The slaughter that shames Tony Blair:

Iraq descended to new depths of savagery yesterday – as Tony Blair washed his hands of all blame for the bloodshed.
With Islamist jihadists now in control of large areas of the country, appalling pictures emerged showing the mass execution of government soldiers by masked fanatics.
Dozens of terrified men in civilian clothes lie in a shallow ditch before being executed in cold blood by Islamist extremists.


The Iraqi Army deserters, some wearing football shirts, were taken to scrubland where they faced a firing squad of Al Qaeda-inspired insurgents.
But, to derision from Left and Right, Mr Blair insisted that the sectarian violence tearing the country apart had nothing to do with his own actions in supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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Tony Blair suggested the chaos in Iraq could have been avoided if the West had bombed Syria

Murdered: Cold-blooded extremists gun down the group, some of whom are still sitting up in their shallow ditch

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Merciless: Clouds of dust appear to rise around the bound bodies of Iraqi prisoners as a militant walks down a line holding a rifle. This image, which could not be verified, was uploaded to an extremist website

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Brutal: Another masked gunman stands over a row of bodies, with the black flag of ISIS visible in the top-left of the shot, The image is thought to originate in the Salahadden governrate, north of Baghdad

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Captive: Footage appears to show militants from the Islamic State of Iraq leading away captured Iraqi soldiers

Brutal: A masked gunman threatens the terrified men who are marched away

Blair calls for Western action to resolve Middle East conflict

Instead, he blamed the West’s failure to bomb Syria last year – and called for fresh Western military action against both nations.
‘We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that “we” have caused this,’ the former Prime Minister wrote in an extraordinary essay.