Tony Blair defends Iraq conflict — RT World Information

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has claimed that the US-led invasion of Iraq was extra justified than Russia’s ongoing army operation in Ukraine, regardless of all of his pre-war justifications since being confirmed false.

Talking to Germany’s DPA and two different European information companies, Blair said that the invasion – during which 46,000 British troops took half – was justified by Saddam Hussein’s home repressions and regional conflicts, and his use of chemical weapons towards the Kurds.

“A minimum of you can say we had been eradicating a despot and attempting to introduce democracy,” Blair stated.

The invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq ended up resulting in the deaths of as much as 210,000 civilians, in line with the Iraq Physique Rely undertaking. Plunged into instability, the nation grew to become a breeding floor for jihadism, and far of Iraq’s northern reaches fell underneath the management of Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS) terrorists following the US pullout in 2011.

Hussein had no connection to the 9/11 assaults, and claims by the US and UK that he harbored weapons of mass destruction had been bogus. Previous to the invasion, Blair falsely asserted that Iraq possessed these weapons, and was working towards acquiring nuclear arms.

Blair went on to say that not like Iraq, Ukraine is “a rustic that has a democratically elected president who, to my data, has by no means began a regional battle or dedicated any aggression towards its neighbors.”

Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovich, was overthrown in a US-backed coup in 2014. His successor, Pyotr Poroshenko, then launched a army marketing campaign towards pro-Russian militias in Donbass, which Russian investigators say killed greater than 2,600 civilians and wounded not less than 5,500 extra.

Russian President Vladimir Putin cited this violence as one of many key components behind his determination to ship troops into Ukraine final February. “The menace was rising day-to-day. The data we had been receiving left little doubt that by February 2022, every part was prepared for an additional bloody punitive motion in Donbass,” he instructed Russia’s parliament final month. 

Except for the menace to the individuals of Donbass, Putin additionally cited NATO’s insistence on arming Ukraine and remodeling it into an “anti-Russia” state, the Western bloc’s refusal to barter a safety take care of Russia, and the proliferation of neo-Nazi ideology in Ukraine as causes justifying the operation.

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