June 03, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "DV" - In spite of all the scepticism regarding the long delayed UK Iraq Inquiry into the illegal invasion of Iraq, with predictions (including by myself) that it would be a “whitewash” of the enormity of the lies which led to the near destruction of Iraq, to the presence of ISIS and to probably over a million deaths, The Sunday Times (May 22nd, 2016) is predicting an “absolutely brutal” verdict on those involved. The paper claims that former Prime Minister Tony Blair, his then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Sir Richard Dearlove, former Head of British Secret Intelligence (MI6) are among those who face “serious damage to their reputations.”

Not before time, many will surely be thinking.

The Inquiry, which sat from November 24th, 2009 until February 2nd, 2011, is finally to be published on July 6th, approaching five and a half years since its conclusion. Speculation is that publication of the findings are being further delayed until after the June 23rd British referendum on whether to remain in the European Union. Tony Blair is campaigning on his pal Prime Minister David Cameron’s “remain in” ticket. Confirmation of his murderous misleadings before the referendum would further discredit all he had to say and seriously damage, if not detonate, the “in” campaign.

Anyone reading The Sunday Times piece might well take the view that with or without the published Report, Blair speaking on either side would be tantamount to inviting total destruction of the cause. For instance: ‘A senior source who has discussed the Report with two of its authors has revealed that Blair “won’t be let off the hook” over claims that he offered British military support to … George W Bush a year before the 2003 invasion.’

Jack Straw as Blair’s Foreign Secretary at the time, and senior Generals, are also said to be subject of “some of the harshest criticism” for the UK’s “disastrous stewardship” of the southern port city of Basra and much of the south, post-invasion. “The Report will say that we really did make a mess of the aftermath.”

Those sent in by Blair’s Foreign Office under Straw were “inexperienced”, did not “quite know what they were doing” and: “All the things the British had been saying about how much better we were at dealing with post-conflict resolution than the American came very badly unstuck.” In fact, misjudgement was such that they “had to be rescued by the Americans.”

The Report, according to a knowledgeable former Minister, will be “Absolutely brutal for Straw … it will damage the reputation … of Richard Dearlove and Tony Blair” amongst others.

General Mike Jackson, former head of the army, named ”Darth Vader” by his men, who vowed to leave Iraq better than he found it, and General Sir Nicholas Houghton, Chief of the Defence Staff and senior officer in Iraq, 2005-2006, are also believed to be in the firing line, with Houghton said to have consulted his lawyers. Houghton’s objections to criticisms of his roles are alleged to have contributed to delays in the Inquiry’s publication.

Houghton became Chief of Joint Operations in 2006. In 2008  “ …the Iraqi military requested US rather than British assistance to retake Iraq’s second city of Basra from the militia, three months after UK forces had withdrawn from the city.” On September 3rd, 2007 the 550 British forces, hunkered down in one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, had fled the city to the relative safety of Basra airport some miles away.

In recent years, Sir Nicholas has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for the UK bombing Syria.

The Sunday Times also cites the Report’s criticism of the “gloss” with which Blair’s officials adorned “intelligence” regarding Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction and (Blair’s) claim that they could be unleashed “in forty five minutes.” Sir Richard Dearlove and others senior in MI6 “will be criticized for failing to prevent” such fairy stories.

The newspaper’s source also said there will be questions raised: “about the (US-UK) ‘special relationship’ (since) diplomats in Washington, including the then Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer, were ‘not plugged in’ and were ‘bounced along behind the Americans…”

At home, the “Cabinet did not have ‘the full picture’ of what was going on before the invasion (due to) Blair’s informal ‘sofa style’ of government.”

Further, incredibly: “officials were not present to take notes when Blair’s inner circle were making key decision”, leading to predicted criticism of former Cabinet Secretary Lord Turnbull and senior Civil Servants.

Former International Development Secretary, Clare Short, has “told friends she will be attacked.” Ms Short, of course, stated that she had stayed on in her job as she wanted her Department to be involved in rebuilding Iraq after the invasion. No thought of resigning earlier, rather than at the last minute in protest at the whole shameful Blair-Bush intended “supreme international crime”, that of a war of aggression.

The Chairman of the Inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, is said to be personally exercised by the ‘failures of “proper constitutional government.” Indeed.

Whilst Blair and Straw declined to comment to The Sunday Times, “Allies of Blair say it is significant that he has not apologized for lying to the public, because they believe Chilcot will not find that he did.”

Given the mountains of evidence and hard facts already in the public domain, they must surely be the only people on the planet to hold such a view.

As for Chilcot, we await the July 6th with the palest glimmer of hope that at last some justice might be seen to be done and that Blair and all responsible for the ongoing Hiroshima level tragedy that is the whole of battered, bereaved, bleeding, irradiated Iraq might find that there is finally at least the beginning of the basis for legal redress.

As this is finished, it transpires Tony Blair has been speaking today at an event in central London organized by the Centre on Religion and Geopolitics. “He made it clear he would be unapologetic for his role in taking Britain to war in 2003”, reports the BBC. As General Taguba was told by a Pentagon colleague when preparing his report on Abu Ghraib’s horrors of the dead and maimed for whom Blair bears such integral responsibility: “They are only Iraqis”, a view Blair clearly shares. 

Charles Anthony Lynton Blair is beyond all shame. However, no matter how widely the guilt is spread, he was Captain of the No 10 Downing Street ship, author of key lies integral to the gargantuan crime and tragedy and thus should shoulder commensurate blame.

Is the UK’s Iraq Inquiry Set to “Savage” Tony Blair?

Part 2 of a 2 Part Series

By Felicity Arbuthnot

With the publication date of the Chilcot Inquiry into the illegal invasion of Iraq just weeks away (July 6th) reportedly set to “savage” former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair he has made a rare return to the UK and gone in to manic diversionary tactic overdrive.

It seems no radio, television news or current affairs programme is without Blair giving his opinion on the upcoming UK referendum on whether to stay in the European Union, making near libelous comments on the current courteous, dignified, non-warmongering leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn (who was implacably against Blair’s foreign interventions.)  He has waded into the economy, Africa, faith, God and, of course, is cheerleading for invading Syria and reinvading Iraq.

He had been Prime Minister for a mere twenty three months when he signaled his preference for bloody interventionism. Speaking at the Chicago Economic Club on April 22nd, 1999, he said:

Many of our problems have been caused by two dangerous and ruthless men – Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic … Instead of enjoying its oil wealth Iraq has been reduced to poverty, with political life stultified …

The Balkans, of course, was already being pulverized: “On its fiftieth birthday, NATO must prevail” he said. Perhaps he was facing his and the US’ worst nightmare – that with the Berlin Wall gone, the Cold War ended and European and Russian citizens rejoicing, NATO no longer had a raison d’etre. Don’t “give peace a chance.”

As for Iraq’s “poverty”, prior to the paralyzing US-UK driven UN embargo imposed on Hiroshima Day 1990, Iraq’s money had been poured for thirty-years into infrastructure, free high quality health services, UN Award winning free education, clean water, reliable electricity, telecommunications – near all comprehensively destroyed by a thirty four nation onslaught (January 17th 1991-February 28th, 1991.)

Iraq was then left, unable to independently import the nation’s needs, rebuild, repair. With towering inventiveness, imagination and determination the country rose from the ashes, but beneath the surface, the infrastructure was near terminal for want of imported parts. Blair ignored both impressive achievements, the embargo’s silent infanticide, genocide and ecocide and the Billion $ rip-off which was the shameful so called UN “Oil for Food” deal.

The UN Sanctions Committee was headed by Blair’s envoy Carne Ross, who subsequently formed an organization called “Independent Diplomat”, which currently states it is working with the “moderate” head chopping, organ eating, pyromaniac Syrian “opposition” to now overthrow that country’s President.

However, Blair’s Chicago speech demonstrates how long he had been determined to back the US in the illegal overthrow of the leader of a sovereign nation. His address was just eleven months after the US had passed The Iraq Liberation Act ( May 1998) which determined:  “… it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government.”

Perhaps with Chilcot’s findings looming, Blair’s duplicities might finally come home to roost, hence the frenzied diversionary tactics.

They are not going well. Michael Burleigh, in an eviscerating piece in the Daily Mail, headed: “Why I despise conman Blair’s grubby attempt to spin away Chilcot truths” writes:

Chilcot will be a defining moment in our recent history … It will show how the art of lying has become central to the British way of government – with ‘facts’ proving malleable and the Civil Service degraded into partisanship.

Having dragged “the perma-tanned multi-millionaire become pantomime villain” through the depths of media mud he concludes:

But the lessons to be learned from Iraq must include how a preachy conman debased our entire system of government.

Also in the Mail, Quentin Letts (“Enter Saint Tony, as tanned as the top of an egg flan…and looking every one of his 63 years …”) refers to an event at which Blair was speaking and from which Letts and other journalists were barred:

By the way, yesterday’s event was co-organized by Mr Blair’s ‘Faith Foundation’ which seeks to promote ‘stable societies’.

And if they won’t make themselves stable we’ll jolly well have to drop bombs and parachutists on them and invade them with tanks and battalions of Western troops and basically kill them. All. That’ll calm them down, just you see.

Blair was also: “ … shrivelled by scandals and pointlessness …”

However:

Mr Blair hinted that he may collaborate with Sir John Major and Gordon Brown on a joint pro-Brussels platform. There was a place for former Prime Ministers, he insisted.

Did he mean The Hague?”

Chris Nineham writing in The Guardian has reminded that:

The parody of Blair as US poodle diminishes his role in history. He chafed at Bill Clinton’s hesitancy to bomb Serbia in 1999 and secretly reassured the Bush administration that it would not be alone in the illegal pursuit of regime change in Iraq” in April 2002.

It should be an encouragement to progressives that Blair’s combination of aggression overseas, pro-market policies at home and deception in general has made him a pariah.

Nineham’s reference to the commitment to Bush re Iraq related to the memo by Colin Powell to George W. Bush briefing him ahead of Blair’s visit to Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch,  April 5-7th, 2002. A paragraph confirms that:

On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary. He is convinced on two points: that the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success …

The “threat”, of course, was a fantasy followed up by a pack of lies and the result has been a “regional” blood bath.

It is set to get worse for Blair. On June 6th a drama, Reg, is to be shown on BBC 2, the real life story of Reg Keys and his wife Sally whose soldier son, Lance Corporal Tom Keys (20) was killed in Iraq with five colleagues.

In 2005 Reg Keys, a paramedic and paramedic trainer, ran against Tony Blair in his Sedgefield, Co Durham constituency in the general election with the aim of drawing attention to Blair’s Iraq duplicities. On election night with all the candidates gathered after the count, which, of course, Blair won, Keys gave a withering, blistering speech reducing the winner and his wife to standing white faced, clench lipped and frozen. As the candidates finally parted Blair refused to shake Keys’ hand. Truth clearly hurts.

Reg’s wife Sally never recovered from the loss of Tom and died in 2011, aged fifty seven. Their agony mirrors the losses of other families from a war built on untruths in the UK and unendingly, ongoing, in Iraq.

Anna Maxwell Martin who plays Sally Keys has commented:

I think this absolutely hammers home the personal nature for some people and I hope it really highlights Tony Blair to be the gruesome crook that he is.

Actor Tim Roth plays Reg Keys and said that he hopes the drama forces Blair to apologise and:

I’ve always felt Blair should be hauled off in handcuffs and put in Wormwood Scrubs (prison). I think he’s profited from the death of Reg’s son and the Iraq war. I have nothing but contempt for him.

In September former MP George Galloway is to screen a documentary. It is called The Killings of Tony Blair.

Meanwhile The Iraq Families Action Group intend to use the findings of the Chilcot Inquiry to sue Tony Blair, his former Ministers and Generals, on behalf of the 179 British soldiers killed. They intend to seek unlimited damages.

The former leader of the Scottish National Party, MP Alex Salmond, seems set to revive a group of politicians formed with a view to taking legal action against Blair back in 2004.

Salmond has said that he believed the: “best route would be to use the International Criminal Court because the Prosecutor is able to initiate action on his or her own behalf on presentation of a body of evidence, which Chilcot would provide.” However, he says he is open to any legal avenue which could have the desired outcome.

Meanwhile, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, interviewed on BBC’s Newsnight stated:

We went into a war that was catastrophic, that was illegal, that cost us a lot of money, that lost a lot of lives, and the consequences are still played out with migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, refugees all over the region.

Asked if he would like to see Blair put on trial he replied:

I want to see all those that committed war crimes tried for it, and those that made the decisions that went with it.

Yet total denial seems to have again struck the former Prime Minister so central to tragedies beyond comprehension, which have affected millions between the embargo, war and the murderous chaos of the aftermath spread far and wide.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday May 29th, he intimated that if the Inquiry finds he committed to the invasion before he told Parliament and the public, he might refuse to accept the verdict. He has surely not forgotten his commitment mentioned in General Colin Powell’s early 2002 communication with George Bush, quoted above?

Ironically, the Centre for Religion and Geopolitics founded by Tony Blair has just published its latest Report on extremism (no reflection, of course, that it does not get much more extreme than enjoining “a Crusade” as declared by George W. Bush.)

The Centre writes: “Our data shows that over the past three months, the same countries repeatedly suffered high levels of extremism.” With no hint of irony they include Iraq and Afghanistan in which Blair’s Britain was integral to attacking and destabilizing. Then Syria, Yemen, Pakistan in which the US and UK have meddled, murdered, damaged and disrupted.

In Libya “ISIS has continued to gain strength”, they note. The same Libya whose leader Blair kissed (a Judas kiss if ever there was one) who resultantly disarmed, was welcomed back into the “community of nations” and was destroyed by that same “community.”

It can only be hoped that Chilcot throws the book at this despicable human being and all involved in Iraq’s tragedy. Whatever the findings it could never be sufficient.

Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of Baghdad in the Great City series for World Almanac books, she has also been Senior Researcher for two Award winning documentaries on Iraq, John Pilger's Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq and Denis Halliday Returns for RTE (Ireland.)