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Iraq Inquiry

All the Cabinet meetings were little chats: they were never a proper consideration of all the options. That is terrifying, but true, and it means that our political institutions are unreliable and incapable of making proper, considered decisions. When the Attorney-General came to Cabinet—I remember him coming only once, right at the end—I was stunned by the opinion that he brought to the Cabinet, but I accepted that in such a matter, the Attorney-General would not bring a concocted opinion. I now know that he did, and I conclude that the arrangements that we have for ensuring UK compliance with international law are unsafe. The way in which the Attorney-General is appointed is unsafe, and our constitutional arrangements need restructuring. That is one of the important issues to which the inquiry must attend. It is often argued that the invasion of Iraq went well and was welcomed by all, but then went wrong, and that what went wrong, as the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), who was previously in the armed forces, suggested, was that no proper arrangements were made for post-conflict Iraq. Indeed, it is sometimes suggested that because of my doubts about the war, I prevented such preparations from being made in the Department for International Development, although how I could be responsible for US policy I am not sure. That claim is completely untrue, as a proper scrutiny of the historical record will demonstrate. Careful and detailed preparations—volumes of them—were made in the US State Department. Louise Fréchette, the deputy secretary-general of the UN, also made detailed preparations to bring together the international effort that would be required to rebuild Iraq. My old Department made preparations, liaising carefully with the State Department, the UN and other international actors. Then, just a couple of months before the planned invasion, President Bush passed responsibility for post-war reconstruction to the Pentagon and set up the new agency, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance—ORHA. All the State Department preparations were junked. There was no liaison with the UN or with the international community. At the time, Andrew Natsios, then head of the US Agency for International Development, said that the danger in post-war Iraq would be chaos, and if we sacked everyone in the Ba'ath party, no institutions would function. He said that it was crucial that only the top people went and everyone else was left in place. That advice was wiped away and we got exactly what he predicted. That was incredible. In the run-up to the war, I thought, "This cannot happen in a nation like the US—they have Harvard, Yale and Princeton-educated people. We cannot make such an error." But the hubris was such that it was believed that the invasion would be welcomed and that there was no need for international co-operation. Because of the deceit that went into the purpose of the war, we got the chaos of the aftermath. These are serious matters, but they are the true record of what happened, and the inquiry must bring them out. Britain must decide what sort of country it wants to be. Do we want to adhere to international law, or do we want to junk it? Israel is junking international law in the occupied territories. Do we want a future in which international law no longer has any authority? It would lead to chaos and instability.