted himself with least damage on the last," it added.

The Daily Mail said it was "a predictably polished, slippery" performance, full of "self-justifying claptrap".

"Mr Blair agreed in secret to wage the Iraq war -- then lied, cheated and manipulated to make it happen," the daily said.

"To this day, his actions stain the national conscience."

The Sun said "nothing divides Britain more than our part in the war against the evil regime of Saddam Hussein".

The Daily Telegraph said "so relentless is the chorus that the public has given up trying to listen to what he has to say, assuming that it is all glib self-justification".

The Times sketch writer Ann Treneman said "the whole place was a "virtual floatation tank of emotion".

According to the Times, Blair's expression of regret over the lives lost in front of bereaved relatives seemed "like some sort of reckoning. Imperfect and messy, yes. Dysfunctional, certainly. But a reckoning, nonetheless".

The Daily Mirror said nobody's mind would be changed by the inquiry.

"It is the process which was at fault rather than any preconceived mendacity on the part of Mr Blair, a politician motivated by good intentions who made a catastrophic error."

The Daily Express agreed, decribing the inquiry as "pointless".

"Everybody by now must have reached a settled view. Clearly Blair massively overstated the case for believing Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Equally there was always a case for removing the monster on human rights grounds and for staying close to America."

"As it happens, the negatives heavily outweighed the positives," it said, adding "that is really all anyone needs to know."