'It would be a mistake to believe that Chilcot and current events are entirely unconnected. The link is through the Labour Party'
Independent
Ashley Cowburn Political Correspondent
July 4, 2016
Alex Salmond has appeared to suggest the internal Labour party coup against Jeremy Corbyn is connected with the publication of the long-awaited Chilcot report into the Iraq war.
His comments come just three days before the publication of the inquiry into the 2003 Iraq war. Earlier reports have suggested Mr Blair, the former Prime Minister, and his contemporaries will be savaged in an “absolutely brutal” verdict.
In an article for the Herald, the former Scottish First Minister wrote: “It would be a mistake to believe that Chilcot and current events are entirely unconnected. The link is through the Labour Party”
“I have been puzzling as to exactly why the Parliamentary Labour Party chose this moment to launch their coup against Jeremy Corbyn and just what explains the desperation to get him out last week. It can hardly be because of a European referendum where [Mr] Corbyn’s campaigning, although less than energetic, was arguably more visible than that of say the likely big political winner Teresa May?”
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From The Guardian
Tony Blair faces calls for impeachment on release of Chilcot report
The Chilcot report is due to be released on Wednesday 6 July.
Photograph: Chris Jackson/PA
“The reason is 179 British war dead, 150,000 immediate dead from the Iraq conflict, the Middle East in flames, the world faced with an existential crisis on terrorism – these are just some of the reasons perhaps he should understand why people don’t hold him in the highest regard."
“[MPs] believe you cannot have a situation where this country blunders into an illegal war with the appalling consequences and at the end of the day there isn’t a reckoning. There has to be a judicial or political reckoning for that.”
It means individual soldiers could be prosecuted for war crimes but not Blair.
The ICC, based in The Hague, has begun a preliminary examination of claims of torture and abuse by British soldiers, after receiving a dossier from human rights lawyers acting for alleged Iraqi victims.
