Nov 24 2009

British Inquiry Into Iraq War

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

This is what this Country, the United States, should be doing now or had already done during the previous administration, investigating towards Impeachment and possible Indictments, depending on what evidence of crimes and lies surfaced. Especially if we really are what we like to think and demand others to believe we are and if our Constitution still exist as the leading Representative Democracy on this planet. But leave it up to ‘Old Europe’, hopefully, to seek answers that should be in the light of day and a part of the physical history added to the already known.

But it’s never to late for us to try and minimize the blowback from our extremely destructive policies, or is it!

Rose Gentle seeks truth from Iraq inquiry

The Glasgow mother, whose son Gordon was killed in the Iraq War, has been speaking ahead of the opening of Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry.



{this isn’t the video from this report, the news video at link}

The mother of a Glasgow soldier who was killed in Iraq has spoken ahead of the inquiry into why the war began.

Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon died in Basra in 2004, spoke to STV News before travelling down to London for the beginning of the inquiry on Tuesday.

Rose has been an outspoken critic of the Iraq conflict and helped set up the group Military Families against the War…>>>>>

Tuesday 24 November 2009 – Opening of Inquiry

Iraq Inquiry Opens Amid Whitewash Claims

The chairman of an official inquiry into the Iraq war has used his opening remarks to rebuff claims it will be a whitewash and insisted it will be a “fair and frank” investigation.

Sir John Chilcot said he will not will not shy away from being critical in his wide-ranging, televised probe into how the UK came to invade the country in 2003…>>>>>

Chilcot inquiry told UK did not consider Iraq regime change before 9/11

Whitehall refused to engage in talks about toppling Saddam but shared US concerns that containment policy was failing

British officials decided not to get involved in talk about regime change in Iraq in 2001 even though some parts of the new Bush administration began to discuss the possibility two years before the invasion, the opening hearing of the UK inquiry into the war heard today.

But Whitehall was, like Washington, concerned that the policy of containing Saddam Hussein was failing before the September 11 attacks on the US, senior civil servants said….>>>>>

Saddam options ‘discussed a year before Iraq war’

British officials privately discussed the prospect of “regime change” in Iraq in late 2001 – more than a year before the invasion – the Iraq War inquiry was told today.

Giving evidence on the first day of public hearings, Sir William Patey, a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office official, said the idea of ousting Saddam Hussein had been discussed in an internal FCO paper…>>>>>

Iraq Inquiry Digest Everything about the Chilcot Inquiry in one place

Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war Follow the action as inquiry into one of the most contentious decisions of modern times begins hearing evidence

Iraq Inquiry: Day 1

Well, after just six hours of evidence at an Inquiry that will last over a year and, already, some interesting disclosures.

The top lines are these:

1. There were “drum-beats” of war with Iraq coming from elements of the Bush Administration in early 2001

2. The UK discussed regime change in an internal Foreign Office “options paper” in 2001 but quickly dismissed it as illegal.

The focus of today was context: an effort to establish what the UK’s position on Iraq was in 2001 – prior to the 9/11 attacks…>>>>>

“We were conscious that there were other voices in Washington, some of whom were talking about regime change,” Ricketts said, citing an article written by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice warning that nothing would change in Iraq until Saddam was gone.”…>>>>>

8 comments

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  1. I hope you keep your eye on developments.

  2. I hope I`ll be able to follow the narrative by your username.

    Very interesting developments, although it seems like a long time to complete an investigation.

    I hope they continuously make public, their findings, on an ongoing basis.

    • TMC on November 25, 2009 at 06:18
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    in the US MSM. Must protect their puppets.

     The United Kingdom is party to the ICC. How lovely it would be to watch Tony Blair sitting in the same docket as Milosevic. Taylor. Karadzic et al. Maybe he’d give up his co-conspirators. This could get very juicy.  

    • RUKind on November 25, 2009 at 08:16
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    We need to join the ICC retro-actively. Tony shouldn’t have to sit in that docket all by himself.

    • Arctor on November 25, 2009 at 17:02
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    examining the fraudelant basis of the war (Downing Street memos) when the Democrats weren’t in a position of power to do anything about it?  

    • jimstaro on November 25, 2009 at 23:12
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    Lest anyone forget, even though these are being held in Britain, that the cheney/bush administration, especially rummy, were telling the Inspectors they knew Exactly where the Chem and Bio weapons were located but as the Inspectors kept calling for those locations the administration kept saying they couldn’t release that information to them as it would Compromise Intelligence Gathering, and we all remember Powell at the UN, talk about intelligence?!!!!

    Iraq war inquiry hears intelligence on Saddam ‘patchy’ in run-up to conflict

    The department’s officials told how ministers heard that knowledge of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes was “sporadic” in the years up to the invasion of 19-20 March 2003. In September 2002 the intelligence “remained limited”, they heard. Yet Blair that month described Saddam’s banned weapons programme as “active, detailed and growing” and said the picture emerging was “detailed and authoritative”…>>>>>

    Nick Clegg: crying wolf in 2003 destroyed all trust in Britain’s leaders

    The opening of the inquiry into the Iraq war reminded me that one of the greatest tragedies of Labour’s foreign policy is that they focused on Iraq, not Afghanistan. They focused on winning the argument for an unjustified war, instead of winning a justified war….>>>>>

    One point, raised the last two days and heard again at the end of the video report, is the talk of regime change in Iraq prior to 9/11 having ramped up and going from the U.S. State Department and sanctions to the Pentagon and regime change, directly after that tragic day. I’m getting the picture, already had but clearer now, the Administration wasn’t concerned at all with al Qaeda and bin Laden, thus 9/11, they wanted Saddam gone, reason the Ghost Enemy has grown, al Qaeda, and bin Laden and the so called top leaders of are still out there!

    Iraq wasn’t the biggest threat, war inquiry hears

    The Iraq war inquiry in London has heard that Britain’s international security chiefs considered Iraq was not as big a threat as three other rogue states.

    The Chilcot inquiry has now heard two days of evidence from the most senior Foreign Office officials who received and analyzed intelligence on Iraq for two years before the war and in the year after the invasion.

    It has emerged that Britain’s Foreign Office also told former prime minister Tony Blair that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction had been dismantled, 10 days before Britain invaded Iraq.

    Overnight, the head of international security in that office, Sir William Ehrman, told the inquiry that Britain had never found any evidence to substantiate claims coming from the White House that Saddam Hussein had a link to Al Qaeda.

    Snip

    “After 9/11 we concluded that the Iraqis had actually stepped further back, that they didn’t want to be associated with Al Qaeda,” he said.

    Snip

    Not only were there no nuclear or chemical weapons considered dangerous, but the UK’s intelligence community ranked Iraq fourth on a list of states posing the greatest risk to Britain’s national security.

    Iran, North Korea and Libya were all thought to be bigger threats…>>>>>

    Iran has only grown in that region, North Korea has only continued to advance as well, especially in long range rocket development, but Libya a more dangerous threat then Iraq, and now the United States and Libya are good friends according to the cheney/bush administration, Hmmmmm!!

    British Officials: Little Pre-War Evidence of al-Qaida-Iraq Link

    Two senior British officials say there was no evidence of serious cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida after the 2003 Iraq invasion, and only sporadic contacts in years before

    Snip

    Dowes told panel members there was little new intelligence on Iraq or its capacity for weapons of mass destruction since the late 1990s.  He said analysts determined those early contacts did not look like collusion, and said he believed U.S. operatives shared that assessment.

    Ehrman said there was scattered evidence that Iraq may have possessed disassembled components of chemical-biological weaponry.    But he described that data as inconclusive and said analysts generally doubted Baghdad had the technology to deliver such payloads…>>>>>

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