Is Tony Blair right to wash his hands of Iraq?

TONY BLAIR’S analysis of Iraq/Syria/ ISIS was well-informed, if not entirely balanced. He highlights the concoction of noxious circumstances that cause extreme insecurity in the Middle East. Poor governance, weak institutions, oppressive rule and the failure of a relationship between religion and government have led to countries being unprepared for the modern world. Mr Blair’s detractors, however, harbour such a visceral hatred of him that they are blind to anything he has to offer. If further proof was needed that total abstention from any role in Middle East conflict prevention won’t work, the images coming out of Iraq — showing mass round-ups and executions, as in Bosnia and Rwanda in recent times — have provided it. I would never say Blair is always right, but we shouldn’t wash our hands of global problems and wait for the consequences to arrive on our shores.

JOHNNY MERCER, Plymouth, Devon. WE’RE asked whether it can be proved that Tony Blair lied to Parliament about what he knew about Iraq’s military capabilities. On the night of August 7, 1995, Gen Hussein Kamal and his brother Col Saddam Kamal — Iraqi sons-inlaw of Saddam Hussein — defected to Jordan and gave crates of documents to UNSCOM, the United Nations’ inspection team looking for WMDs. The key output was the documented revelation two years later that in Iraq, ‘all weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed’. In a misleading statement to the Commons on February 25, 2003, Blair said: ‘It was only … after the defection of Saddam’s son-in-law to Jordan that the offensive biological weapons and the full extent of the nuclear programme were discovered.’ The question apologists for Tony Blair need to ask is: why did he so blatantly disregard the information from 1997 when pressing for war?

Dr DAVID LOWRY, former director, European Proliferation Information Centre,

Stoneleigh, Surrey.