Bush, Blair are war criminals, court says …..

http://www.presstv.ir

source

A War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia has found former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of war crimes for their roles in the Iraq war, Press TV reports.

The five-panel Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against humanity by leading the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a Press TV correspondent reported on Tuesday.

In 2003, the US and Britain invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law and under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction allegedly stockpiled by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The Malaysian tribunal judges ruled that the decision to wage war against Iraq by the two former heads of government was a flagrant abuse of law and an act of aggression that led to large-scale massacres of the Iraqi people.

Bombings and other forms of violence became commonplace in Iraq shortly after the US-led invasion of the country.

In their ruling, the tribunal judges also stated that the US, under the leadership of Bush, fabricated documents to make it appear that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

However, the world later learned that the former Iraqi regime did not possess WMDs and that the US and British leaders knew this all along.

Over one million Iraqis were killed during the invasion, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

The judges also said the court findings should be provided to signatories to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, and added that the names of Bush and Blair should be listed on a war crimes register.

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Tony Blair ‘misled’ Commons over legal advice on war in Iraq

http://www.sott.net

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:36 CST

UK Telegraph

Tony Blair will give evidence before the Chilcot inquiry again on Friday

Tony Blair misled Parliament by claiming that Britain could legally attack Iraq in the face of United Nations opposition despite being given clear advice to the contrary, new evidence suggests.

In evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Lord Goldsmith, who at the time was the government’s top legal adviser, disclosed that he was “uncomfortable” about statements made by the then-prime minister in the run up to the 2003 invasion.

Two months before the war began, in a meeting at No 10, the former attorney general told Mr Blair that war would not be legal without a fresh mandate from the UN.

In a statement to MPs the following day, however, the Labour prime minister said that there were “circumstances” in which an attack could be valid.

The following month, he gave an interview in which he suggested that war would be legal if another nation had made an “unreasonable” veto at the UN on military action.

A witness statement to the Chilcot Inquiry into the war, published today, makes clear that Lord Goldsmith considered that this did not accord with the advice he had given Mr Blair.

Asked whether Mr Blair’s words were compatible with the advice he received, the former attorney general wrote simply: “No.”

He added: “I was uncomfortable about them (the prime minister’s comments) …

“My concern was that we should not box ourselves in by the public statements that were made, and create a situation which might then have to be unravelled.”

Lord Goldsmith evidence to the inquiry has come under scrutiny after he admitted changing his mind about the legality of military action on the eve of the war.

His views were swayed during meetings he was encouraged to have with American government lawyers and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s ambassador to the UN.

Giving evidence to the inquiry last year, he denied that he was “leant on” by No 10 to change his legal opinion.

Until two weeks before the invasion, in March 2003, Lord Goldsmith had been of the view that UN resolution 1441, which was passed in November 2002 and declared Iraq in “material breach” of its obligations to disarm, was not sufficient to sanction war by the UK and United States.

In the new evidence to the inquiry, Lord Goldsmith said in his statement that the phrasing of resolution 1441 was “problematic”.

He was not actively consulted on the final drafting of the resolution after telling Mr Blair in October that the text as it stood did not authorise the use of force.

The former attorney general said: “I was not being sufficiently involved in the meetings and discussions about the resolution and the policy behind it that were taking place at ministerial level.

“Much of the later difficulties could have been avoided if my view had been sought on the drafts that were developed during the later stages of the negotiations, particularly bearing in mind the fact that I had not been persuaded that the early drafts achieved our objectives.”

The Chilcot Inquiry also released a previously secret memo in which Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, warned Mr Blair of the “high” risks of his visit to US President George Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.

In the letter, dated March 25 2002, Mr Straw said: “A legal justification is a necessary but far from sufficient precondition for military action.

“We also have to answer the big question – what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything.”

The former foreign secretary said there was no certainty the regime that replaced Saddam would be any better, adding: “Iraq has had no history of democracy so no one has this habit or experience.”

Mr Blair will appear before the inquiry for a second time on Friday, when he will be asked to explain gaps in his earlier evidence and discrepancies between his account and official documents and other witnesses’ testimony.

A spokesman for Mr Blair said: “Tony Blair will deal with all these issues in his evidence on Friday. The issue of the so called unreasonable veto was not the basis on which Britain took part in the military action. The basis was that given in the Attorney General’s advice which he has confirmed in the statement published today. What Peter Goldsmith’s statement does is make it categorically clear that there was a proper legal basis for the military action taken.”

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How to create an Angry American

 

US UK War Crimes: More leukemia in Iraq than after Hiroshima as result of depleted uranium, white phosphorus bombs and nerve gas

http://www.globalresearch.ca

Global Research, September 22, 2010

Parliamentary Motion in Scotland

More leukemia in Iraq than after Hiroshima as a result of the US-UK use of depleted uranium, white phosphorus and nerve gas in its weaponry. Bush and Blair lied about non-existent Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction in order to justify their invasion of that country. Now the toxic effects of US-UK’s own WMD bring a massive cancer scurge – particularly of childhood cancers – to the town of Fallujah. Women are now being advised not to have children. 22 September 2010 PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Use Women advised not to have children as legacy of US and UK WMD Bill Wilson MSP (SNP) has lodged a Parliamentary Motion highlighting the consequences of the US and UK’s use of Weapons of Mass Destruction during an attack on Fallujah in 2004. Speaking after lodging his motion, Dr Wilson said, “The consequences are ongoing: a survey showed a four-fold increase in all cancers, a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s and a 38-fold increase in leukaemia. By contrast, Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase with regard to the latter. What’s more, because of this cancer crisis, local doctors are advising women not to have children. “I have long been convinced that those responsible for the invasion of Iraq should be charged. It seems to me that any reasonable person looking at what happen in Fallujah would conclude that major war crimes have been committed. Tony Blair has to answer for his decisions. “It is disappointing, to say the least, that our media have paid relatively little attention to this issue. Yet women are now being advised not to have children. To turn a blind eye now would surely make us all complicit.” Contact Dr Bill Wilson MSP Tel +44 (0) 782 459 6994 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +44 (0) 782 459 6994      end_of_the_skype_highlighting / 131 348 6805 / 141 840 2772 Fax +44 (0) 131 348 6806 / 141 889 4693 E-mail Bill.Wilson.msp@scottish.parliament.uk Website www.billwilsonmsp.org Notes to Editors 1. FULL TEXT OF THE MOTION Short Title: Women Advised Not to Have Children as Legacy of US and UK WMD S3M-07049 Bill Wilson (West of Scotland) (SNP): That the Parliament notes a report in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009, on the effects of the United Kingdom and United States’ attack on Fallujah in 2004; notes the reports that this attack involved the use of illegal chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs and nerve gas; understands that it has been further reported that this has led to an explosion of infant mortality, leukaemia and cancers, exceeding those following the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the extent that local doctors are advising women not to have children; supports the international courts in their pursuit of war criminals since 1945; believes that no individual guilty of such crimes should escape justice, and calls for the detention and trial of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. 2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION BEYOND HIROSHIMA – THE NON-REPORTING OF FALLUJAH’S CANCER CATASTROPHE http://www.medialens.org/alerts/10/100907_beyond_hiroshima_the.php RELATED PREVIOUS RELEASE MSP Seeks Legal Advice re Crown Office Refusal to Disclose Deliberations on Iraq Prosecution http://www.billwilsonmsp.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1013&Itemid=2 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————— .

Tony Blair’s Journey

from : http://www.truthdig.com

Posted on Sep 17, 2010

By Peter Stothard

This review originally appeared in The TLS, whose website is www.the-tls.co.uk, and is reposted with permission.

Tony Blair’s political memoir has been pulled apart this week as though it were the palace of a fallen dictator, not so much reviewed as ransacked. Reporters have raced through its 700 pages as though each were some hitherto shuttered room hiding unused ammunition, looted antiquities, piles of purposeless propaganda, racks of vintage wines and extravagant wardrobes. With no prior newspaper serialization deal, there was a stampede for stories that matched the frenzy for Saddam’s Picassos or Mrs Marcos’s shoes. The British may not like him much any more but the media remain fascinated by the man who led their government for a decade, led an unelectable party to three election victories, followed an unprecedentedly unpopular American President into even more unpopular wars and redefined the role of Prime Minister for an age in which the lines between the political and the personal were themselves being redefined.

The best prospects for looters seemed to lie in the pages indexed under the name of Blair’s sometime collaborator, rival and loathed successor, Gordon Brown. Early results here were good. Although it was hardly any longer a surprise for Blair to say that his Chancellor of the Exchequer was “maddening” and had “zero emotional intelligence”, the news that in March 2006 Brown had blackmailed Blair with the threat of a formal investigation into the selling of peerages unless plans for pension reform were abandoned was sharp. “I have considered at length whether to include this episode”, Blair writes of the day when Britain seems to have come closest to an outright coup by one politician against another.

Revelation of the “truly nasty side of politics” is not, however, what Blair wants his book to be remembered for. Much of the personal abuse that marked the relationship between the two founders of the New Labour project remains unrepeated, at least for now. The consequence, in the Brown zones of Blair’s ransacked palace, has been unexpected emphasis on the long-time policy differences between the two men. Disputes over the modernization of welfare and the State’s role in solving the financial crisis were revealed in detail that was fresher, feeding the simultaneous media battle over who should be the next Labour leader and whether the TB-GBs (as the two men’s hatred became known) would continue into future generations, Blairites vs Brownites like some second-rate curse on the House of Atreus.

A Journey: My Political Life

By Tony Blair

Knopf, 720 pages

The other area that seemed a ripe source of stories was the one marked Iraq, especially the shrines to the genius of George W. Bush that the book’s limited pre-publicity had promised. The result here was more of a disappointment to those seeking new facts. But there are no new heights of hagiography either: when Bush is described as having been both “very smart” and of “immense simplicity in how he saw the world”, it is of interest now only to collectors of narrative contradiction. Blair has always been empathetic to a fault (he has a voice for every room), and in these parts he is writing for American readers who like their leaders treated with a pale-toned respect. Describing Camp David as “a collection of log cabins, very much American-style and very well done” is perhaps a little too lame even for the lowering prose that is the dominant vocal style here.

One paragraph, however, stands out and in a way which becomes peculiarly characteristic of the whole. The description of the Blair family’s arrival at Bush’s Crawford Ranch in April 2002 begins as expected, a place “pretty much in the middle of nowhere, 1,600 acres with a house and guest house and various outbuildings”. And then:

“as usual I turned up mob-handed with Grandma [Cherie’s mother] and Leo [their baby son] in tow. It was all very odd. Cherie used to like the family to travel with me but, frankly, when I was working, I preferred to be on my own and undistracted, able to concentrate entirely on the matter in hand, not having to worry about Leo feeling bored, Grandma complaining or making sure that everyone got on together. ”

To see long excerpts from “A Journey: My Political Life” at Google Books, click here.

For some readers this enlivening of the political by the personal may be merely charming, a reminder of just how like the rest of us our Prime Minister once was. For others it may bring a mild alarm. Ten months later when the Iraq war was close and unstoppable, Blair faced hundreds of thousands of critics who were sceptical that he was still negotiating in good faith and that he had not long ago given his word to back the American removal of Saddam. The British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, has said that at this Crawford Ranch meeting the Prime Minister had pledged his backing “in blood”. Blair has always denied this claim; but then perhaps he was worrying about Grandma when the blood-dipped pens were handed around the table. There are truly some details that one would rather not know.

The former Prime Minister spends little time in Britain now, preferring the popularity, the profit, and the opportunities to spread religious harmony which are open to him overseas. His single high-security signing session in London has been cancelled after bottles and shoes greeted his first publicity appearance in Dublin. There is a popular internet campaign for bookshop customers to move his oeuvre to the “True Crime” or “Dark Fantasy” shelves.

As long as he is abroad Blair sees a continuing future for himself as a professional guru and guide. The future has always been the time zone in which he feels most comfortable. “I’m not really a retrospective person”, he writes. He describes how he told his wife in Paris in 1994, before there was a vacancy as leader of the Labour Party, that the then occupant would die and he would take over the job: “I think this will happen, I just think it will”. As he told Peter Mandelson after the first part of this prediction had come true, “this is mine, I know it and I will take it”. He predicts confidently now about the prospects of China, seeking “to set out a view of the world both as it is and as it may become”.

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Tony Blair Fanclub Part 2 : War Criminals Rewarded for their Contribution to World Peace: Only in America Can Tony Blair Go Out in Public

http://www.globalresearch.ca by David Swanson
Global Research, September 14, 2010
warisacrime.org
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When U.S. media pundits claim that every other nation on earth honestly believed the absurd lies George W. Bush told about Iraqi weapons and ties to terrorism, the grain of truth is that one leader of one foreign nation went along with the lies: British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bush gave Blair a medal of freedom as a reward. I picture millions of Iraqi refugees without proper food or medicine in Jordan and Syria strong in spirit and grateful for their fate thanks to Blair’s assistance in freeing them from their homes. On August 31st, President Obama spoke from the Oval Office, assuring us that the War on Iraq had been launched to disarm a nation. Disarming a nation is a criminal basis for a war, a fact that I wish would quit getting lost in the madness of what we actually debate in this country. But Obama’s claim to have opposed this war that he funded as a senator and continued as a president rests on the idea, not just that he was lucky enough not to yet be in the Senate when it started, but that he didn’t at that time yet pretend to believe the lies. Now he finds it important to put up that pretense when nobody else believes it anymore, in order to urge us to “turn the page” on the crime of the century. Obama’s embrace of the Iraq war lies, which included the “surge” lies so valuable now in Afghanistan, coincided with Tony Blair’s book tour. When Blair was performing his poodle tricks in 2002 and 2003 he was questioned and mocked at home and in Parliament, but given endless standing ovations in Congress. Nothing has changed. In Ireland on his book tour — the current equivalent of a triumphal march after a return from foreign slaughter — Blair faced protests and an attempted citizen’s arrest. In London the planned protests were so large that Blair canceled his event, stuck his tail between his legs, and whimpered away. In Philadelphia, on the other hand, Blair has just been presented with a Liberty Medal at the Constitution Center by none other than Bill Clinton, as reward for Blair’s . . . wait for it . . . “steadfast commitment to conflict resolution.” Only in America. I haven’t read Bliar’s book (Bliar is the proper spelling) and I don’t think I could be paid enough to do so. But I want to recommend a different book instead. Someone else who was part of the British government during the lead up to the War on Iraq has also just published a book. It doesn’t have any cute stories in it about sitting in the wrong chair in the Queen’s palace, but it does tell the truth about Blair’s deadly lies, for which he should have been — and nearly was — impeached, and for which he should be prosecuted. The book is “Failing Intelligence: The True Story of How We Were Fooled into Going to War in Iraq,” by Brian Jones, the former head of the UK Defense Intelligence Staff’s nuclear, biological, and chemical section. Jones was in charge of the type of claims that Blair used in his famously sexed up dodgy dossier to sell his nation on war. But Jones and his staff were cut out of the process. They were told that evidence existed that they could not see and would have to take on faith, evidence Jones still hasn’t seen but which was “withdrawn” as inaccurate by the government after the war began. Jones did not accept the mysterious evidence of “weapons of mass destruction” on faith. He formally registered his concerns with his superiors at the time. But he did not resign in protest or go public, either. Jones seems, from his book, to be a very cautious bureaucrat whose view of the world does not differ radically from the worldview of Bush or Blair. But he has come gradually, through a series of inquiries into the war lies, to understand that the lies were intentional and to speak out against them. Jones notes that the discussion at 10 Downing Street on July 23, 2002, recorded in the Downing Street Minutes, did not include any consideration of the security of Britain and seemed based on the premise that continued good relations with the United States was of greater importance than the risk of a terrorist attack. Jones would never have sworn that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. He even finds the question lacking, pointing out how swiftly a nation can create and use biological or chemical weapons whether or not it currently has them, as long as it has the know-how, which Iraq did. But, contrary to what you might hear in the U.S. media, Jones — the man in charge of this area in Britain — did not have any evidence that Iraq did have biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons. In fact, Jones knew Iraq to be far from possessing nuclear weapons. And he said so, albeit privately and through approved professional channels. “Now listen, Brian,” he records his boss lecturing him, “I don’t know what it is but you really seem to have a problem with authority, don’t you? Decisions have been made, a position has been established and it is our responsibility as good civil servants to accept that and support the line as best we can.” Jones refused to go along, and he says that he tried to go public with his concerns following his retirement but before the invasion of Baghdad. Jones retired two months before the war began. “I thought it was important that the public should understand these differences [between various types of weapons conflated through the term "WMD"] and I drafted an article that explained them,” Jones writes. “I was surprised that my request to Whitehall for clearance for me to submit it for publication was promptly approved. Unfortunately, no one wanted to publish it.” A version of that article, dated July 2003, is here: http://warisacrime.org/downloads/jones.pdf You can see why nobody wanted to publish it. It does not blow the whistle on the war liars, explain how the experts were cut out of the process, or denounce the war. It presents itself as academic quibbling over the use of terminology. Jones’ account of his gradual movement in the months and years following the invasion reads, at first, more as a profile in pusillanimity than courage. He literally has a weak heart and is concerned about his health during the stress of testifying to the Hutton, Butler, Chilcot and other inquiries. Asked at the Hutton Inquiry how he would have felt had his staff gone to the press with their concerns, Jones replied: “I would have thought they were acting well beyond the bounds of what they should have been doing. I would have been very disappointed and very annoyed.” Never mind that over a million Iraqis might have been kept very much ALIVE. That concern never enters Jones’ book. And yet, as he methodically recounts, he came to speak out in public inquiries and in the press about the corrupt process through which Bliar dragged Britain into a U.S. war of aggression. Jones lays the blame for his nation’s role solidly on Bliar. Now, it occurs to me that Washington, D.C., is crawling with respectable bureaucrats like Jones, none of whom have published a book like his. And it occurs to me that they are less likely to do so because of the climate in which they live. In Britain, there have been constant investigations since the war was launched. They have been limited and can in most cases accurately be characterized as white washes. They have not involved criminal prosecution. But they have been there. And those who have spoken up a bit have been lauded and encouraged to speak up a little more. This climate, I think, has encouraged the leaking of all the official British documents through which we in the United States have learned about our own government’s war plans. The activism of the Stop the War Coalition has been relentless, but — unlike in the United States — it has penetrated major media outlets. Producers and editors have urged Jones and others to make their information known and to publish books. We haven’t seen a proposal in Washington to investigate the war lies since 2005 when the Democrats were lying about what they’d do if we gave them a majority in Congress. On the contrary, it is now popular in Washington to claim you supported the 2007 “surge” and knew Iraq would turn out to be a “good war” all along. Jones’ prescription for reform at the close of his book is a single intelligence agency with a single head answerable to the Parliament. As his book reveals in detail, just as in the United States, the tangled web of rival agencies in the UK is a liability. I agree with Jones’ proposed reform, although I hardly think spying — even when limited to spying, and excluding assassination and other tricks of the CIA — has earned the moniker ‘intelligence.’ I’d be inclined to go with ‘stupidity’ for a while. “Would you please share that piece of stupidity with the committee?” “Is there a consensus on this point within the stupidity community?” “I have the utmost respect for the views of our stupidity agents.” Et cetera. More substantively, of course, we will only be able to “turn the page” to a page that looks sufficiently different when there are deterrents to the sort of abuses engaged in by Bush and Blair. Blair WAS, in fact, a single head of government answerable to Parliament, and Parliament failed to impeach him. Now, if we could just begin enforcing the law and stop handing out medals. David Swanson is the author of “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” http://davidswanson.org http://warisacrime.org
Global Research Articles by David Swanson .

let him have eggs and shoes ! Tony Blair Fanclub Part1

to be continued……………