UK’s Iraq War report could make grim reading for Tony Blair

[struggle4progress]

By Press Trust of India
July 5, 2016 at 11:42 PM

... Tomorrow, retired civil servant John Chilcot will publish his long-delayed, 2.6 million-word report on the divisive war and its chaotic aftermath. The US-led conflict killed 179 British troops and some 4,500 American personnel. It also helped trigger violence that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and still rocks the Middle East. And it overshadows the legacy of former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“Despite all the many other things he did and many people would argue lots of positive achievements, he will always be remembered for this fateful decision in 2003,” said Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director-general of defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute.

Opponents of the war hope Chilcot will find that Blair agreed to support President George W. Bush’s invasion and then used deception to persuade Parliament and the public to back it.

Such a stark finding is unlikely. But senior politicians, diplomats, intelligence officials and military officers are bracing for criticism over the flawed arguments that led to the invasion, and the lack of planning for the occupation that followed ...

http://www.india.com/news/world/uks-iraq-war-report-could-make-grim-reading-for-tony-blair-1311957/

[Botany]

1. Tony Blair is right: without the Iraq war there would be no Islamic State

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/25/tony-blair-is-right-without-the-iraq-war-there-would-be-no-isis

But please can we look @ HRC's emails again?

The 12 years since have constantly disproved both claims. Within six months of British troops landing in Iraq, the SAS was sent to Baghdad’s western outskirts to attack jihadis who had taken up residence in Ramadi. Back then, they were a mob of foreigners and Iraqis who fed off a broad Sunni discontent fuelled by the invasion; a serendipitous vanguard that not long afterwards organised into al-Qaida in Iraq, then the Islamic State of Iraq and, since mid-2013, Isis.