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Iraq War Inquiry report to be published June or July 2016, Chilcot tells Cameron

RT | October 29, 2015

Sir John Chilcot has told Prime Minister David Cameron that the long-delayed, highly controversial report into the legality of the Iraq War will certainly be published in June or July 2016.

In an official letter to Cameron, Chilcot said the text of the report would be completed by April 18, 2016, at which point “national security” checking of the content will commence.

Chilcot said that given the sheer size of the document, which he says will run to more than 2 million words, the intervening time will be required check the text before printing and publication.

In his correspondence, Chilcot tells Cameron that the process of ‘national security’ is distinct from the process of declassification.

It concerns the preparation of material to avoid endangering Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – in effect, the right to life – and to ensure the nation’s security as a whole is not breached by anything made public.

Blair’s office released a statement claiming the former-Prime Minister had always been keen to see the report published as soon it “properly” could be.

The statement claimed that delays over the report had not been due to the nature of past correspondences between himself and former-President Bush or because he had contested findings.

“It is our understanding that other witnesses also received information very late in the process, so any suggestion that witnesses have been the cause of the delay is categorically incorrect and this has again been stated clearly and publicly by Sir John,” the statement reads.

In mid-October it was revealed that, contrary to his claims at the time, former-Prime Minister Tony Blair had committed the UK to joining the US invasion of Iraq a year before it began.

The memo was obtained by the Daily Mail as part of the batch of emails from the private server of former US State Secretary Hillary Clinton, which US courts have forced her to disclose.

Among the leaked papers is one written in March 2002 by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell to then-President George W. Bush, in which he said: “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary … He is convinced on two points: the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success.”

At the time Blair was quoted by the British media as saying: “This is a matter for considering all the options.”

“We’re not proposing military action at this point in time.”

Following the release of the memo, Blair appeared to apologize for some parts of his involvement in the Iraq War and concede that the 2003 invasion and occupation led to the rise of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

Reg Keys, whose son Tom was killed in Iraq in 2003, dismissed former Blair’s apology aired on CNN as an attempt to shift the blame and spin the long-overdue Chilcot Inquiry report into the war.

He told the Telegraph he felt Blair’s apparent apology was a political move, and not a heartfelt one.

“I feel that he’s obviously pre-empting the Iraq inquiry’s findings. It’s finger-pointing. He’s blaming intelligence chiefs for giving him the wrong intelligence. He’s not [apologizing] for toppling Saddam.”

“What about [apologizing] for the unnecessary loss of life? The reason we went to war was weapons of mass destruction, not to topple Saddam,” Keys added.

“I feel revulsion. This man [Blair] certainly got it wrong.”

Despite widespread opposition to the Iraq War, Blair is not without his defenders.

Michael Gapes MP, one of most hard-core Blair loyalists in the Labour Party, questioned whether the report should be published at all, tweeting “the hysterical Blair haters have decided already” and that “most journalists and commentators have made up their minds already so won’t bother to read it in any case.”

October 30, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | 2 Comments

SNP dubs belated Chilcot inquiry ‘ludicrous’

Press TV – August 30, 2015

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has called on the British government to set a deadline for the much-delayed report of the Iraq war inquiry.

SNP said it was unacceptable that the inquiry has not reported after six years and a cost of nearly 16 million dollars.

The ruling Scottish party, which on its website described the delays as ludicrous, called for a definitive answer to what it called the failures of the Iraq war.

It added that the current Conservative government is also responsible for the Labour-initiated war as Conservatives overwhelmingly backed the invasion of Iraq.

The so-called Chilcot inquiry, named after John Chilcot who chairs the Iraq war investigation, began in 2009 and has repeatedly delayed its report under the pretext that it needs to interview all individuals implicated in the US-led invasion of the country.

The last of the hearings of the inquiry was held more than four years ago.

Chilcot has already declined to set out a timetable for his Iraq inquiry despite a threat of legal action by families of British troops killed in the unpopular US-led war.

Earlier this month, Lawyers representing 29 families said they would move to the London High Court, if the Chilcot inquiry fails to give a publication deadline in two weeks.

“There have been outrageous delays to date and it seems as though those delays would simply be interminable,” Matthew Jury, a lawyer representing the families said.

The US-led invasion of Iraq began in 2003 and lasted for over 8 years. The war, which was initiated under the false pretense of weapons of mass destruction, took the lives of 179 UK personnel and nearly 4,500 US soldiers.

The number of Iraqi civilian deaths has been estimated to be over one million by some sources.

August 30, 2015 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | 1 Comment

The Blair Charge Sheet

By John Andrews | Dissident Voice | January 31, 2015

On the 21st January the UK’s Channel 4 news had a discussion about the fact that the long-awaited Chilcot Inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the illegal war in Iraq will not be released until after the general election in March. On the 29th of January a sizeable group of demonstrators protested outside the Houses of Parliament against the continuing suppression of the Chilcot Report — now five years late. Whilst this story was covered on Russia Today, not a single mention of it was made on the BBC’s six o’ clock news. None of this is surprising: both Labour and the Tories were complicit in authorising the unlawful adventure in Iraq, therefore neither will want the unhelpful publicity the inquiry might generate.

In the Channel 4 show, John Rentoul was appearing representing Tony Blair’s position. Mr Rentoul is apparently Blair’s biographer. If there’s one book that’s surely not worth the paper it’s written on, that must be it; because Mr Rentoul’s spirited defence of Blair suggested very strongly that impartial record-making is not likely to be much in evidence in his book. For Blair is surely the most evil person that Britain has produced in recent times, and anything that suggests otherwise is being very economical with the truth. The award for most wicked monster in modern times was undoubtedly held by Margaret Thatcher, until Blair came along. Let’s consider some of the more obvious charges against him.

When he was first brought to power in 1997, it was because the country was sick to death of years of Thatcherism (the “austerity” of its day). Margaret Thatcher was primarily responsible for starting the ruination of Britain, as it was she who began the plundering of public assets (selling-off public utilities such as British Rail and British Airways, British Gas and British Telecom), and the killing-off of Britain’s manufacturing base – the main source of the nation’s wealth. Thatcher was unquestionably a monster, but at least she never seriously pretended to be anything else: she was, after all, a Tory. If you vote Tory that’s the sort of thing you should expect to get. Blair, on the other hand, was quite different: he was also a traitor. In 1997 people voted for him in their millions expecting traditional Labour values to scrap the years of painful plundering, and a fresh start to rebuilding the country. What they got was yet more and more painful plundering. So that’s the first major charge against Blair: his utter betrayal of British voters in general, and Labour voters in particular.

Then, of course, came the illegal war in Iraq in 2003. We’ll possibly never know the full truth behind Blair’s involvement in this, but that he was hugely complicit in what was unquestionably a massive war crime is beyond doubt. So that’s the second charge against Blair: he’s a war criminal.

Those two charges are more than enough to ensure the man is forever reviled – on a par even with the worst of the worst Nazi war criminals. The Nazis could at least have pleaded that there was no historical precedent for such a thing as war crime. Nuremberg eliminated that excuse. In other words Blair, who is a trained lawyer, should have known full well he was committing a war crime. He just didn’t care. His hubris is such that he clearly deems himself above the law.

However, there’s something else that must not be forgotten, a charge that is arguably even more serious than the first two. When Blair ordered a country that was mostly opposed to war to subordinate itself to the American war criminal George Bush, he immediately signed the death warrants of 179 British military personnel and, which is even worse, ordered tens of thousands of British military personnel to become war criminals themselves, just like him. Although it’s highly unlikely that any British soldier will ever have to appear in a court of law to face such charges, the fact is that in theory at least they could. In theory, every man and woman who took part in Bush’s illegal war could be charged with committing a war crime; because Nuremberg ensured, rightly, that the plea of “just following orders” is no longer an acceptable excuse for taking part in the greatest abomination that human beings are capable of committing: war.

If there were such a thing as real justice Tony Blair should spend the rest of his days behind bars, and there are plenty of others who should join him.

February 1, 2015 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | 3 Comments

Scottish First Minister leads united call for Iraq war report disclosure

RT | January 19, 2015

Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon has called for a united political movement to demand the immediate publication of the Chilcot Inquiry report into the legality of the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Sturgeon has written to other Scottish party leaders, urging them to unite in favor of immediate publication.

The Chilcot Inquiry, which was set up in 2009 and is expected to cost the taxpayer over £10 million, has come under fire in recent months due to delays in its publication.

The disclosure of secret documents, and disagreements over whether private communications between former leaders Tony Blair and George W. Bush should be made public, has disrupted the progress of the inquiry.

There are now fears that unless the report is published immediately, its release could affect the results of the general election in May.

The leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Jim Murphy, and the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Willie Rennie, have also said they support the earliest possible release of the document.

The House of Commons will debate the release of the findings on January 29.

Last month there was speculation that Tony Blair may face prosecution for war crimes as a result of the report’s findings. Blair said he “resented” claims he was responsible for the delays.

The debate surrounding the release of classified material had presented a large obstacle to the publication of the report, but it was decided in June last year that the “gist” of conversations between Blair and Bush could be published.

Sturgeon said it would be impossible to have a national election without the report’s findings being presented.

“Surely we can’t go through a general election without people having the answers to the questions on the Iraq war that they still don’t have,” she told the BBC.

“That has to happen before some of these MPs that voted for the Iraq war are back up for election.”

Murphy responded to Sturgeon’s call for action, saying it was essential for future governments to learn from the results.

“The Chilcot Inquiry is a crucially important piece of work that must be conducted thoroughly and forensically,” he said. “The inquiry was initiated by Labour in July 2009, because it is vital to identify the lessons that can be learned from the conflict.”

“There is rightly real public interest in the findings of such an important inquiry and I think it is right that there is the earliest possible publication of the report.”

Rennie also expressed his eagerness for the report to be published, saying he agreed with the SNP’s Sturgeon.

“We agree with Nicola Sturgeon. It is important that the lessons learnt from the Chilcot report are learnt whilst there are people involved in Parliament who are in a position to answer for their actions.”

A spokeswoman for the Iraq Inquiry said: “We will not be commenting further on the process or the progress of the report.”

READ MORE:

Cameron has final word on release date of Iraq war report – Downing Street

Publish ‘Iraq war’ report before election, MPs demand

January 19, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment