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Iraq Inquiry

As the hon. Gentleman mentions, that is exactly what the Red Cross says. I think that the aftermath of the war needs to be considered. We could have predicted it. People on the Liberal Democrat Benches, notable exceptions on the Conservative Benches, and very many notable exceptions on the Labour Benches—[Interruption.]—and the nationalists warned the Government that the consequences of the action would be appalling, yet, I am afraid, one Conservative Front-Bencher who is sitting in the Chamber described me as an appeaser, and described my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber as Charlie Chamberlain. That was the kind of abuse that was being thrown at us when we warned of the consequences. A second aspect that must be considered, mentioned by the hon. and learned Member for Medway, is the legality of the war. I have never wanted to say that the war was illegal, because if I did, I would be suggesting that the British forces who went to Iraq were complicit in some kind of war crime, but certainly the legality of the war, and the justification by Lord Goldsmith, conveniently changed considerably in a 10-day period in the run-up to the war. There are many reasons to believe that under international law, the action, if not illegal, certainly pushed the bounds of legality in ways never experienced before. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) said when expressing his view of what a just war is, Iraq could not be considered a just war. It is absolutely right that we examine whether the war was legal or not. After all, what other reason is there why Lord Boyce—then Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff—sought the Prime Minister's personal guarantee that the war was legal? He surely would only have done so if he had some doubts. The next thing that we must surely ask—it is a question that I asked consistently at the time—is whether we were equipped to fight the war, and whether we had the right equipment. Certainly the troops that I saw preparing to fight the war did not have the body armour, the boots or the equipment to make sure that they could fight the war. Sadly, that is a view shared in many coroners' inquests held since the war. We are not talking about a war that suddenly occurred; it was not like the Falklands, where we suddenly woke up one morning and said, ““Oh my God, we've got to perform an amphibious action on the other side of the world.”” We are talking about a war for which we were preparing, month after month, yet we sent our troops away inadequately kitted out. Certainly some inquests have suggested that some of our servicemen died as a result of not being properly equipped. What more serious criterion could there be by which to judge the value of a conflict? We are talking about a Government who sent their troops off, knowing that they were going to fight, without giving them the equipment with which to fight that war. We have tonight heard references to weapons of mass destruction. There might have been such weapons years before, but certainly there were not weapons of mass destruction available to Saddam Hussein, ready to fire within 45 minutes, that could hit our bases in Cyprus; let us remember that the dossier suggested the contrary, as did the front page of the Evening Standard. They suggested that there was somehow an immediate threat to British troops based in Cyprus, and a threat to the troops who were about to fight—the troops whom, let me remind hon. Members, we had not properly equipped. Reference has been made to Lord Franks and his inquiry after the Falklands. That was an inquiry on the workings of Government. I would certainly be happy if the inquiry that will eventually take place covered the workings of Opposition parties. I would certainly be prepared to stand by what we, as an Opposition party, did to oppose the war. Frankly, her Majesty's loyal Opposition failed to oppose it in the way that it should have done. It is a matter of record that before Christmas in 2002, the then leader of the Conservative party was calling for military action to overthrow Saddam. That was before the dossier and before any talk of weapons of mass destruction. The Tories, and unfortunately their leader at the time, were as much cheerleaders for the war as any Member on the Treasury Bench.