News Compass

Revealed: Tony Blair Intensified Bombing of Iraq in 2002 to Provoke Saddam to Start the Iraq War

by

Michael Smith

Read here full article in TimeOneline (UK)

May 29, 2005

Edited article

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war.

This new information was revealed by the UK Ministry of Defence in response to a question from Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman.

The attacks were intensified six months (May 2002) BEFORE the United Nations resolution which Tony Blair said gave the coalition the legal basis for war.

Towards end of August 2002, the raids had become a full air offensive with the British Royal Air Force (RAF) increasing their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did.

The Coalition dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001.

During 2000, RAF aircraft Iraq dropped 20.5 tons of bombs from a total of 155 tons dropped by the coalition, a mere 13%.

During 2001 that figure rose slightly to 25 tons out of 107, or 23%.

Between May 2002 and the second week in November 2002, British aircraft dropped 46 tons of bombs a month out of a total of 126.1 tons, or 36%.

By October 2002, RAF aircraft were dropping 64% of bombs falling on the southern no-fly zone. The UN vote was still two weeks away (ie 8 November 2002)

It was not until November 8 that the UN security council passed Resolution 1441, which threatened Iraq with “serious consequences” for failing to co-operate with the weapons inspectors.

Tommy Franks, the allied commander, has since admitted this operation was designed to “degrade” Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air attacks that began the 1991 Gulf war.

The new information from the British Ministry of Defence shows that despite the lack of an Iraqi reaction, the air war began anyway in September 2002 with a 100-plane raid.

The systematic targeting of Iraqi air defences appears to contradict Foreign Office legal guidance appended to the leaked briefing paper which said that the allied aircraft were only “entitled to use force in self-defence where such a use of force is a necessary and proportionate response to actual or imminent attack from Iraqi ground systems”.

Go to Latest Posting

Comments 0