Blair attacked by Iraq war supporters
Two senior Labour MPs who staunchly backed the allied invasion of Iraq have criticised the prime minister for his “over-emphasis on WMD”.
Backbench MPs Ann Clwyd and Clive Soley claimed that the government placed too much emphasis on the significance of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and too little on the need for regime change and the moral case for war.
In a Fabian Society pamphlet to be published on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Commons vote to endorse war, the two MPs argue that ministers should have stressed that there were wider reasons for invading Iraq than disarmament alone.
Ms Clywd, now Tony Blair’s personal human rights envoy to Iraq, and Mr Soley, a former chairman of the parliamentary Labour Party, said that Mr Blair had “paid a high price” for focusing on weapons which several experts now believe do not exist.
The pair argued that Mr Blair could have avoided the damage done to his public approval and trust ratings had he made a wider case for war, based on Saddam Hussein’s record of human rights abuses.
Mr Soley said today: “A number of us feared Tony Blair was boxing himself in on the issue of weapons of mass destruction. For initially, he had made a much wider case for intervention. His over-emphasis on WMD was a major tactical error and he has paid a high price for it.”
However, Ms Clwyd and Mr Soley insisted that the war had been justified and claimed that opponents of intervention put the interests of nation states ahead of the rights of individuals.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Me Soley called for a change in international law to permit ousting brutal dictators.
He explained: “Our case is that there is a case for regime change in these extreme cases of failing states and the key is to find a way in which the UN can legitimise intervention and regime change because we cannot go on in the 21st century accepting that somehow or other it’s alright to turn a blind eye to these psychopathic killers who do take over nation states.”
The MP acknowledged that states such as Iraq had received support in the past from Britain and the US but he argued that in the Cold War America consciously went against Soviet policy and that past alliances did not justify leaving brutal dictators in power.
The prime minister’s strategy unit is currently working on proposals for a new analytical framework on how to handle weak and failing states.
This week will see many Labour MPs analysing their own support for the invasion of Iraq in light of the allies’ failure to locate Saddam Hussein’s reported banned weapons.
