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.
‘Your great danger, when you want to go and do these regime changes, you’re back to what Bush called a crusade… put on a white sheet and a red cross, and we’re back to the Crusades.’
Tory MP Charlotte Leslie described Mr Blair’s views as ‘dangerous’. ‘Believing Blair on the Middle East feels about as safe and wise as referring patients to Harold Shipman,’ she said.
And Ukip leader Nigel Farage said the former Labour leader has become ‘an embarrassment’ and suggested his friends should urge him to take ‘an extended period of silence’.
He added: ‘The lesson is not that the West should intervene in Syria – the lesson is the West should declare an end to the era of military intervention abroad.’
Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s ambassador to the US from 1997 to 2003, said the second Gulf War was ‘perhaps the most significant reason’ for the current sectarian violence’.
‘We are reaping what we sowed in 2003. This is not hindsight. We knew in the run-up to war that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would seriously destabilise Iraq after 24 years of his iron rule,’ he wrote in the Mail on Sunday.
Former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell added: ‘I think Mr Blair actually admitted today that the purpose was regime change. Well that’s not what he was telling us back in 2003.’
Downing Street declined to comment on Mr Blair’s intervention.
Culture Secretary Sajid Javid said the situation in Iraq was a ‘huge worry’ but warned there were no plans for military intervention, Daily Mail informs.
