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18/06/2009
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The announcement that Gordon Brown intends to hold the enquiry into the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in private is a disgrace.
Just a few days before he was promising a new spirit of openness and public accountability in politics. Brown promised cross-party consultation on electoral and parliamentary reform, yet then he announced an inquiry that will satisfy no one, except perhaps those whose decision took us to war and cost so many innocent lives.
It appears that when it comes to lies and killing it is business as usual at Westminster.
Respect MP George Galloway expressed the outrage of many when he commented, “This was a war that has killed a million people, including 179 British service men, it was conceived in secrecy and justified with lies. This enquiry will not have the right to apportion blame and it will only report after the next election. This is an utterly cynical manoeuvre that will convince no one.”
"Now we are to have an inquiry in secret presided over by figures who are thoroughly compromised. This is an insult and belies the commitment to 'transparency' that Gordon Brown made just days before. Not even the generals who carried out the orders to attack Iraq have any confidence with the terms under which the enquiry has been set up,” he added.
Air Marshal Sir John Walker, the former head of Defence Intelligence, said: "There is only one reason that the inquiry is being heard in private and that is to protect past and present members of this Government. There are 179 reasons military want the truth to be out on what happened over Iraq."
Unless those who took us to war in Iraq, including Blair and Brown, are held accountable, in public and under oath, there is simply no guarantee that this latest enquiry will not end up as all previous Iraq enquiries have – as costly whitewash.
Clive Searle
Manchester Respect