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Iraq Inquiry

I respectfully agree. The right hon. Gentleman has conveniently taken my next words from my mouth, because I was about to report to the House that that was indeed what Jonathan Powell said. The apologia that he gave for the war was that Saddam Hussein had gone. It is an apologia that we hear time and time again, and as a litany it begins to bear an uncomfortable relationship to the words of Napoleon the pig in Orwell's ““Animal Farm””, who at the end of the book informs the animals that their suffering and distress is in fact a paradise, because the farmer has been removed. Let us have no more of this, particularly those of us who spent many years campaigning against Saddam Hussein. We do not want to hear any more the idea that the distress to the Iraqi people and the 600,000 of them who have died is blood that was worth paying for an illegal occupation in 2003. It was possibly the diversion into Ireland that prevented any serious investigation in that interview, or at all, of the main issues upon which an inquiry must centre. I wish to bring to the House's attention just two, which are, for me, the most important two. I mention them also because they may be investigated without the slightest inconvenience to any diplomat in Iraq—which is now apparently the reason why we cannot have an inquiry—without the intervention of a single member of the armed forces; and without inconveniencing a single member of the security services, if that is something that exercises the House. They can be investigated only through the cross-examination and interrogation of those who were involved. The first is what was revealed in the Downing street memo of July 2002, reported by The Sunday Times in an unusual contribution to the debate. It was recorded that at that meeting in Downing street in July 2002 Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of secret intelligence, or ““C””, as he was known, had reported from America to the War Cabinet, which included Jonathan Powell, that:"““There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.””" In the same minute, it is recorded that the then Foreign Secretary, now the Lord Chancellor said that it was clear that"““Bush had made up his mind to take military action…But the case was thin.””" The then Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, to whom I shall return in just a moment, is recorded as warning that justifying the invasion on legal grounds would be difficult. That secret memorandum, of limited circulation and ordered to be destroyed thereafter, will become, I predict, one of the seminal documents when the history of warfare comes to be discussed. Not one single word of that document reached this House; not one single word reached the British people. Indeed, this House was told precisely the opposite: until the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, the case was made that there was still time to avert war and catastrophe. That was a lie, and a black deception to this House and to the British people. I do not entirely agree with the palliative statements in the excellent speech made by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) in opening the debate. The real point of the debate, and of any inquiry that may be held, is not to learn lessons so that we do not make mistakes again. That is one reason, but I want an inquiry to be held into the Iraq war because I want those responsible to be brought to book and to justice. If necessary, they should be brought to international justice, but I want us to be the ones who bring them to it.