Desmond Tutu lashing out

A man never afraid to speak his mind, even when it means he has to sound controversial, the past few days has seen him take the front row over a nine-year old subject that is turning out to be a “mistake” – The Iraq War of 2003.

In a blog titled “Why I had no Choice But To Spurn Tony Blair” for The Observer newspaper, the retired Archbishop took former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and ex-United States of America President George Bush to the cleaners over their complexities in the Iraq War of 2003, accusing the two former leaders of “fabricating the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart”.

“The immorality of the United States and Great Britain’s decision to invaded Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarized the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history,” he says.

“Instead of recognizing that the world we lived in, with increasingly sophisticated communications, transportations and weapons systems necessitated sophisticated leadership that would bring the global family together, the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us”.

Questioning what informed the decision to invade Iraq, he asked: “On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go to the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers' circuit, Bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr. Bush’s chief supporter, Mr. Blair, confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?”.