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Iraq Inquiry

It will take me just three minutes to put together what I would like to say. I am one of those people who was not elected when the debate on Iraq first took place. I made it clear that I was against the war at that stage, but I am more concerned about what happened in the aftermath of the decision to go to war—the peacekeeping that took place. It is why I strongly believe that it is time for a review. The fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is a useful time to take stock of what is going on there. This weekend's attacks left 47 people dead, and it is clear that that is a typical weekend death count. We do not see the headlines as much as we used to, because not so many British deaths are taking place, but Basra is involved in a turf war and the Anbar province has been ethnically cleansed almost across the board. In Baghdad, where the surge has had an impact, again areas are being cleared of one type of population or another, unemployment is rife, electricity is intermittent and the queues for petrol remain long. More than 4,000 US soldiers have died, as have 175 from the British side, including 11 from my regiment, so now is the time to ask whether we can call this a success story. The counter-argument is that we got rid of a tyrant, but as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) pointed out, we could have used the military in many other different capacities to end up with a better result. The justification for war moved from weapons of mass destruction to regime change, and intelligence was cherry-picked to make a case. As happens with these things, details are now emerging to suggest that the WMD argument came from a spy codenamed Curveball, who was involved with German federal intelligence, and the Americans never had an opportunity to speak to him directly. This has been a fascinating debate. It has focused a lot on what has happened to the justification for going to war—but we have made a complete mess of the peace process. We could have done a lot better in the direct aftermath—from the days when President Bush stood on his ship declaring that the mission was accomplished—because that was when the hard work should have begun. There was clearly no plan. Even Colin Powell felt embarrassed having to justify the invasion when he went to the United Nations. The consequence is that we are living in Iraq today and our military are picking up a lot of the criticism, if I can put it that way, for the fact that international development agencies could not take advantage of the fragile peace when we moved in after the invasion. A lot of work needs to be done. There are many questions outstanding, and I believe that an inquiry is well overdue.