British Prime Minister Tony Blair will go down in history like his World War II predecessor Winston Churchill, former Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al Jaafari told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. Jafaari, who stepped down in April last year, told the British weekly that BlairÂ’s backing for the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq will be judged comparable to Churchill standing up to Nazi GermanyÂ’s leader Adolf Hitler.
He said that ousting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power would be something future generations of Britons would be “proud of.” “What Tony Blair has done in Iraq is something that is very important, and history will remind us of that. He has helped the Iraqi people to get rid of Saddam Hussein,” Jaafari said.
“Unfortunately, I see the situation in the West and how they deal with the Iraqi crisis now. But future generations, I think, will see Tony Blair’s decision to get rid of Saddam Hussein in the same way as Winston Churchill got rid of Hitler.” He added: “We know that he (Saddam) had weapons of mass destruction because he used them in 1988. It is not a question of what he didn’t have, it is what he did have. That is what the proof should be.” Jaafari said he had seen no evidence that Iran was behind Shia attacks in Iraq. |