Tony Blair should be impeached over the Iraq war, a former senior soldier has demanded.
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General Sir Michael Rose, right, former UN commander in Bosnia, said the Prime Minister had to be held to account."Certainly from a soldier's perspective there can't be any more serious decision taken by a prime minister than declaring war," he said.
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"And then to go to war on what turns out to be false grounds is something that no one should be allowed to walk away from."
"And then to go to war on what turns out to be false grounds is something that no one should be allowed to walk away from."
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General Sir Michael told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Mr Blair's actions were "somewhere in between" getting the politics wrong and actually acting illegally.
General Sir Michael told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Mr Blair's actions were "somewhere in between" getting the politics wrong and actually acting illegally.
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"The politics was wrong, that he rarely declared what his ultimate aims were, as far as we can see, in terms of harping continually on weapons of mass destruction when actually he probably had some other strategy in mind."And secondly, the consequences of that war have been quite disastrous both for the people of Iraq and also for the west in terms of our wider interests in the war against global terror."
"The politics was wrong, that he rarely declared what his ultimate aims were, as far as we can see, in terms of harping continually on weapons of mass destruction when actually he probably had some other strategy in mind."And secondly, the consequences of that war have been quite disastrous both for the people of Iraq and also for the west in terms of our wider interests in the war against global terror."
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The general accepted Parliament had endorsed the war, but he said that was because the Prime Minister had stressed the weapons of mass destruction argument.
The general accepted Parliament had endorsed the war, but he said that was because the Prime Minister had stressed the weapons of mass destruction argument.
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So there we are, the rather strange notion that somehow the Iraqi war is “illegal”. Illegal by whose standards?
The UN is not a judicial organization. It is not a body of legal opinion that can make judgements of that kind and apply them to the whole world. The International Criminal Court makes up it's rules as it goes along and again, has no single body of criminal law to refer back to. What is illegal in, say, the United Kingdom, is not necessarily that anywhere else. A war can be intelligent or foolish; it can be justified or not; it can be aggressive or defensive or pre-emptive; it can, even, be just or unjust, though one rather wonders how many of the people who are loudly condemning the war in Iraq for its “illegality” have bothered to read St Thomas Aquinas on that subject. But what a war cannot be is illegal, because there is no legality to break.
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A what does the General, the Lib-Dems and others who constantly cry ''illegal war'' actually intend to do with Tony Blair when he has been impeached over the Iraq war? Do they propose to put the PM (and Bush) on trial at the International Criminal court and reinstate Saddam Hussain as President of Iraq (with compenstation for the death of his evil sons) so that once again he can at his will murder millions of his fellow Arabs?
So there we are, the rather strange notion that somehow the Iraqi war is “illegal”. Illegal by whose standards?
The UN is not a judicial organization. It is not a body of legal opinion that can make judgements of that kind and apply them to the whole world. The International Criminal Court makes up it's rules as it goes along and again, has no single body of criminal law to refer back to. What is illegal in, say, the United Kingdom, is not necessarily that anywhere else. A war can be intelligent or foolish; it can be justified or not; it can be aggressive or defensive or pre-emptive; it can, even, be just or unjust, though one rather wonders how many of the people who are loudly condemning the war in Iraq for its “illegality” have bothered to read St Thomas Aquinas on that subject. But what a war cannot be is illegal, because there is no legality to break.
.
A what does the General, the Lib-Dems and others who constantly cry ''illegal war'' actually intend to do with Tony Blair when he has been impeached over the Iraq war? Do they propose to put the PM (and Bush) on trial at the International Criminal court and reinstate Saddam Hussain as President of Iraq (with compenstation for the death of his evil sons) so that once again he can at his will murder millions of his fellow Arabs?
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