(conclusão)
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O texto em inglês continua abaixo:
SENSATIONAL BLAIR EXPOSÉ – YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Why have these memos come out now?
The U.S. courts have ruled that 30,000 emails received by Hillary Clinton when she was U.S. Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 should be released.
She may have asked for these documents to grasp the background to the Iraq War.
What was the Crawford summit?
The meeting between Blair and Bush at the President’s Texan ranch in April 2002, 11 months before the outbreak of war. The pair spent long periods discussing Iraq without their advisers, leading to suspicion that they privately cut a deal for the conflict.
UK Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer said it was impossible to know whether a deal was ‘signed in blood’.
What did Blair say at Crawford?
At the start of the summit, Mr Blair said: ‘We’re not proposing military action at this point in time.’
For the whole of 2002, Blair claimed no decision had been taken and in the run-up to war. He said that Saddam Hussein could avoid conflict by co-operating with UN weapons inspectors.
What happened after Crawford?
In September 2002, in an attempt to prove Saddam was a threat, No 10 falsely claimed Saddam could deploy biological weapons ‘within 45 minutes’, and Mr Blair went around the world trying to drum up UN backing for action against Iraq.
Despite mass anti-war protests, Britain and America invaded Iraq in March 2003 without the backing of the UN.
Had the allies prepared for ‘the day after’?
The invasion was declared complete on April 15, 2003. But the reason for war proved spurious, and Saddam’s removal left a power vacuum filled by warring factions which some say helped Islamic State rise.
Have the memos been seen by the Chilcot Inquiry?
It is not thought the £10million, six-year inquiry has asked to see American Government material.
Stunning memo proves Blair signed up for Iraq even before Americans – comment by former shadow home secretary David Davis
This is one of the most astonishing documents I have ever read.
It proves in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a front man for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet.
He was happy to launder George Bush’s policy on Iraq and sub-contract British foreign policy to another country without having the remotest ability to have any real influence over it.
And in return for what? For George Bush pretending Blair was a player on the world stage to impress voters in the UK when the Americans didn’t even believe it themselves.
Blair was content to cynically use Britain’s international reputation for honest dealing in diplomacy, built up over many years, as a shield against worldwide opprobrium for Bush’s ill-considered policy.
Judging from this memorandum, Blair signed up for the Iraq War even before the Americans themselves did. It beggars belief.
Blair was telling MPs and voters back home that he was still pursuing a diplomatic solution while Colin Powell was telling President Bush: ‘Don’t worry, George, Tony is signed up for the war come what may – he’ll handle the PR for you, just make him look big in return.’
It should never be forgotten that a minimum of 120,000 people died as a direct result of the Iraq War.
What is truly shocking is the casualness of it all, such as the reference in the memo to ‘the day after’ – meaning the day after Saddam would be toppled.
The offhand tone gives the game away: it is patently obvious nobody thought about ‘the day after’ when Bush and Blair met in Crawford.
And they gave it no more thought right through to the moment ‘the day after’ came about a year later when Saddam’s statue fell to the ground.
We saw the catastrophic so-called ‘de-Baathification’ of Iraq, with the country’s entire civil and military structure dismantled, leading to years of bloodshed and chaos. It has infected surrounding countries to this day and created the vacuum into which Islamic State has stepped.
This may well be the Iraq ‘smoking gun’ we have all been looking for.
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Um exemplo dos documentos apresentados.
