THIS book may read read like a scene-of-the-crime thriller but, in providing a factual account of the genocide in Iraq, it provides damning grounds for prosecuting George Bush, Tony Blair and others for their war crimes in that country.

According to its authors, the sanctions imposed by the West killed 450,000 children by 1995 and continued for eight years after US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright affirmed that the price of those deaths was “worth it.”

The “shock and awe” bombing campaigns and further US state terrorism murdered another 600,000 by 2006. Iraq’s suffering was compounded by its oil income being sequestrated in a New York bank, with most of it diverted to global oil and private security corporations.

Head of the US occupation Paul Bremer spent little in restoring hospitals, water, power or other essentials. Instead, his actions bore out the definition of genocide which includes not only killing large sections of society but deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.

The writers expose the blockade of vital items such as milk formula and medical syringes under the guise of “sanctions.”

These are not weapons of mass destruction. And the International Atomic Energy Agency was prevented from importing equipment to locate up to 2,000 tons of US depleted uranium weapons, from which millions still suffer painful and deadly effects.

Bremer, unaccountable to Iraqi authority, instituted laws — enforced by terror and the US army — expelling or murdering Sunnis, violating international law in the process. To avoid prosecution, the US refused to join the International Criminal Court.

The demonisation of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athists reveals the depth of Western malevolence against Iraq, even though no human rights allegations against the Iraqi president succeeded in court, as Dr Abdul-Haq al-Ani demonstrated in his book The Trial of Saddam Hussein.

As the results of the Chilcot inquiry are delayed yet again, this book demonstrates why Blair and others should be prosecuted for genocide now. We owe it to the survivors.

And such an action may deter copy-cat atrocities — after all, Syria, Yemen, Iran and North Korea and are all very much on the neocon hit-list.

Review by James B Thring