Monbiot fails to 'arrest' Bolton

Sadly, George Monbiot has been prevented from conducting a citizen's arrest on John Bolton at the Hay Festival by security guards stepping in and restraining him. Monbiot had promised for days that he would make the attempt as he considers John Bolton a war criminal for planning the Iraq war outwith of United Nations.

He said: "I'm aware that I've made what I believe is the first attempt ever to arrest one of the perpetrators of the Iraq War, and I believe that is a precedent and I would like to see that precedent followed up."

He had earlier confronted Bolton during a question and answer session:

Mr Monbiot asked Mr Bolton what distinguished him from a Nazi war criminal.

Mr Bolton replied that in exchange for a ceasefire on the Gulf War, Iraq had been required to do a variety of things including a declaration of weapons of mass destruction and the elimination of those weapons.

"By consistently refusing to abide by Resolution 687, Iraq demonstrated it was time and time again not in compliance with the ceasefire resolution," said Mr Bolton.

"It's a fairly straightforward argument, when one party is not in compliance other parties are freed from their obligation under that resolution as well.

The error in Bolton's logic, of course, is that it is not for individual nations to decide whether or not Iraq is in breach of a United Nations resolution, that is a matter for the UN to decide. Bush and Blair attempted to get them to do so by the passing of the infamous second resolution, which they withdrew when it became obvious that the rest of the world simply didn't agree with them.

So Bolton's argument is basically a pile of old tosh.

Speaking afterwards, Mr Monbiot said he planned to pursue former PM Tony Blair.

He said he considered Mr Blair and other leading politicians to be war criminals who had breached international law by their involvement in the decision making process which led to the Iraq war.

He said he had given a dossier of evidence on Mr Bolton - who was President Bush's representative at the United Nations during the time of the Iraq War - to Dyfed-Powys Police ahead of his attempt to present his charge sheet.

Good on Monbiot for making the attempt. We appear to live in a world where only our enemies can commit war crimes, while we can do things that would be considered war crimes were other nations to do them, but they are clearly not war crimes when carried out by ourselves.

And quite how Bolton can sit there spouting that tosh when Scott McLellan has blown the lid off the lies told before the war is simply beyond me. It was nothing to do with WMD, as even Wolfowitz has previously confirmed. And McLellan has now also told us that the war was for "the neoconservative dream of creating a democratic Iraq that would pave the way for an enduring peace in the region."

In other words, the war was for Israel, that continual neo-con obsession. McLellan has also told us that in order to make sure this war took place that the administration "intentionally" ignored any evidence which did not support war.

So the war criminal Bolton can sit there bleating about UN resolutions all he likes, McLellan has revealed that as the bunkum which we always suspected it was.

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Tags: George Monbiot, John Bolton, Hay festival, citizens arrest