Iraq war inquiry: still on course for a bucket of whitewash
On Wednesday 24 June, Parliament debated the inquiry on the war in Iraq, set up by Gordon Brown, who originally proposed a completely secret inquiry, with no authority to apportion blame and with a hand picked panel guarenteed not to rock the establishment boat. The government defeated an attempt to give the inquiry more teeth, though its majority was nearly halved to 39. Extracts below from speeches made in the debate by MPs George Galloway, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell show why holding some of the inquiry in public is not enough to prevent its report being little more than a bucket of whitewash, just as Brown always intended.
David Miliband
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, opening the debate, said, "It is not an inquiry that has been set up to establish civil or criminal liability; it is not a judicial inquiry. Everything beyond that is within its remit; it can praise or blame whoever it likes; it is free to write its own report at every stage."
 George Galloway
George Galloway called for those found to have “misled parliament” over the war to face trial and punishment. He said: “To some of us, it was worse than a blunder. It was a crime. “If people are found guilty by this inquiry of having misled parliament, the Queen, the armed forces and the public they will have to be held accountable for it. There’ll have to be a trial about it and that will lead to punishment if convicted.”
'People have queued up to say they have nothing against the membership of the inquiry. Well, I do. The more the Foreign Secretary adumbrated their distinguished characteristics, the more I saw a parade of establishment flunkeys—Sir Humphrey This and Sir Humphrey That. Those who are not just grey blurs are in fact partisans. Freedman is one of the authors of the intellectual case for the war. He and his neo-con friends were the people who made the then Prime Minister’s bullets for the war. Gilbert hailed Bush and Blair—imagine, they are already two of the most discredited political figures in the world, and history has not even started on them yet—as akin to Roosevelt and Churchill. Yet both Freedman and Gilbert are among the very small group of people who will conduct the inquiry.'
»Read George Galloway's speech in full here...
Claire Short
The decision to go to war in Iraq and the “lying” by the British government was because of Tony Blair’s “desperate” need to be close to the former US president, George Bush, said the former international development secretary. She told MPs she remained “deeply shaken” at the manipulation of international law in the run-up to the invasion.
 John McDonnell
I urge the Government tonight to hang up the guns at the door of the saloon. Let us get out of the trenches tonight and start talking about what the real needs of the country are. The real need is for honesty. We need an inquiry that brings forward the truth, no matter what the consequences. Many of my constituents feel that there has been a war crime; they feel that there was an act of criminality involved. If there are consequences that lead to our own Nuremburg or to The Hague or whatever, let us at least explain to our people that we recognise that possibility, and we are willing to examine the issue, no matter what the consequences.
 Jeremy Corbyn
I was one of those who helped to organise the massive demonstration in 2003, and I have attended hundreds of meetings all over the country against the invasion of Iraq and the legality of the war. The one million and more people who came to London on that day in 2003—and the millions more around the country who attended local demonstrations, wrote to their MPs, sent e-mails, signed petitions or simply expressed an opinion against the war—felt very let down by Parliament on that occasion. They also felt very let down by the political system, and a whole generation of young people have now been radicalised to question the effectiveness of this place and to wonder what is the point of a political system that can take us into a war that turns out to be illegal and then blinker its eyes to the consequences. We need to take some serious decisions tonight.
Diane Abbott
Like me, my hon. Friend was on that great march in 2003. Does he agree that part of the disillusion with the political system stems from people’s sadness and bitterness that so many people could have been out on the streets of London that day and yet be ignored by the political establishment?
Jeremy Corbyn
Absolutely. My Friend gets that message about Iraq in her constituency, as every Member does, and it simply will not go away. Many Members—on this side of the House and on the Opposition Benches—publicly regret the way they voted on that occasion, and many, many more do so privately. They know that they were told falsehoods in the lead-up to the war, and they have also seen the consequences and the costs of it.
The Prime Minister of the day, Tony Blair, said in terms in the House that this war was about removing the weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. A short time later, he, the then Foreign Secretary and others were involved in ensuring that Hans Blix and Mohamed el-Baradei were not allowed back into Iraq to continue the process of inspection and disarmament that they were so effectively carrying out at that time.
The Prime Minister also said in a broadcast the day after the vote in Parliament that this war was about getting rid of Saddam Hussein and regime change. George Bush, on the other hand, was relatively straightforward in that he said it was always about regime change. They cannot have it all ways and there should have been honesty towards us in that respect.
I use the figures carefully, but well over 500,000 Iraqis have died since 2003. The living standards of many are no better. Instability in many cases is far worse, and I say that not as somebody who was ever an apologist for or defender of the Saddam Hussein regime. Indeed, there is plenty of recorded opposition from me and some other Members to arms sales to Iraq in the 1980s.
We have spent billions of pounds of UK public money on this war. We have lost 179 soldiers. Many more have been seriously injured and traumatised by the experience. During the activities of the Stop the War Coalition, I have had the good fortune to meet many military families who have joined Military Families Against the War. They tell in graphic detail what it was like to lose their son or daughter, how their son or daughter has been badly injured and traumatised by this event and how angry they feel at how they were led into this situation.
The legality of war is an interesting concept; the idea that going to war can be legalised is itself an interesting concept. Nevertheless, there is such a concept and it revolves around the UN charter, a real and credible threat to an individual country, and the UN itself. If resolution 1441, as we were told later, gave us the authority to go to war, why did the Foreign Secretary and others put such great effort into getting a second UN resolution that was then not possible? The Secretary-General of the United Nations said in terms at the end of the conflict that he believed the actions to be illegal.
We must look now to what an inquiry can do. A week ago, the Prime Minister announced in the wake of the famous parliamentary Labour party meeting that there would be an inquiry on the war in Iraq. I thought, “Good news, at last a real change. Let’s have an inquiry.” We would have been better off having no inquiry whatever than what we were presented with a week ago—a private inquiry of Privy Counsellors sitting around together.
The Government have made concessions in saying that some of the inquiry will be held in public, but the idea that the chair of the inquiry should consult on the terms of the inquiry with people who themselves may be subject to that inquiry seems a little wide of serious and strong inquisitive action on the whole process and the war in Iraq.
Governments set up inquiries for two reasons: either to cover something up or to get to the truth. I suspect that this inquiry is all about diversion and ensuring that we do not get to the questions of culpability or the details of how this decision came about and why Parliament was presented with the information that it was.
19 Labour MPs rebelled and voted against the government. They were:
1. Corbyn, Jeremy
2. Dhanda, Mr. Parmjit
3. Drew, Mr. David
4. Farrelly, Paul
5. Field, rh Mr. Frank
6. Fisher, Mark
7. Flynn, Paul
8. Godsiff, Mr. Roger
9. Hoey, Kate
10. Hopkins, Kelvin
11. Jones, Lynne
12. Mackinlay, Andrew
13. Marshall-Andrews, Mr. Robert
14. McDonnell, John
15. Prentice, Mr. Gordon
16. Simpson, Alan
17. Soulsby, Sir Peter
18. Strang, rh Dr. Gavin
19. Wood, Mike |
