Salmond slammed over ‘tasteless’ war remarks
ALEX Salmond was yesterday accused of trying to boost his independence campaign by making ‘tasteless’ remarks about dead Scottish soldiers.
The SNP leader told a Labour MSP that ‘people died’ as a result of his failure to oppose the Iraq war in 2003.
The comments came after Mr Salmond used his government’s debating time at Holyrood to challenge MSPs who supported the war in Iraq to publicly change their minds and ‘admit their mistake’.
During the original discussion ten years ago, the SNP’s attempt to humiliate Tony Blair was defeated by 16 votes.
Yesterday’s motion by Mr Salmond said ‘questions remain unanswered’ about the decision to go to war without a UN resolution and that nations must act as ‘good citizens’ rather than engaging in ‘reckless, illegal military conflicts with incalculable human and material costs’. But the First Minister caused outrage when he replied to Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald, who was trying to intervene, by saying: ‘Well, the member says it’s a joke. Let him speak and see how funny it is that people died because of his votes in this parliament.’
Following the debate, which had been initiated in a bid to embarrass Labour and Tory politicians who had supported the UK government action, a Scottish Labour spokesman said: ‘The First Minister doesn’t have high standards, but with these words he has fallen below even his norm.’
Meanwhile, John Prescott has admitted the Iraq War may have been illegal and said Tony Blair’s call for regime change in Iran and Syria is ‘absolutely bloody crazy’.
As a series of devastating Al Qaeda-linked car bombs and suicide blasts in Baghdad marked the tenth anniversary of the USled invasion, the Labour peer, who was Deputy Prime Minister to Mr Blair, told CNN: ‘You have to ask yourself, ten years on, was it justified and was it really about regime change? And if it was about regime change, I’m afraid that doesn’t make it legal.’
Lord Prescott said he was now alarmed at Mr Blair’s calls for further regime change in the Middle East. ‘He wants to do it now in Iran, possibly, and Syria. Absolutely crazy, in my view.’
IN the two years between the start of the Leveson Inquiry and this week’s draconian crackdown on Press freedom, every relevant fact was made public.
Meanwhile, ten years have passed since Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq – and four since the Chilcot Inquiry was appointed to study the lessons of the war.
So the Mail has one question: as Mr Blair’s Whitehall cronies continue to withhold key incriminating documents, how much longer must we wait before the Chilcot Report is published?
As Max Hastings argues on this page, mass bloodshed caused by politicians surely cannot be less important than eavesdropping by renegade reporters.