Blair deveria ser julgado?

July 06, 2016 by RFE/RL A seven-year public inquiry ordered by the British government into the circumstances and "lessons" of the 2003 invasion of Iraq has concluded that the country's leadership went to war "before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted" and based on flawed intelligence and "wholly inadequate" planning. The move also undermined the UN Security Council's authority because it failed to get council majority support for military action, the so-called Chilcot Inquiry found. The 2.6 million-word "report for publication" casts a harsh light on former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, who joined the U.S.-led invasion to unseat Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein warning of a "real and present danger" of "terrorist groups [coming] in possession of WMD," a reference to weapons of mass destruction. The inquiry, named after former civil servant John Chilcot, who led the probe, heard from 150 witnesses and analyzed 150,000 documents. Presenting the conclusions in London on July 6, Chilcot said "the U.K. chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort." He added that the Blair government's evaluation of the threat from Hussein's weapons projected "certainty that was not justified." It is an unwelcome spotlight for Blair, who left power in 2007 and last year publicly apologized "for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime." But the 63-year-old former face of "New Labour" in Britain added that he "find[s] it hard to apologize for removing Saddam" Hussein. Chilcot said that the legal basis for British military action in Iraq was "far from satisfactory." The Iraqi war remains a divisive political topic in the United Kingdom and in many of the dozens of other countries that participated -- overtly or covertly -- in the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq in March 2003. The dissemination of the report on July 6 attracted antiwar demonstrators -- some of whom are clamoring for Blair to be tried for alleged war crimes -- to the London convention center near Parliament where Chilcot was presenting the findings. Relatives of some of the 179 U.K. service personnel who died in the 2003 Iraq war also gathered in London to hear the committee's conclusions. The UN's unanimously approved Resolution 1441 in 2002 gave the Iraqi leader "a final opportunity" to declare all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and disarm or possibly face "serious consequences," a phrase that many interpreted as a green light for military action. Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, AFP, and BBC