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Iraq

I wish to make some progress, if I may. Almost on a weekly basis, we see senior military figure after senior military figure making yet another devastating assessment of the Government’s policy-making capacity. Lord Guthrie said that the policies are cuckoo. Lord Inge said that there was a lack of clear strategy at the Ministry of Defence. Most damning of all was the verdict of the current head of the Army, who said that"““history will show that the planning for what happened after the initial…war fighting phase was poor, probably based more on optimism than sound planning.””" Unfortunately, we have not seen that kind of honesty from any Government Minister to date. However, it is fair to say that the Foreign Secretary came perilously close when she said that history may judge the Iraq war to have been a disaster. Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of waiting for history’s verdict; we need some answers and action now. A Government who were prepared to parade before our eyes dossier after dodgy dossier of carefully edited intelligence will not now let us read any of the intelligence on what is happening on the ground. We have had no comprehensive statement to date of Government policy. In February last year, the Prime Minister promised the Liaison Committee that General Luck’s audit of coalition security strategy in Iraq would be published. For the record, I quote the Prime Minister:"““I have seen a draft that is still under discussion…When there is a finished article, it will be published.””" It never was. Before the Government come back and say, ““That was not our fault; the decision not to publish was made in Washington””—like so many other foreign policy decisions under this Government—I should point out to Treasury Ministers that they have not published a single word of Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s assessment of the UK’s contribution to Iraqi security sector reform, which was completed 10 months ago. Of course we understand that parts of these reports have to be withheld for security reasons, but does the Foreign Secretary really believe that Parliament can do its duty in holding the Government to account if we get no information about their strategy? There are two Iraqs: the Iraq of George Bush and the Prime Minister, where things are going to plan and getting better all the time; and the real Iraq of murder and mayhem, whose future is uncertain. The state of denial that characterises the Government’s policy now mirrors the state of delusion that characterised their policy in the run-up to war. The Prime Minister told us that night that it was ““beyond doubt”” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, even though the intelligence supplied was packed with doubt. He rattled off the huge quantities of WMD that he said had been left unaccounted for. Then he treated us to the punch-line:"““We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years—contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence—Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.””—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 762.]" Well, not as things turned out. In my more uncharitable moments, I am reminded of that famous Aneurin Bevan put-down during the Suez crisis. He said, ““If Sir Anthony Eden is sincere in what he is saying—and he may be, he may be—then he is too stupid to be Prime Minister.”” To be fair—