AS IS WELL KNOWN the moment that US President Bush heard about the criminal terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in NewYork on Tuesday September 11, 2001 he decided that it provided the perfect opportunity for a massive attack on Iraq to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime.
Even Bush was surprised that when he spoke to the Labour PM of the day, Blair, who outdid Bush’s enthusiasm for war with Iraq, and insisted that he did not want the UK to be left out of the projected onslaught.
In fact, Blair was so enthusiastic that he convinced the House of Commons to support the war with a pack of lies that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that could be mobilised for use against the British base in Cyprus in 20 minutes.
In fact, Iraq was not a danger to any other state. It had been subjected to the most severe and vicious sanctions for over a decade that had weakened and starved Iraq to such an extent that hundreds of thousands, particularly very young children, had died from lack of medicines.
Iraq was already on its knees thanks to the sanctions war crime, so it qualified as an easy target, and an opportunity to forge a new imperialist-dominated world of the type that Blair was working for – no matter what the cost.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed by the murderous sanctions and many more were slaughtered in the invasion and its aftermath, when cities like Faluja and entire areas like southern Iraq rose up.
The end product of the Iraqi intervention, and Bush and Blair’s transformation, was Isis which erupted to occupy northern Iraq and then Syria. The war to destroy Iraq, and then to proceed to do the same in Libya and Syria was and remains a gigantic war crime.
No wonder the British capitalist state does not want to open up Pandora’s Box and investigate the war crimes that were carried out in the course of the action by British solders who had the authority of Bush and Blair behind them.
In fact, an investigation by BBC Panorama and the Sunday Times has spoken to 11 British detectives who said they found credible evidence of war crimes in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Soldiers should have been prosecuted for the killings, say the detectives, while the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it rejected the ‘unsubstantiated allegation’ of a pattern of cover-ups.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told the BBC ‘all of the allegations, that had evidence, have been looked at’. He said ‘the right balance’ had been struck over decisions whether or not to investigate alleged war crimes.
The new evidence has come from inside the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), which investigated alleged war crimes committed by British troops during the occupation of Iraq, and Operation Northmoor, which investigated alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
The government decided to close IHAT and Operation Northmoor, after Phil Shiner, a lawyer who had taken more than 1,000 cases to IHAT, was struck off as a solicitor following allegations he had paid fixers in Iraq to find clients.
Now, former detectives from IHAT and Operation Northmoor said Phil Shiner’s actions were used as an excuse to close down criminal investigations. None of the cases investigated by IHAT or Operation Northmoor resulted in a prosecution.
One IHAT detective told Panorama: ‘The Ministry of Defence had no intention of prosecuting any soldier of whatever rank he was unless it was absolutely necessary, and they couldn’t wriggle their way out of it.’
Another former detective said the victims of war crimes had been badly let down: ‘I use the word disgusting. And I feel for the families because . . . they’re not getting justice. How can you hold your head up as a British person?’
Detectives concluded the soldier who shot Raid al-Mosawi should be prosecuted for killing the Iraqi police officer and commanding officer Major Suss-Francksen should be charged with covering up what happened. But military prosecutors have not taken anyone to court. Operation Northmoor was set up by the government in 2014 and looked into 52 alleged illegal killings.
Its closure was announced by the government before Royal Military Police detectives even had a chance to interview the key Afghan witnesses. It is obvious that justice will only be done when the working class in the UK takes the power and establishes socialism.
Then Blair and his military and political supporters will be packed off to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague to pay for their crimes.
