EXCERPT:
One politician with whom [Madeleine Albright] had sparred did take a stand in vast contrast. Robin Cook, Britain’s Foreign Secretary resigned in protest two days before the invasion. His resignation speech in Parliament on 18th March 2003 was a searing indictment of stark double standards on dealing with Iraq. Deliberate selective perception which could now equally apply to threats to Iran:
“I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but twelve years in which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted”, he began.
“Yet it is more than thirty years since (UN) Resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
“We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply.”
He talked of: “ … the strong sense of injustice throughout the Muslim world at what it sees as one rule for the allies of the US and another rule for the rest.”
Britain’s credibility was not: “helped by the appearance that our partners in Washington are less interested in disarmament than they are in regime change in Iraq.
“That explains why any evidence that inspections may be showing progress is greeted in Washington not with satisfaction but with consternation: it reduces the case for war.
And as Iran now, he pleaded that: “Inspections be given a chance (that the UK was) “being pushed too quickly into conflict by a US Administration with an agenda of its own.
He asked for the halt of: “commitment of troops in a war that has neither international agreement nor domestic support” and ended: “I intend to join those tomorrow night who will vote against military action. It is for that reason alone, and with a heavy heart, that I resign from the government.”
On the first anniversary of the invasion he stated in Parliament: “It seems only too likely that the judgment of history may be that the invasion of Iraq has been the biggest blunder in British foreign and security policy in the half century since Suez. “In truth we would have made more progress in rolling back support for terrorism if we had brought peace to Palestine rather than war to Iraq.”
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