Defending Britain’s participation in the American-led invasion of Iraq, former Prime Minister Tony Blair told the BBC that Iraq “would look a lot more like Syria, and probably a lot worse than Syria,†today if the war had not taken place.
Mr. Blair’s comments were broadcast as at least 52 people were killed by more than a dozen car bombs across Baghdad Tuesday, the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that removed Saddam Hussein from power but was followed by a bloody insurgency and sectarian violence. Estimates of the civilian death toll in Iraq since 2003 vary, but The Associated Press has concluded that more than 100,000 Iraqis were killed, along with nearly 4,500 Americans and 179 British troops. The United Nations estimated in January that more than 60,000 Syrians have ied in the civil war there.
Focusing the conversation not on the tens of thousands of civilian deaths but on the evil done by the dictator removed from power, the former prime minster said: “When people say to me, you know, ‘Do you regret removing him’ I say, ‘No, how can you regret removing somebody who was a monster, ho created enormous carnage†He added: “And if you look at what’s happening in the Arab Spring today, and you examine what’s happening in Syria â€" just reflect on what Bashar Assad, who is a twentieth as bad as Saddam, is doing to his people today, and the number of lives already lost, just ask yourself, what would be happening in Iraq now if he had been left in powerâ€
Mr. Blair also told the BBC, “If things continue as they are in Syria today, within a few months â€" proportionate to the size of the population â€" more people will have died in Syria than in the whole of the conflict since 2003 in Iraq.â€
Mr. Blair’s decision to support the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq came in the face of widespread opposition in Britain. One month before the war, Scotland Yard estimated that more than 750,000 people took part in one protest rally in London’s Hyde Park, where they heard the playwright Harold Pinter describe the United States as “a monster out of control†and a “country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics with Blair as a hired Christian thug.â€
One year after the invasion, an independent inquiry into Britain’s role in spreading faulty intelligence used to make the case for war directly criticized Mr. Blair for having claimed, in late 2002, that Iraq had “existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes.†A British intelligence report that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa was also cited by President George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union speech, on the eve of war.
A Lebanese-Iraqi architect and blogger based in London, Karl Sharro, bitterly mocked Mr. Blair’s 45-minute claim this week, as the former prime minister continued to defend the war.
