To be honest like many other people I have never been really sure why we got involved in this particular military campaign in the first place. I know that at the time the Government were banging on about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the fact that Saddam Hussein could bring these down onto our heads in a matter of minutes.
I also recall that a lot of these claims were based on the now infamous “Dodgy Dossier” which to the Governments embarrassment was not based on intelligence sources but on a student’s thesis lifted off the Internet. In fact when the then Foreign Secretary was questioned on this matter he stated that the dossier was an "embarrassment" for the government and was commissioned by Downing Street communications director Alastair Campbell.
I also had other concerns though for brevity I will only mention two of them. The first was the public anger and opposition against the war, who can forget the scenes of hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens marching in protest against an invasion. The second concern was with regard to the amount of time that the Government had spent on debating the decision to invade Iraq. Let me put this into perspective, at the time the other big issue was the ban on Fox Hunting and believe it or not the Government devoted more than 700 hours of parliamentary time to the issue of the hunting ban. Whilst the decision to invade Iraq received just seven hours, a comparison that I personally think is both disgraceful and very worrying and makes an embarrassing statement about the way we are governed.
So in light of all my misgivings I was delighted when I learnt that Gordon Brown had finally succumed to public pressure and agreed to an inquiry into the Iraq war. Unfortunately, my delight was to be short lived as I subsequently learned how the much vaunted inquiry would be conducted, to my disgust and despair and despite reassurances and promises of greater transparency and openess it emerged that the inquiry would be held in secret/private.
Mr Brown’s decision to hold the iraq inquiry in private is both wrong and unjustifiable and will I believe come back to haunt him. Not only is the decision incredibly unpopular but it has already caused many people to ask what it is he is trying to hide. Mr Brown claims that a private inquiry is necessary to protect national security and to allow the witnesses to be as "full and candid as possible". However, under the terms of the inquiry none of the evidence will be given under oath and the inquiry will have no power of subpoena. In effect the inquiry will have no real power and is but a PR gimmick, yet more spin.
So unpopular is this travesty of an inquiry that former Service Chiefs are also voicing their concerns. General Sir Mike Jackson who at the time of the invasion of Iraq was the head of the Army has himself criticised Gordon Brown's decision to hold the inquiry behind closed doors. He has stated that he would have "no problem at all" in giving his evidence in public. He also stated that holding all the hearings in private would simply feed the current climate of "suspicion and scepticism" about government.
Whilst, General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank has also cast doubt on the credibility of the inquiry because he believes that it is unlikely to examine Mr Brown’s own role in the failure to supply and equip the Armed Forces properly. General Guthrie, a former Chief of the Defence Staff told The Times that Mr Brown had been “unsympathetic” to appeals for more money for the troops when the campaign began in 2003.
He further stated that “Although the equipment is excellent now, initially and subsequently in Iraq, it was very poor, and if Gordon Brown as Chancellor had been more sympathetic, it would have kept people alive,”
In light of all this I believe that it is essential that the inquiry is held in public and that once and for all the public are told the whole truth about the Iraq war. As a country and as a democracy we have a right to know the facts. People have died and are still dying on our behalf the very least that we can do is to demand to know why.
Next week a Conservative motion will be debated in Parliament, and will demand that the hearings "should whenever possible be held in public". This is a motion which I believe will have support not only form the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats but also from a number of Labour backbenchers who have also criticised the inquiry.
Please join with me and register your opposition to any attempt to hold this inquiry in private.
Thank you. |
