The fact that Britain is once again investigating its role in the Iraq blunder is praiseworthy. The previous Hutton and Butler inquiries were disappointing to put it mildly. Perhaps because they were undertaken at a time when the British establishment was still on the defensive and when preserving the reputation of the prime minister took precedence over exhuming the truth. Or, alternatively, because they took place when British troops were still in theater when damaging revelations could have seriously affected morale and/or relations with Britain’s Washington ally.
Certainly, the ongoing inquiry into events leading up to the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, led by Sir John Chilcot, a Privy Council member and former civil servant, appears to be a different animal entirely, with diplomats, ministers and mandarins eager to distance themselves from what is now universally acknowledged to have been a blunder.
It’s early days yet, but the likelihood is that Tony Blair will end up with a lot of explaining to do. It’s also likely that Teflon man will use his silvered tongue, slick charm and boyish good humor to wriggle out of any culpability.
Witnesses that were close to him during the run-up indicate that legal advisers who believed regime change was illegal were leaned on to revise their opinions. Others say Blair had secretly drawn-up war plans nine months before the invasion when he was publicly adamant that conflict wasn’t on the cards. And there are accusations that in April 2002, Blair “signed a blood pact” with George W. Bush behind closed doors during a visit to his Crawford Ranch in Texas when the two men knelt and prayed together.
Thereafter, Blair was a man with a mission to bully his Cabinet into rubber-stamping the misadventure and do everything possible to pull the wool over the eyes of a highly skeptical public as to the war’s motivation and legality. At that time, nobody knew whether Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. There was no hard evidence, only guesswork based on the earlier ambitions of Iraq’s former leader to build a nuclear bomb following Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s Tammuz-1 reactor at Tuwaitha along with his use of US-supplied chemical weapons during Iraq’s war with Iran.
In fact, Saddam terminated his nuclear weapons program and ordered his Republican Guards to destroy his country’s stockpiles of chemical weapons in 1991 following the Gulf War when clandestine procurements were no longer feasible. Despite US and UK protestations to the contrary, that was no secret.
When Saddam’s son-in-law, the former head of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs Hussein Kamel, defected to Jordan in 1995, he spilled the beans to the CIA, UN and British intelligence officers. Notes of one UN interrogation show that Kamel was a gold mine of detailed information, and that he was generally believed.
At the time, Kamel’s testimony was eminently credible because he had no intention of returning to his home country until Saddam Hussein was toppled. In the event, dissatisfied with his welcome and status in Jordan, he allowed himself to be lured back by false promises and was murdered along with codefector and brother Saddam Kamel.
So the truth was out there all the time. But that didn’t deter Tony Blair from concocting dodgy and ‘sexed-up’ dossiers on Iraq’s WMD to the effect Iraq had the capability to attack Britain’s interests within 45-minutes of his giving the order. His paucity of information was such that No. 10 resorted to filching portions of a student’s thesis on the subject from the Internet, typos and all.
Those of us who were against the invasion from day one could easily penetrate the slew of fabrications. Yet, Blair’s Cabinet along with the Labour Party hierarchy submitted meekly to bamboozling with the exception of the late Robin Cook, then Leader of the House of Commons, who resigned his post because he could not support a war “without international agreement or domestic support.”
Cook also doubted Iraq’s WMD capabilities and deplored US impatience with UN weapons inspectors when Israel’s illegal nuclear weapons were openly tolerated. He was belatedly followed by former Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short. Both were relegated to the back benches and were treated as party renegades. It’s a great shame that Blair’s friend and confidante Lord Goldsmith, then attorney general, lacked the guts to follow suit.
A letter written by Goldsmith in July, 2002 proves that he initially believed regime change was a breach of international law and the UN Charter. Thereafter, he was gagged from speaking publicly, barred from attending Cabinet meetings, and “pinned to the wall” by Blair’s closest aides to revise his opinion, which, in fact, he later did.
Similarly skeptical was biological weapons expert and former UN weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly who told BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan in confidence that Blair’s 45-minute claim was dubious. However, Gilligan disclosed that he was his source when Kelly was dragged before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which treated him roughly. Two days later, his body was discovered in a wood a mile away from his home. He had a cut wrist and was later found to have ingested 29 painkillers. The Hutton inquiry pronounced that his death was suicide. Now six prominent British doctors are challenging that finding. They are accusing the authorities of “perverting the course of justice” and are taking legal action to get the case reopened. They claim that Kelly’s fingerprints were not on the knife used to cut his wrist and in any case, the cut wasn’t deep enough to cause him to bleed to death. They further insist that the chemicals found in his system were not of sufficient quantity to have killed him.
One of the six, trauma expert David Halpin says Kelly may have been assassinated and hints of a conspiracy cover-up. But before they can procure an inquest they have to obtain the permission of Baroness Scotland, Britain’s current attorney general. But it’s doubtful whether she will bless this without receipt of new evidence.
The whole truth about the Iraq War and Kelly’s death may never be revealed in its entirety. But those who are trying hard to unveil it in the face of a seemingly impenetrable establishment brick wall should be commended. Unfortunately, the Chilcot inquiry is limited. It is empowered to point fingers at individuals and government departments for wrongdoing but that’s as far as it goes.
Ultimately, the only credible Iraq War inquiry would be one conducted by an international body, such as the United Nations or, alternatively, a joint UK-US inquiry held on neutral soil with a panel of legal experts that excluded non-American/British nationals. Better still would be a special tribunal in The Hague to hold accountable those responsible for a million-plus deaths. But don’t hold your breath!
— The author can be contacted at [email protected]
