A mask of Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair during a protest in London, England (file photo)
Presstv: Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair has rejected the idea that his decision to support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 caused the recent surge of violence in the country.
“We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that we caused this”, Blair wrote in an essay published on his website on Saturday, adding that the belief that the US-led invasion of Iraq had led to the current situation was “bizarre.”
The former premier insisted that the invasion of Iraq, which led to the toppling of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, was right and that things would have been worse if he had not been ousted from power more than a decade ago.
The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants gained control of parts of Iraq’s northern areas on June 10. The militants first took control of Nineveh Province, including its provincial capital, Mosul. Rights groups say around half a million people have been displaced in and around Mosul.
The terrorists have also vowed to continue their raid toward the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
Critics, however, dismissed Blair’s claims, saying that the US-UK invasion of Iraq was the main reason for the current situation in the Arab country.
Michael Stephens, from the Royal United Services Institute, said he thought Blair was “washing his hands of responsibility” and that the Iraq War played a major role in destabilizing the country.
UK forces participated in the US-led invasion of Iraq in a blatant violation of international law in 2003 under the pretext that the regime of Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were ever discovered in Iraq.