[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Senior Labor MP: 'Tony Blair is a war criminal'

[manni at snafu.de]

Forwarded Message:
> To: portside at yahoogroups.com
> From: portsideMod at netscape.net
> Subject: Senior Labor MP: 'Tony Blair is a war criminal'
> Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 03:22:41 -0500
> -----
> In the name of peace and democracy, go
> 
> By Tam Dalyell
> <http://www.redpepper.org.uk/>
> April 2003
> 
> The Linlithgow Constituency Labour Party association has
> just passed a motion recommending that Tony Blair
> reconsider his position as leader of the party because
> of his giving British support to a war against Iraq
> without clearly expressed support from the UN.
> 
> I agree with this motion. I also believe that since Mr
> Blair is going ahead with his support of a US attack
> without unambiguous UN authorisation, he should be
> branded as a war criminal and sent to The Hague.
> 
> I have served in the House of Commons as a member of the
> Labour Party for 41 years, and I would never have
> dreamed of saying this about any one of my previous
> leaders. But Blair is a man who has disdain for both the
> House of Commons and international law.
> 
> This is a grave thing to say about my party leader. But
> it is far less serious than the results of a war that
> could set Western Christendom against Islam.
> 
> The overwhelming majority of international lawyers,
> including several who advise the government (such as
> Rabinder Singh, a partner in Cherie Booth's Matrix
> Chambers and visiting law professor at the London School
> of Economics), have concluded that Blair's decision to
> sanction military action in Iraq without proper UN
> Security Council authorisation is illegal under
> international law. The UK Attorney General Lord
> Goldsmith disputes this.
> 
> The UN charter outlaws the use of force with only two
> exceptions: individual or collective self-defence in
> response to an armed attack, and action authorised by
> the UN Security Council as a collective response to a
> threat to peace.
> 
> At the moment, there are no grounds for claiming the
> need to use such force in self-defence.
> 
> Moreover, the prime minister's assertion that, in
> certain circumstances, a vetoed resolution becomes
> 'unreasonable' and may be disregarded has absolutely no
> basis whatsoever in international law.
> 
> The doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence against an
> attack that might arise at some hypothetical and
> unforeseeable future time has no basis in international
> law.
> 
> Neither Security Council Resolution 1441, to which Mr
> Blair constantly refers, nor any prior resolution
> authorises the use of force in the present
> circumstances.
> 
> This puts the prime minister and those who will be
> fighting in his and president Bush's name in a
> vulnerable legal position.
> 
> Already lawyers report that they are getting phone calls
> from anxious members of the armed forces.
> 
> Blair accuses opponents of war of 'appeasement' – in
> spite of the fact that, in many cases, their active
> opposition to Saddam's dictatorship well pre-dates his.
> 
> But if anyone is the 'appeaser' it is Blair: in his
> support for the US government in its long-planned pre-
> emptive attack on Saddam.
> 
> It is clear that the extremists who have hijacked the US
> government are pursuing plans hatched as long ago as
> 1991 to gain control over Iraq's oil reserves and,
> equally important, to eliminate an obstacle to US-
> Israeli political dominance over the Middle East.
> 
> I am not anti-American. I was a member of the executive
> of the British-American parliamentary group. I share at
> one remove four times over a grandmother with former US
> president Harry S Truman, and I hope to accept the
> invitation to attend the celebrations to mark the
> anniversary of Mr Truman's birthday on 8 May in
> Independence, Missouri.
> 
> But many of us in this country think the fundamentalists
> now running the White House are using the support of a
> British Labour prime minister as a fig leaf against
> their critics and against opposition to war in the US.
> 
> It is useful for these people to say to their opponents:
> 'But a British Labour prime minister supports us.'
> 
> If Britain had made it clear months ago that we would
> not be party to a US attack on Iraq, that the US was
> acting entirely on its own, I think US public opinion
> itself might well have stopped this war from ever being
> contemplated.
> 
> Many of us in the Labour Party who are opposed to war
> believe that Blair has misunderstood the pressing
> danger. It comes not from Iraq, but from terrorism.
> 
> If there is a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein,
> it is this: Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein. On at
> least two occasions bin Laden's organisation has tried
> to assassinate Saddam.
> 
> The effect of this war, however, could well be to bring
> the pair together. Far from this being an effective war
> against terrorism, it is a war that will strengthen
> terrorism.
> 
> I don't think that Mr Blair really understands the
> horrors of 21st century warfare.
> 
> In 1994 I visited Baghdad (all expenses paid by me) and
> saw the carbonated limbs of women and children who had
> been impregnated against a wall by the heat of just one
> cruise missile.
> 
> In the coming war, we are told that 800 cruise missiles
> will be launched just to soften up the enemy.
> 
> We are told that the US intends to use incapacitating
> bio-chemical and depleted-uranium weapons.
> 
> We are also receiving information that the US intends to
> use war in Iraq as an opportunity to test out a whole
> range of new weapons: cluster aviation bombs with self-
> guided munitions and pulse bombs being examples.
> 
> The UN was created in response to the indiscriminate
> horror of modern warfare in the 1940s. The UN's charter
> describes its role as saving 'future generations from
> the scourge of war'. Surely, that means that all those
> who claim to uphold the UN charter should pursue
> peaceful solutions to their limits?
> 
> The draft work plans of the UN weapons inspectorate make
> clear that the inspectors believed they could have made
> real progress down their non-violent path to disarmament
> (see 'Regime change without war', in Red Pepper this
> April) The Labour Party will not tolerate a leader who
> takes the country into an avoidable war.
> 
> Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow since 1962, is the
> longest continuously serving member of the House of
> Commons.
> 
> 
> 
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