Iraq descended to new depths of savagery yesterday – as Tony Blair washed his hands of all blame for the bloodshed.
With Islamist jihadists now in control of large areas of the country, appalling pictures emerged showing the mass execution of government soldiers by masked fanatics.
Dozens of terrified men in civilian clothes lie in a shallow ditch before being executed in cold blood by Islamist extremists.
The Iraqi Army deserters, some wearing football shirts, were taken to scrubland where they faced a firing squad of Al Qaeda-inspired insurgents.
But, to derision from Left and Right, Mr Blair insisted that the sectarian violence tearing the country apart had nothing to do with his own actions in supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Instead, he blamed the West’s failure to bomb Syria last year – and called for fresh Western military action against both nations.
‘We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that “we” have caused this,’ the former Prime Minister wrote in an extraordinary essay. ‘We haven’t.’
The former Labour leader – now a Middle East peace envoy – said failure to act now could lead to a terror attack in the UK. His comments led to an avalanche of criticisms.
Former deputy PM John Prescott accused Mr Blair of trying to take the West ‘back to the Crusades’.
And Clare Short, who also served in Mr Blair’s Cabinet, branded him a ‘complete American neocon’, adding: ‘More bombing will not solve it, it will just exacerbate it.’
Miss Short, who resigned over the decision to go to war, said Mr Blair had been ‘absolutely, consistently wrong, wrong, wrong’ on the issue of Iraq.
Mr Prescott, Mr Blair’s deputy at the time of the war, accused his political ally of trying to take the West ‘back to the Crusades’.
‘He says he’s disappointed with what has happened in Iraq… but he wants to invade somewhere else now,’ he told Sky News.
Mailonline
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