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Iraq Inquiry

I shall come to that point in a few minutes. The second reason why we need an inquiry is that the overwhelming majority of the people in the UK believe that they were lied to about the reasons for the war. Troops are still being deployed, and soldiers are still being injured, losing their lives and taking the lives of Iraqis for reasons that the majority in this country disbelieve. Our troops find that very distressing. A year or so ago, I was stopped in Whitehall by an officer in civilian clothes, who said that the worst thing that a soldier ever had to do was to talk to the parents of someone who had died under their command, and that when their country thinks that the war is dishonest and does not believe in it, that duty becomes unbearable. So part of our duty is to our troops. We need to get the truth out there and to treat them with respect. We should not ask them to serve, to risk their lives and to take the lives of others for reasons that their country does not believe in. The third reason why we need an inquiry is to establish why there was such a failure to prepare for post-conflict Iraq. This is the issue that the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) raised a moment ago. I was involved in this, and my view is that the failure properly to prepare flowed from the deceit on the route to war. Preparations were made in the State Department, in the United Nations and in my old Department in co-ordination with other humanitarian agencies across the world for a post-conflict situation in which the occupying powers would honour their obligations under the Geneva convention. The occupying powers have a duty under that convention to keep order, but they do not have the right to reorganise the political institutions of a country. Under such arrangements, there was an expectation of internationalisation and international support. I went to a meeting of the World Bank shortly after the war. Of course, there were fantastic divisions there, but we worked to say that, whatever the divisions on the reasons for the war, if we could internationalise the reconstruction, please let us all come back in together to help Iraq to rebuild itself. What happened? With just months to go before the date chosen for the war, the President of the United States scrapped all the State Department’s preparations—which were massive and had been made in co-ordination with the rest of the world—and set up a unit in the Pentagon, which started making preparations from scratch. A British general, General Tim Cross, was put in as its deputy. He told me that they were moving in the furniture just a couple of months before the date chosen for the war. The answer is not that people failed to prepare. The preparations that were properly made according to international law for conditions that would have brought international co-operation were thrown away because of the reasons for the war. America wanted, as in Japan and South Korea, to be dominant in Iraq, to have bases and a pro-American Government there. It did not want internationalisation or a UN lead. That is all extremely important, and we need to learn those lessons if we are to begin to put things right. The fourth reason why we need an inquiry is to examine the role of the Attorney-General. The full legal advice was never given to the Cabinet. I have never been a constitutionalist, but I am still utterly shocked by what took place. When I read the full legal advice, I still cannot believe that we were never given it, and that the legal advice that was given to the Cabinet and to Parliament was so different—