Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair burned a memo declaring the war in Iraq “illegal”

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was awarded the title of Sir by Queen Elizabeth, but his subjects disagree: the lies he told in 2003 to make war on Iraq are unforgivable and he is responsible for the death of dozens of British soldiers. The petition to deprive him of knighthood nearly reached 700,000 signatures and, to aggravate his position, it was discovered that Blair ordered a memo to be burned in which the highest legal authority in the government said the war in Iraq was illegal.
Revealing the existence of the memory and the order to destroy it was Blair’s former Defense Minister himself, Geoff Hoon. It had already been talked about in 2015, but the former prime minister had called it “nonsense”. Hoon returned to the story in his memoir “See How They Run”, anticipated by the Daily Mail. The former minister says his chief private secretary was ordered “in no uncertain terms” by Jonathan Powell, chief of staff at 10 Downing Street, to read the document and then burn it. Instead of carrying out the order, the Defense Ministry staff locked the memo in the safe. Powell denied making this request, but admitted he ordered the destruction of a memo anticipating the official document.
The secret note was the negative opinion of Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, to whom the government had asked if there was a legal basis for waging war on Iraq. According to Hoon, Blair took no account of this authoritative judgment and actually worked to hide it. Days before hostilities began, Goldsmith changed his mind and declared legal war. Blair has been accused several times of having made a “blood pact” with US President George W. Bush already a year before the attack on Iraq. Exaggerating the scale of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, the former prime minister lied to the country and to Parliament and deserves, according to most Britons, punishment rather than being named a comrade in the Order of the Garter, the oldest order. knightly of Great Britain.
Human rights attorney Philippe Sands, of University College London, said: “When Lord Goldsmith wrote legal advice warning that the war in Iraq could be illegal, it could hardly have been expected that those who received a copy would be said to ‘burn after reading’. Ministers, Parliament and the public were misled by Blair into supporting a war that many saw as illegal and a crime. In modern Britain, it seems, such a manifest act of transgression does not preclude the offer of a high-level recognition ”.
The Queen had waited 14 years to grant Blair the knighthood, an honor instead granted to all prime ministers immediately after the conclusion of their term. It is not known what or who pushed her to change her mind, but it was undoubtedly an unfortunate decision that the subjects do not share and from which it will be very complicated, and perhaps impossible, to go back. With Prince Andrew on trial for child abuse and the storm over Sir Tony, the 70th anniversary of Elizabeth’s reign doesn’t get off to a good start.