Author: |Posted: 6:47 pm on 03/02/10
Category: Iraq Inquiry Blog
Interesting morning. On the face of it little of Sir Kevin Tebbit’s evidence was new. We had already heard from a bevy of defence secretaries and the Treasury’s top civil servant about the Whitehall turf-war in 2003 that led to huge MoD expenditure cuts.
What were damning today were the language and the detail. Chancellor Brown didn’t just cut the MoD’s spending, he “guillotined” it. Throughout his time at Defence Tebbit said he had been forced to run a “crisis budget.” (Governments don’t like the word ‘crisis.’ Oppositions do.)
Then came the casualty list, fleshed out with much more information than we’d ever heard before. Destroyers and frigates, Nimrod aircraft, submarines, helicopters, minesweepers, patrol vessels, AS90s, Challengers, tank squadrons, 10,00 civil servants, a reduction in headquarters size and more. read more
Author: |Posted: 5:31 pm on 03/02/10
Category: Iraq Inquiry Blog
“What on earth are you going to do,” Sir Roderic boomed at a member of the Chilcot support team this morning, “now this is nearly over?”
“Not sure,” came the reply, “I was thinking maybe the Afghanistan inquiry?”
Which would perhaps have been funnier had John, sorry, Dr Reid not gone on to make the same joke during his evidence. On the basis of today’s session Dr Reid does for jokes pretty much what he says we the media do for the Greater Good. (Clue: not a lot.) read more
Author: |Posted: 6:11 am on 03/02/10
Category: Iraq Inquiry Blog
Hard to say exactly what today’s highlight will be as we’ll be hearing consecutively from three different witnesses.
Sir Kevin Tebbit returns for a brief spin to round off evidence about his period as MoD Permanent Secretary 2001-05. read more
Author: |Posted: 8:10 pm on 02/02/10
Category: Iraq Inquiry Blog
Gosh. Quite a morning, even if things sagged a little thereafter. The problem with Clare Short’s evidence was that she’s been so vocal (not to mention literary) since resigning from Cabinet in May 2003 that it was hard to be sure which of her battlefield munitions were new and which she’d deployed beforehand.
Cabinet jeered her – “Oh Claaaaaare!” – in March 03 when she alone asked the attorney general why his legal advice had changed (strong wafts of testosterone at this point). Goldsmith misled Cabinet. Blair misled her in September 02 when he claimed not to have been briefed on military options in Iraq.
The machinery of Government is unsafe, deceitful, secretive, driven by the 24-hour media, riven by leaks with no minutes, no scrutiny. Coffee sessions at which Brown said Blair was obsessed with his legacy, wanted a short war and a reshuffle. Blair “conned” her to persuade her not to walk out the door the same day as Cook. The US smeared Blix. HMG blaming the French for failure at the UN was a deliberate lie.
After a while we were out of breath in the room next door: trying not only to keep up with each allegation but to compare notes and consult Google to see whether she’d gone this far before. read more
Author: |Posted: 7:12 am on 02/02/10
Category: Iraq Inquiry Blog
I mentioned once before the Chilcot witness who likened Tony Blair’s involvement with Iraq to a Greek tragedy.
For the anti-war lobby at least, the tragedy for today’s key witness is that while Robin Cook’s principles led him to resign from Cabinet before hostilities Clare Short’s persuaded her to stay on until afterwards.
Even today Short is, I think it’s fair to say, political Marmite. read more
Author: |Posted: 6:00 pm on 01/02/10
Category: Iraq Inquiry Blog
Short session but some pretty important points.
Missing kit and procurement problems have come up before but remember this; the Chief of the Defence Staff is “the professional head of the UK Armed Forces and the principal military adviser” to the Defence Secretary and the government. Put another way: top brass.
Jock Stirrup got in quick admitting that getting the right kit to the right places had been a problem. Specifically – crucially – he admitted that the army could have done better delivering enhanced combat body armour to the troops that most needed it. read more
Author: |Posted: 9:36 am on 01/02/10
Category: Iraq Inquiry Blog
‘Follow that up’ I hear you say, and it’s true that Friday’s session will be a hard act to beat. But even as the first public phase of the Inquiry comes towards its end there are still some key witnesses to hear from. read more
Author: |Posted: 6:24 pm on 29/01/10
Category: Iraq Inquiry Blog
And so it comes to an end – a six-hour session from the former prime minister, who stuck firmly to his position that he did on Iraq what he thought was right.
“If we had left Saddam in power, even with what we know now, we would still have had to deal with him, possibly in circumstances where the threat was worse, and possibly in circumstances where it was hard to moblise any support for dealing with that threat,” he said in a closing statement. read more
Author: |Posted: 5:55 pm on 29/01/10
Category: Iraq Inquiry Blog
It’s pretty well acknowledged that the reconstruction effort in Iraq did not turn out as planned – but was enough planning done?
We did an “immense amount of post-war planning,” Tony Blair told the Iraq inquiry. The problem was that “our focus was on the issues that in the end were not the issues that caused us the difficulties”. read more
Author: |Posted: 2:24 pm on 29/01/10
Category: Iraq Inquiry Blog
A quick clip of one of Blair’s more passionately delivered justifications for the war, as noted by bloggers elsewhere including the Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh and The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow.
More evidence that Blair was acting to do what he believed best for the world, or a diplomatic version of Minority Report?
Here are Blair’s words: “What’s important is not to ask the March 2003 question, but to ask the 2010 question. Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons, who were going to follow him, in charge of Iraq – people who used chemical weapons, caused the death of over a million people.
“What we now know is that he retained absolutely the intent and the intellectual know-how to restart a nuclear and a chemical weapons programme, when the inspectors were out and the sanctions changed, which they were going to be.
“I think it is at least arguable that he was a threat and that had we taken that decision to leave him there… with an oil price not of $25 but $100 a barrel, he would have had the intent and he would have had the financial means, and we would have lost our nerve.”
