Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War to be published in the summer

[Blackleaf]

The Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War should be published in June or July 2016 - nearly six years late - says its author.

Sir John Chilcot said the two million word report would be finished in April, with two months or so then set aside for national security checks on it.

The mother of a British soldier killed in Iraq said it was "another let-down", criticising the time taken to publish the inquiry, which began in 2009.

Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "disappointed" and offered resources to speed up the process.

The inquiry is considering how UK forces came to participate in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its aftermath.

The new publication timetable was set out in a letter to Mr Cameron on the inquiry's website.

Iraq Inquiry published 'in June or July 2016' Sir John Chilcot says

BBC News
29 October 2015

Sir John Chilcot began his inquiry in 2009

The Iraq Inquiry should be published in June or July 2016, its author says.

Sir John Chilcot said the two million word report would be finished in April, with two months or so then set aside for national security checks on it.

The mother of a British soldier killed in Iraq said it was "another let-down", criticising the time taken to publish the inquiry, which began in 2009.

Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "disappointed" and offered resources to speed up the process.

The inquiry is considering how UK forces came to participate in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its aftermath.

The new publication timetable was set out in a letter to Mr Cameron on the inquiry's website.

In his letter, Sir John says the text of his report should be completed in the week starting 18 April 2016, at which point the process of national security checking will begin.

Such checking is "normal and necessary" with inquiries handling large amounts of sensitive material, he said.

It will ensure that national security and Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to life, are not "inadvertently breached" by publication, he said.

"I consider that once national security checking has been completed it should be possible to agree a date for publication in June or July 2016," he added.

MPs and peers have expressed frustration with the length of time it is taking, and in June Mr Cameron said he was "fast losing patience".

Sir John has previously rejected calls to publish a timetable for publication, saying he did not want to "arouse false hopes".

The process of giving key figures the right to respond to criticism, known as Maxwellisation, has been blamed for holding up the process.

Sir John ended his letter to the prime minister by saying: "My colleagues and I remain committed to producing a report that will meet the very wide ranging terms of reference we were given and reflect the considerable investment of time and effort by all involved."

In his letter back to Sir John, Mr Cameron welcomed the fact there was "a clear end in sight" but added: "I am disappointed - and I know the families of those who served in Iraq will also be disappointed - that you do not believe it will be possible logistically to publish your report until early summer."

He said he would welcome measures to "expedite" the final stages, saying the government would be "very happy" to provide more resources if it meant the inquiry was published sooner.

The prime minister said the government intended for the national security checking to last no longer than two weeks.

'Far too long'

Reg Keys, whose son, Lance Corporal Tom Keys, was killed in Iraq in June 2003, was critical of the "ridiculous" Maxwellisation process, saying it had been allowed to "run on far too long".

He predicted the report, when it was eventually published, would be a "watered-down" version of criticism raised during the inquiry.

The mother of Royal Highland Fusilier Gordon Gentle, who was killed aged 19 in a bomb attack in Basra in 2004, said she was "disappointed" by the latest news from the inquiry.

Rose Gentle, from Glasgow, said: "We thought it should be out a lot sooner than this. I thought it would be out by the end of the year, because they have everything there.

"It's another let-down. It's another few months to wait and suffer again."

The Iraq War

Image copyright AFP

The US-led invasion of Iraq started on 19 March 2003 with a "shock-and-awe" campaign intended as a show of force

The US and the UK claimed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction he was capable of using

The capital Baghdad fell in April and US President George W Bush declared "mission accomplished" weeks later

Saddam Hussein was captured, tried by the new Iraqi government and hanged. Insurgency continued

British forces ended combat operations in 2009 and the US did so the following year

A total of 179 UK service personnel and nearly 4,500 US soldiers were killed in the conflict

British-based organisation Iraq Body Count estimates 134,400 to 151,652 Iraqi civilians died since 2003, and United Nations estimates 18,805 between 2008-12 - all counts and estimates of Iraqi deaths are highly disputed

The Chilcot inquiry into the UK's role in the war was established by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009

45,000 British troops, 148,000 US troops, 2,000 Australian troops and 194 Polish troops took part in the original invasion of Iraq in March and April 2003, with troops from another 36 countries later getting involved


Iraq Inquiry published 'in June or July 2016' Sir John Chilcot says - BBC News

 

[gopher]

In the coming weeks, the U.K. is certain to be rocked by the Chilcot Inquiry, the years-overdue investigation into the planning, marketing, and execution of the Iraq War under former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.
That timing explains the preventive public relations war Blair launched over the past week to soften the coming blows. On the airwaves and in the op-ed pages, the mastermind of New Labour repackaged some old apologies to defend—not atone for—his decision to join U.S. President George W. Bush in ousting Saddam Hussein. Acknowledging that there are "elements of truth" to the well-documented history that the invasion and occupation of Iraq fueled the rise of ISIS, Blair nevertheless countered that, "I find it hard to apologize for removing Saddam." Speaking to Fareed Zakaria of CNN, Blair made the historical strategic catastrophe for his country and ours sound like an ill-timed fart:

"I can say that I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong. I can also apologize by the way for some of the mistakes and planning and certainly our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you remove the regime."
If that script sounds familiar, it should. After all, that kind of finger-pointing was behind Jeb Bush's short-lived talking point that "knowing what we know now" he "would not have engaged" in the preventive war against Iraq. Or as his fellow Floridian and 2016 White House wannabe Marco Rubio put it in May:
"Not only would I not have been in favor of it, President Bush would not have been in favor of it."
But that statement is simply not true. And we know this because George W. Bush repeatedly told us so.
Continue reading about the unrepentant George W. Bush, below.

That's right. Bush didn't just declare in 2013 that "I'm confident the decisions were made the right way," decisions that directly led to the needless Iraq war that killed 4,500 American soldiers, wounded 30,000 more, converted Baghdad into an Iranian satellite and birthed ISIS. To the degree Dubya admitted to any mistakes it all, it was limited to his use of his "bad language" and "gun-slinging rhetoric"about the war.

That Bush was unrepentant, unaware, or both became apparent in April 2004. Thirteen months after the start of "shock and awe" in Iraq, President Bush could not acknowledge that ousting Saddam—or anything else—constituted a mistake. During a White House press conference, President Bush could not think of a single error he had made during his tenure in the White House:

"I'm sure something will pop into my head here...maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."
On August 30, 2004, Bush43 confessed that his only failure in Iraq was being too successful:
"Had we had to do it [the invasion of Iraq] over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success - being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day."
But by January 2007, just days after he announced the surge in Iraq, Bush admitted to Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes that he had made mistakes, if only semantic ones:
PELLEY: You mention mistakes having been made in your speech. What mistakes are you talking about?
BUSH: You know, we've been through this before. Abu Ghraib was a mistake. Using bad language like, you know, "bring them on" was a mistake. I think history is gonna look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it.

(Mary Kewatt, whose nephew Jim was killed by a sniper in Baghdad in 2003, doubtless agreed. As she lamented to Minnesota Public Radio that summer, "President Bush made a comment a week ago, and he said, 'bring it on.' They brought it on and now my nephew is dead.")
Bush's most jaw-dropping statement of regret about his tough talk came in June 2008. In London as part of his final swing through Europe before leaving the White House, President Bush told The Times of London that his cowboy rhetoric was perhaps his greatest regret:

President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a "guy really anxious for war" in Iraq.
[...] In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. "I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric."

Phrases such as "bring them on" or "dead or alive", he said, "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace."

Of course, many Americans struggled with the notion that George W. Bush was a "man of peace" after he had repeatedly bragged to them that "I'm a war president." Bush doubtless made matters worse by joking about the bloodbath he inaugurated in Iraq. On March 24, 2004 (the same day his former Counter-Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke told the 9/11 Commission, "Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you"), President Bush regaled the audience at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington. As David Corn recalled:
Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.
Bush's punchlines about the missing "smoking gun that could come in the form of the mushroom cloud" was no laughing matter to the families of the Americans killed and maimed in Iraq. And over the years, it was no laughing matter to President Bush's closest aides, either.
In his 2010 memoir Courage and Consequence, Karl Rove blamed himself for not lying more about the war. As Baker wrote at the time ("Rove on Iraq: Without W.M.D. Threat, Bush Wouldn't Have Gone to War"):

"Would the Iraq War have occurred without W.M.D.? I doubt it," he writes. "Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the W.M.D. threat. The Bush administration itself would probably have sought other ways to constrain Saddam, bring about regime change, and deal with Iraq's horrendous human rights violations."
He adds: "So, then, did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not." But Mr. Rove said the White House had only a "weak response" to the harmful allegation, which became "a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency."

After Jeb's "knowing what we know now" imbroglio, Dubya's former press secretary Ari Fleischer lamented, "No, it was not handled well by Gov. Bush. I don't know why he said what he did." But this is how Fleischer himself recently addressed the "knowing what we know now" question on Iraq:
"I just don't think he would have gone to war. I think he would have turned up the heat on Saddam, but I don't think he would have gone to war."
Then again, that's not what Ari Fleischer was saying before. As he put it to Chris Matthews in March 2009:
"After September 11th having been hit once how could we take a chance that Saddam might strike again? And that's the threat that has been removed and I think we are all safer with that threat removed." [Emphasis mine]
As his presidential library was about to open in 2013, Bush declared he was "comfortable" with life and his legacy. And that included the legacy of his war of choice in Iraq. "It's easy to forget," he said, "what life was like when the decision was made."
And in Bush's own 2010 memoir Decision Points, the decision to remove Saddam over his non-existent weapons of mass destruction was an embarrassment, but not a mistake. As Peter Baker documented for the New York Times in May 2015 ("Unlike His Brother, George W. Bush Stands by His Call to Invade Iraq"):

"No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn't find the weapons," Mr. Bush wrote. "I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do." The false intelligence proved to be "a massive blow to our credibility -- my credibility -- that would shake the confidence of the American people," he concluded...
"Imagine what the world would look like today with Saddam Hussein still ruling Iraq," Mr. Bush wrote. "He would still be threatening his neighbors, sponsoring terror and piling bodies into mass graves."

"Instead," he added, "as a result of our actions in Iraq, one of America's most committed and dangerous enemies stopped threatening us forever."

As it turned out, not so much. Last November, the former president used the press tour for his biography of his father to once again defend the rightness of his March 2003 invasion of Iraq. If "bad language" had been his only regret while in office, by the end of 2014 Bush's lone misgiving was the rise of ISIS:
"I think it was the right decision. My regret is that a violent group of people has risen up again. This is al Qaeda plus. I put in the book that they need to be defeated. And I hope they are. I hope the strategy works."
Unfortunately, as Jeb Bush learned from 19-year-old college student Ivy Ziedrich, "Your brother created ISIS." As I summed up Team Bush's culpability for the birth and rise of the Islamic State in May:
Ms. Ziedrich's is a bold claim. After all, for her to be right, ISIS--the dangerous movement combining Saddam loyalists, former Al Qaeda members and disgruntled Sunni fighters--would have to have emerged as a direct result of the war Bush launched in 2003. The disbanding of Saddam's 400,000 man army would have to be laid at the feet of "The Decider." Foreign fighters must have flocked to Al Qaeda--a non-factor in Iraq before the U.S. invasion--specifically to target American troops. And while those unlikely allies forged ties in U.S and Iraqi prisons, Sunni tribesmen once paid by American forces would have to have become alienated by a sectarian Shiite strongman in Baghdad beholden to Iran. The inevitable outcome of such U.S. mismanagement of post-Saddam Iraq, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld privately warned his boss on October 15, 2002, would be that "Iraq could experience ethnic strife among Sunni, Shia, and Kurds" with the result that "it could fracture into two or three pieces, to the detriment of the Middle East and the benefit of Iran."
Unfortunately for Jeb Bush, and to Ivy Ziedrich's credit, that is precisely what transpired. Or to put it in terms even Republican myth-makers can understand: ISIS? George W. Bush built that.

It's with good reason that even the ever-smarmy Tony Blair had to admit this week, "Of course, you can't say that those who removed Saddam in 2003 have no responsibility for the situation in 2015." Of course, George W. Bush had in his own way admitted as much in his December 2008 exit interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC News:
BUSH: One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take--
RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded.

BUSH: Yeah, that's right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they're going to take a stand. Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand.

Before and since, George W. Bush has taken a stand on his decision to go to war in Iraq. As he explained in that 2014 hagiography of his dad (41: A Portrait of My Father), Dubya proclaimed:
"One thing is certain: The Iraqi people, the United States and the world are better off without Saddam Hussein in power," Mr. Bush wrote. "I believe the decision that Dad made in 1991 was correct -- and I believe the same is true of the decision I made a dozen years later."
History, as both he and Jeb are fond of saying, will judge the 2003 Iraq war. Sadly for them both, it's already clear that history's judgment won't be kind. Alas, being a Republican apparently means never having to say you're sorry.





While Blair offers ersatz apology for Iraq War, Bush offers none at all



That's why Blair came up with his ''apology'' while Bush never made his.

 

[MHz]

So basically 6 months after the war is over.

 

[Blackleaf]

Two million words.

That's around three times more than the Bible.

It's abour four times more than the English translation of War and Peace.

It's around about the same as the longest novel ever published: Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus.

Whilst I look forward to the Chilcot Report and find out some of what it says, I don't think I'd be buying it and reading it.

 

[gopher]

Blair and Bush went to war in Iraq despite South Africa's WMD assurances, book states
New book God, Spies and Lies details Mbeki’s attempts to stop invasion
SA experts worked with Saddam in 1980s; Mandela also tried to warn Bush


Blair and Bush went to war in Iraq despite South Africa's WMD assurances, book states | World news | The Guardian



Tony Blair went to war in Iraq despite a report by South African experts with unique knowledge of the country that showed it did not possess weapons of mass destruction, according to a book published on Sunday.



God, Spies and Lies, by South African journalist John Matisonn, describes how then president Thabo Mbeki tried in vain to convince both Blair and President George W Bush that toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003 would be a terrible mistake.

Mbeki’s predecessor, Nelson Mandela, also tried to convince the American leader, but was left fuming that “President Bush doesn’t know how to think”.

The claim was this week supported by Mbeki’s office, which confirmed that he pleaded with both leaders to heed the WMD experts and even offered to become their intermediary with Saddam in a bid to maintain peace.

South Africa had a special insight into Iraq’s potential for WMD because the apartheid government’s own biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programme in the 1980s led the countries to collaborate. The programme was abandoned after the end of white minority rule in 1994 but the expert team, known as Project Coast, was put back together by Mbeki to investigate the US and UK assertion that Saddam had WMD – the central premise for mounting an invasion.



more ....



Eagerly awaiting the Chilcot Inquiry conclusions.

 

[Ludlow]

All that is well and good Blacklump but Sir john needs to be wearin a turtle neck sweater to hide that turkey neck who's gonna sit and listen to a man give a lecture when his neck skin be draggin the podium.

 

[Blackleaf]

All that is well and good Blacklump but Sir john needs to be wearin a turtle neck sweater to hide that turkey neck who's gonna sit and listen to a man give a lecture when his neck skin be draggin the podium.

You have to be careful what you say. Sir Chilcot is a member of the Privy Council, the Sovereign's formal body of advisers.

He therefore has the power, if you displease him, to order your beheading with a sword.

Blair and Bush went to war in Iraq despite South Africa's WMD assurances, book states
New book God, Spies and Lies details Mbeki’s attempts to stop invasion
SA experts worked with Saddam in 1980s; Mandela also tried to warn Bush


Blair and Bush went to war in Iraq despite South Africa's WMD assurances, book states | World news | The Guardian



Tony Blair went to war in Iraq despite a report by South African experts with unique knowledge of the country that showed it did not possess weapons of mass destruction, according to a book published on Sunday.



God, Spies and Lies, by South African journalist John Matisonn, describes how then president Thabo Mbeki tried in vain to convince both Blair and President George W Bush that toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003 would be a terrible mistake.

Mbeki’s predecessor, Nelson Mandela, also tried to convince the American leader, but was left fuming that “President Bush doesn’t know how to think”.

The claim was this week supported by Mbeki’s office, which confirmed that he pleaded with both leaders to heed the WMD experts and even offered to become their intermediary with Saddam in a bid to maintain peace.

South Africa had a special insight into Iraq’s potential for WMD because the apartheid government’s own biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programme in the 1980s led the countries to collaborate. The programme was abandoned after the end of white minority rule in 1994 but the expert team, known as Project Coast, was put back together by Mbeki to investigate the US and UK assertion that Saddam had WMD – the central premise for mounting an invasion.



more ....



Eagerly awaiting the Chilcot Inquiry conclusions.

I actually believe Britain was right to go to war in Iraq in 2003. It's just that Britain and America conducted the war wrongly and should have done it better.

As for WMD, Saddam definitely had it, and lots of it.

 

[tay]

The Inquiry, which was set up in June 2009 to look into the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, will release its 2.6 million word report just two weeks after the EU referendum. It is expected to “damage the reputations” of a number of high-ranking officials.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, will also face criticism for failing to prevent Downing Street from putting “gloss” on intelligence surrounding the alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Blair will already be familiar with the criticisms in the report due to the Maxwellisation process, which allows those under fire to respond to the allegations in the report before publication.

Last year, in an interview with CNN, the former Labour Prime Minister issued a partial apology. He said: “I can say that I apologise for the face that the intelligence I received was wrong. I also apologise for some of the mistakes in planning, and certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime”.

Chilcot report: Tony Blair set to be savaged in ‘absolutely brutal’ Iraq war inquiry verdict | UK Politics | News | The Independent

 

[PoliticalNick]

Two million words.

That's around three times more than the Bible.

It's abour four times more than the English translation of War and Peace.

It's around about the same as the longest novel ever published: Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus.

Whilst I look forward to the Chilcot Report and find out some of what it says, I don't think I'd be buying it and reading it.

That 2 million words will be about 200,000 released to the public after redaction for "security" reasons. By that I mean security of those who lied and comitted war crimes.