Iraq will haunt us all for ever
On Wednesday we finally saw the Chilcot Report. It was a damning indictment of how the Blair Government handled the war – and I take my fair share of blame.
As the Deputy Prime Minister in that Government I must express my fullest apology, especially to the families of the 179 men and women who gave their lives in the Iraq War.
Chilcot went into great detail as to what went wrong. But I want to identify certain lessons we must learn to prevent this tragedy being repeated.
My first concern was the way Tony Blair ran Cabinet. We were given too little paper documentation to make decisions. I raised this matter with Lord Butler, the Cabinet Secretary. I asked him whether Blair had consulted him on the proper rules and practices of a Cabinet Government. He said that he had, and that Tony was not going to run it that way.
In fact Tony ran it like a Shadow Cabinet, where the least amount of information was made available to avoid any possible leak of papers. These leaks had plagued Harold Wilson’s Labour Government and Tony didn’t want a repeat.
This attitude can be seen in the criticism of the regular intelligence reports. These reports were based on discussions at receptions and prejudiced sources.
As I told the Iraq Inquiry, the intelligence seemed to be tittle-tattle, not hard evidence.
We now learn from Chilcot that even the intelligence agencies warned of the inadequacies or reliability of such intelligence sources.
But these concerns were never referred to in any of the intelligence documents given to the Cabinet.
A similar example was the failure to provide the Cabinet with the reasoning of the Attorney General’s judgment that it was legal to act militarily against Iraq.
The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, came to the Cabinet, verbally announced it was legal, but provided no documentation to justify it.
The timing of the decision was clearly designed to endorse an almost immediate action for us to go to war. In my evidence to Chilcot, I said the Attorney General in the weeks before the decision was an “unhappy bunny” as he continued to find a justification to invade Iraq.
But the overwhelming matter of grave concern was our “special relationship” with the US and President George W Bush.
In earlier discussions with Blair I expressed concern, to which he replied that every Prime Minister has to decide early on whether or not they are to become a special friend to the US. Tony’s choice was clearly to be that special friend.
After the attacks on the Twin Towers and our justified intervention in Afghanistan, Tony’s special friend turned his attention to Saddam.
My concern about Iraq was that any intervention had to have the support of the UN Security Council, like the US and UK secured after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. On top of that, any actions needed the endorsement of our Parliament and that to go to war with the prime purpose of regime change was illegal. Tony agreed to this. In the days after 9/ 11, Blair suggested I visit America to satisfy my concerns. It was arranged for me to meet Vice President Dick Cheney in the White House. He appeared via video link from a secret location.
I then spoke to US Senators and military personnel which left me with the overall impression that the Americans were going into Iraq – with or without us.
A senior US senator told me, referring to the failure to topple Saddam after the Kuwait invasion: “John, this is unfinished business.”
I informed Tony of this but still he expressed the view that his policy and purpose was a UN resolution, not regime change.
And Tony’s note to Bush with that devastating quote “I am with you, whatever” was all the Americans needed to go in, without UN support. They wanted it over and done with quickly to avoid the heat of a summer military intervention.
I am pleased Jeremy Corbyn has apologised on behalf of the Labour Party to the relatives of those who died and suffered injury.
A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think of the decision we made to go to war. Of the British troops who gave their lives or suffered injuries for their country.
Of the 175,000 civilians who died from the Pandora’s Box we opened by removing Saddam Hussein.
I will live with the decision of going to war and its catastrophic consequences for the rest of my life.
In 2004, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that as regime change was the prime aim of the Iraq War, it was illegal.
With great sadness and anger, I now believe him to be right.