Archive for December, 2009
Seasonal greetings to all
Everyone here at the Iraq Inquiry Digest would like to take this opportunity to wish all our contributors, supporters and readers a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.
Since this website opened in very early October, we have created 204 posts and 89 pages. We have approved 704 comments, and have consistently [...]
Straw “faces grilling over Blair letter”
by Chris Ames
The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour reports that:
The former foreign secretary Jack Straw is to face potentially explosive questioning at the Iraq inquiry next month over a private letter he sent to Tony Blair on the eve of the invasion, urging the prime minister to look at options apart from pressing ahead with British [...]
Dossier Demolished
by Brian Jones
Dr Chris Williams of the University of Birmingham has provided the Digest with a copy of his submission to the Iraq Inquiry. You will find it here. It raises issues that were touched on in earlier inquiries and which Sir John Chilcot and his committee must address much more directly than [...]
Stitch-up goes down badly
by Chris Ames
It goes without saying that the Inquiry’s announcement that Gordon Brown and other ministers give evidence after the election has gone down badly, particularly with opposition politicians.
Richard Norton-Taylor has done a Comment is Free piece this afternoon about what the Inquiry has revealed about the aftermath of the invasion.
Political witness list announced
by Andrew Mason
The Iraq Inquiry has today announced a list of witnesses who will be appearing in January and early February 2010. Included on the list are Alastair Campbell, former Director of Communications at No 10, and Elizabeth Wilmshurst, former Deputy Legal Adviser at the FCO, who resigned her position because she could not agree with [...]
The veto was the trigger
by Andrew Mason
The following is effectively the Spanish version of the ‘Downing Street Memo’. I only became aware of it last night following my reading of Christopher King’s article and submission to the Chilcot Inquiry, posted yesterday at Redress Information & Analysis.
On 26 September 2007 the Spanish newspaper El Pais published the text of a [...]
Blair should apologise, says Seldon
by Chris Ames
In the Observer, Tony Blair’s biographer Anthony Seldon says that the time has come for Blair to stop justifying himself and apologise, not for the war itself but for a number of “errors”, including:
“He should accept responsibility for misleading the British public over the reason for committing British troops to fight. While the [...]
Why the ‘45 minute intelligence’ still matters
by Brian Jones
Having been “done to death” in previous inquiries and with innumerable words already written about it, it is surprising that ‘45 minutes’ has again risen to the surface in the Chilcot inquiry. Perhaps it was because the final conclusion of the Butler review was vague and not entirely to the point – “The [...]
The Inquiry keeps us in the dark
by Chris Ames
I posted this piece last night on Comment Free: Chilcot inquiry keeps us in the dark.
I argued that Sir John Chilcot had implicitly admitted what I have been saying for a long time, that the Inquiry needs to obtain permission from the government if it is to quote unpublished documents in its [...]
Medialens’ take on the Inquiry
by Andrew Mason
Media Lens have published the following – CHILCOT INQUIRY – THE ESTABLISHMENT GOES TO WORK – as their latest media alert.
Introduction
We are controlled by an illusion of democracy based on rigged political parties and rigged elections. It might be cathartic to periodically reject Tweedledum in favour of Tweedledee, but they serve the same [...]