Bush’s Lap Dog Tony Blair Can’t Even Apologize Correctly for Destabilizing the Middle East (Video)
This post originally ran on Truthdig contributor Juan Cole’s website.
Former British PM Tony Blair reiterated on Sunday some of his previous half-hearted “apologies” for illegally launching a war of aggression on Iraq in 2003.
Blair’s
“apologies” always take the form of the little boy who, when instructed
to apologize for calling a lady fat, says, “Lady, I’m sorry you’re
fat.”
Blair has never apologized for increasing Iraqi mortality or death rates, leaving hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead.
Blair
admitted that the invasion in some ways led to the rise of Daesh (ISIS,
ISIL). But he argues that Daesh was “barely known” in 2008.
This is not true, and is another sign that Blair as prime minister wasn’t paying attention.
Blair-Bush
blamed all the violence in Iraq in 2005-06 on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the
leader of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. On his death in May 2006, the
organization changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and was led
by the shadowy Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. Anyone following Iraq in 2008
knew that ISI was a major insurgency group. They took over territory in
parts of Diyala province.
I posted at my blog in 2007 a USG translation of a jihadi’s short history of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq. The extremist participant in a bulletin board said,
The 70% figure is ridiculous. But to say
“The statement cites President Bush in his press conference, October
2006, as saying that “America’s presence in Iraq is precisely to thwart
the establishment of “a strong Islamic state, caliphate,” which will
“endanger Western interests and threaten America at home.” The author
also says that 70 percent of the Sunni tribes support the Islamic State
of Iraq.
that Daesh was barely mentioned in 2008 is simply a lie, since Bush was
actually giving its strength in Iraq as a reason the US occupation had
to remain: the ‘caliphate’ had to be defeated. (There was no al-Qaeda
or ISI in Iraq, to speak of, before the US & UK overthrew Saddam
Hussein).
Blair also suggested that the outbreak of youth
revolutions in 2011 would have anyway thrown Iraq into turmoil. That
may or may not be true, but it has nothing to do with his invasion of
Iraq in 2003.
