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Iraq Inquiry

I agree. The Government's arguments are manifestly absurd; in respect of time scale, they are like rejecting an inquiry into Dunkirk just after VE-day because we are going to engage in fighting the Japanese, which might be a distraction. It is five years since this unhappy adventure was embarked on. In 1945, one could have said that an inquiry into Dunkirk would be entirely irrelevant and a matter for the historians. However, I am afraid that an inquiry into the events leading up to the Iraq war, and into our policy on the occupation since, is extremely relevant to what we continue to do—not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan and in other conflicts in future. We cannot wait any longer; Government Ministers have only to read Hansard, listen to this debate and see where the strength of argument is coming from to know that in their heart of hearts. The hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) has the honour of chairing the Foreign Affairs Committee. He talked about R2P, the right to protect. That all links in with the Chicago doctrine and the whole idea of liberal interventionism. It is absolutely essential that we inquire into how we got into the situation and into the arguments put forward to justify our actions. In a customarily brilliant speech—on this occasion without any specialist advice, I am impressed to say—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea referred to Jonathan Powell's statement that he and others did not know that more troops would be needed. I am afraid that that argument does not wash. The previous chief of the US army staff told Donald Rumsfeld that more troops would be required and that the forces provided were wholly inadequate for the occupation; his reward was to be sidelined and shuffled out. We should honour him for the fact that he did give advice. The Americans cannot say—nor can the British at the most senior levels—that they did not receive serious advice that the strategy on which we were embarked was wrong. I agree with nearly all that my right hon. and learned Friend said. He was certainly right that containment was working and that sanctions were not. When I worked for my right hon. and learned Friend at the Foreign Office, it was my view that at some point we would have to face up to the failure of the oil-for-food programme. That is why I have significant sympathy for people such as the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). When they voted for the Government motion in 2003, that was about business unfinished since the ceasefire in 1991. From what I know of it, the legal case presented by the then Attorney-General hung round the failure of Iraq to observe the terms of the 1991 ceasefire. The argument made to the people of the United States was that the issue was about al-Qaeda—it was painfully apparent that that was false. The problem was that that argument could not be made in the United Kingdom, as we had not been attacked by al-Qaeda. Of course, here the arguments made were that it was about weapons of mass destruction. We need an inquiry to identify what happened in the decision-making process. I want to know how it is that I, as a Member of Parliament, ended up voting for the Government's resolution. I watched the performances of the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, probably from right where I am standing now, in September 2002 and in March 2003. I thought that I knew when he was not being entirely direct with the House and that I could spot when things were different. Those performances were of a totally different quality from anything that he had produced on any other occasion in the House of Commons, and he was always a fantastic performer in this Chamber. He really believed it, and that was what I was being told by friends of mine who remained in the Army and were briefing him to say that he was entirely up for this and convinced of its necessity. I am afraid that that faith in its necessity, combined, it would appear, with the faith of the President of the United States in its necessity, and the opportunity presented by 9/11 to move on to unfinished business in Iraq, blinded senior policy makers at all levels to the consequences of what they were doing. I want to know the detail of what happened in October 2001 in the discussions between Rumsfeld and Cheney and at senior levels of the Bush Administration about 9/11 providing the opportunity to ““do”” Iraq. I want the then Prime Minister questioned about what happened in Crawford, Texas in April 2002, when the United Kingdom became irredeemably committed to that course of action. All the policies that flowed from that decision, with British officers getting involved in CENTCOM and the planning that took place during the summer, meant that by July 2002 the thing was rolling down a military track and was not going to stop. I do not know when the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Keetch) received his briefing from CENTCOM, but my understanding would be that this was happening six months before he went there. Everything was running to a military timetable in order to get the invasion of Iraq under way in spring because people would not have wanted to delay it until the summer, for entirely understandable military reasons. At that point, the military timetable overtook all the other considerations. The doubts that were being thrown in about the intelligence and other issues became irrelevant to the key policy makers as they drove the process forward. An important lesson that an inquiry should be able to get to the bottom of is how we can put the brakes on at a policy-making level inside Government and in Parliament. Today, the Justice Secretary came to the House to explain about this Chamber's involvement in war-making votes in future. That is of direct relevance to an inquiry. For ex-soldiers like me, it was not realistic to ask me to vote about 12 hours—or 36 hours; I cannot remember now—before H-hour and troops going over the front line, and to pull the plug on a huge operation that had been months in the planning by suddenly saying, ““Sorry, the British aren't coming.”” We were providing more than a third of the forces to invade southern Iraq; the military and strategic decisions had been taken. We were placed in an impossible position. Immediately before the soldiers were committed to action, with their battle procedure almost complete for going across the starting line, we were being invited to pull the rug out from underneath them. That would have been another consideration of mine in deciding to support the Government. My view was that that the Saddam Hussein issue had to be resolved and that 9/11 had given the President of the United States the freedom of manoeuvre to act on Iraq and resolve it; that is why I supported the action. I should have followed the advice from slightly wiser quarters like those whom I previously worked for and with in the Foreign Office. I was profoundly wrong in not identifying the consequences that we have unleashed on the middle east and the world. We need an inquiry to understand the damage done to the United Kingdom's position in the middle east. I take a significant interest in the region and travel there frequently. Wherever one goes there, one finds that friends of the UK are appalled at our failure to exercise more influence on the United States throughout the course of the disastrous strategy leading up to the invasion and during the conduct of the occupation as well. They expected much more of the United Kingdom, given our history and our association with the region. Tragically, we utterly failed to deliver and our standing in the middle east has taken a hammering as a result. It is vital to the British interest that we somehow address that damage to our standing and start to put it right. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary made clear, books on the subject are now being published by figures such as Sir Hilary Synnott. Rory Stewart wrote an excellent book on the conduct of the occupation in Iraq, Paul Bremer has burst into print, and so has the former chief of the general staff—everyone is writing their account. We need an inquiry so that senior Members of both Houses can bring together all that testimony in a sensible, disciplined way, as proposed by the motion, to try to draw the sensible lessons we must learn from the appalling tragedy that has overtaken Iraq as a consequence of our policy. Finally, I want to turn to today's events in Basra, which was one of the arguments advanced by the Foreign Secretary as to why now is not the time for an inquiry. In April 2004, I and other members of the Defence Committee were taken to Basra, and we were proudly shown British police officers, and Northern Ireland police officers, training Iraqi policemen. We were taken to three different police stations—it took up about half of the time we had in Basra—where we were shown different groups of policemen going through riot training and so on. But even with the level of investment we had put into training police in Basra, we completely failed to avoid their being highly penetrated by militias competing for power there. If we had given our international development aid to one thing alone, it should have been to payment of the police to get control of their human resources policy. We could then have sacked people who did not match our standards. If we had paid the police at the same rates paid to police in the UK, we would have achieved an enormous amount more than we did in the past five years. The importance of how the police are treated in the establishment of the rule of law in a country was a lesson learned in Bosnia. We have identified that problem all too plainly in Iraq, and we are making the same mistake in Afghanistan now. The police in Afghanistan are highly corrupt and in the hands of drugs barons and local warlords. The entire shop in Afghanistan is bet on the Afghan national army at some point being able to face down the police forces around the country in order to retake control for the central Government.