http://news.scotsman.com
JAMIE LYONS
PRIME Minister Tony Blair should be impeached over the Iraq war, a former
top general said today.
General Sir Michael Rose, who commanded United Nations forces in Bosnia, said the Prime Minister should not be allowed to “walk away” from the conflict without being held to account.
He will use a TV documentary this week to call for Mr Blair’s impeachment.
Today he accused the Prime Minister of misleading parliament and the public about his true motives for going to war in Iraq.
Despite publicly insisting that his aim was to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blair “probably had some other strategy in mind”, said Gen Rose.
“Certainly from a soldier’s perspective there can’t be any more serious decision taken by a prime minister than declaring war,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“And then to go to war on what turns out to be false grounds is something that no one should be allowed to walk away from.”
The general described Mr Blair’s actions in the run-up to war as “somewhere in between” getting the politics wrong and actually acting illegally.
“The politics was wrong, that he rarely declared what his ultimate aims were, as far as we can see, in terms of harping continually on weapons of mass destruction when actually he probably had some other strategy in mind,” he said.
“And secondly, the consequences of that war have been quite disastrous both for the people of Iraq and also for the West in terms of our wider interests in the war against global terror.”
Gen Rose is one of a number of retired soldiers taking part in a documentary by former war correspondent and independent MP Martin Bell, entitled Iraq: The Failure of War.
He told Bell he would have resigned his commission rather than take troops to war on the flimsy basis offered by Mr Blair.
And he said: “The politicians should be held to account, and my own view is that Blair should be impeached.
“That would prevent politicians treating quite so carelessly the subject of taking a country into war.”
In his documentary, Bell denounces the war as an “ill-considered adventure” and suggests it may prove more damaging to those who launched it even than America’s involvement in Vietnam.
There has already been an attempt by MPs, led by Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price, to impeach Mr Blair for “high crimes and misdemeanours” in taking Britain to war against Iraq.
Gen Rose accepted Parliament had endorsed the decision to commit British troops to military action, but he said that was because the Prime Minister had stressed the argument that dictator Saddam Hussein must be stripped of the power to deploy weapons of mass destruction.
The weapons of mass destruction (WMD) argument used to persuade MPs that war was justified had turned out to be wholly wrong, he told Today.
Gen Rose said he would not have been prepared to lead the Army into a war that he believed was wrong and on such weak grounds. “You cannot put people in harm’s way if you don’t believe the cause is right or sufficient,” he said.
Senior soldiers should point out strategic failures, he went on.
They should tell their political masters “they should not contemplate taking the most serious decision any politician can take, and that is to go to war, without proper grounds and without proper adequate resources to fulfil the strategy that has been outlined”.
Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond welcomed Sir Michael’s impeachment call revealing that 109 MPs, including 20 Labour backbenchers, had now signed his motion calling for an inquiry into the Iraq War.
Mr Salmond said: “The comments from General Sir Michael Rose provide further impetus into the argument for a parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of the Prime Minister and his government in taking us to war in Iraq.”
