PRESS RELEASE
Chilcot Report To Appear July 6
July 4, 2016 (EIRNS)—The Chilcot report will finally be released on July 6, and already there’s talk of impeaching former British Prime Minsiter Tony Blair (the British version of impeachment, not the American) and maybe even trying him for war crimes. A number of MPs led by Alex Salmond of the Scottish National Party, are expected to use an ancient law to try to impeach the former prime minister when the report comes out on Wednesday, reports the Guardian July 3. The last time impeachment was invoked in Britain was in 1806, and it’s seen in Westminster as an alternative form of punishment to ensure that the impeached never holds office again. A simple majority is required to convict, at which point a sentence can be passed which could, in theory, involve Blair being sent to prison. However, MPs have said the attempt will be symbolic and is unlikely to result in imprisonment.
Salmond said there
"has to be a judicial or political reckoning" for Blair’s role in the Iraq conflict.
"He seemed puzzled as to why Jeremy Corbyn thinks he is a war criminal, why people don’t like him," he told Sky News. "The reason is 179 British war dead, 150,000 immediate dead from the Iraq conflict, the Middle East in flames, the world faced with an existential crisis on terrorism—these are just some of the reasons perhaps he should understand why people don’t hold him in the highest regard."
If Blair is not tried for war crimes in the British system, we can’t count on the International Criminal Court to do it. In a statement to the Telegraph covered on July 2, the ICC said it would comb through the report for evidence of war crimes committed by British soldiers in Iraq, but that the decision to go to war is outside of its remit. "As already indicated by the Office in 2006, the ‘decision by the U.K. to go to war in Iraq falls outside the Court’s jurisdiction.’" Obviously, the Nuremberg code is not part of the legal basis for the existence of the ICC, which is actually a creation of George Soros, as Anton Chaitkin showed in EIR on July 25, 2008.
The idea that British soldiers could be prosecuted for crimes, while the man who ordered them into combat gets off scot-free, has really angered families of British soldiers who were killed in Iraq. Reg Keys, whose son Tom was one of six Royal Military Police slaughtered at Majar al-Kabir in 2003, and who famously ran against Blair in the 2005 election, said, "It makes me very angry. They don’t call him ‘Teflon Tony’ for nothing."
