More questions have arisen regarding the conduct of the Iraq War than answers, which have been conspicuously absent for more than a decade. Those questions continue to pile up around a very strange set of intelligence reports that were insisted upon the Bush administration as being flawless and impending.
Based on much of those “flawless and impending” reports, other nation’s governments opted to become embroiled in the conflict in the Middle East that enabled the United States and its allies (which were few) to topple the oppressive Saddam Hussein regime and his Sunni-dominated government.
Prime Minister Tony Blair was among those world leaders that fell for the supposed posterity of the intelligence reports presented to the United Nations Security County by then Secretary of State Colin Powell. An Iraqi general who was deeply ensconced in the events as they unfurled is demanding answers, but running into expected brick wall.
Britain’s High Court has blocked a bid by an Iraqi general to bring a private prosecution against Tony Blair over the war he launched in Iraq while prime minister.
General Abdul Wahed Shannan Al Rabbat accused the former Labour leader of committing a ‘crime of aggression’ by invading Iraq in 2003 to overthrow former President Saddam Hussein. The general wanted to see the prosecution Blair and two other key ministers of the time – Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general.
The men currently have immunity from criminal charges over the war after a 2016 ruling said attempting to bring any prosecution would involve revealing details kept under the Official Secrets Act.
Al Rabbat’s lawyers asked London’s High Court for permission to seek judicial review in an attempt to get the Supreme Court, now the highest court in the land, to overturn a ruling by the House of Lords in 2006 that there is no such crime as the ‘crime of aggression’ under the law of England and Wales.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the Lord Chief Justice, and Mr. Justice Ouseley, dismissed the general’s application on Monday, saying there was “no prospect” of the case succeeding.
Although General al-Rabbat is being given an excuse that national security would be compromised with the revelations of the documents regarding the Iraq conflict, it seems a bit of a stretch to suggest that something as old as the war which was initiated 14 years ago could still be relative, as far as intelligence operations are concerned, in today’s digital and electronic age where wars are fought in the matrix rather than on the ground. The idea that somehow, British intelligence could be compromised by admissions of oversights from 2003, is utterly ridiculous.
While I do understand the nature of protecting heads of state, in so far as security is concerned, it falls into a different realm when speaking about malfeasance and globalist concerns regarding the protection of the Illuminati and their ilk.
Michael Mansfield QC, appearing for Al Rabbat, argued that the Chilcot Inquiry published last year showed the prosecution of Blair would be justified. An order declaring Blair’s immunity against any charges should therefore be overturned, Mansfield said.
The 2.6 million-word Chilcot report, which examined the first eight years of the war, said Britain chose to join the invasion of Iraq in 2003 before peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted, alongside former US president George W. Bush, whom Blair had already pledged to support.
It added that the UK’s involvement in Iraq was based on what soon became obvious was a false pretext that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The report found that Blair misled the British public over the threat posed by WMD, which turned out to be non-existent.
Blair’s arguments for going to war were “based on flawed intelligence and assessments” that “were not challenged [and] should have been,” the report said.
The report also detailed the private deals Blair made with Bush ahead of the invasion. Blair promised Bush “I will be with you, whatever” long before the British public was told that he had set out on a path that led inevitably led to British involvement in the conflict eight months later.
As in the U.S., the call goes on for an investigation into the core reasons for the attack on Hussein that left a power vacuum so immense as to be filled with only the most brutal and barbaric force.
The Iraq War caused the deaths of 179 British servicemen and women, and cost the UK economy an estimated £9.6 billion (US$12.6 billion). It is widely held to have caused the bloody sectarian conflict that brought about the rise of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
According to Iraq Body Count, at least 160,400 Iraqi civilians died during the war.
The Military Industrial Complex worked overtime on this one. There had been no substantial war effort since the end of Vietnam in 1975 and the need to concoct a reason…any reason…for a conflict that would be enough of a distraction away from the long peacetime effort was made to order in Iraq. Hussein was a belligerent tyrant who had no real friends in the region. He was constantly in border disputes with virtually every neighboring nation.
It was perfect. And it worked.
Source: RT
