Manning told The East Anglian Daily Times she was "absolutely disgusted" to learn of Blair's knighthood. Sharron Elliott, when the patrol boat she and three other British service members were traveling in was hit by a bomb near Basra on Remembrance Day in 2006. One of the petition's signatories, Elsie Manning, lost her daughter, Royal Army Staff Sgt. That's the second-highest total of coalition service member deaths after the U.S., which lost over 4,400 troops and Department of Defense employees in what the Bush administration initially called Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL). Ministry of Defense (MOD) reported that 179 British troops and MOD personnel died during Operation TELIC, which lasted from March 2003 through May 2011. 'Duped': Tony Blair Supported Bush's Iraq War Long Before Vote or Invasion The Costs of War Project estimates that over 9.2 million Iraqis were displaced by the war. One survey placed the number of Iraqi deaths at over one million. The Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs says that possibly over 200,000 Iraqi civilians died "from direct war-related violence caused by the U.S., its allies, the Iraqi military and police, and opposition forces from the time of the invasion through October 2019," with the vast majority of those deaths occurring during the invasion and eight-year occupation of the country, according to Iraq Body Count. Bush's staunchest ally during the Iraq War, which was waged on a foundation of nearly a thousand lies, including many about erstwhile ally Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and involvement in the Septemterrorist attacks. Make it millions.\n\u201d - John Pilger Pilger)īlair was then-U.S. Below is the petition calling for Blair's knighthood to be rescinded. \u201cStand in solidarity with the men, women and children whose lives were lost or ruined in the criminal invasion of Iraq. "Tony Blair is the least deserving person of any public honor, particularly anything awarded by Her Majesty the Queen," the petition asserts. For this alone he should be held accountable for war crimes." "He was personally responsible for causing the death of countless innocent civilian lives and servicemen in various conflicts. "Tony Blair caused irreparable damage to both the Constitution of the United Kingdom and to the very fabric of the nation's society," the petition states. Queen Elizabeth II announced Blair's knighthood on New Year's Eve. "He was personally responsible for causing the death of countless innocent civilian lives and servicemen in various conflicts."Īs of Thursday afternoon, over 900,000 people had signed the petition seeking to have Blair's "Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter"-one of the highest honors a British monarch can bestow upon a subject-rescinded. The only mystery is why it took so long for him to get one.Citing his role in the Iraq War and other devastating conflicts, hundreds of thousands of people in the United Kingdom and beyond are calling for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be stripped of his newly bestowed knighthood. His decade in office left Britain “fairer, smarter, healthier, more modern and more at ease with itself”. He stood by the US over Iraq for good reasons, aware of the political cost. ![]() He turned Labour’s noble aims into action: the minimum wage, tax credits, free nursery care, more doctors, more teachers. Neither side can admit that Blair was not just a good PM but a “great” one. The Right can’t forgive him for trouncing them the Left can’t forgive him for allying with “the most dogged enemy of socialism: the voters”. ![]() But that’s not enough for his “haters”: he must also be a “mass murderer”, the “monster who introduced lying to the noble vocation of politics”. 10, he has further damaged his reputation by advising foreign despots and scheming to overturn the Brexit referendum.īlair made mistakes as PM, said Stephen Daisley in The Spectator, such as introducing devolution and setting the arbitrary target for half of young people to attend university. Worst of all, he took the UK into Iraq on “a false prospectus” – launching a war in which hundreds of thousands died, and which sent the region into a spiral of violence. He politicised the civil service by diverting power to “party political apparatchiks” he unleashed an immigration free-for-all in a “bid to reshape the electorate” to Labour’s advantage. His achievements in office – the Good Friday Agreement, independence for the Bank of England, civil partnerships – are far outweighed by the damage he caused. ![]() While this award is generally extended to every former PM, Blair is not worthy of it. Little wonder, said Andrew Pierce in the Daily Mail. ‘The delay to Tony Blair’s award could be a royal comment on his botched job’.
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