If I was a British taxpayer I would be annoyed at the use of good public money spent on the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War. Six years after the invasion into Iraq there have been three inquiries. We know that yet another inquiry is not going to change anything. The damage has been done. We know that the truth about the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD's) was exaggerated. The inquiry will be at best a gentle prodding and at worst an admonishing for sexing up "that dossier".
It has been a disastrous war. No WMD's were discovered after the war despite Tony Blair telling Parliament there was "no doubt" they were in Iraq somewhere. Over a million Iraqi people have been killed with five million refugees, of which the US have taken a handful (69 people granted refugee status in the US by 2007). At least 2,000 Iraqi doctors have been killed and 250 kidnapped. At least 179 British soldiers have been killed and many hundreds more injured. The war has cost the British public some $8.4 billion, in excess of $1 billion a year. Think how well this money could have served the failing NHS. Instead, it has served to increase the Jihad against the West and brought Islamic terrorism to Mainland Britain.
This is what is so annoying. I and many others were vehemently against the War and argued vociferously against the misguided need to invade Iraq as some kind of solution to the War on Terror. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant. But there are many tyrants in the world that the West doesn't unilaterally invade. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York. It was obviously a knee jerk reaction with the added bonus of freeing up the oil supplies in one of the largest oil supplying countries in the world.
When US forces were mobilising around the borders of Iraq and the drum roll beat grew louder and louder I and many others had heated discussions and arguments with friends and family alike in opposition to military action against Iraq. It was obvious to me and thousands of others (you did not need to be a rocket scientist or a UN arms inspector) to know that the invasion into Iraq was not going to solve the war on terror. In fact we knew it would worsen it.
Round the Cabinet table were doubters like International Development Secretary Clare Short insisting Mr Blair should "not divert from the UN route" and must resist joining any unilateral military action by the US. Robin Cook, Leader of the House of Commons and a leading cabinet sceptic, resigned in protest saying "In principle I believe it is wrong to embark on military action without broad international support. In practice I believe it is against Britain's interest to create a precedent for unilateral military action". Gordon Brown held on to a very long silence. Amongst church leaders, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury was early to voice his deep doubts as to the wisdom of military action. Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, leader of the Catholic church in England and Wales made clear his disquiet over going to war with Saddam as have Church of England Bishops, the Pope and other religious leaders.
It was why hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London to voice their opposition to military action against Iraq. In February 2003 there was the UK's biggest ever demonstration with at least 750,000 people taking part although organisers put the figure close to 2 million. There were also anti-war gatherings in Glasgow and Belfast with hundreds of rallies and marches in up to 60 countries. This all came as Tony Blair gave warnings of "bloody consequences" if Iraq was not confronted. He did not "seek unpopularity as a badge of honour" he said, but "sometimes it is the price of leadership and the cost of conviction". To which the crowd responded sounding horns and banging drums waving slogans "No War on Iraq" and "Make Tea, Not War". From Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Muslim Association they all converged to the rally in protest.
Some of the comments of ordinary people held up banners reading "Bush and Blair, A Good Christian will never Kill". Other high profile supporters were writer Tariq Ali, ex-minister Mo Mowlam, Ken Livingstone, Vanessa Redgrave, Bianca Jagger and MP Tony Benn. Harold Pinter made a rare public speech saying America was "a country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug!"
I can understand embellishing the truth on occasion. We all do this from time to time: to make a story more interesting, to engage with your audience, to sell a product.
But when you are the leaders of a democratic and free country such as Great Britain the need to embellish a story about weapons of mass destruction in order to gather support for a parliamentary vote to take a whole country to war is just plain irresponsible. Every word has the power of a bullet. Not only were events engineered to take a whole country to war in a gung-ho guns a-blazing way but there was no deep analysis about the complexity of that country nor a realistic exit strategy. That is just foolhardy. Hence the mess we are in today. Winning a war is not only about invading it, its about winning hearts and minds, neither of which have been won in Iraq nor the UK. But its particularly won the hatred of the hearts and minds in the Islamic world.
The day suicide bombers came to mainland UK was a very dark day. The gloss of living in London was forever changed. I was never able to travel on the underground in the same sort of way, often with complete fear and trepidation. To be blown to pieces in the depths of a dark tunnel (or worse to lie maimed in darkness with rats running over you) was too horrendous to contemplate. Even travelling on the bus sitting next to someone with a holdall and headphones became unsettling. Its just too easy. How can you argue against a suicide bomber who carry out these horrific acts with the promise of martyrdom, glory and 70 virgins in the afterlife - perhaps the biggest sexed up lie of all time.
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