LONDON, January 8, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be impeached for his role in the Iraq war, a leading British Army officer was quoted as saying by Britain's the Mail on Sunday.

"I think the politicians should be held to account ... my view is that Blair should be impeached," General Sir Michael Rose, a former UN commander in Bosnia, said in a television documentary to be aired on Channel Four television on Friday, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"That would prevent the politicians treating quite so carelessly the subject of taking a country into war."

US President George Bush and his war alley Blair invaded Iraq in March 2003 without a mandate from the UN Security Council on claims of possessing weapons of mass destruction, none of them had ever been found.

"I would not have gone to war on such flimsy grounds," Rose said.

Clare Short, a former minister who quit Blair's government over the Iraq invasion, has said the government never held an honest debate concerning Iraq's WMDs and most ministers saw little intelligence and knew only what they read in the press.

In 2004, an official inquiry blasted the British pre-war intelligence as unreliable and seriously flawed.

Negligence

Martin Bell, BBC television's former war correspondent who made the documentary – "Iraq: The Failure of War" – backed impeaching Blair.

"Ordering the armed forces to war is the most serious decision any government takes. On Iraq it was taken with a degree of nonchalance bordering on negligence," said the former independent member of parliament.

In his film, Bell argue the case that war is an increasingly unreliable and unjustifiable means of solving conflicts in the 21st century.

Twenty-three British lawmakers attempted in November 2004 to file a motion to impeach Blair on charges of "gross misconduct" over the US-led invasion.

Although it fell by the wayside despite attempts to revive it during the general election last May, it was the first such bid to impeach a British prime minister in 198 years.

A recently-leaked government memo revealed that Blair had already committed himself to a regime change in Iraq by force eight months before the invasion of the oil-rich Arab country.

In a 13-page legal advice to Blair on March 7, 2003, British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith raised doubts over the legality of the Iraq war.

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