F-35 Strike Fighter

Mr Speaker, I can announce today that the Committee of Inquiry will be chaired by Sir John Chilcot and include:

Baroness Usha Prashar
Sir Roderick Lyne
Sir Lawrence Freedman; and
Sir Martin Gilbert

All are - or will become - privy counsellors

Statement on Iraq

Sir John Chilcot: a safe pair of hands

Usha Prashar, Baroness Prashar

Sir Roderick Lyne

Lawrence Freedman

Sir Lawrence Freedman

Sir Martin Gilbert

Life in Baghdad's Slums

Fighting to Survive in Sadr City

Here's one voice that won't be heard by Chilcot & fellow Zionists

Iraq's poorest people live on trash heaps, sleep amongst the rats and drink polluted water. In the country with the world's third largest oil reserves, a million people live in misery ...

In the past seven years, the United States has pumped around $53 billion in civilian aid into Iraq through a program that is roughly tantamount to a modern Marshall Plan.

The money was intended to create a flourishing economy, supported by a strong agricultural sector and a strong middle class.

But that's not the reality today. Every fourth household has no running water.

Close to 60 percent of all sewage is pumped, without being treated, into the desert.

The electricity supply in Baghdad has deteriorated again to the point that power is only available to customers for up to three hours a day, making any normal business life in the capital city impossible.

The reason for the misery is the political standstill.

The government is incapable of acting, and the national parliament hasn't passed a single act of legislation in nine months.

On top of that comes mass corruption, which has proven all-corroding in Iraq.

Transparency International has named Iraq one of the fifth most corrupt countries in the world.

Not far from the slums, politicians can lead a luxury life that couldn't seem any more remote.

The lion's share of the reconstruction money has been funnelled in to the wrong pockets and projects, claims Christine McNab of the United Nations Development Program in Iraq ...

Der Spiegel  01 Sept 2010    War on Terror

Witnesses bent on self-exoneration

The Chilcot inquiry, which marks its first anniversary this weekend, was flawed from the start ...

I ... committed the easy error of believing that senior army officers largely supported the venture. I should have known better.

Theirs was a mix of ire and disdain, seeing in their leader a man who was both weak in the face of an extreme US administration and a man who used the military to posture on the world stage.

But the criticisms of Tony Blair and those around him were made in typically establishment fashion, off the record and deniable.

Experiences such as these helped to inform my view of Whitehall as I watched the inquiries on the Iraq war over the years.

Alongside the parliamentary investigations by MPs hopelessly out of their depth, there has been the whitewash of Hutton and the lost opportunity of the Butler inquiry, to which I was asked to give evidence.

In each case, the evidence was laid out for all to see.

A compelling narrative emerged of a prime minister desperate not to be outflanked by the Conservative opposition and desperate to keep on the right side of his mentor in the White House.

Blair's instruction to his advisers, the military, security chiefs and diplomats was to do whatever it took not to let Saddam Hussein off the hook.

If that meant massaging the evidence, exaggerating the threat and preparing for war while insisting until late on to the armed forces that no such plans were being hatched, then so be it ...

Independent  31 July 2010    War on Terror

Prescott: files on Iraq's WMD made me nervous

Chilcot inquiry has already exposed the folly of the invasion

Sir John and team to visit Iraq

UK and US 'should have realised Iraq evidence was suspect'

Giving evidence to the Iraq Inquiry, Dr Hans Blix said it should have set alarm bells ringing in London and Washington when the inspectors repeatedly failed to turn up any evidence that Saddam Hussein still had active WMD programmes ...

Dr Blix said that the inspectors had visited 30 sites based on tip-offs from British and US intelligence but found little other than some old missile engines and a sheaf of nuclear documents.

He acknowledged the pressure of the US military build-up in the region had led Saddam Hussein to agree to the return of the UN inspectors in September 2002.

However he said that he did not believe that Britain and the US had been entitled to invade Iraq without a further UN Security Council resolution specifically authorising military action.

He accused the administration of US president George Bush of being "high on military" in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York in 2001.

"They felt that they could get away with it and therefore it was desirable," he said.

He also condemned claims by Britain and the US that Iraq had tried acquire raw uranium for its supposed nuclear programme from Niger, based on a forged document.

"That was perhaps the first occasion I became suspicious about the evidence," he said. "I think that was the most scandalous part." ...

Independent  27 July 2010

Allies used 'poor' intelligence ahead of Iraq invasion

Iraq war inquiry: former UN expert accuses Whitehall of cover-up

Chilcot inquiry witness claims government is trying to suppress embarrassing testimony about case for Iraq invasion ...

Ross claims he was told his evidence must not refer to a memo from a senior Foreign Office official.

The memo, to the special adviser to the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, expressed concern that a briefing paper for the parliamentary Labour party had "dramatically" altered the assessment of Iraq's nuclear threat.

Ross says the "paper claimed that if Iraq's programmes remained unchecked, it could develop a workable nuclear device within five years.

The official's memo pointed out that this was not in fact the UK assessment, which was more or less the opposite: that the UK believed that Iraq's nuclear programme had been effectively checked by sanctions."

Despite the official's concern, the paper was used to brief the cabinet.

Ross writes: "This paper was pure overstated propaganda, filled with almost ludicrous statements like 'one teaspoon of anthrax can kill a million people'."

He expressed incredulity that the Foreign Office wanted references to the briefing removed from his testimony, as it related to a public document.

"It is very worrying that the government machine is still trying to withhold key documents, and silence those of us with detailed knowledge of the policy history. I have been told too... that members of the [inquiry] panel have been refused documents they have specifically requested." ...

Observer  25 July 2010    

Ex-MI5 boss says war raised terror threat

"Our involvement in Iraq radicalised a whole generation of young people, some of them British citizens"

The invasion of Iraq "substantially" increased the terrorist threat to the UK, the former head of MI5 has said.

Giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Baroness Manningham-Buller said the action "radicalised" a generation of young people, including UK citizens.

As a result, she said she was not "surprised" that UK nationals were involved in the 7/7 bombings in London.

She said she believed the intelligence on Iraq's threat was not "substantial enough" to justify the action.

She said she had advised officials a year before the war that the threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited" and believed that assessment "turned out to be the right judgement" ...

In a newly declassified document, published by the inquiry, Baroness Manningham-Buller told the senior civil servant at the Home Office in March 2002 that there was no evidence that Iraq had any involvement in the 9/11 attacks ...

BBC NEWS  20 July 2010    War on Terror Log

Eliza Manningham-Buller at the Iraq inquiry

Saddam terror threat limited says ex-spy chief

Iraq War Inquiry

WMD claims were lies says former envoy

Mr (Carne) Ross, who resigned before the war, pointed to a document circulated to Labour MPs in 2002 as evidence of a “process of deliberate public exaggeration”, including the claim that Saddam could develop nuclear weapons within five years.

He added: “This paper also contains such scare-mongering claims as ‘less than a teaspoon of anthrax can kill over a million people’ without explaining the extremely difficult process for anthrax to be weaponised and delivered in an effective method.”

The former diplomat said the September 2002 dossier that made the case for war – including the notorious claim that Iraq could launch a missile strike within 45 minutes “misrepresented” the raw intelligence ...

Mr Ross concluded: “This process of exaggeration was gradual, and proceeded by accretion and editing from document to document, in a way that allowed those participating to convince themselves that they were not engaged in blatant dishonesty.

“But this process led to highly misleading statements about the UK assessment of the Iraqi threat that were, in their totality, lies.” ...

The Independent  12 July 2010

Iraq deaths in British custody could see military face legal challenges

MoD faces judicial inquiries as the Guardian raises questions over seven Iraqis who died while being held by UK troops ...

In seven cases raised by the Guardian, the MoD is refusing to explain why the individuals were detained, or say where, how or why they died.

Officials have refused even to disclose whether or not the deaths were investigated.

Next week, lawyers representing 102 Iraqi civilians will seek a judicial review of the MoD's refusal to hold a public inquiry into all cases of abuse of Iraqi civilians after the March 2003 invasion ...

Guardian  01 July 2010    Tony Blair    Torture

Why did Goldsmith change his mind?

Biggest new revelation is the publication of Lord Goldsmith's initial advice saying that invasion would be illegal.

Like so much else in this fascinating inquiry, the revelation is not new as such. Lord Goldsmith has already said that he changed his mind before giving his final advice in support of the war.

But it does raise all sorts of questions as to why the Attorney General underwent quite such a radical conversion. Whether the Chilcot committee ends up concluding that the war was illegal, I doubt.

But one wonders whether the Cabinet Secretary would have allowed publication if Chilcot was still sitting under Labour.

What sticks in my craw, however, is the inquiry's claim to be full and comprehensive. It spent, it boasts, part of the period during the election when it was in purdah visiting France and the US to find out recollections there.

The one place it didn't get to, of course, was Iraq itself and the one set of people it is not going to interview is the Iraqis themselves.

How a so-called independent committee, which includes two historians (admittedly neither of them known for expressing any sympathy with the Arab point of view) can claim to understand what went on without finding out the view from the other side beats me.

But until we do, we'll never learn the lessons of these conflicts, in Afghanistan no more than in Iraq.

Independent  01 July 2010    War on Terror

Ministers warned Blair over Iraq

How Goldsmith changed advice on legality of war

Diplomat questions Blair's handling of Bush in runup to Iraq war

Lord Jay of Ewelme, who was head of the Foreign Office as permanent secretary there between 2002 and 2006, told the inquiry that the former prime minister gave commitments about Britain's support for the war in advance that he would not have given himself ...

Asked whether he believed that UN security council resolution 1441, passed in November 2002, justified military action, Jay replied:

"A number of us believed that there should be a second resolution, that the first resolution was good but it was not sufficient, and that there needed to be a second resolution. I certainly believed that. I remember having a discussion with Andrew Turnbull at the Cabinet Office where we were discussing these things and we both agreed that there needed to be a second resolution." ...

Wood said that going to war without a second resolution would be illegal. Straw wrote back rejecting his advice.

Guardian  30 June 2010        

Defence chiefs gag damning Iraq invasion findings

Highly critical comments by a senior army officer asked to conduct a study of the circumstances surrounding the invasion of Iraq have been suppressed on the orders of the country's top defence officials ...

Former senior military officers and defence officials have already described their anger and frustration about the failures in damning testimony to the Chilcot inquiry into the 2003 Iraq invasion. One of the inquiry's key objectives is to spell out the lessons that should be learned from what is widely regarded in Whitehall as an ill-conceived operation of dubious legality and, in foreign policy terms, a disaster comparable to the 1956 Suez crisis.

Against this background, the Ministry of Defence agreed to conduct its own study. However, Brown's criticisms were so harsh that they have been suppressed following the intervention of Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, and other officials, who considered them too embarrassing even for internal consumption at the MoD ...

Guardian  27 May 2010

Brown at the Chilcot Inquiry

When Brown was kept in the dark

Gordon Brown was "aware of what was happening" as Britain edged closer to war with Iraq but was kept in the dark about some key developments, the inquiry heard today ...

... Mr Brown, then Chancellor, was not present at every meeting, the panel was told.

During his evidence, it also emerged Mr Brown:

* Was not shown an "options paper" drawn up by the Cabinet Office in March 2002;

* Did not know attorney general Lord Goldsmith had wavered on a decision to give legal backing for the war;

* Had not seen private letters sent by Mr Blair to US president George Bush assuring British support for any military action;

* Was not present at all war cabinet meetings.

Mr Brown insisted that Cabinet had been "informed fully" about the process of negotiations ahead of the invasion.

But, in his evidence to the panel, he indicated that he was not at the heart of the decision-making process.

Independent  05 Mar 2010

Brown blames generals

Testifying before the Chilcot inquiry, Mr Brown said that every single request for equipment had been approved and the Treasury had "immediately" committed £90 million for the purchase of new armoured vehicles after it became apparent that the Land Rovers did not protect against roadside bombs.

Having clearly decided that attack can be the best form of defence, he went on to lay the blame for equipment shortages on the generals who should have predicted the operational needs of their troops.

"I have to stress it is not for me to make the military decisions on the ground about the use of particular vehicles," Mr Brown told the panel. "What I can, however, say is that at every point we were asked to provide money and the resources for new equipment or for improving equipment, we made that money available."

Times  05 Mar 2010

Brown defends defence spending curbs

Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended his decision to curb defence spending after the Iraq invasion ...

He told the Chilcot Inquiry that the move was necessary to prevent public finances spiralling out of control.

But he insisted he provided money every time defence chiefs asked for new equipment ...

The Prime Minister was asked how much impact the conflict had on Britain's finances.

He replied: "I think the effects of the Iraq invasion are far less than, for example, the effects of the global financial crisis on the economy."

Telegraph  05 Mar 2010

Chilcot: the extent of Brown's blame

AndrewWatt
5 Mar 2010, 1:17PM

@Xenium

You wanted comment on the legality of the war?

Here you go ....

One of my main concerns is about the legality of the Iraq War in terms of UK Law.

Here are some questions for Gordon Brown that I would consider as pivotal today, if I were Sir John Chilcot.

1. Do you accept that the government of Iraq was changed by force in 2003?

2. Are you aware that Section 2(2) of the Reinsurance (Acts of Terrorism) Act 1993 deems changing a government by force to be "an act of terrorism"?

3. Are you aware that the acts of the UK armed forces in Iraq in 2003 also constitute "terrorism" in the meaning of Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000?

4. Are you aware that in funding the military action in Iraq in 2003, which as discussed earlier is "terrorism", that you appear to have committed an offence in the meaning of Section 15 of the Terrorism Act 2000?

5. Are you aware that the penalty specified for someone convicted of a Section 15 offence is up to 14 years imprisonment?

6. Are you aware that in December 1999 during the Second Reading of the Terrorism Bill (that later became the Terrorism Act 2000) that it was pointed out to Jack Straw that UK military action in Iraq would correspond to the definition of "terrorism" in what was then Clause 1 of the Terrorism Bill? The point was made to Jack Straw by Tom King.

7. Are you aware that you have caused UK tax payers to commit offences under Section 15 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in that they funded "terrorism" in Iraq?

8. Are you aware that as a consequence of your actions, and the actions of other ministers, that the bulk of the UK military personnel who died in Iraq died as "terrorists", in the meaning of Section 40 of the Terrorism Act 2000?

9. Do you wish to resign as Prime Minister now, in view of your seeming criminal actions with respect to the Terrorism Act 2000, or would you prefer to do it later?

Guardian  05 Mar 2010

Another witness is let off the hook

Brown on Iraq: I wasn’t at fault

Admiral slams 'disingenuous' Brown

Brown Iraq inquiry evidence disingenuous - Lord Boyce

Gordon Brown at the Iraq inquiry

When Brown was kept in the dark

Brown defends defence spending curbs

Brown blames generals for Snatch Land Rover fiasco

Chilcot: the extent of Brown's blame

Brown denies Iraq war cash curbs

Right decision to overthrow Saddam

Gordon Brown at the Iraq Inquiry

Brown’s cuts ‘cost lives of soldiers’

Clare Short: Tony Blair lied and misled parliament in build-up to Iraq war

• Blair 'lied' over war preparations
• Attorney general 'misled' government
• Brown 'marginalised and unhappy'

Declassified letters between Short and Blair released today show she believed that invading Iraq without a second UN resolution would be illegal and there was a significant risk of a humanitarian catastrophe.

She told the inquiry that she had a conversation with Blair in 2002. He told her that he was not planning for war against Iraq and that the evidence has since revealed that he was not telling the truth at that point, she said.

She also said she was "stunned" when she read the 337-word legal advice on the war written by the then-attorney general Lord Goldsmith during a cabinet meeting on 17 March 2003, three days before the war began. She was forbidden by Blair from discussing it during the meeting.

"I said, 'That is extraordinary.' I was jeered at to be quiet. If the prime minister says be quiet there is only so much you can do.

"I think for the attorney general to come and say there's unequivocal legal authority to go to war was misleading."

Short, who was applauded by some audience members in public seats at the end of her evidence, said the ministerial code was broken as cabinet colleagues were not aware of Goldsmith's modifications to his legal advice over the previous weeks ...

Guardian  02 Feb 2010

Short shrift for Blair at Chilcot

Tony Blair 'leaned on Lord Goldsmith'

Gordon Brown ‘had no input’ over decision on Iraq

Blair deceived Parliament over grounds for war

Gordon Brown ‘had no input’ over decision on Iraq

Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry

Not only did he refuse to give an inch on every angle of the war – nothing wrong with the grounds for the invasion, the planning of it, its legality, the decision-making process or the conduct of its aftermath – he also went on the counter-offensive, challenging his critics.

This he called the 2010 question: where would Saddam be now if no action had been taken? Wouldn't he represent an even greater threat today than he did then?

(To which the answer is surely that the 2003 invasion exposed Saddam and his ragtag army as a toothless tiger, whose rusting arsenal would be even more useless seven years on than it was then.)

Not content with that, Blair pushed further, apparently touting a new war in the Persian Gulf, this time against Iraq's neighbour, Iran. All day Blair used his platform to bring up Iran, even when it was only tangentially related to the topic in hand.

The arguments that applied in 2002 – about WMD falling into terrorist hands – applied in spades to Iran in 2010, he said.

Blair clearly doesn't realise that the fastest way to taint any planned military action against Iran is to associate it with the catastrophe of Iraq. But he is convinced that he can see what others cannot, that he is a latter-day Winston Churchill, crying out a warning that others refuse to heed. He thinks history will vindicate him – crediting him for seeing the menace of Saddam and Iran when others refused to listen ...

Guardian  29 Jan 2010

Blair v Chilcot. No contest: we and the truth are the losers

Blair’s world view: simply goodies v baddies

Blair attacked over Iran stance

Tony Blair: world leaders need to take urgent action over Iran

Chilcot inquiry member Sir Martin Gilbert praises Gordon Brown

Attorney-General in briar patch con shock

Tony Blair's Iraq letters to stay secret

Britain and genocide

Goldsmith says Iraq advice should be published

Lord Goldsmith today criticised the Government’s decision not to declassify more secret legal documents relating to the Iraq war ...

He told the Iraq Inquiry: "I want to make it clear that I didn't agree with the decision that has apparently been made that certain documents are not to be declassified but I will give the evidence that the inquiry seeks."

Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry chairman, said he was “frustrated” that more documents had not been made public.

The key missing documents include Lord Goldsmith’s draft legal advice on January 14, 2003, in which he said the war would be illegal and a second dossier on March 7 in which he is reported to have concluded that it would be lawful ...

Times  27 Jan 2010

Iraq inquiry is being ‘gagged’ after secret documents withheld

US lawyers persuaded Lord Goldsmith to change his mind on Iraq war

The former foreign secretary Jack Straw is to face potentially explosive questioning at the Iraq inquiry next month over a private letter he sent to Tony Blair on the eve of the invasion, urging the prime minister to look at options apart from pressing ahead with British military involvement in the attack.

It is understood that the inquiry is to receive a copy of the personal letter sent by Straw, written after discussions with Sir Michael (now Lord) Jay, the Foreign Office permanent secretary, on 16 March 2003, two days before the Commons voted to back the war ...

... the inquiry has controversially decided not to cross-examine Gordon Brown before the general election, on the basis that it would be wrong to interrogate any serving minister still holding ministerial responsibility for Iraq. Straw is not exempted on this basis because he is now lord chancellor, with responsibility for the justice system.

It has been claimed that in the letter Straw suggested the UK should offer the Americans "political and moral support" in their campaign against Saddam Hussein, but not military backing.

He reportedly urged Blair to tell George Bush that British troops would help clear up the mess and keep the peace once the war was over, but could play no part in Saddam's overthrow ...

Guardian  23 Dec 2009

Jack Straw dismissed advice on Iraq war legality

Jack Straw appearance at Chilcot Inquiry

Blair always wanted regime change

I could have vetoed UK military action

I could have stopped invasion

The members of the Chilcot Inquiry have a choice: they can be loyal to the Establishment or they can expose the subterfuge

The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible. Who is any longer naive enough to accept that the then Prime Minister’s mind remained innocently open after his visit to Crawford, Texas?

Hindsight is a great temptress. But we needn’t trouble her on the way to a confident conclusion that Mr Blair’s fundamental flaw was his sycophancy towards power.

Perhaps this seems odd in a man who drank so much of that mind-altering brew at home. But Washington turned his head and he couldn’t resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him. In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so.

Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that “hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right”. But this is a narcissist’s defence and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death ...

The real tragedy of Iraq, beyond all the danger and the terrible loss, is that it rendered any affair of the heart between government and people no more than a wisp, like a lie in the wind. It broke faith ...

Times  14 Dec 2009

Key parts of Tony Blair's evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War will be held in secret, sources close to the hearings revealed last night.

His conversations with President George Bush when he was prime minister, and crucial details of the decision-making process that led Britain into war, will fall under the scope of national security and the protection of Britain's relations with the US.

But there are also suggestions by well-placed sources that anything "interesting" will also be shrouded in secrecy, leaving his public appearance containing little more than is already known ...

All of the evidence held behind closed doors is expected to be redacted from the Chilcot panel's final report on the war.

There are already concerns that Sir John Chilcot and his four fellow panellists have given the 27 witnesses who have so far appeared – mainly senior Foreign Office mandarins – an easy ride over their role in the war.

The former MI6 chief Sir John Scarlett, in evidence last week, distanced himself from the "overtly political" foreword to the September 2002 Downing Street dossier. Yet the panel failed to ask why it was that Mr Blair and Alastair Campbell were able to amend the document he was in charge of. Sir John will also give evidence in private ...

Independent  13 Dec 2009

Despicable means to a dead end

A very British arrangement

The Chilcot inquiry today met its first "hostile" witness, Sir John Scarlett, former head of MI6. Mastermind of Saddam's threat of weapons of mass destruction and thus architect of Tony Blair's case for the Iraq war, he entered the inquisition room like a small, well-bred bull, ready for battle.

Within seconds he was wandering round the ring, lost and searching for a matador. The inquiry appeared to have gone on strike.

Scarlett duly droned for a third of his allotted time on the structure of the joint intelligence committee.

The inquiry members looked to the ceiling, gazed at their feet, even seemed to fall asleep. Scarlett teased them with tales of dossiers and spin, with murmurs of American pressure, aluminium tubes and the clear impression that weapons inspectors were spies. They barely noticed.

He failed to mention Alastair Campbell or Tony Blair. He did all he could to cause a fight, but he failed. He walked out unmarked. Chilcot is an inquiry with much to prove ...

Guardian  08 Dec 2009

Blair claim on Iraq WMDs was overtly political

Lt Gen Viggers, who was the senior British military representative in Iraq from May to September 2003, said ministers had learned nothing from their experience of the Iraq war and are "not living up to the responsibility" placed on them.

He launched into his astonishing attack on the Government when he was asked whether he felt ministers and senior civil servants should have training in military strategy before taking up key positions.

Complaining that the job of post-war reconstruction in Iraq had suffered from a "lack of a sense of direction from the outset", he said:

"We have not really progressed at the strategic level. I am not talking about the soldiers and commanders and civilians...who did a great job.

"But it's the intellectual horse power that drives these things (which) needs better co-ordination.

"We are putting amateurs into really important positions and people are getting killed as a result of some of these decisions. It's a huge responsibility and I just don't sense we are living up to it."

Lt Gen Viggers' comments amounted to the most damning criticism of the Government from any military officer to give evidence to the Inquiry ...

Telegraph  09 Dec 2009

They plan to publish a report which they claim proves the weapons expert did not commit suicide, as the Hutton Report decided, and have hired lawyers to call on Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, and the coroner Nicholas Gardiner to re-examine the circumstances of his death.

The doctors are asking for permission to go to the High Court to reopen the inquest on the grounds that it was improperly suspended ...

Telegraph  06 December 2009

Dr Kelly WAS murdered

Gordon Brown is facing demands to change the rules of the Iraq inquiry this weekend amid fears that the most explosive documents explaining why Britain went to war will not be made public.

As the inquiry enters its second week, the prime minister is under pressure to make key evidence relating to secret government discussions public, including minutes showing how the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, changed his mind about the legality of the war.

The demands are made in a letter to Brown from the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, who insists that unless the lid is lifted on secrecy, the Chilcot inquiry will fail to satisfy the public's demands for honesty.

Last night the Mail on Sunday claimed Goldsmith wrote to Blair in July 2002, eight months before the war, telling him that deposing Saddam Hussein was a blatant breach of international law.

The intention was to make Blair call off the invasion but he ignored the advice, the newspaper says, and banned Goldsmith from attending cabinet meetings.

The letter has been handed to the inquiry and both men are expected to be questioned about it in the new year ...

Observer  29 November 2009

Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 senior British officials have gently hinted that what went wrong was the fault of the Americans and, if there is any blame left over, it belongs to Tony Blair.

The first day of the Chilcot inquiry suggests, on the contrary, that British mandarins of the day had little more idea of the mechanics of Iraqi politics than the most rabid and jingoistic neo-cons in Washington.

At no time, going by their evidence, did British officials in 2003 realise that the invasion of Iraq meant revolutionary change in the region. It would mean that the Sunni Arabs, who had traditionally ruled the country, would be displaced by the Shia and the Kurds. The Sunni were unlikely to go quietly.

The fall of Saddam Hussein was also going to start a political earthquake in the Gulf if it meant, as seemed likely, that the Sunni elite went with him.

The main beneficiaries were going to be the Iranians, who had, after all, spent eight years of war trying to get rid of Saddam in the 1980s.

Now the Americans and the British were doing it for them ...

Independent  25 November 2009

Churchill's Folly

Sir John Chilcot, a former Whitehall mandarin, has insisted that the legality of the 2003 war will be one of the key issues he addresses in his inquiry, which begins on Tuesday.

But lawyers have said that neither the inquiry's chair, not his panel, which includes a Professor of War Studies, a former diplomat, and a Crossbencher in the House of Lords, has the expertise to do so.

They have also queried the panel's ability to cross-examine witnesses, who could include Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General, and Sir John Scarlett, Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee from 2001 to 2004.

One senior judge told The Guardian: "The truth of the matter is, if the inquiry was going to express a view with any kind of authority on the question of legality, it would need a legal member and quite a senior one," the judge said. "Looking at the membership, it seems to me that legality just wasn't going to be a question they would be asked to review."

Another senior legal figure added: "The panel clearly lacks the expertise to address the question of legality. The members are not experienced at cross-examination – it is simply not their skill set."

The concerns are the latest to be raised about the effectiveness of the Iraq Inquiry, which is expected to report its findings in 2011 ...

Telegraph  24 November 2009

Some anti-war campaigners had hoped that the inquiry could lead to criminal charges against some witnesses following suggestions that there had been breaches of the Geneva and Hague conventions on the rules of war. But in a statement the inquiry team made clear that some witnesses could be offered immunity if that was required to ensure that they spoke frankly.

It also confirmed that witnesses would be told in advance of the subjects, events and documents about which they would be questioned, although they would not be told the precise lines of questioning.

The inquiry team said in its statement: “Should a witness feel unable to answer questions due to a genuine fear of self-incrimination of a criminal offence, it would be open to the Inquiry Committee to consider whether, in order to secure the greatest possible openness and co-operation, it would be appropriate to seek an undertaking from the Law Officers that evidence provided to the inquiry will not be used in criminal proceedings against them.” ...

Telegraph  24 November 2009

Iraq inquiry: witnesses could be given immunity from prosecution

On the eve of the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, The Sunday Telegraph has obtained hundreds of pages of secret Government reports on “lessons learnt” which shed new light on “significant shortcomings” at all levels.

They include full transcripts of extraordinarily frank classified interviews in which British Army commanders vent their frustration and anger with ministers and Whitehall officials.

Tony Blair, the former prime minister, misled MPs and the public throughout 2002 when he claimed that Britain’s objective was “disarmament, not regime change” and that there had been no planning for military action. In fact, British military planning for a full invasion and regime change began in February 2002.

The need to conceal this from Parliament and all but “very small numbers” of officials “constrained” the planning process ...

The plans “contained no detail once Baghdad had fallen”, causing a “notable loss of momentum” which was exploited by insurgents. Field commanders raged at Whitehall’s “appalling” and “horrifying” lack of support for reconstruction ...

Telegraph  21 November 2009

A former head of MI5 discloses in the Guardian today that she warned ministers and officials that an invasion of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat to Britain.

Lady Manningham-Buller says that as US and British forces were preparing to invade Iraq, she asked: "Why now?" She adds: "I said it as explicitly as I could. I said something like, 'The threat to us would increase because of Iraq'."

MI5 knew that invading Iraq would make its task much more difficult by breeding resentment and hostility among Britain's large Muslim community.

Even Whitehall's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), largely responsible for drawing up the discredited Iraqi weapons dossier, warned in February 2003 – a month before the invasion – that international terrorism posed by far the biggest threat to Britain's national security, certainly more than Saddam Hussein ...

Guardian 11 July 2009

The bodies lying at the British embassy in Baghdad yesterday were the grimmest reminders of a dark tale with accusations of betrayal and intrigue.

Two years of frantic searches, night raids and secret negotiations amid the murderous violence had failed to save at least two of the five men who disappeared on 29 May 2007.

... serious questions must be asked about the tactics employed by the British Government and also the role of GardaWorld, the company which employed the four bodyguards for Mr Moore.

Court papers lodged in the US claimed that GardaWorld had continued to charge USaid, which paid for Mr Moore's protection, $1,000 a day for the "services" of the four bodyguards while they were in captivity. The company, it was alleged by a former employee, did not have a kidnap and insurance policy and this was revealed to the families of the hostages. The company also employed a public relations company to manage the bad news. Friends of Mr Moore who organised events to keep his memory alive say they had complaints from the PR firm.

And GardaWorld is said to have played a part in shaping the British Government's policy of sparse publicity over the matter, a policy very different from the ones adopted over other abductions, such as those of Terry Waite and John McCarthy in Beirut, Norman Kember in Baghdad and Alan Johnston in Gaza. As a result, say critics such as Graeme Moore, the hostages were more or less forgotten until the shocking reminder of the news from Baghdad.

Asked out the insurance and $1,000-a-day charge, a spokesman for GardaWorld said: "We haven't disclosed any of the details around this."

A crisis management firm, Millbrook Partnership, was employed in response to hostage-taking. Its responsibilities include dealing with communications.

The GardaWorld spokesman said that rather than influence the Foreign Office, "I think the British Government was of a similar mindset".

The Independent 22 June 2009

Iraq hostages: 'we left no stone unturned' says Gordon Brown

Iraq's mercenaries

GardaWorld

The Times ... thinks there should not be an inquiry at all. In a first leader last week the paper grumbled that there had already been two of them, and it doubted that a third could tell us anything we don’t already know.

I disagree. There are many aspects of this affair that remain unexamined. One of them is the attitude of some newspapers, in particular the Murdoch-owned Times and Sun, in uncritically promoting the Government’s flawed case for war, and defending, or even omitting to report, its mistakes ...

The BBC’s Andrew Gilligan was almost entirely right about the “sexed up” 2002 dossier. During the row between the Government and the BBC in July 2003, both papers took the Government’s side. After No 10 had revealed the identity of the weapons inspector Dr David Kelly, subsequently found dead near his home, they attacked the Corporation.

The Times’s Tom Baldwin, a friend of Alastair Campbell, shamelessly wrote that, “some BBC journalists seemed to have abandoned objectivity”.

The Sun was even more aerated, suggesting that, “this is the time for root-and-branch reorganisation of the news department at the BBC.” This from a newspaper which in February 2004 did not even report Tony Blair’s amazing confession that when Britain went to war he did not know that so-called WMD ( had they existed) were considered by the western military to be battlefield weapons which could only be fired a relatively short distance.

The Times complains that every aspect of the Iraq war has already been discussed. No. Rupert Murdoch’s role as chief cheerleader for the war has hardly even been considered ...

The Independent 22 June 2009

Tony Blair urged Gordon Brown to hold the independent inquiry into the Iraq war in secret because he feared that he would be subjected to a "show trial" if it were opened to the public, the Observer can reveal ...

The Observer reveals today that six weeks before the war, at a meeting in Washington, the two leaders were forced to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second UN resolution legitimising military action.

Bush told Blair that the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, painted in UN colours, over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes, he would put Iraq in breach of UN resolutions and legitimise military action ...

On his blog, Alastair Campbell, Blair's former spin doctor, says that "on balance" he believes Brown was right to order the inquiry to be held in private. "I can see the arguments for both sides - openness and transparency favours a public inquiry, but it may well be that the inquiry will do a better job freed from the frenzy of 24-hour media."

Observer 21 June 2009

Blair was involved in Iraq inquiry talks

Iraq war inquiry could reveal secrets, lies and the rush to war

The pressure on No 10 mounted yesterday as the shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, tabled a Commons debate for next week demanding that inquiry evidence be heard in public. The Conservatives will be supported by rebelling Labour backbenchers and by Liberal Democrats, who could force another embarrassing parliamentary defeat on Mr Brown ...

General Sir Mike Jackson, head of the Army during the Iraq invasion, said: "I would have no problem at all in giving my evidence in public." ...

Air Marshal Sir John Walker, the former head of Defence Intelligence, said: "There is only one reason that the inquiry is being heard in private and that is to protect past and present members of this Government. There are 179 reasons why the military want the truth to be out on what happened over Iraq." ...

One serving senior officer who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan said: "It was a political decision to go to war and we followed orders, although a lot of us had private reservations.

"One thing I do remember is how urgent procurement orders were delayed and delayed because the Government wanted to pretend it was still following diplomatic channels. This was one of the main reason for the shortages we faced and this resulted in lives being lost. We won't mind details of that coming out to the public." ...

The Independent 17 June 2009

The betrayal of a soldier

This exercise won't even ask the hard questions

Its terms of reference – to "learn the lessons of the complex and often controversial events of the last six years" – are drawn so broadly as to guarantee a report submerged in generalities. Add to that a committee made up of two knighted historians, a Labour-created peer and a former ambassador, which is headed by a former civil servant, Sir John Chilcot, who has spent much of his career handling the police and intelligence, and the one thing you can be certain of is that it won't ask, let alone answer, the hard questions ...

The inquiry, said the Prime Minister announcing it yesterday, "does not aim to apportion blame". You bet your life it doesn't. Blame is the last thing that ministers, or Tory front-benchers, want bandied around to their detriment. Gordon Brown went along with the war, as did the rest of the Cabinet with one notable exception in Robin Cook ...

The invasion of Iraq did not have full public support, it has not ended in victory and it is impossible to deal with the questions it poses without apportioning blame. This inquiry is a classic establishment exercise in driving a thorny subject into the long grass – par for the course, yes; predictable, no doubt; but nonetheless an insult to the public and to Parliament for all that.

The Independent 16 June 2009

ePolitix.com

Gordon Brown is condemned over secret inquiry ...

His team is made up of Baroness Usha Prashar, a cross-bench peer, Sir Roderick Lyne, a former ambassador to Moscow, Sir Lawrence Freedman, the professor of war studies at Kings College, London, and Sir Martin Gilbert, the biographer of Winston Churchill.

The lack of anyone with a practical military background will cause consternation.

The families of those service personnel killed will want answers about the standard of equipment for soldiers.

The committee will also look at the intelligence failures in the run-up to the invasion in March 2003 ...

Telegraph 16 June 2009

Parents of Iraq dead denounce 'whitewash'

The families of British servicemen who died in Iraq were disappointed and angered to learn that the inquiry into the war will be held in secret.

Reg Keys, whose son Thomas, a military policeman, was killed by an Iraqi mob alongside five of his colleagues in the town of Majar al-Kabir in June 2003, said that the fact the inquiry would be "held behind closed doors" smacked of a whitewash.

"It is an inquiry by mandarins. There are no senior military figures on the panel," he said. "I am not happy that it is behind closed doors. It will not have any credibility. I understand that certain sessions should be in camera for national security, but if there were some sessions in public it could go a long way to help the grieving process … I would have liked to have sat in the public inquiry and hear Tony Blair give his evidence."

Guardian 15 June 2009

Skewed and in secret ... a scandal

Just last week the prime minister committed himself to a new spirit of public accountability, cross-party consultation on electoral and parliamentary reform, as well as a greater and more independent role for backbenchers and select committees. Now he promptly goes against all that when it comes to looking into the most important foreign policy decision of the last decade ...

Guardian 15 June 2009   

The probe that misses the point

What is already known about Britain's decision to invade Iraq is surely more extraordinary than anything that could possibly be uncovered by the inquiry announced yesterday ... the real reason an inquiry is needed is to draw together what we already know, and in its light to try to grasp how such a monstrous blunder could have been made. What went wrong with the structures, the culture and - yes - the individuals in Whitehall, such that the country could be led into a bloody conflict on a false prospectus?

By demanding frank and early answers, the prime minister could have addressed the widespread belief that all politicians are liars - a belief that undermines democracy, and one that has been one of the war's most poisonous results. Even more importantly, he might have hoped to prevent Britain becoming embroiled in a similar disaster in the future ...

The inquiry Gordon Brown set out to the Commons yesterday, however, falls woefully short of the task. For one thing, it is - for no better reason than the precedent set by the Franks inquiry into the Falklands in the bad old days of the 1980s - to meet in secret, before publishing a report in a year's time.

The upshot is that nothing will come out till after the general election, an approach that can only inflame cynicism and mistrust.

The membership should have been chosen after cross-party consultation; instead, Mr Brown has hand-picked an establishment team that strains under the weight of its own baubles. The chair will be the former mandarin Sir John Chilcot, who also served on the Butler inquiry into intelligence on Iraq. Another member is Martin Gilbert, a distinguished historian but one who - as late as 2004 - argued that the standing of Bush and Blair "may well ... join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill" ...

Guardian 16 June 2009

This inquiry into the invasion of Iraq needs to be open

The Government's decision to throw a veil over the proceedings of this inquiry sends the dangerous message that this exercise is less about learning lessons from the invasion of Iraq than smothering past mistakes. The Prime Minister made the first tentative step towards open government yesterday by establishing this investigation. Now he needs to follow his arguments through to their natural conclusion by requiring the inquiry to produce interim reports and to conduct its proceedings in the clear light of day.

The Independent 16 June 2009

Brown rejects early Iraq inquiry

Iraq Body Count - Media Lens responds

Iraq Body Count

Last week, Shia militiamen seized four "security contractors" working for the Canadian company Gardaworld. Buried in the story of this small horror is the bigger tale of a vast shift in how Western wars will be fought in the 21st century if the American right has its way - and one of the great lost scandals of this war.

These men are not "security contractors", nor are they "civilian operatives", nor "reconstruction workers". There are now more of them in Iraq than there are professional soldiers: Britain alone has 21,000 in the country, raking in $1.6bn a year.

As he scurried out the door in 2004, Paul Bremer - the first US viceroy to Iraq - issued Order 17, which exempted all mercenaries operating in the country from having to obey the law. He in effect gave these men a licence to kill - and they are using it, every day. ...

In April 2004, mercenaries working for a private militia named Blackwater were guarding US occupation headquarters in Najaf when a protest by Shia Iraqi civilians began to stir outside. According to the Washington Post and eyewitnesses, Blackwater opened fire on the protesters, unleashing so many rounds so rapidly they had to pause every 15 minutes to allow their gun barrels to cool down. A video of this attack made it on to the Web, where a mercenary can be seen describing the Iraqis they are gunning down as "fuckin' niggers". ...

The main limit on an aggressive US foreign policy today is the limited number of US citizens who are prepared to kill and die for it. Mercenaries solve the problem: just buy troops in. The public is far less likely to protest against a war if the victims are hardened Colombians in it for the cash, rather than their cousin from Wisconsin who signed up out of patriotism.

In mercenary wars, all citizens are asked to give is money, not blood. The Cheney model of mercenary warfare being tried out in Iraq is, in fact, a way of making possible his vision of a 21st century in which wars for resources will be "necessary" on a "regular basis". ...

Johann Hari, The Independent 04 June 2007

SAS on alert to rescue Baghdad Britons

GardaWorld Security Corporation is, it claims, the fifth largest consulting and security services firm in the world, and one of the most rapidly expanding.

With more than 50,000 employees, the 35-year-old company this year reported its best-ever annual profit of $21 million. Based in Montreal, Canada, it has operations in North America, Mexico, Europe and the Middle East.

The company principally provides "investigation, guarding and other specialised services". It also provides electronic equipment installation services, such as access cards and surveillance cameras.

It has been gobbling up companies - around 25 in the past seven years - and last year it bought Kroll Security International, which provided governments and companies with services such as intelligence, executive protection and kidnap negotiations in high-risk countries including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last year it bought ATI Systems, America's second largest cash handling company, in its biggest acquisition to date.

Telegraph 30 May 2007

A multibillion dollar industry

GardaWorld

GardaWorld Appoints Former Boston Police Commissioner Paul Evans as Managing Director

Former intelligence chief moves to Canadian private security firm

SourceWatch

Mr Williams said that an urgent written request for 37,000 extra sets of ECBA, sent to Mr Hoon by an MoD logistics team on September 13, 2002, was returned by the minister with the annotation "further advice required" because any approach to manufacturers would have telegraphed the fact that Britain was preparing for war while diplomacy continued at the UN.

... Mr Hoon finally allowed officials to place an order for the £167 ECBA kits (the cost is equivalent to two days' pay for an Army private) on 13 November [2002]. But the kits did not reach Iraq until 31 March, 2003 - eight days too late for Sgt Roberts ...

The lack of equipment was exacerbated by the coalition's decision, in January 2003, to invade Iraq from the south, rather than the north. Though an additional 4,000 troops were needed for the southern approach, the combat gear order had not been increased accordingly. A total of 2,200 troops lacked ECBA kits.

Mr Roberts' widow, Samantha discovered some of these shortcoming when she heard audio tapes recorded by her husband in the days before his death, describing preparations as "a joke". She said: "The loss of Steve to us cannot be measured. This has been the driving force behind our quest for answers, some of which we feel could have been provided earlier."

The Independent 19 December 2006

Brown 'guillotined' funds for military

Military cutbacks after invasion

Ministers told of Iraq kit risk

Troops sent to Iraq without sufficient body armour

Brown marginalised on Iraq decision, says Short

40 days that made illegal attack into legal war on Iraq

UK legal process on Iraq 'lamentable'

Iraq invasion had no 'legal basis in international law'

Straw rejected advice ...

Jack Straw dismissed advice on Iraq war legality

Hans Blix warned Tony Blair Iraq might not have WMD

'Gordon Brown cut budget for helicopters'

Goldsmith was not convinced war was legal

Hoon 'denied Iraq soldiers equipment that could have saved lives'

Jack Straw’s secret warning to Tony Blair

Attorney general changed mind over legality of invasion

Campbell attacked for criticism of Short's Iraq stance

'We will be there': Blair gave secret pledge to Bush on Iraq war, Campbell reveals

Andrew Gilligan

I would have invaded Iraq anyway

Blair claim 'separate from Iraq dossier'

Spy chief faces questions

How our pliant generals became Blair's yes men

Was Iraqi cabbie the source of the dodgy dossier?

US 'assumed' UK participation

Blair told Bush he was willing to join, 11 months before war

Inquiry off to promising start

Blair's view on Iraq 'tightened' after Bush meeting

Iraq war build-up 'left us scrabbling for smoking gun'

Tony Blair told ‘days before invasion’ WMD had been dismantled

Crying wolf in 2003 destroyed all trust in Britain's leaders

Britain rejected regime change as illegal in 2001

Iraq inquiry told of 'clear' threat from Saddam Hussein

Iraq war bereaved give views on inquiry