CNN Amanpour: Key player in Iraq war turns critic plus video of interview
(CNN) – “I’ve come to a conclusion: the justification for the intervention was wrong,” Former British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said of the Iraq War in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, which aired March 19, 2013.
“[We] may have got rid of Saddam, but it certainly never brought peace,” Prescott added.
Looking back, on the ten-year anniversary of the war, Prescott said everyone should ask themselves whether the war was justified, and whether the true objective was in fact regime change, not weapons of mass destruction.
Prescott said that former Prime Minister Tony Blair “certainly believed” it was because of the alleged weapons of mass destruction.
“I was convinced in America you were already preparing for war, despite us talking about the U.N. You were getting your military machine ready. You were going to do it before the hot summer. So there’s no doubt in America – and I told Tony, the Yanks are going in whether you agree or not.”
Prescott admitted that he feels a share of responsibility for the Iraq War.
Blair has also been giving interviews on this tenth anniversary and he admits that the war did not turn out the way he hoped it would. Nonetheless, Blair still insists that invading and toppling Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do at the time.
Prescott told Amanpour that the action that was taken to stop the bloodshed in Kosovo and Sierra Leone helped persuade them to believe that military action in Iraq would be the right thing to do.
“Tony came to the view,” Prescott recalled, “that if no leader of a country was entitled to treat his people like that. He then followed on. It was for all us then to intervene to stop that.”
As the world now debates crises of varying degrees with Iran and in Syria, Prescott did not hold back in articulating what the Iraq experience had taught him.
“[Blair] wants to do it now in Iran, possibly, and Syria. Absolute bloody crazy, in my view,” Prescott said. “You’ve got to ask yourselves, what are you doing it for, just to get rid of the evil men around the world? Because I’ve got to tell you, there’s been more killings in Iraq since they’ve left, and still continuing.”
John Prescott: Iraq invasion ‘cannot be justified’ plus video
(BBC News) – The invasion of Iraq in 2003 “cannot be justified”, Lord Prescott – who was then deputy prime minister – told BBC. He had backed the Iraq War because he believed George Bush had a plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Lord Prescott said that, ahead of the invasion, Prime Minister Tony Blair had been keen “to get the Americans in” on the UN’s approach to dealing with Iraq.
He said that, after Mr Blair had sent him to the US to talk to Vice-President Dick Cheney, he told the PM it was clear “They’re going to go in without you; whether you come with them or not, it doesn’t matter to the Americans – they’re getting ready”.
Lord Prescott added: “But I tell you something that persuaded me. You know Bush was quite prepared to have a plan for Israel and the whole problem in regard to Palestine and he promised. “And, therefore, that plan was something.”
But Lord Prescott said the plan “fell apart as it often does in American politics because the influence domestically is too great“.
