Knives out for Blair over Iraq

On 29 January, Tony Blair appeared before Lord Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry to explain his reasons for leading his country into the Iraq invasion of 2003. The former British prime-minister still justifies the attack on the grounds that Saddam Hussein, according to British intelligence, possessed weapons of mass-destruction. However, the press increasingly contends that this is untrue. Left-leaning weekly the New Statesman leads the case against Blair with testimony from government experts whose advise Blair ignored in the run-up to the war. “Over the years, numerous revelations - including leaked official memos and minutes - have suggested that Blair, in spite of his repeated denials, signed up not simply to disarmament but to regime change (i.e. the overthrow of Saddam) in Iraq a full year before the invasion”. The paper quotes a senior law-lord who calls on the Iraq inquiry to declare the war illegal, which chimes in with campaigns calling for Blair’s arrest and trial as a war criminal.