On July 16, Foreign Secretary William Hague answered questions in the British Parliament from the Foreign Affairs Committee on Developments on UK Foreign Policy.
Ann Clwyd (Labour, Cynon Valley) whose cheerleading and misleading for the invasion of Iraq and whose numerous visits to Iraqi Kurdistan and alleged close friendship with Kurdish war lord, Jalal Talabani, led Iraqis and Iraq watchers to dub her “Mrs Talabani”, is seemingly on the war path again.
She asked the Foreign Secretary: “ … to what extent the UK government is prepared to hold the (Syrian) opposition to account, as well as Assad, for serious human rights abuses, war crimes, crimes against humanity and so on?”
Never mind that she is seemingly ignorant of the correct form of address to the President of a nation whose ”sovereignty and territorial integrity” is enshrined in fine legalese at the UN — as was Iraq’s prior to the illegal invasion.
The usually slithery Mr Hague’s answer, however, was surprisingly illuminating:
I think this is a very important point, and we must be prepared to do so … But this country will always have a position that war crimes and crimes against humanity must be rooted out, their perpetrators prosecuted, and it doesn’t matter who did it.
Surely then, immediate steps will be taken to deliver Tony Blair; former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon; former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith to the International Criminal Court at the Hague for the plotting of the illegal invasion, occupation and decimation of Iraq based on a pack of lies.
I have at hand a copy of Lord Goldmith’s legal advice to then Prime Minister Tony Blair, of January 30, 2003. Paragraph 4 states:
I remain of the view that the correct legal interpretation of (UN Security Council Resolution 1441) does not authorize the use of force without a further determination by the Security Council …
Against this paragraph Blair has scrawled:
I just don’t understand this.
Goldsmith meekly changed his advice.
“Crimes and crimes against humanity” must indeed be “rooted out” and “perpetrators prosecuted.”
I await with hope, the sound of a few dawn raids and splintered doors. Hopefully one will be in the Cynon Valley for just one of Ms Clwyd’s outrageous untruths. She had seen personally the shredding machines, through which Saddam Hussein fed live human bodies, feet first, she told the House of Commons, in a voice-breaking Oscar performance. They did not, of course, exist.