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Today's Daily Mail reports:

A high number of children are being born with birth defects in an Iraqi city where U.S. forces may have used chemical weapons during a fierce battle in 2004.
Children in Fallujah are being born with limb, head, heart and nervous system defects. There is even a claim that a baby was born with three heads.

The number of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than the rate in Europe.

The BBC’s John Simpson reported on Thursday from Fallujah that, while there had been no authoritative medical investigation, there was growing evidence of an alarming incidence of birth defects.

A British-based Iraq researcher, Malik Hamdan, told the BBC that Fallujah doctors were swamped by a ‘massive, unprecedented’ number of heart defects and other problems.

Figures from a city doctor from 2003, before the war, showed she was dealing with one birth defect every two months at that time, but was now seeing at least one case a day.

Miss Hamdan said data from this January showed the rate of heart defects among newborns was 95 per 1,000 births – 13 times that of Europe.

Meanwhile, the British Prime Minister has told the Chilcot Inquiry that he thinks the invasion of Iraq was the 'right decision for the right reasons'.

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Your hero Tony Bliar is a war criminal and will end up in a prison cell.

Nor will we ever forget the role that warmongering journalists like you played in propagandising for a blatantly illegal and immoral conflict.

Oh, and here’s the latest news from oh so democratic ‘liberated’ Iraq.

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The BBC reports:

An inquiry into the Netherlands' support for the invasion of Iraq says it was not justified by UN resolutions.
The Dutch Committee of Inquiry on Iraq said UN Security Council resolutions did not "constitute a mandate for... intervention in 2003".
The inquiry was launched after foreign ministry memos were leaked that cast doubt on the legal basis for the war.
The Netherlands gave political support to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but had no military role.
The report demolishes the Dutch case for supporting the invasion, says the BBC's Europe correspondent Jonny Dymond.
It could also be taken to reinforce the international case against the Iraq war, he says.

In the First Post, Robert Fox writes:

While he (Alistair Campbell), was protesting that Tony Blair, honourable as Brutus, acted with the deepest sincerity and the best of intentions, a high-powered inquiry headed by a former Dutch supreme court judge, Willlibrord Davids, reported that the Netherlands and its allies had no excuse under any interpretation of international law for going to war in Iraq in March 2003.
This is the third inquest into the Netherlands' participation in the Iraq war in 2003; though the Dutch didn't join the invasion, they sent troops in support and to help with the occupation. This is the harshest judgment of the Iraq war so far, and comes from a legal system and tradition of men like Hugo Grotius, a founding father of the modern concept

Of course, the Dutch inquiry only confirms what those of us who opposed the war have maintained all along: that the war had no legal basis. But it strengthens even further the case for bringing those responsible for the crime of the century to justice.

What on earth are we waiting for?

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This article of mine appears in The First Post.

Neil Clark: A trial would be warmly welcomed by millions – so what happens next?

Tony Blair's extraordinary admission on Sunday to the BBC's Fern Britton - that he would have gone to war to topple Saddam Hussein regardless of the issue of Iraq's alleged WMDs - is sure to give fresh impetus to moves to prosecute our former prime minister for war crimes.

The case against Blair, strong enough before this latest comment, now appears rock solid. Going to war to change another country's regime is prohibited by international law, while the Nuremburg judgment of 1946 laid down that "to initiate a war of aggression", as Blair and Bush clearly did against Iraq, "is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole".

Blair's admission, that Saddam would have been attacked anyway, is also an acknowledgement that he lied to the House of Commons on February 25, 2003, when he told MPs: "I detest his [Saddam's] regime. But even now he [Saddam] can save it by complying with the UN's demand. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully. I do not want war... But disarmament peacefully can only happen with Saddam's active co-operation."

The view that Blair is a war criminal is now mainstream: when comedian Sandi Toksvig, host of Radio Four's News Quiz, called him one on air, the BBC, according to the Mail on Sunday, did not receive a single complaint.

But while it is easy to label Blair a war criminal, what are the chances of him actually standing trial - and how could it be achieved?

You can read the rest of the article here.

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By his own admission.
'Regime change' may be popular with neocon fanatics, but it is illegal.

And when you read Bliar's latest comments, think back to the speech he gave to the House of Commons on 25th February 2003.

"I detest his regime....but even now, he (Saddam) could save it by complying with the UN's demand. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully. I do not want war ... But disarmament peacefully can only happen with Saddam's active co-operation."

What a liar.

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The Mail reports:

Gossip from an Iraqi taxi driver was a key source for Tony Blair's 'dodgy dossier'.
A report by a respected MP claims that the unlikely secret agent was one of MI6's top sources when it was building a case to justify the invasion.
He provided the information that Saddam Hussein could fire chemical weapons at British targets within 45 minutes.
Mr Holloway's report says that analysts at the Secret Intelligence Service quickly decided the cab driver's information about missiles was 'verifiably' false and warned that the agent was not reliable.
But a carefully-worded footnote in an MI6 report was apparently brushed aside by Downing Street officials when the dodgy dossier was put together in September 2002.

Gossip from a Iraqi taxi driver being used to sell the case for an illegal war. And the consequences of that war: over 1m people dead.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, the carnage unleashed by the illegal invasion continues.

The Iraq war was the defining event of the first decade of the 21st century.

Let’s make sure that in the second decade of the century those responsible for it are finally brought to justice.

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The Mail on Sunday reports:

Tony Blair was accused of a 'gross betrayal' of the Queen and Parliament last night after it emerged that the Government's chief law officer warned him eight months before the Iraq invasion that regime change would be illegal.

In a previously undisclosed memo, described as 'the most vital piece of the jigsaw so far', Attorney General Lord Goldsmith told the then prime minister that the war would be a blatant breach of international law.

But rather than slow his rush to war, Mr Blair froze Lord Goldsmith out of Cabinet meetings and sent two of his closest allies to menace him into changing his mind. Lord Goldsmith was so furious at his treatment he threatened to resign- and lost three stone as Mr Blair and his cronies bullied him into backing down

What lovely people Bliar and his cronies are, don't you think? Starting blatantly illegal wars. Bullying those who get in the way of their plans.

Tony Bliar, the man the neocons wanted to be EU President- is now a totally disgraced figure. He- and his few remaining supporters- need to be treated with utter contempt. But that's not enough. There is abundant evidence that Bliar is guilty of war crimes. The 'supreme' international crime is to launch a war of aggression against a sovereign state- and that's what Bliar did in 2003.
He- and his US counter-part George W. Bush- and the neocon fanatics who pushed so aggressively for war, need to be brought before a war crimes tribunal as soon as possible.

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BLAIR LIED LIED AND LIED AGAIN: MANDARINS REVEAL THAT 10 DAYS BEFORE IRAQ INVASION PM KNEW SADDAM COULDN'T USE WMDs.

says today's Daily Mail headline. Who'd have thought it eh? Tony Blair lying? I'm sure that news comes as a huge surprise to readers of this blog.

Reading the Mail's headline reminded me of the events of February 2003. Veteran socialist politician and peace campaigner Tony Benn travelled to Baghdad to ask Saddam Hussein if he did indeed possess WMDs. (you can watch part one of Tony's interview above, and you can watch parts two and three here and here).

For going to Baghdad and meeting with Saddam, Benn was savaged by the pro-war hawks in the media. David Aaronovitch, wrote this sneering, sarcastic piece poking fun at Benn in The Guardian. What a silly old naïve fool Tony Benn was the neocons and 'liberal interventionists' chimed, going to Baghdad and asking Saddam if he had WMD. Of course Saddam would say he hadn't and of course he was lying.

But it wasn’t Saddam Hussein who was telling porkies, but the British and American governments.

Of course, some of us said the WMD line was baloney. It wasn't a difficult call to make- for if Bush and Blair had genuinely believed Iraq possessed WMDs they would not have been so keen to attack the country, as I argued here.

But many, many journalists did swallow the lies about WMDs, hook, line and sinker.
As I said here, the pundits who parroted the U.S. and Britain's deceitful propaganda on Iraq have never been properly held to account.

Far from it, they've actually been rewarded for getting things so badly wrong.

Melanie Phillips, and not John Pilger or Seumas Milne, is on Question Time tonight.

UPDATE: Blair and Bush's Bush and Blair’s secret, illegal plan to ‘regime change’ in Iraq. Read all about it here and here.

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Mehdi Hasan and Craig Murray explain his colour scheme.
hat tip for Craig Murray's post: The Exile

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The Sunday Telegraph reports:

Tony Blair, the former prime minister, misled MPs and the public throughout 2002 when he claimed that Britain’s objective was “disarmament, not regime change” and that there had been no planning for military action. In fact, British military planning for a full invasion and regime change began in February 2002.

Throughout most of 2002, Mr Blair’s consistent line was that – though military action could not be ruled out – no decisions had been made, no British military preparations were in train, and any action had to be pursued through the UN. That, today’s documents make clear, was not correct.

You can read more here from the Iraq war files here and here.

Tony Bliar misleading MPs and the public? Who’d ever have thought it!!

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With all the attention on events in Afghanistan, the media has tended to ignore the continuing devastation that the 2003 illegal US-led attack on Iraq has caused.

Today, 95 people lost their lives in bomb blasts in Baghdad- and more than 500 people were injured. It's no good supporters of the war trying to evade responsibility for the carnage- the fact is that attacks like the ones we saw today are a direct consequence of the decision to invade and topple Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. Al-Qa'eda and other such groups may be operating in Iraq today- but they certainly weren't operating in Iraq prior to March 2003. And for that we have the neocons to thank.

Apologists for the war urge those of us who opposed it to 'move on'. But I for one will not be 'moving on' until those who planned the invasion- one which has cost the lives of up to 1m people- are properly held to account for their crimes.

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This article of mine on how a David Cameron government would be brimming with hawks, appears in the First Post.

The Iraq war is widely discredited. George W Bush and Tony Blair are both out of office. Barack Obama has talked of a "new beginning" in his country's relationship with the Islamic world. Surely it's game over for the neocons, the small group of hardline hawks commonly held responsible for the US-led attack on Iraq in 2003?

Don't bet on it. If, as bookmakers believe, an overall majority for the Conservatives in the next election is a racing certainty, then the proponents of 'Shock and Awe' will once again be back in the corridors of power in Britain.

To understand why the neocons would be in such a strong position if David Cameron does make it to Number 10, we need to go back to the autumn of 2005, the time of the last Conservative party leadership election.

Fearing that in a head-to-head contest between popular former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke and right-winger David Davis, the more charismatic - and anti-war - Clarke would win, the neocon faction within the party started to champion the cause of a young, relatively little known MP for Witney, promoting him as the man who would 'modernise' the party and lead it back to power. The strategy worked a treat, and the little known MP - David Cameron - pulled off a surprise victory.

Cameron's campaign was masterminded by a triumvirate of MPs: Michael Gove, Ed Vaizey and George Osborne.

Gove, who believes the invasion of Iraq was a "proper British foreign policy success", is the author of the polemic Celsius 7/7, which has been described as a "neo-con rallying cry" for its attacks on Islamism, which he describes as a "totalitarian ideology" on a par with Nazism and Communism, and says must be fiercely opposed.

He, along with Vaizey, is a signatory to the principles of the ultra-hawkish Henry Jackson Society, an organisation founded at Peterhouse College Cambridge in 2005 and named after a warmongering US Senator who opposed détente with the Soviet Union.
The Society supports the 'maintenance of a strong military' with a 'global reach'; among its international patrons are the serial warmonger Richard 'Prince of Darkness' Perle, a former staffer of Henry Jackson who was considered one of the leading architects of the Iraq war, and Bill Kristol, the influential American journalist, formerly with the New York Times, who called for military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in 2006.

As for Osborne, Cameron's Shadow Chancellor and right-hand man; he praised the "excellent neoconservative case" for war against Iraq.

There are other strong neocon influences on Cameron. Policy Exchange, which has been described as the Tory leader's 'favourite think-tank', and which will have an open door to Number 10, was set up in 2002 by Michael Gove and fellow hawk Nicholas Boles, a member of the Notting Hill set who the Tories plan to parachute into the safe seat of Grantham and Stamford at the next election. Dean Godson, the group's research director and adviser on security issues, has been described as "one of the best connected neoconservatives in Britain".

When Godson, a former special assistant to the disgraced publisher Conrad Black, was dismissed by the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper's editor Martin Newland said of him (and Black's wife, fellow neocon Barbara Amiel, who also wrote for the paper): "It's OK to be pro-Israel, but not to be unbelievably pro-Likud Israel. It's OK to be pro-American but not look as if you're taking instructions from Washington."

In 2007, Policy Exchange was accused of deliberately stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment in Britain after a controversy over the veracity of some of the evidence it used in its report 'The Hijacking of British Islam'.

Although he said that Britain should learn from the 'failures' of neoconservatism in a speech in September 2006, and denied that he was a neocon himself, Cameron's public pronouncements on foreign affairs since then certainly give the Tory uber-hawks no grounds for believing that they have backed the wrong man.

Last summer, during the South Ossetia conflict, he called for Russia to be expelled from the G8, for Georgia's Nato membership to be "accelerated" and lambasted the British government for allowing Moscow's "aggression" to go unchecked.

He has consistently called for a tougher stance on Iran, warning that "every week, every month that goes by brings Iran closer to possessing a nuclear weapon." And, while staying largely silent on Israel's military assault on Gaza, he has declared his belief in Israel to be "indestructible" and pledged that he would be an "unswerving friend" to the country if he became Prime Minister.

Just as significant has been the way Cameron has protected his neocon allies during the expenses scandal - although they were arguably among the worst offenders. Gove, the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, who was described by the Daily Mail's political commentator Peter Oborne as "one of the most notorious milkers of the expenses system", for spending thousands furnishing his London home before 'flipping' to a new property and claiming £13,000 in moving costs, came under no pressure from Cameron to stand down. He is likely to play a major role in the next Conservative government.

So too will fellow flipper George Osborne and Ed Vaizey, who claimed for over £2,000 in antique furniture bought from a business owned by David Cameron's mother-in-law.

The trio will not be the only hawks in Cameron's Cabinet. Shadow Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox, is the founder and UK Director of the 'The Atlantic Bridge', an organisation which promotes closer US/British foreign policy ties. Members of the group's advisory council include Gove, Osborne, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling and Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, a strong supporter of the Iraq war who has attacked Europe's "extraordinary weakness" in dealing with Russia.

It's a sobering thought that before the Iraq inquiry has finished its work, some of the war's most fervent supporters may, if the bookies are right and the Tories win the May 2010 election, once again be guiding Britain's foreign policy.

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Michael Crick writes:

I'm interested to see that the distinguished war historian Sir Lawrence Freedman has been appointed to the new inquiry into the Iraq war, announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown today.
Critics of the war might argue Sir Lawrence was himself one of the causes of the war!
The professor once told me how, back in 1999, he was contacted by Downing Street seeking his thoughts for a speech on humanitarian intervention which the-then Prime Minister Tony Blair was about to make in Chicago.
When was military action justified for, liberal, humanitarian reasons?
Sir Lawrence says he was astonished when he heard and read Mr Blair's famous Chicago speech - perhaps the most important of Blair's premiership - that it was based largely on the memo he had sent to Number 10.
And the rest was history.
Nor will critics of the war be very happy about the appointment of the other historian Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill.
In 2004, he went so far as to compare US President George W Bush and Mr Blair to Roosevelt and Churchill.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really disappointed that Gordon Brown hasn’t gone the whole hog. Why doesn’t he put 'Neo' Con Coughlin, Nick Cohen, and Melanie Phillips on the inquiry team too?

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This brilliant letter by Mark Holt of Liverpool was 'Letter of the Day' in last Monday's Daily Express.

Out of the Iraqi frying pan and into Afghan fire

So, British troops have finally left Iraq after six agonising years.

The government assures us our troops did a wonderful job and that Iraq is a better place.

But since the 2003 invasion, one million Iraqi civilians have died, the country's infrastructure has been looted or destroyed and most Iraqis say that life was better under Saddam Hussein.

Will Gordon Brown hold an official inquiry into the outlandish lies that led to the war? Or will we be offered another whitewash? Will lessons be learned? And how in future will we be able to restrain an arrogant government hellbent on pursuing similar courses of action?

Sadly, we're involved in other conflicts just as morally repugnant, such as Afghanistan and America's de facto war on Pakistan that has so destabilised the country that the Taliban may take over a nuclear-armed state.

On the subject of the 'outlandish lies that led to the (Iraq) war', a little bird tells me that the pro-war writer David Aaronovitch has got a new book out on conspiracy theories. I wonder if he has included in it the conspiracy theory that Iraq possessed WMDs- a 'theory' that led to the deaths of 1m people?

Something tells me that he probably hasn't.

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Today is the sixth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.

Let’s spare a moment to think of the 1.3 million people to have lost their lives since the invasion-Iraqi civilians, Iraqi soldiers, US and British soldiers.

And then let’s spare a moment to remember the lies we were told in order to justify this illegal war of aggression.

We are told by our masters today that we must ‘move on’ from Iraq.

But we must never do so until those who planned this supreme international crime are brought to justice.

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A propos of Justice Minister Jack Straw’s shameful decision to veto the release of minutes that were taken in the Blair Cabinet meetings that led up to the invasion of Iraq, and HM Opposition's support for his decision, Mick Hall writes:

One would have expected today’s British newspapers to be full of this attempt by the Government and Tory opposition to deny the right of the British people to know what their politicians got up to in this vital period. Yet not one of the three main UK broadsheets carries this story on their front page.

The Times leads with a government powder-puff about forcing the train franchisees to cut fares. The Guardian led with a ‘may happen' tale about the “Fight against Terror spells end of privacy,” alongside a large photo of a statue of Betty’s mum, which this bastion of liberal democracy felt the need to repeat on page 5. The Daily Telegraph leads with Betty’s mum’s statue, plus what amounts to fillers about strokes linked to the number of cups of tea we drink; a piece of nonsense about savers withdrawing their cash as interest rates slide, and council tax being raised this April.

Not only should the papers have led with this story it was in the public interest that they did so.

It is becoming increasingly clear that there was a conspiracy between the leaders of the Labour government and the Conservative party to support Bush’s criminal adventure in Iraq. That this coalition is still in place became clear from the Conservative front bench’s behavior in the Commons yesterday.

Mick is absolutely right. Any real opposition would have made great political capital out of Jack Straw's shameful decision, as I pointed out yesterday. But in one-party Britain the one thing we do not have is a real opposition.

Iraq was a criminal conspiracy on a monster scale- one which has led to the deaths of up to 1m people. And the conspirators must not only be swept from the corridors of power, they must be held to answer for their crimes before a court of law.

Don't think it will ever be done? Don't be disheartened.

Remember, we are the many and they are the few.

It's about time we made our superior numbers count.

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More than 4,000 Americans have been killed and perhaps 20,000 wounded. The British loss is 178.

But statistics are one thing, while the spectacle of limbless young men and women at the Headley Court rehabilitation centre in Surrey is quite another.

As for the Iraqis, their loss and suffering as a direct consequence of the Anglo-American occupation has been appalling.

To begin with, there was the colossal physical damage and civilian casualties inflicted by the initial ‘shock-and-awe’ bombardment of Baghdad and other cities.
Since then, the total number of civilians killed in the crossfire between the bombs of the insurgents and the inaccurate U.S. firepower on land and from the air stands between 100,000 and 600,000, depending on the guesstimate.

When we add to this tally of death the known total of Iraqi refugees at four million, the bottom line is a human catastrophe on the grandest scale.

Brown will tell the House that Britain can withdraw its 4,100 troops because we can leave the peace and security of the Basra region safely in the hands of the Iraqi government and its British-trained army.

But this, too, is a lie. The truth is that we will leave Iraq at a time when the Iraqi people are immeasurably worse off than under Saddam’s tyranny.



writes the historian Correlli Barnett in today's Daily Mail.

I am proud that I was among the small number of British journalists and media commentators to unequivocally oppose the Iraq War- and to openly ridicule, in print, the neo-con claims that Iraq possessed WMD. I am proud too to have taken part in the large anti-war demonstrations which took place in London in September 2002 and February 2003.

But I am very sad that we on the anti-war side were unable to stop the neocons from getting their evil way and that we failed to prevent a "human catastrophe on the grandest scale".

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Some breaking news: five and a half years on from the invasion, Iraq's WMDs have finally been found. Mick Hall has the details.

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The Guardian reports:

One of Britain's most authoritative judicial figures last night delivered a blistering attack on the invasion of Iraq, describing it as a serious violation of international law, and accusing Britain and the US of acting like a "world vigilante".

Lord Bingham, in his first major speech since retiring as the senior law lord, rejected the then attorney general's defence of the 2003 invasion as fundamentally flawed.

Contradicting head-on Lord Goldsmith's advice that the invasion was lawful, Bingham stated: "It was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had." Adding his weight to the body of international legal opinion opposed to the invasion, Bingham said that to argue, as the British government had done, that Britain and the US could unilaterally decide that Iraq had broken UN resolutions "passes belief".

Addressing the British Institute of International and Comparative Law last night, Bingham said: "If I am right that the invasion of Iraq by the US, the UK, and some other states was unauthorised by the security council there was, of course, a serious violation of international law and the rule of law.

Of course Lord Bingham is right. The Iraq war was blatantly illegal, as I have always maintained. But it's not good enough, five years on, to merely state that the war was unlawful.

We need to make sure that the perpetrators of the war- namely George W. Bush and Tony Bliar- a man who is millions of pounds richer because of the conflict-and the neocon men and women who planned it, are bought to justice. The Nuremburg judgements held that to launch a war of aggression is the 'supreme international crime'- and it is obscene that five years on, those responsible for this outrageous crime- which has led to the deaths of up to 1m people, are still at liberty.

Furthermore, it's also important too that those journalists and writers, who propagandised for an attack on Iraq- in contravention of international law- are also are held accountable for their actions. The trial of Julius Streicher after WW2 sets the precedent.

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"Wars, conflict- it's all business"- sighs Monsieur Verdoux, the eponymous anti-hero in Charlie Chaplin's classic film. This report from today's Mail on Sunday hardly disproves the thesis.

The man who acted as go-between for Tony Blair and George Bush in the run-up to the Iraq War has been given a senior post worth an estimated £50,000 a year with U.S.-owned arms company Lockheed.

Sir David Manning (pictured above, on left, next to George Bush), Britain's former ambassador in Washington has also joined a shadowy UK intelligence firm set up by former spies.

Sir David was Mr Blair's foreign affairs and defence adviser. He stepped down as the UK's envoy in Washington two years ago.

He played a key role in planning the Iraq War, and secret memos published after the conflict revealed how he knew Mr Blair had promised to go to war with Mr Bush a year before the conflict.

Sir David has become a non-executive director of Lockheed's subsidiary, Lockheed UK. He will also act as personal adviser to the firm's chief executive, Ian Stopps.
A company spokesman said: 'He has joined because of his distinguished career and experience in diplomacy as well as in government.'

Lockheed is one of the most powerful defence firms in the world. It is proud of its role in the Iraq War and published an 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' brochure that described how its 'stealthy F-117 Nighthawk opened the Allied operation with a strike aimed at Saddam Hussein's leadership'.

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