Iraq War Inquiry, Day 14

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Drip, drip, drip…………… more from the faucet of recent history coming out from across the pond. When following this Inquiry, especially in viewing, insert American faces of those known from the cheney/bush administration and multiply the known and unknown ten, twenty, thirty……….times as they were the ringleaders and intelligence manipulators seeking justification to invade and destroy an innocent people and their country.

Just think how long before the Brits found out about the following did our administration and probably many in the ‘lockstep rubber stamping congress’ know:

Brits ‘knew of abuse at Abu Ghraib’, says MI6 boss

Britain knew about abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the MI6 boss said yesterday.

Sir John Sawers told the Iraq inquiry UK officials learned of “difficulties” at Abu Ghraib jail in mid-2003. But he said the scale of mistreatment by US troops was “way beyond” what they expected.

He added: “The revelations were definitely a shock to us, as they were to everybody on the American side as well as across the world….>>>>>

MI6 chief reveals advance warning of Abu Ghraib problems

British officials were aware of possible violence against Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison almost a year before revelations of torture and abuse finally emerged, the head of MI6 has revealed.

Sir John Sawers said that poor conditions and possible violent mistreatment of inmates by the US troops running the prison were known within months of the invasion in March 2003. It was not until the Spring of 2004 that cases of physical, psychological and sexual abuse were exposed publicly.

Snip

However, he insisted that the extent of the abuses that eventually came to light were “way beyond” anything that British officials in Iraq had imagined. “We knew of difficulties in the conditions for detainees dating back to June, July of 2003,” said Sir John, who arrived in Baghdad in May 2003 to represent Tony Blair in the Iraqi capital. “But the revelations at Abu Ghraib were definitely a shock to us, as they were to everybody on the American side as well as across the world.”

He added: “We thought the basic problems were about poor conditions and possibly unnecessary violence, but Abu Ghraib was an extra dimension.” Eleven US soldiers were convicted of committing abuses against prisoners within the facility. Two soldiers were sentenced to ten years and three years in prison.

Sir John said that the high-profile inquiry in 2004 into the torture claims at Abu Ghraib marked the low point for the British team working to try to rebuild Iraq after the invasion. “It was then that we realised the scale of the task that was ahead of us and the need to really put our heads down and be in it for the longer term because the insurgency and the violence was clearly not at a peak,” he said. “The Abu Ghraib issues just added another nasty twist to the difficulties that we faced.”…>>>>>

This was already known, and spreading, in Iraq! Any atrocity, any perceived atrocity is known about and word spreading quickly in any occupied country. This not only causes some in these occupied countries to pick up arms and join the fight but it raises the support of the population to that fight keeping an insurgency against an invading occupying force alive and growing. These incidents, while hawks and especially those not willing to serve cheer them on, they bring on devastating blowback of killing and maiming of the soldiers ordered into these theaters and most trying to stabilize and help the innocent people. One incident causes any steps forward to be quickly erased and not forgotten moving any good back into the negatives, many incidents greatly compound the death and destruction.

Every decade or so it seems a few come along and think they’re going to do War and Occupation better then any previous actions carried on by megalomaniacs of power and wealth:

Tony Blair might have been put off Iraq war by violent aftermath, says adviser

{Note From the Guardian: This article contained a mistake by the Guardian, which they have now corrected.   It attributed incorrectly a quotation to Nigel Sheinwald.  As the Guardian explain on their website: “This article was amended on Thursday 17 December 2009. We quoted Sir Nigel Sheinwald as saying Britain was concerned about the prospect of “US marines going in with all guns blazing”. In fact he did not use that phrase: it came from a question posed to him by Sir Lawrence Freedman, a member of the Chilcot inquiry. This has been corrected.”  See Here}

• Government shocked by level of post-war violence

• Inquiry asks if invasion hurt Britain’s reputation

The Blair government might not have invaded Iraq had it envisaged the scale of violence it might provoke, Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6 and former adviser to the prime minister, said today.

Very few observers predicted the violence produced by a combination of jihadists, former Ba’athist officials who had melted away immediately after the invasion, and Shia extremists supported by Iraq, he told the Chilcot inquiry.

“Frankly, had we known the scale of the violence, it might well have led to second thoughts about the entire project,” said Sawers. “It was not thought through.”

Sawers, who was an adviser to Tony Blair and spent three months as Britain’s special envoy in Baghdad in 2003, said the only person he could think of who got it right was Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who warned the conflict would create “100 new Bin Ladens”.

Snip

There was concern that the US would exacerbate Sunni and Shia insurgencies in both the centre and south of Iraq. The issue was “one of the key things” on the agenda of Blair’s agenda at a meeting with George Bush in the US in April that year, Sheinwald told the Chilcot inquiry. It was known, and reported, at the time, that defence chiefs urged Blair to warn Bush of the consequences of US attacks on Falluja, including the use of white phosphorus {my highlight}.

According to previously leaked documents about the April 2004 White House meeting between the two leaders, Bush was so angry about attacks on US soldiers that he allegedly suggested that the offices of the Arabic satellite TV station al-Jazeera should be bombed.

Snip

Referring to the abuse of Iraqi detainees by US soldiers, he added: “The Abu Ghraib issues just added another nasty twist to the difficulties that we faced.” As for Britain’s role in occupying southern Iraq, Sawers told the inquiry: “We had no plan for handling Basra when we went in”….>>>>>

One needn’t have gone back in history to far of the powerful against weaker thought of foes, the Afghan/Soviet debacle, to see what results when invading and not quickly stabilizing and working towards re-building to see what develops. And as the leading power of might bringing in others to be the backups, us here in the United States, have our own very recent history who’s lessons were ignored and those welding the push to war this time didn’t serve in with many of us. We saw what was to come why didn’t they!

Iraq inquiry – live

Two of Tony Blair’s foreign policy advisers and the former Ministry of Defence policy director give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry

5.27pm: There are a couple of other quotes that are worth putting up in full. They are from the exchange at 3.41pm. At one point Sawers read out a passage listing the objectives the government had set itself for Iraq in early 2003.

A stable, united and law-abiding Iraq, within its present borders, cooperating with the international community, no longer posing a threat to its neighbours or international security, abiding by all its           international obligations and providing effective, representative government, sustainable economic growth and rising living standards for all its peoples.

Sawers said Iraq had achieved those goals.

But Chilcot disagreed. He told Sawers:

The picture that is painted in that statement of objectives is not, I think, what you would find in Iraq today.

5.19pm: Here’s what Chilcot said at the very end of the hearing.

I think we have talked a lot about potential, if not final judgements, at any rate provisional judgements about the whole six years. And I think the committee itself is extremely … aware of the casualty list, the blood. Treasure you can rebuild. Blood you can’t get back. I don’t know whether at this stage we shall come to the kind of final judgement that these last questions have raised. This may be the first draft of history. But we are conscious throughout of that cost that has been incurred by humankind. I think I’ll close with that.

Very curious. What does he mean by that? It didn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of the war to me ….>>>>>

Scarlett accused of misleading inquiry

Former MoD expert contradicts claim that Iraq evidence was reliable

Britain’s former spy chief has misled the Iraq inquiry by exaggerating the reliability of crucial claims about Saddam Hussein’s ability to launch weapons of mass destruction, according to the leading Ministry of Defence expert who assessed the intelligence behind the decision to go to war.

Sir John Scarlett, who was responsible for drafting the Government’s controversial 2002 dossier outlining the case for invading Iraq, claimed last week that intelligence indicating Iraq possessed missiles that could be launched within 45 minutes was “reliable and authoritative”. But Scarlett’s evidence is contradicted by the most senior WMD analyst who saw the original intelligence. Brian Jones said that it was vague, inconclusive and unreliable….>>>>>

Now Blair’s key Iraq war aides desert him: Spy chief and top envoy tell inquiry of their doubts

The head of MI6 and Britain’s top diplomat yesterday refused to back Tony Blair’s assertion that the war in Iraq was worth the human and financial cost.

In testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry, spymaster Sir John Sawers and Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Britain’s ambassador in Washington, both admitted they now agonise over whether the UK should have joined the invasion.

They warned that, in doing so, Britain had damaged its reputation around the world.

Snip

Sir John was forced to correct evidence that he gave last week after the panel made clear that his claims were disputed by official documents.

He admitted that the Department for International Development was ‘not substantially involved’ in Iraq policy in the two years before the war after denying claims from aid officials on Friday….>>>>>

Civil servants intent on evading all responsibility

Chilcot has heard a litany of excuses. Officials are out to blame others

Whatever else the Chilcot inquiry does – and I still believe it won’t be much – it will at least have served to remind people just what a disastrous exercise the whole invasion of Iraq was and how Tony Blair must carry the personal responsibility for it. In overall terms the evidence so far has changed little of the picture we already knew. But in testimony after testimony of the players involved it has filled out the picture of war that was fought on the flimsiest of excuses, conducted with the minimum of preparation and pursued in blithe disregard for its consequences.

Which is why, of course, Tony Blair is apparently so furious that Chilcot has rained on his parade just as he was hoping to become President of Europe. And it is why presumably he has chosen to come out and say in a BBC interview last Sunday what we had all suspected but never quite believed would come out in the open – that he was determined on regime change in Baghdad come what may and that, if he hadn’t had weapons of mass destruction as a reason, he would have found another….>>>>>

Scarlett will be asked to justify reliability of 45-minute claim

John Scarlett’s evidence to the Iraq inquiry has been questioned by a WMD analyst

Pressure on inquiry witness after Independent revealed doubts about his evidence

The Iraq inquiry committee has come under pressure to recall Britain’s former spy chief to give further public evidence after allegations that he misled them over Saddam Hussein’s ability to use weapons of mass destruction.

Sir John Scarlett, who oversaw the drafting of the government’s controversial 2002 dossier outlining the case for invading Iraq, had claimed that intelligence indicating that Iraq could launch missiles within 45 minutes was “reliable and authoritative”. But Dr Brian Jones, the most senior WMD analyst who saw the original intelligence, told The Independent that it was vague, inconclusive and unreliable.

MPs from all parties raised concerns about the evidence given by Sir John….>>>>>

Nailing the Iraq Lie

How right Edward Gibbon was when he said history is little more than the register of crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. But perhaps no register is enough to chronicle the crimes double-speaking and double-dealing politicians routinely commit against humanity.

Look at Tony Blair. You would think two years out of power would have narrowed down the gap between the former British prime minister and what is commonly known as common sense. But then there’s no antidote to hubris.

In the countdown to the Iraq invasion and long since, Blair insisted ad nauseam that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Speaking in the world’s oldest parliament, a grim faced Blair solemnly warned the British public – and the world – that Saddam had the capability and the intent to launch a WMD attack against Britain “within 40 minutes.”

In fact, with his gift of the gab the man once known as Britain’s most successful politician played a crucial role in building the case for Iraq war, and gifting the much-needed legitimacy to with-us-or-against-us Bush and his cowboy coalition….>>>>>

Replace the names and faces of the British Inquiry with those from here, the ringleaders of war, and multiply by whatever high number as to involvement and guilt and we’re watching our own Inquiry we fear to hold!!

Watch the Inquiry Live when in Session

Written Transcripts by Date

Oral: The Video’s by Date

See how the Inquiry is unfolding on the Sky News Timeline

BBC Iraq inquiry – day by day timeline of evidence given