UK's Iraq War report could make grim reading

After 13 years, Chilcot report delivers damning verdict on British role in Iraq War

By Tim Hume, CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/06/europe/uk-iraq-inquiry-chilcot-report/

“Military action in Iraq might have been necessary at some point, but in March 2003 there was no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein,” John Chilcot, chairman of a British inquiry into the UK’s role in the Iraq War, said Wednesday.
The “strategy of containment” could have continued for some time, he said.

Speaking ahead of the release of the long-awaited report in London, Chilcot said former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned of the risks of regional instability and the rise of terrorism before the invasion of Iraq, but pressed on regardless.
The UK failed to appreciate the complexity of governing Iraq, and did not devote enough forces to the task of securing the country in the wake of the invasion, he said.
Blair’s decision to invade Iraq was influenced by his interest in protecting the UK’s relationship with the United States, he said.
That relationship “does not require unconditional support where our interests and judgments differ,” said Chilcot.
The inquiry did not express a view on whether the invasion was legal, he said, arguing that that was a decision for another forum.

John Chilcot, chairman of a British inquiry into the country’s role in the Iraq War, said in releasing the report that Britain joined the invasion of Iraq “before the peaceful options had been exhausted,” and that preparations for the aftermath were “wholly inadequate.”
UK policy was based on “flawed intelligence and assessments,” he said. “They were not challenged and they should have been.”
Hindsight was not necessary to identify the risks of what would happen to the country post-invasion, he said: “The risks… were each explicitly identified before the invasion.”
Furthermore, the legal basis for the war was “far from satisfactory,” he said.
“The people of Iraq have suffered greatly,” he said.
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Britain’s long-awaited inquiry into the country’s involvement in the Iraq War will be released Wednesday, placing former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s actions in leading the country into a deeply unpopular conflict under comprehensive scrutiny.
Protesters began gathering outside the London office building where the report is to be released at 11 a.m. local time (6 a.m. ET) Wednesday, as the politicians who launched the deadly invasion more than 13 years ago — most notably Blair — braced themselves for the fallout from the report.
The Iraq Inquiry — widely known as the Chilcot report, after inquiry chairman John Chilcot — was commissioned in June 2009 by Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, following pressure from the public and parliament.
Charged with examining the build-up to the conflict, the war itself and its bloody aftermath — over a period from 2001 to 2009 — the inquiry was initially expected to take a year to complete.
Instead it has taken more than seven — longer than the war itself — with the final report running to 2.6 million words across 12 volumes.

Britain’s decision to go join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was perhaps its most controversial foreign policy decision in the modern era.
Britain’s Parliament approved the war — ostensibly to remove Saddam Hussein and rid the country of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) — shortly before the invasion, although U.N. approval was not gained and millions marched in the streets in protest.

Hussein was removed and later executed. But the WMD threat was found to have been exaggerated and the promise to turn a dictatorship into a democracy was never delivered on.
Instead, the country descended into years of vicious sectarian conflict, with large swathes seized by terror group ISIS.

More than 250,000 people have died violent deaths since the 2003 invasion, according to the Iraq Body Count project, while millions of Iraqis have been made homeless in the conflict with ISIS.
On the British side, 179 service personnel were killed in the conflict.
Calls for further action against Blair
Blair is expected to give a statement some time after the release of the report today, as is outgoing prime minister David Cameron, who supported the war as a backbench MP, and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who fervently opposed it.

There have been calls for Blair — who gave evidence to the inquiry twice — to be charged with war crimes over Iraq, but it is considered unlikely that the report will issue a decision on the legality of the war.
Speaking to British broadcasters on Tuesday night ahead of the launch of the report, Chilcot, a retired senior civil servant, said the report would not avoid criticizing key figures where warranted.
“I made very clear right at the start of the inquiry that if we came across decisions or behavior which deserved criticism, then we wouldn’t shy away from making it,” he said. “Indeed, there have been more than a few instances where we are bound to do that.
“But we shall do it on a base of a rigorous analysis of the evidence that supports that finding. We are not a court — not a judge or jury at work — but we’ve tried to apply the highest possible standards of rigorous analysis to the evidence where we make a criticism.”
An overriding aim of the inquiry will be to ensure Britain never goes to war in future without having made a comprehensive assessment of the situation, he said.

One key issue expected to be addressed in the inquiry, which had access to a redacted version of Blair and then-U.S. President George W. Bush’s communications: what was said between the leaders in the build-up to the invasion?

Others include: why did the intelligence around WMDs prove to be so off-target?
What were the circumstances surrounding then attorney general Peter Goldsmith’s change of heart over the legal footing of the war? (He initially said that further U.N. Security Council approval was needed, before changing his stance days ahead of the invasion.)
And did Britain’s military commanders fail to adequately prepare for the war and its aftermath?
The report is embargoed until after Chilcot makes a public statement at its release, but an embargoed version has been provided to a group including politicians, journalists and the families of victims — some of whom have already expressed fears that the report will be a whitewash.
CNN political contributor Robin Oakley said, after seven years in the making, the report may fail to live up to the high expectations some held out for it that it would bring leaders to account for the war.
“It started in an age when you could keep things much more covered in terms of what goes on in government,” he said.
“Now expectations worldwide have been raised in terms of the amount me expect to know about how decisions are taken… I think in those terms, it might be a disappointment.”
The reputations of many of the key figures under scrutiny had already taken a hammering in the eyes of the public the intervening years, he said.

wv wrote:

Well I assume it will follow the usual blueprint. They will find that “mistakes were made”.

“well-meaning but flawed leaders tried to bring democracy to barbarians but failed”.

I assume that will be the major-meme. Ya know. The mainstream-vietnam-meme all over again.

w
v

Well, so far, no…it’s different from that.

I don’t think it would be what you or I would write (if we had millions of dollars of resources to do it).

But it also isn’t quite what you;re expecting, I think.

In fact many of the critiques we made about the war here, on version 1 of this board, are in that report (near as I can tell so far).

And to keep side-tracking, part of what interests me about this is how much WE said here(ish) as a group turned out to be just dead on. It was a great group effort of inter-educating. Better even than anything I had around me in the real world, though ostensibly my real world comrades should have been on top of things (they really weren’t though).

…

Chilcot report: Tony Blair’s Iraq War case not justified

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36712735

Tony Blair overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, sent ill-prepared troops into battle and had “wholly inadequate” plans for the aftermath, the UK’s Iraq War inquiry has said.
Chairman Sir John Chilcot said the 2003 invasion was not the “last resort” action presented to MPs and the public.
There was no “imminent threat” from Saddam – and the intelligence case was “not justified”, he said.
Mr Blair apologised for any mistakes made but not the decision to go to war.

The report, which has taken seven years, is on the Iraq Inquiry website. http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/

Prime Minister David Cameron, who voted for war in 2003, told MPs it was important to “really learn the lessons for the future” and to improve the workings of government and how it treats legal advice.
And he added: “Sending our brave troops on to the battlefield without the right equipment was unacceptable and, whatever else we learn from this conflict, we must all pledge this will never happen again.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – who voted against military action – said the report proved the Iraq War had been an “act of military aggression launched on a false pretext”, something he said which has “long been regarded as illegal by the overwhelming weight of international opinion”.
After meeting relatives of British service people killed in Iraq, Mr Corbyn said: “I now apologise sincerely on behalf of my party for the disastrous decision to go to war.”
He urged the UK to back moves to give the International Criminal Court “the power to prosecute those responsible for the crime of military aggression”.
A spokesman for some of the families of the 179 British service personnel and civilians killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2009 said their loved ones had died “unnecessarily and without just cause and purpose”.
He said all options were being considered, including asking those responsible for the failures identified in the report to “answer for their actions in the courts if such process is found to be viable”.

Analysis

By Peter Hunt, BBC correspondent

It’s been a long wait.
It may prove to have been a worthwhile wait for the people who have always opposed the Iraq War.
Remember, one million individuals took to the streets in 2003 in opposition to the march to war.
They will seize on this Inquiry’s judgement that Saddam Hussein didn’t pose an immediate threat and military action at that time was not a last resort.
Those seeking action against Tony Blair are likely to be disappointed – but probably not that surprised – that a panel which didn’t include any lawyers, hasn’t expressed a view on whether military action was legal.
Sir John Chilcot’s public remarks were peppered with the word “failure”.
But he was careful not to apportion blame.
Others will now do that on the evidence his report has placed in the public domain.
The political space will be filled with claims and counter claims about a war in Iraq where – as Sir John Chilcot put it – its people have suffered greatly.
In a nearly two hour news conference he said he would never agree that those who died or were injured in Iraq “made their sacrifice in vain” as they had played their part in “the defining global security struggle of the 21st century against the terrorism and violence which the world over destroys lives, divides communities”.
Quizzed about what he was apologising for, he said: “There is no inconsistency in expressing my sorrow for those that have lost their lives – my regret and my apology for the mistakes – but still saying I believe the decision was right. There is no inconsistency in that.”
He said the US would have launched an invasion “either with or us or without us”, adding: “I had to decide. I thought of Saddam and his record, the character of his regime. I thought of our alliance with America and its importance to us in the post 9/11 world and I weighed it carefully with the heaviest of hearts.”

Mr Blair, who was PM from 1997 to 2007, conceded that intelligence on Iraq’s weapons had “turned out to be wrong” and the invasion had destabilised Iraq but said he still believed the country was “better off” without Saddam, comparing it with the situation in Syria where the decision had been taken not to intervene.
He also said he should have “disclosed” the attorney general’s legal advice to the Cabinet on the eve of war – but he defended his close relationship with President Bush, saying: “we are better to be strongly onside with the US”, arguing that it was “better for our own security”.

The key points of the report

Sir John, the ex-civil servant who chaired the inquiry, describes the Iraq War as an intervention that went “badly wrong” with consequences still being felt to this day – and he set out lessons to be learned for future conflicts.
His report, which is 2.6 million words, does not make a judgement on whether Mr Blair or his ministers were in breach of international law.
But it does highlight a catalogue of errors in political and military decision-making, including:

UK military commanders made “over-optimistic assessments” of their capabilities which had led to “bad decisions”
There was “little time” to properly prepare three military brigades for deployment in Iraq. The risks were neither “properly identified nor fully exposed” to ministers, resulting in “equipment shortfalls”
Policy on the Iraq invasion was made on the basis of flawed intelligence assessments. It was not challenged, and should have been
Mr Blair overestimated his ability to influence US decisions on Iraq; and the UK’s relationship with the US does not require unconditional support
In his statement, Sir John said military action against Saddam Hussein might have been necessary “at some point” but that when Britain joined the US-led invasion in March 2003, the Iraqi dictator posed “no imminent threat”, the existing strategy of containment could be continued and the majority of UN Security Council members supported continuing UN inspections and monitoring”.
He added: “The judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of a mass destruction – WMD – were presented with a certainty that was not justified. Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated.”

Blair/Bush memos

Previously classified documents, including 31 personal memos from Tony Blair to then US president George W Bush, have been published alongside the Chilcot Report.
They show that momentum in Washington and London towards taking action against Saddam Hussein quickly began to build in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 in the US, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
On the day after the attack on New York’s Twin Towers, Mr Blair sent a note to President Bush offering his support to bring to justice the hijackers and looked ahead to the “next stage after this evil”.
Mr Blair said some would “baulk” at the measures necessary to control “biological, chemical and other weapons of mass destruction”, but added: “We are better to act now and explain and justify our actions than let the day be put off until some further, perhaps even worse, catastrophe occurs.”

The memos reveal that Mr Blair and Mr Bush were openly discussing toppling Saddam Hussein as early as December 2001, when the UK and US had just launched military action in Afghanistan.
“How we finish in Afghanistan is important to phase 2. If we leave it a better country, having supplied humanitarian aid and having given new hope to the people, we will not just have won militarily but morally; and the coalition will back us to do more elsewhere,” says Mr Blair in the memo.
“We shall give regime change a good name which will help in our arguments over Iraq.”
In another memo, from July 2002 – nearly a year before the invasion of Iraq – Mr Blair assured President Bush that the UK would be with him “whatever,” but adds that if Mr Bush wanted a wider military coalition he would have to get UN backing, make progress on Middle East peace and engineer a “shift” in public opinion in the US, UK and the Arab World.

The note, marked “personal,” was shared with then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, but not then defence Secretary Geoff Hoon – a decision criticised by Sir John, who is scathing about the way the collective Cabinet discussion was bypassed by the Blair government.

Intelligence failures

The way decisions were made by the government have been criticised
Sir John echoes the criticisms made in earlier reports into the Iraq War of the use of intelligence about Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction to justify war.
It says the assessed intelligence had not established “beyond doubt” that Saddam Hussein had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons.
Of Mr Blair’s September 2002 statement warning that Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons that could be launched within 45 minutes of the command to use them, Sir John says: “The judgements about Iraq’s capabilities in that statement, and in the dossier published on the same day, were presented with a certainty that was not justified.”
On the eve of war Mr Blair told MPs that he judged that the possibility of terror groups in possession of weapons of mass destruction was a “real and present danger to Britain and its national security”.
“Mr Blair had been warned, however, that military action would increase the threat from al-Qaeda to the UK and UK interests. He had also been warned that an invasion might lead to Iraq’s weapons and capabilities being transferred into the hands of terrorists,” said Sir John.

The legality of the war

The then attorney general Lord Goldsmith advised Mr Blair to seek explicit UN authorisation for military action but when diplomatic efforts failed, informed him that intervention was lawful on the basis of previous UN resolutions on Iraq relating back to the 1991 Gulf War.

Sir John said the report did not make a judgement on the legality or otherwise of the war – pointing out that participants did not give evidence under oath and his findings had no legal force.
But he added: “The circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action were far from satisfactory.”
In the report he says Lord Goldsmith should have been asked to set out in writing how he arrived at his change of view.
When the UK failed to get a UN resolution specifically authorising military action in March 2003, Mr Blair and then foreign secretary Jack Straw blamed France for an “impasse” in the UN and said the UK government was “acting of behalf of the international community to “uphold the authority of the Security Council”.
But Sir John concludes that the opposite was true. “In the absence of a majority in support of military action, we consider that the UK was, in fact, undermining the Security Council’s authority,” he said in his statement.

Post-war planning and aftermath

Much of the report focuses on the post-war planning for the governance of Iraq, originally undertaken by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, and how well equipped British troops were to oversee the large area of southern Iraq around Basra.
Many of the witnesses to the inquiry, including former ministers and military commanders, were highly critical of what they said were failures in the Ministry of Defence to provide the necessary resources and equipment and the UK’s general deferral to the US in key areas.
In his statement, Sir John said: “We have found that the Ministry of Defence was slow in responding to the threat of improvised explosive devices and that delays in providing adequate medium weight protected patrol vehicles should not have been tolerated.
“It was not clear which person or department or department within the Ministry of Defence was responsible for identifying and articulating such capability gaps. But it should have been.”
Mr Blair told the inquiry the difficulties encountered in Iraq after the invasion could not have been known in advance but the inquiry says, the risks of “internal strife”, regional instability and al-Qaeda activity in Iraq were each “explicitly identified before the invasion”.
“The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate. The government failed to achieve its stated objectives.”
The report acknowledged that the initial campaign to overthrow Saddam was successful and praised the “great courage” of service personnel and civilians involved during and after the invasion, which led to the deaths of more than 200 UK nationals and at least 150,000 Iraqis.
But the report adds that Britain’s military role “ended a very long way from success” and it was “humiliating” that British troops was reduced to doing deals with a local militia group in Basra, releasing captured militants in return for an end to attacks on British forces.

bnw wrote:

The decider’s justification for invading Iraq.

Were you saying all that at the time? Not challenging you, just curious.

I will say this. This board, or its original version, grew out of an interest by many in getting beyond mainstream media stuff on the build up to the war. We pretty much pieced together the fact that on every single level, there was no justification for it. It was a very involved, multi-faceted discussion.