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'Don’t Iraqi women weep when their children die?' asked Tony Benn. But that couldn’t stop the war or Blair | Diane Abbott

Looking back after 20 years, I recall how an unswerving PM bullied MPs to get their votes and ignored all the warnings

Most of what happens in parliament is theatre – symbolic and significant, but one step away from reality. But the discussion and debate in the weeks and days leading up to the Iraq war was the most intense and emotional that I have witnessed in the Commons. It was literally about matters of life and death. It was obvious from the beginning that Tony Blair was determined to go to war, shoulder to shoulder with George W Bush. The prime minister’s relationship with the US seemed to matter more more to him than opinion in his own party, and it also seemed to matter more than whether the war was even legal or not.

The public rationale was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was harbouring those responsible for 9/11: al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden. In order to shore up support, Alastair Campbell, Blair’s spin doctor, was involved with the production of a dossier on Iraq’s weapons programme. Reading it at the time, I realised there was very little substance to it.

Diane Abbott has been the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987

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