Iraq inquiry: Gordon Brown v Tony Blair

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So GB going to the inquiry was just a PR stunt for electionering purposes,

No Courage
No Answers
No nothing

Just a waste of taxpayers money
Justr a party political broascast

Yes to all that, Nick, but he also demonstrated what a poor command of the english language he has, with limited vocabulary, poor grammar and bad english being constantly demonstrated. What with that and the constant stuttering, and the inappropriate 'Gordon Grin' regularly on show, he made an embarrassing sight at times, particularly as he is our Prime Minister and represents us on the world stage.

And as for the demonstration of sorrow for loss of life, I think this was repeated to the extent that it lost its value, for me anyway.

"Mr Brown expressed regret for the loss of life where Mr Blair angered many by refusing to do that."

Hollow gestures, one has an election to win, the other doesn't....

Brown is trying to look like the person who was thrown the hot potato, trying not to look like the person who was but one step behind Blair, lived next door (over the shop), could have made it quite clear that he would make it very difficult to fund such a war, could have taken half the party at least (both members and MPs votes) with him had he made the same sacrifice as Robin Cook did, if anything he was probably the one person in the UK who could have stopped the UK's involvement in the Iraq war.

I just feel that had Mr Brown faced any form of decent cross examination then he would have been asked whether he is saying that all those people who have highlighted equipment shortages are liars. Hasn't there been enough evidence of the lack of equipment for it to be clear that Mr Brown's decisions directly led to the complaints about the lack of equipment? Somehow I doubt that this enquiry will come to that conclusion

This whole thing is a waste of time no one ever answers the question honestly without some kind of prepared brief . Gordon It was not me Brown is no different at least Blair stuck to his guns

A complete waste of time this inquiry. If someone decides that they will not tell the truth, there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it. We know Brown tells untruths so the whole thing is a waste of time and money. Brown has been prepared for this inquiry and it showed.

I had to have a smile to myself when Brown said he was building up schools, hospitals and infrastructure in Iraq. I wonder who is going to help build up Britains services when it looks as though in the future the money will be very scarce due to Browns policies. Will oil rich Iraq send Britain all the money it needs. I don't think so?

The wars and the inquiries have been money thrown away. The lives lost in these wars, lost for nothing, the World is not a safer place. Terrorism has spread and will continue to do so.

These last 13 years of Labour have been a farce of lost opportunities for Britain in order to feed the egos of two people at war with each other, Blair and Brown. I can only hope for the day when this awful period is over and this Labour Government consigned to history books.

The part that i dont get is that it appears that he was being briefed,separately from the PM ??? surely all the ministers should have been briefed at the same time and with the same material....how can he not known about the legality advice ???

As for his evidence just like we see at prime minister questions he totally refuses to answer the question that is asked and trots out rehearsed mini speechs about other subjects.His demeanour was of a man in a hurry to say his lines before he forgot them......

Nick, you missed the bit where he avoided answering direct questions.

Such as:

1012 Baroness Prashar asks about the threat from weapons of mass construction. Did Mr Brown see "a real and present danger" from weapons held by Iraq? Mr Brown calls Iraq "an aggressor state" and says the community was justified in taking action against it - but doesn't specifically answer the WMD question.

1014 She tries again with the same question…

1044 Sir Roderic asks whether there was a "current threat" of aggression from Iraq in March 2003. Mr Brown doesn't answer that directly, but repeats his previous point that some countries were not prepared to take action under any circumstances. Sir Roderic asks again - but again the PM answers in a different way, choosing to focus on the obligation he felt the international community had to "deal with problems of rogue states". Sir Roderic even asks the question a third time, but the answer is the same.

1121 Sir Roderic asks whether the cabinet really was in a position to say yes or no war - or whether "the die had already been cast" by Tony Blair and all Mr Blair really wanted was an endorsement for his position?

1122 Mr Brown answers indirectly, saying that in future he thinks Parliament should have a vote on whether to go to war. But he repeats his earlier point that invasion was "the right decision for the right cause".

And that's just in the first 90 minutes or so (and there was a coffee break in there as well)

No stfraight answers, no credibility.

Get this dangerous fool away form power.

Gordon Brown never answers the question - he always pretends to listen and then gives another answer. He gets very angry when people push him to answer the question, but most just let him off!

The other trick is to answer a question that has not been asked - eg.
Interviewer : "Did you push somebody?"
GB : "No, I totally deny ever hitting anybody!"

Ed Balls did it too :
Interviewer : "Did GB push people and swear at them?"
EB : "No, hitting and swearing at people - that is not the Gordon I know"

"Mr Brown expressed his sadness for the loss of life"

Yes, but does anyone think he actually meant it?

Rather than point out the difference between the two appearances, I would have thought it's more appropriate to point out the similarities:

1. Neither of them took any personal responsibility for what happened
2. Both came across as evasive and insincere
3. Both were given a ludicrously easy ride by a panel that wouldn't know how to ask a tough question if they were dressed up in a magic tough questions cloak, allowed to consult the manual of "how to ask tough questions" at every stage, and given personal coaching between each question by Jeremy Paxman, John Humphrys, and a dozen experienced QCs

So who do we trust now Mr Brown.
Sorry I forgot, there's always Peter Mandelson

Brown has been having anger management classes. They worked. They worked so well he was benign, relaxed, placid and threw no wobblies let alone papers to the floor.

This was his modus operandi. He has an election to fight. He thinks he will win it but not if he loses it. Besides, was it not he who arranged for the Chilcot Inquiry? He would hardly come off badly in it now would he?

Manipulator. Hope he likes hospital food because he will most likely blow up this weekend and next week to compensate.

If soldiers really knew why they were sent off to war they wouldn't go. But if politicans told the truth a lot of things would be different. The Iraq issue was about oil and Afghanistan is about Islamic terrorists fighting against captialism and that is always defended because it is an attack on big business and banking. After the bankers and governments betrayed all their citizens it is hard to convience people that this system isn't really just about the rich. The financial collapse is much more than about money....although the motivations were not.

The Brown versus Blair story is trying to make a false distinction. They are both the same side of the same coin, whatever the labour spinmeisters would like us to believe.

It is suggested that Blair and Brown apparently don't like each other - but that perception (whether true or false) serves Labour very well!

People were fed up with Blair so a 'change' was needed. They hoped that Brown stepping in as a substitute would give Labour a bounce without actually needing an election.

This worked for a little while, but the Brown Bounce soon wore off once people realised how incompetent he was.

The real question now is not about Iraq itself, but why our troops were so under funded and ill-equipped. This was mainly thanks to Gordon.

The other issue that needs to be looked at is why the Tories are slipping down the polls. Clearly this isn't because the voters have decided Brown isn't so bad after all.. but more likely because the Tories are still talking to themselves rather than the people.

Cameron should be shooting at an open goal, but instead it's one own-goal after another. He needs to forget all the 'heir-to-Blair' rubbish, and reassure people he will undo all the damage done by years of Big Nanny.

If Labour remain in power after the next election, we are all doomed.

No11 Disgusted,
Is it reasonable to assume that the only answer that would satisfy you would be one that you had allowed to be ingrained in your mind weeks ago?

No7 Susie,
What policies did you have in mind, saving the financial system in the UK from complete collapse, and putting forward a set of ideas adopted by developed nations throughout the world in order to save a global meltdown? Have you always told the truth?

I do find some of these comments interesting, as I appear to have been listening to a completely different enquiry...

Firstly, I would like to make it clear that I am not a support of Mr. Brown, and am unlikely to vote Labour at the next election (though I will admit, I'd rather have a 'bully' than a 'Mr. PR' anyday).

However, certainly compared to the awful 'barrister-esque' ducking and diving performed by Blair, I thought Mr. Brown gave a far more confident, direct, and dare I say it, honest response to the questions he was posed.

Obviously, he wanted to paint his own picture regarding decisions and funding and where he stood in the decision making process, and there were a couple of instances where a plain answer would have been preferable, but on the whole I think he conducted himself very well. He was there to defend himself after all...

The problem with these things is that the public generally have already made their mind up before any questioning has taken place, and because they don't hear the answers they want to hear, they rubbish the enquiry.

In short, the answers were far from perfect, but it was no where near as bad as some of the comments above are making out.

I was against the war, but nevertheless thought that Gordon Brown was assured and convincing. I was interested therefore to read the many hostile comments, showing that different people can have totally different impressions of the same performance.

Gordon Brown at the Iraq inquiry in six words: false, spinning, dodging, evasive, Grinning, fool.

#16 and you are not

#17 and there is no evidence that we have been actually saved yet, just the debt has been transferred to the national debt and that has to be sorted out and brown is not the man for that or we would be some way down that nearly 3 years on

Nick:

I was right in the previous blog.

You ARE angling for the job of ghostwriting his memoirs!

Be warned though, you'll need to have 'em ready to go to print BEFORE Blair's is out in September - he never likes following Blair in anything - you werent expecting to have a summer holiday this year were you?

17#

Susie's moral compass probably never told her she was born to be Prime Minister though, Sout... :-)

It appears there are those who were evidently watching a different broadcast. I do not recognise some of the comments at all, I suspect these are coming from those who have their minds already made up.

The trouble with 'tractor stats' is that they are only of use to those who want tractors.

So while Brown quotes the increase in defence spending year on year he neglects to mention the Eurofighter development costs taking a massive wadge and that there had, in fact, been a long term squeeze on Army funding.

Has anyone seen any footage of Eurofighters in Iraq/Afghanistan?

Cos I haven't

Two comments on this thread:
1. Conservative Central Office ought to back off from their organised mass blogging; this is overkill. Threads have to have some balance to keep the uncommitted looking at them. The message that we're all doomed and Labour are completely incompetent is not of interest to most.

2. 5. At 3:46pm on 05 Mar 2010, pablo1962 wrote:

"I just feel that had Mr Brown faced any form of decent cross examination then he would have been asked whether he is saying that all those people who have highlighted equipment shortages are liars."

I doubt if he would have said that. Soldiers complain about equipment like farmers complain about the weather - it's always wrong, there's never enough of what they want and it's always late. That doesn't mean I don't respect the job soldiers do. If I was in their position I'd do the same, except I wouldn't be in their position because I'm not brave enough. As Chancellor, his job was to take a realistic view of what the country could afford, not to give the generals a blank cheque every year. Perhaps they were at fault just a little bit for not foreseeing the kind of warfare they would be facing and identifying what they needed in time - that's their job after all. After the event, they are ruthless in protecting their own reputations - see the latest outburst from the ex-SAS boss. How is a politician supposed to answer that in the current climate? And when your conservatives get in, as they will, will you criticise their defence spending cuts? Alternatively, are you willing to see your taxes go up to protect the defence budget?

Lets be honest.

The Chillcott inquiry will I'm afraid prove pointless because all those who hold strong opinions are not going to change their views one iota, they are set in stone.

If this was the "Mother Theresa" inquiry with a panel of Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad and the Pope (just to ensure "truth" for those of faith) and a legal team of Perry Mason, Rumpole and Judge John Deed... If the outcome wasn't what the anti war and anti labour voices want (ie Blair/Brown blamed and the war declared illegal) the cry of "whitewash, whitewash" is as certain as night follows day.

That's why its pointless.

On another note I thought Brown was (surprisingly) accomplished today. The great debates may prove a little more difficult for Cameron and Cameron Lite than they think.

7 Susan

said non Tory Susan

"These last 13 years of Labour have been a farce of lost opportunities for Britain in order to feed the egos of two people at war with each other, Blair and Brown. I can only hope for the day when this awful period is over and this Labour Government consigned to history books."

On the subject of your politics being Susan.

No one is in the slightest doubt about "your politics" Susan. A flashing neon sign with "I'm a Neo Con" would make it no clearer, what people find laughable s the Tory denial.

Lets be honest Susan, if/when the "Tea Party" movement starts in the UK you'll be on that bandwagon before you can say Sarah Palin.

#16, IPGABP1:

I have no answers ingrained in my mind. I'm open to any plausible explanations for what really happened. So far, I just haven't heard any.

This beggars belief.

Our troops shot to pieces because they didn't have kevlar vests, chinook helicopters lying idle in the UK while troops are blown to bits travelling in landrovers.

And Brown has no regrets over the financing of the Iraq war.

Let's stop the spin and see the facts - i.e. MoD troop equipment budgets for the last ten years in detail.

I watched a little of the performance today - what dismayed more than anything else was his reference , on more than one occasion , to 'the next time' . Are we really drifting into a '1984' situation when to maintain the status quo permanent war is the only option....

When considering whether the troops were adequately funded, we have to take into account not just the money spent, but the money wasted. Remember the Chinook Fiasco? See here for details and also see the Public Accounts Committee report.

Chucking money around does not solve the problem when everything is micromanaged by people who are institutionally incompetent.

Brown will be telling us next that the NHS isn't underfunded either....

Just to nip in and fulfil one my core duties, a very late - and rather short, you'll be disappointed to hear - Thought For The Weekend. It pertains to Gordon Brown. The Prime Minister. OUR Prime Minister. Guess you all saw him at Iraq today, right? And whatever one's views on the merits and demerits of what he said, we can all agree that the way he said it was impressive. He said what he said and said it very well is what I mean. Relaxed, amiable yet full of gravitas, no sign of the petulant bully we heard about last week. And looking good too. Really fresh and sober and clean. Almost like the Man from the Pru. Whatever he was selling you'd buy it, wouldn't you? And what is he selling? Well who knows. But the thought which struck me was that maybe this guy is a late developer - maybe he's only now really growing into the role of national leader and head honcho of the Labour Party. Maybe he's made it through the rain and kept his world protected, as it were. Made it through the rain and kept his point of view. Could just be that his best days lie ahead. A narrow win on June 3rd, a full term with his own mandate, and then another after that. Retirement with full honours at the age of 70 or so, as a much loved and much respected elder statesman. Then a quarter century of happy retirement and when the man comes calling, a Churchill like parade through Central London to the Abbey. Could just be, couldn't it? And maybe not, of course, but very very possible. Quite a thought, isn't it? ... for the weekend.

It must be very gratifying for those who constantly attack Brown, that they twist everything to fit their preconceived beliefs. That way they are always right. The strange thing is that they operate in exactly the same as Brown - it is just that they do not share his beliefs.

What is very sad is that so many people believe that politicians are the only people who affect our lives. If you asked people you would find that many people are more influenced by the philosophy that come from the X Factor, Jordan, Facebook, iPods, advertising or from human traits ranging from self-sacrifice to bullying. Society is much more complicated the Brown = Bad and Cameron = Good or even anything that happens in Parliament.

17. At 4:50pm on 05 Mar 2010, IPGABP1 wrote:

"No7 Susie,
What policies did you have in mind, saving the financial system in the UK from complete collapse, and putting forward a set of ideas adopted by developed nations throughout the world in order to save a global meltdown? Have you always told the truth?"

Well seeing that most of those polices were actually cribbed from either the UK opposition parties or other countries governments, people like you are very quick to remind us of what Brown/Darling did but not so quick to remind us from whom the rescue polices came or the fact that some had been predicting 'doom' for some time...

@32

"Let's stop the spin and see the facts - i.e. MoD troop equipment budgets for the last ten years in detail.@

I'm pretty sure these are publicly available. Or at least overall MoD spending is. And I'm pretty sure it rose every year with Brown as Chancellor.

As for kevlar vests, chinook helicopters on the ground in Britain... are you suggesting Brown organises and manages all aspects of the war and defence spending? He gives the money, its up to Hoon or whoever is defence secretary and the generals to execute the war.

I have to agree 100% with an earlier poster who said that the ex-generals complaining about funding is as predictable as farmers complaining about weather/trade unions complaining about pay etc etc. I actually think its slightly disgusting that everyone wants to pin the deaths of our soldiers in Iraq on somebody in charge of the budget. I think its doubly disgusting that ex-generals feel it is correct to come out in public and criticise.

Lets face it, these ex-generals know that everyone paper will be willing to print anti-Brown stories, but none of them would dare print stories against these generals themselves.

#26 verymuchso

"The message that we're all doomed and Labour are completely incompetent is not of interest to most."

You think not? Really?

"Soldiers complain about equipment like farmers complain about the weather - it's always wrong, there's never enough of what they want and it's always late. "

Farmers do have a tough job, that's true - but your comparison with soldiers at war shows a breathtaking lack of insight. When farmers plough a field, they are not in danger of being blown up by improvised explosive devices. Soldiers in Afghanistan on the other hand encounter roadside bombs every day, and face increased danger due to unsuitable vehicles and lack of helicopters.

Blaming the generals, as you appear to do, is rather shoddy.

@32

"Brown will be telling us next that the NHS isn't underfunded either.... "

Is this really the argument you're making? NHS which has had the biggest investment in its history. From Brown/Blair. Start checking some facts.

3,4,11: Come on you lot, give the man a break. Would you prefer he didn't express regret?

In general: It's quite clearly the case that UK involvement in Iraq was always Blair's idea, and Brown always kept his distance. The only others pushing for more involvement at the time were the Tories. Yes, Brown's answers were evasive at times, but let's be realistic here - he's hardly going to open up a new massive rift between him and Blair a few weeks before a general election. If you think anyone politician would, you're just kidding yourselves. Let's just be thankful that that dangerous man Blair is no longer in power, so this sort of thing won't happen again.

And please, people, let's keep the debate above personal insults about the way that the man grins.

24. At 5:33pm on 05 Mar 2010, saah_papa wrote:

"It appears there are those who were evidently watching a different broadcast. I do not recognise some of the comments at all, I suspect these are coming from those who have their minds already made up."

You mean, like the answers on Browns 'crib' sheets?...

# 33 Saga

"Whatever he was selling you'd buy it, wouldn't you?

Ah, Saga! The famous showman P.T Barnum had something to say about this! "There's a sucker born every minute!"

(Actually, Barnum may not have said it - but if people believe it, it proves the point)

In reality, men and women died due to lack of necessary equipment, with warnings that this would happen voiced ahead of time and with foresight.

But hang on. Let's see how it was in theory and with hindsight. No costs restraints on any aspect of conduct of the conflicts, all requests for equipment met as soon as they were made, the military called the shots etc etc. No lack of funding. No mistakes in budget setting. No trumping of conflict reality by Treasury accounting protocols.

So that's all right then.

Just a couple of things, vms....

26. At 5:34pm on 05 Mar 2010, verymuchso wrote:
"Two comments on this thread:
1. Conservative Central Office ought to back off from their organised mass blogging; this is overkill. Threads have to have some balance to keep the uncommitted looking at them. The message that we're all doomed and Labour are completely incompetent is not of interest to most."

Just because people dont like Brown and dont trust a word he says does not automatically make them tories. A typical Labour obsessive knee jerk response, if I may be as perjorative in my judgement as you are.

"2. 5. At 3:46pm on 05 Mar 2010, pablo1962 wrote:

"I just feel that had Mr Brown faced any form of decent cross examination then he would have been asked whether he is saying that all those people who have highlighted equipment shortages are liars."

"I doubt if he would have said that. Soldiers complain about equipment like farmers complain about the weather - it's always wrong, there's never enough of what they want and it's always late."

True. Never going to make all of them happy.

"As Chancellor, his job was to take a realistic view of what the country could afford, not to give the generals a blank cheque every year."

Yep, also true.

"Perhaps they were at fault just a little bit for not foreseeing the kind of warfare they would be facing and identifying what they needed in time - that's their job after all."

Partly true. The strategic direction and the way that an armed force is set up to face future armed conflicts is decided by government, based on the reccomendations of the chiefs of defence staff. Hence, the Strategic Defence Reviews, the last of which was undertaken in 1998. As we all know, 9/11 changed a lot, but it could also have been argued that following Gulf War 1 that the presence of troops and aircraft policing the No Fly Zones in the north and south of Iraq should have given anyone in a position of decision making a pretty strong clue as to how things were going to go. However, having said that, that would still have been along the lines of state on state warfare as against the asymmetric/counter insurgency type warfare which the UK forces faced in Basra after the invasion and certainly face in Afghanistan now. They are, as I'm sure you appreciate, completely different kinds of warfare.

"After the event, they are ruthless in protecting their own reputations - see the latest outburst from the ex-SAS boss. How is a politician supposed to answer that in the current climate?"

By telling the truth. Simple. If it is a case of the MoD having the money but the chiefs of staff wasting it on the wrong kit at the wrong time, then for christs sake say so. The MoD has long needed a shake up from top to bottom and no defence secretary in recent living memory has had the cojones to do it. But those at the sharp end, who end up making the decisions on the ground, who end up visiting the relatives of the fallen, who have to pick up those who have seen their mates killed beside them can only call it as they see it. I would have thought for someone to have reached the position of Chief Of the SAS, he would have been on the sharp end of some serious stuff over the years... not the kind of role you get handed out through dead mans shoes, so to speak. But not all of the chiefs are of the same type and some of them recently have been a disgrace to their uniform. The chiefs cannot be absolved of responsibility for what has happened, regardless of how their hands may have been tied.

"And when your conservatives get in, as they will, will you criticise their defence spending cuts? Alternatively, are you willing to see your taxes go up to protect the defence budget?"

If they do the same as they did last time with the likes of Portillo and Bunter Soames did in the MoD, hell yes, without question. I have very serious doubts about Liam Fox's capability to discharge the post of SecDef. I dont know of any possible alternative in the tory party because I'm not a tory. All I do know is if the question is Bob Ainsworth, the answer is most certainly not Liam Fox. Will I criticise their cuts? Yes. Absolutely. The only time I will not, is if there is withdrawl from Afghanistan, the Falklands, Cyprus, etc and we just go back to protecting the UK and nothing else. But that would require a major Strategic Defence Review and a serious rethink of our position in the world, whether we still wish to be a permanent member of the Security Council... I know what I think personally, but that is a big decision. Would I be prepared to pay more tax to protect the defence budget? Well, considering the first duty of any government is the safety of its citizens, then yes. I would rather pay more tax to protect the defence budget than the social security one for a start. I would rather pay more tax to protect the defence budget at the expense of departments like DFID and BERR. But it depends on what kind of role on the world stage that you want the country to have.

If you want to be able to intervene in every conflict that comes along - Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghan, then that costs. And the higher you try to punch above your weight, the more it costs.

If you dont, it doesnt. Back to the SDR question again.

Its not possible to have it both ways. You cant do it on the cheap.

Sorry if the opening paragraph seems to be a bit of a jibe, but it was unnecessary. Your second paragraph posed some interesting questions that I've tried to answer honestly without political favouritism.

I listened with incredulity to our Prime Minister significantly misleading, possibly dissembling, today before Chilcot. He claimed all states who backed the UN Security Council Resolution 1441 ( of 8/11/02) believed Saddam possessed WMDs and he(Saddam) had not co-operated with the "international Community's" requirement he (Saddam as Iraq's President)make transparent his WMD capability. But Saddam's former head of military procurement and son-in-law to boot, Lietentant-General Kamel Hussein had revealed the dismantling of all Iraq's WMD in 1995.
( and the WMDs were never reconstituted).

I have set out demonstrable proof of this below.Nick Robinson's 'compare and contrast' blog commentary misses out this crucial aspect of evidence altogether.

In short, Tony Blair seemingly chose to believe Kamel on everything, except his revelations on total dismantlement of WMDs. Was Brown equally aware of Kamel's revelations?

-Dr David Lowry
Stoneleigh Surrey

Here is what Blair misleadingly told Parliament on Kamel's revelations on the eve of war
18 Mar 2003 : Column 760

Iraq
[Relevant document: The Fourth Report from the International Development Committee, on Preparing for the humanitarian consequences of possible military action against Iraq (HC444-I).]
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): I have to inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith).

12.35 pm
The Prime Minister (Mr. Tony Blair): I beg to move,


In August, it provided yet another full and final declaration. Then, a week later, Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to Jordan. He disclosed a far more extensive biological weapons programme and, for the first time, said that Iraq had weaponised the programme—something that Saddam had always strenuously denied. All this had been happening while the inspectors were in Iraq.
Kamal also revealed Iraq's crash programme to produce a nuclear weapon in the 1990s. Iraq was then forced to release documents that showed just how extensive those programmes were. In November 1996, Jordan intercepted prohibited components for missiles
18 Mar 2003 : Column 762

that could be used for weapons of mass destruction. Then a further "full and final declaration" was made. That, too, turned out to be false.


And here is a question querying this....


26 March 2003: Column 235W
PRIME MINISTER
Iraq
Llew Smith: To ask the Prime Minister pursuant to his statement of 18 March 2003, Official Report, columns 761–62, on the information provided by Hussein Kamal on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, if he will place in the Library the text of the interview. [104714]
The Prime Minister: Following his defection, Hussein Kamal was interviewed by UNSCOM and by a number of other agencies. Details concerning the interviews were made available to us on a confidential basis. The UK was not provided with transcripts of the interviews.

The interview with Hussein Kamel: the text of the transcript is here [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]


And here is the explanation.
Gen. Hussein Kamel, the former director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation, in charge of Iraq's weapons programme, defected to Jordan on the night of 7 August 1995, together with his brother Col. Saddam Kamel. Hussein Kamel took crates of documents revealing past weapons programmes, and provided these to UNSCOM. Iraq responded by revealing a major store of documents that showed that Iraq had begun an unsuccessful crash programme to develop a nuclear bomb (on 20 August 1995). Hussein and Saddam Kamel agreed to return to Iraq, where they were assassinated (23 February 1996).
The interview was conducted in Amman on 22 August 1995, 15 days after Kamel left Iraq. His interviewers were:

Rolf Ekeus, the former executive chairman of Unscom (from 1991 to 1997).
Professor Maurizio Zifferero, deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and head of the inspections team in Iraq.
Nikita Smidovich, a Russian diplomat who led UNSCOM's ballistic missile team and former Deputy Director for Operations of UNSCOM.
During the interview, Major Izz al-Din al-Majid (transliterated as Major Ezzeddin) joins the discussion (p.10). Izz al-Din is Saddam Hussein's cousin, and defected together with the Kamel brothers. He did not return with them to Iraq in 1996, moving instead to Jordan and now to an unknown European country.
In the transcript of the interview, Kamel states categorically:

"I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed"
(p. 13).

Kamel specifically discussed the significance of anthrax, which he portrayed as the "main focus" of the biological programme (pp.7-8). Smidovich asked Kamel: "were weapons and agents destroyed?"
Kamel replied: "nothing remained".
He confirmed that destruction took place "after visits of inspection teams. You have important role in Iraq with this. You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq." (p.7)
Kamel added: "I made the decision to disclose everything so that Iraq could return to normal." (p.8)
Furthermore, Kamel describes the elimination of prohibited missiles: "not a single missile left but they had blueprints and molds for production. All missiles were destroyed." (p.8)
On VX, Kamel claimed: "they put it in bombs during last days of the Iran-Iraq war. They were not used and the programme was terminated." (p.12).
Ekeus asked Kamel: "did you restart VX production after the Iran-Iraq war?"
Kamel replied: "we changed the factory into pesticide production. Part of the establishment started to produce medicine [...] We gave insturctions [sic] not to produce chemical weapons." (p.13).
Despite the significance of these claims, it was not known that Kamel made this assertion until February 2003. Kamel's claim was first carried on 24 February 2003 by Newsweek, who reported that Kamel told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims (Newsweek, 3/3/03). Newsweek reported that the weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Newsweek reported.
However, these facts were "hushed up by the U.N. inspectors" in order to "bluff Saddam into disclosing still more", according to Newsweek.
CIA spokesman Bill Harlow angrily denied the Newsweek report. "It is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue," Harlow told Reuters the day the report appeared (Reuters, 24 February 2003).
On Wednesday (26 February 2003), a complete copy of the Kamel transcript -- an internal UNSCOM/IAEA document stamped "sensitive" -- was obtained by Glen Rangwala.

The Significance of Hussein Kamel
Kamel's departure from Iraq was the major turning point of the inspections saga. As UNSCOM said in their final substantive report:
" the overall period of the Commission's disarmament work must be divided into two parts, separated by the events following the departure from Iraq, in August 1995, of Lt. General Hussein Kamal".
(25 January 1999 letter to U.N. Security Council, Enclosure 1, para.12).
Kamel's defection has been cited repeatedly by President Bush and leading officials in both the UK and US as evidence that (1) Iraq has not disarmed; (2) inspections cannot disarm it; and (3) defectors such as Kamel are the most reliable source of information on Iraq's weapons.

Prime Minister Tony Blair in his statement to the House of Commons on 25 February 2003, said: "It was only four years later after the defection of Saddam's son-in-law to Jordan, that the offensive biological weapons and the full extent of the nuclear programme were discovered."
President Bush declared in a 7 October 2002 speech: "In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq's military industries defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions."
Colin Powell's 5 February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council claimed: "It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons. The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law."
In a speech on 26 August 2002, Vice-President Dick Cheney said Kamel's story "should serve as a reminder to all that we often learned more as the result of defections than we learned from the inspection regime itself".
Hussein Kamel was not in the process of providing excuses for the Iraqi regime. Much of the interview is taken up with his criticisms of its mistakes: "They are only interested in themselves and not worried about economics or political state of the country. [..] I can state publicly I will work against the regime." (p.14). And yet, when it comes to prohibited weapons, Kamel is unequivocal: Iraq destroyed these weapons soon after the Gulf War.

The Significance of the Kamel Transcript
The above quotes from President Bush, Prime Minister Blair and Secretary Powell refer to material produced by Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War. The administration has cited various quantities of chemical and biological weapons on many other occasions -- weapons that Iraq produced but which remain unaccounted for. All of these claims refer to weapons produced before 1991. According to Kamel's transcript, Iraq destroyed all of these weapons in 1991.
Kamel's statement casts into new light the claims made by the Iraqi government that it destroyed its non-conventional weapons in the period immediately after the end of the Gulf War. This topic remains highly potent, with Hans Blix declaring that "[o]ne of three important questions before us today is how much might remain undeclared and intact from before 1991" (statement of 27 January 2003 to the Security Council). If Kamel is to be taken as seriously as the UK and US administrations have previously held him to be, then his claim that "[a]ll weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed" should be taken seriously.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This briefing was produced by Glen Rangwala. Thanks to Seth Ackerman of FAIR for his assistance in putting it together.

Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction,
said Hussein Kamel in 1995


Brent Sadler (CNN): “Can you state here and now - does Iraq still to this day hold weapons of mass destruction?”



Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law: “No. Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction. I am being completely honest about this.”





This is a snippet from a TV interview on 21 September 1995, a transcript of which can be read on CNN’s website [1] today, and probably could have been read there in March 2003, when the US/UK invaded Iraq, ostensibly because it possessed “weapons of mass destruction”.



Hussein Kamel was in a position to know what he was talking about since for almost a decade he had been in administrative control of Iraq’s proscribed weapons programmes, as the director of Iraq’s Military Industrialisation Corporation.



Six weeks earlier, on 7 August 1995, Kamel had left Iraq for Jordan, where he was interviewed by UN inspectors (and by MI6 and the CIA). He later – February 1996 – returned to Iraq and was assassinated.



UNSCOM/IAEA “note for the file”

A UN inspection team, led by the first head of UNSCOM, Rolf Ekeus, interviewed Hussein Kamel on 22 August 1995. A 15-page “note for the file” on the interview (headed UNSCOM/IAEA SENSITIVE) came into the public domain a few weeks before the US/UK invasion of Iraq in March 2003 [2]. UNSCOM was the UN inspection body responsible for chemical and biological weapons and missiles, the IAEA for nuclear issues.



In the “note for the file”, Hussein Kamel is quoted as saying:



“All weapons – biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed.” (p13).



On chemical weapons, he said:



“All chemical weapons were destroyed. I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons.” (p13)



Earlier (p7), he described anthrax as the “main focus” of Iraq’s biological programme and when asked “were weapons and agents destroyed?”, he replied: “nothing remained”.



Asked about the 819 Soviet-made missiles Iraq was known to have purchased in the 1980s, he replied:



“Not a single missile left, but they had blueprints and molds for production. All missiles were destroyed.” (p8)



At the time of the interview in August, UN inspectors had been in Iraq for over 4 years. In that time, they had destroyed lots of proscribed material – missiles, chemical agents, weapons and production facilities, etc – that had been declared to them by Iraq. What Kamel was telling them was that Iraq had unilaterally destroyed the material that Iraq hadn’t declared, in particular, biological weapons and related material that the inspectors had only recently learned about.



The CIA and MI6 also interviewed Kamel in August 1995, and he told them the same story.



Valuable informant?

In the months before the US/UK invasion of Iraq, the US and UK Governments continually cited Hussein Kamel as a valuable informant about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” and as proof that interrogation of Iraqis who participated in these programmes, rather than detective work by UN inspectors, was the way to locate and destroy them. This was part of making the case for taking military action against Iraq – we were meant to infer that, if other defectors like him did not emerge, then invasion and occupation would be necessary in order to disarm Iraq.



Needless to say, in the months before the invasion, US/UK spokesmen consistently omitted to mention that Hussein Kamel had told UN inspectors that “all weapons – biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed”.



In a speech on 7 October 2002, President Bush declared [3]:



“In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq’s military industries [Hussein Kamel] defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions.”



The President did not tell his audience that as of August 1995, according to Kamel, “all weapons – biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed”.



Likewise, in his presentation to the Security Council on 5 February 2003, Secretary of State, Colin Powell, claimed [4]:



“It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons. The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein’s late son-in-law. UNSCOM also gained forensic evidence that Iraq had produced VX and put it into weapons for delivery.”



Colin Powell made it clear that his Security Council presentation was the product of his personal appraisal of the available intelligence. But he apparently failed to notice that Kamel had told UN inspectors that “all weapons – biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed”, which rendered his presentation somewhat less than complete.



Likewise, on 18 March 2003, Prime Minister Blair told the House of Commons [5]:



“In August [1995], it [Iraq] provided yet another full and final declaration. Then, a week later,

Saddam’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to Jordan. He disclosed a far more extensive biological weapons programme and, for the first time, said that Iraq had weaponised the programme – something that Saddam had always strenuously denied. All this had been happening while the inspectors were in Iraq.



“Kamal also revealed Iraq’s crash programme to produce a nuclear weapon in the 1990s.Iraq was

then forced to release documents that showed just how extensive those programmes were.”



Plainly, in Prime Minister Blair’s opinion, Kamel had provided reliable evidence about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”. But the Prime Minister chose not to divulge to the House of Commons that Kamel also told UN inspectors that “all weapons – biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed”.



Had he done so, the House of Commons would not have voted for military action against Iraqa few hours later.



(Shortly afterwards, Labour MP, Llew Smith, asked the Prime Minister “pursuant to his statement of 18 March 2003 ... on the information provided by Hussein Kamal on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, if he will place in the [House of Commons] Library the text of the interview”. Blair’s disingenuous reply on 26 March 2003 was [6]:



“Following his defection, Hussein Kamal was interviewed by UNSCOM and by a number of other agencies. Details concerning the interviews were made available to us on a confidential basis. The UK was not provided with transcripts of the interviews.”



By then, the UNSCOM/IAEA “note for the file” was in the public domain.)



Importance to UNSCOM

Hussein Kamel’s defection was a very important event in the history of the UN inspection ofIraq in the 1990s. After the inspectors were forced out of Iraq in December 1998, because Clinton and Blair were going to bomb Iraq, UNSCOM wrote in its final report [7]:



“... the overall period of the Commission’s disarmament work must be divided into two parts, separated by the events following the departure from Iraq, in August 1995, of Lt. General Hussein Kamal.” (Paragraph 12)



UN inspectors learned a great deal as a result of Hussein Kamel’s defection (a) because of what he told them directly, and (b) because his defection forced Iraq to reveal other aspects of its proscribed weapons programmes. In particular, inspectors learned the full extent of Iraq’s biological weapons programme and, that back in 1990/91, Iraq had engaged in an (unsuccessful) crash programme to develop a nuclear weapon. Kamel also revealed that Rolf Ekeus’ own Arabic translator, a Syrian, was an Iraqi agent who had been reporting to Kamel himself.



UNMOVIC – UNSCOM’s successor – published a comprehensive survey of Iraq’s proscribed weapons programmes (apart from its nuclear programme) on 6 March 2003, entitledUnresolved Disarmament Issues: Iraq’s Proscribed Weapons Programmes [8]. This says of Kamel’s defection:



“In early August 1995, Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamal defected to Jordan. Following the defection, Iraq stated that Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamal had been responsible for the decision to hide aspects of its WMD programmes, including the decision to cover up the BW programme. Shortly after the defection, Iraq handed over to UNSCOM boxes of documents that had been stored at Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamal’s chicken farm, known as Haidar Farm. The documents were records relating to Iraq’s WMD programmes and comprised research papers, plans, photographs, videotapes and other material. Although not a complete record, they provide a considerable insight into the programmes and their achievements.



“Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamal’s defection also precipitated new disclosures by Iraqconcerning its WMD programmes, particularly in the biological field.”



Hussein Kamel’s defection was very important for the inspection process. His name comes up constantly in UN inspection reports. Judging by what he told UN inspectors (and CNN), he had turned against Saddam Hussein’s regime and it was difficult to believe that he giving false information on its behalf. Certainly, there is no suggestion in UN reports that the information he supplied was anything other than accurate. But, to the best of my knowledge, nowhere in these reports is there a mention of his extraordinary assertion that Iraq no longer possessed any “weapons of mass destruction”. And, nor is there any sign that UNSCOM as a body began to believe that Iraq was in reality disarmed.



Why so little impact?

Why did Hussein Kamel’s revelations that Iraq no longer possessed any “weapons of mass destruction” have so little impact on UNSCOM? Let’s go back to the beginning.



Disarmament obligations were imposed upon Iraq by the Security Council after the Gulf War, in a series of resolutions beginning with Resolution 687 [9] passed in 3 April 1991. This demanded that Iraq give up chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres, and “undertake not to use, develop, construct or acquire” these weapons in future. Resolution 687 also established a Special Commission of inspectors (aka UNSCOM), which, together with nuclear inspectors from the IAEA, was to effect disarmament and set up a permanent system of monitoring to ensure that Iraq didn’t develop any of these proscribed weapons in future.



In addition, Resolution 687 laid down that the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq when it invaded Kuwait in August 1990 would be lifted when Iraq met these disarmament obligations.



From the outset, the US made it clear that, as long as Saddam Hussein remained in power, it would not honour the obligation in Resolution 687 to lift economic sanctions, even if Iraqfulfilled the disarmament obligations laid down the Security Council. Throughout the 90s, both the Bush administration and the Clinton administration made this abundantly clear.



For example, on 20 May 1991, President George Bush said:



“At this juncture, my view is we don’t want to lift these sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power”.



On 14 January 1993, just before assuming office, President Clinton quashed suggestions that his administration would adopt a different stance towards Iraq, by saying:



“There is no difference between my policy and the policy of the present Administration.... I have no intention of normalizing relations with him [Saddam Hussein].” (New York Times, 15 January 1993)



On 26 March 1997, just after her appointment as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright said[10]:



“We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted. Our view, which is unshakable, is that Iraq must prove its peaceful intentions. It can only do that by complying with all of the Security Council resolutions to which it is subjected.



“Is it possible to conceive of such a government under Saddam Hussein? When I was a professor, I taught that you have to consider all possibilities. As Secretary of State, I have to deal in the realm of reality and probability. And the evidence is overwhelming that Saddam Hussein’s intentions will never be peaceful.”



Regime change in Iraq was US policy long before George Bush came to power in January 2001 – and long before it became official US policy when Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act on 31 October 1998 after it was passed overwhelmingly by the US Congress. Section 3 of it states (see, for example, [11]):



“It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.”



The Clinton policy was “regime change” by economic sanctions, with devastating effect on the Iraqi people. In 2002, the Bush policy became “regime change” by military action. Essential to both was the maintenance of the fiction that Iraq retained effective “weapons of mass destruction”.



(There is little doubt that the UK concurred with the US on this matter, though it was more reticent in stating it bluntly in public. At the Security Council meeting at which resolution 687 was passed, the British Ambassador to the UN, David Hannay said [12]:



“My Government believes that it will in fact prove impossible for Iraq to rejoin the community of civilized nations while Saddam Hussein remains in power.”)



UNSCOM accounting

That was the political background. Happily for the US (and the UK), the mode of operation of UNSCOM (and its successor organisation UNMOVIC) meant that the disarmament process could be spun out indefinitely – and economic sanctions maintained indefinitely.



UNSCOM inspectors set out to account for what happened to all proscribed weapons and related material imported into Iraq or manufactured by Iraq before the Gulf War. A vast amount of these had been used up in the Iran-Iraq war (and a small number of missiles and warheads in the Gulf War). Some were destroyed by US/UK bombing in the Gulf War. Iraqdestroyed a lot in the summer of 1991, without declaring their existence to UNSCOM. UNSCOM itself destroyed all that had been declared to it by Iraq.



For each proscribed item – a particular warhead, for example – the question for UNSCOM was: has the total quantity imported/manufactured been used up in war or destroyed by US/UK bombing or by Iraq – or destroyed by UNSCOM itself? Unless Iraq supplied documentary or other evidence of the quantity used or destroyed, then the total quantity imported/manufactured (apart from any destroyed by UNSCOM itself) was deemed “unaccounted for”. Of course, this didn’t mean that this quantity existed – merely that Iraqhad been unable to convince UNSCOM that it had been used or destroyed.



UNSCOM’s objective was to get Iraq to produce documentary or other evidence of use/destruction to convince it to reduce the “unaccounted for” quantity to zero for each item. With the best will in the world, this was next to impossible, given the destruction that Iraq had undergone in the Iran-Iraq and Gulf Wars. The potential for spinning out the disarmament process indefinitely is obvious.



The fact that a member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, who was in a position to know, had stated bluntly that Iraq no longer possessed “weapons of mass destruction” was irrelevant to this accounting process – since he didn’t supply evidence of their use/destruction.



Qualitatively disarmed?

The final UNSCOM report of January 1999 [7] specifies many items with “unaccounted for” quantities. But, in reality, by this time UNSCOM was confident that the bulk of Iraq’s proscribed weapons and related material, and the means of producing more, had been eliminated. No doubt Hussein Kamel’s assertion that Iraq no longer possessed “weapons of mass destruction” played a part in establishing this confidence.



But, what evidence is there that UNSCOM was confident that Iraq’s proscribed weapons had been more or less eliminated?



First, the Amorim report. After the UN inspectors were forced out of Iraq by Clinton and Blair in December 1998, as a preliminary step towards re-establishing an inspection regime in Iraq, the Security Council established a panel, chaired by Ambassador Amorim of Brazil, to assess the degree to which Iraq had been disarmed and to propose a way forward. In March 1999, the panel concluded [13]:



Nuclear weapons

“On the basis of its findings, the [International Atomic Energy] Agency is able to state that there is no indication that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons or any meaningful amounts of weapon-usable nuclear material or that Iraq has retained any practical capability (facilities or hardware) for the production of such material.” (paragraph 14)



Proscribed Missiles

“With regard to items selected as key for the purpose of the verification of the material balance of proscribed missiles and related operational assets, UNSCOM was able to destroy or otherwise account for: (a) 817 out of 819 imported operational missiles of proscribed range; (b) all declared mobile launchers for proscribed Al Hussein class missiles, including 14 operational launchers; the disposition of 9 of the 10 imported trailers used for the indigenous production of mobile launchers; and the destruction of 56 fixed missile launch sites; (c) 73 to 75 chemical and biological warheads of the declared 75 operational special warheads for Al Hussein class missiles; 83 of the 107 imported and some 80 of the 103 indigenously produced conventional warheads declared by Iraq to be in its possession at the time of the adoption of resolution 687.” (paragraph 16)



Chemical weapons

“UNSCOM has supervised or been able to certify the destruction, removal or rendering harmless of large quantities of chemical weapons (CW), their components and major chemical weapons production equipment as follows: (a) over 88,000 filled and unfilled chemical munitions; (b) over 600 tonnes of weaponized and bulk CW agents; (c) some 4,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals; (d) some 980 pieces of key production equipment; (e) some 300 pieces of analytical instruments. The prime CW development and production complex inIraq was dismantled and closed under UNSCOM supervision and other identified facilities have been put under monitoring. It was pointed out that UNSCOM has been able to establish material balances of major weapon-related elements of Iraq’s CW programme only on the basis of parameters as declared by Iraq but not fully verified by UNSCOM.” (paragraph 19)



Biological weapons

“UNSCOM ordered and supervised the destruction of Iraq’s main declared BW production and development facility, Al Hakam. Some 60 pieces of equipment from three other facilities involved in proscribed BW activities as well as some 22 tonnes of growth media for BW production collected from four other facilities were also destroyed. As a result, the declared facilities of Iraq’s BW programme have been destroyed and rendered harmless.” (paragraph 23)



Overall conclusion

“The elements presented above indicate that, in spite of well-known difficult circumstances, UNSCOM and IAEA have been effective in uncovering and destroying many elements of Iraq’s proscribed weapons programmes in accordance with the mandate provided by the Security Council. It is the panel’s understanding that IAEA has been able to devise a technically coherent picture of Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme. UNSCOM has achieved considerable progress in establishing material balances of Iraq’s proscribed weapons. Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq’s proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated.” (paragraph 25)



(A year earlier, on 4 February 1998, the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee had made a similar assessment:



“UNSCOM and the IAEA have succeeded in destroying or controlling the vast majority of Saddam’s 1991 weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capability”.



See Paragraph 181 of the Butler report [14].)



Second, the evidence of Rolf Ekeus, the first head of UNSCOM, who left in 1997 to become Swedish Ambassador to Washington. On 23 May 2000, Ekeus addressed a seminar, entitledSanction in Iraq: Is the policy defensible?, at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. A portion of the question and answer session from the seminar is reproduced on the Campaign Against Sanctions in Iraq (CASI) website [15]. Asked if he thought that Iraq had been “qualitatively disarmed”, he replied:



“I would say that we felt that in all areas we have eliminated Iraq’s capabilities fundamentally. There are some question marks left.”



This wasn’t an isolated remark by Ekeus. It was made at the end of a dialogue in which Ekeus agreed that emphasis on the “quantitative disarmament” of Iraq, that is, the attempt to account for every last nut and bolt of Iraq’s proscribed weapons and related material, should be replaced by an emphasis on monitoring Iraqi facilities to attempt to ensure that Iraq’s proscribed weapons programmes were not revived.



An Associated Press report by George Gedda on 16 August 2000 (see [16]) confirms that this was Ekeus’ position:

“More optimistic is Swede Rolf Ekeus ... ‘I would say that we felt that in all areas we have eliminated Iraq's capabilities fundamentally’, Ekeus said in a speech at Harvard in May. “But rather than have UN inspectors try to track down whatever weapons remain, Ekeus believes the focus should be on preventing Iraq from engaging in a new weapons buildup.”

Establishing a permanent monitoring system was part of the original UNSCOM/IAEA mandate laid down by the Security Council in Resolution 687, and an elaborate monitoring system had been established with Iraq’s consent. When the UN inspectors were withdrawn on US orders in December 1998, in addition to monitoring by no-notice onsite inspection, some 300 sites were being continuously monitored remotely by electronic means without Iraqi obstruction, the data gathered being transmitted back to UNSCOM/IAEA headquarters in Baghdad.



Operation Desert Fox

During 1998, France, Russia and China, and the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, sought to bring the disarmament process to an end along these lines and to have economic sanctions lifted. But the US, and the UK, wouldn’t countenance the lifting of sanctions with Saddam Hussein still in power.



Ostensibly, the purpose of Operation Desert Fox, the US/UK bombing of Iraq in December 1998, was to punish it for obstructing UN inspectors. In reality, it was to bring the inspection process to an end, in order to eliminate the growing risk that the Security Council would declare that Iraq had fulfilled its disarmament obligations and lift economic sanctions.



Clinton and Blair knew that by bombing Iraq they were terminating the inspection process, that Iraq would not let the inspectors back in again after the bombing. We have that on the authority of Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary at the time, who told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on 17 June 2003 [17]:



“It [the bombing campaign] was quite deliberately undertaken by us in the knowledge this would mean that the inspections regime would come to an end and would have to be replaced by a policy of containment.”



Without inspectors in Iraq, the states that wanted to lift economic sanctions were no longer in a position to press their case.



Butler report

Hussein Kamel’s assertion in August 1995 that all Iraq’s proscribed weapons had been destroyed did alter the assessment of British intelligence about these weapons. This can be deduced from the report of the Butler inquiry [14], which the British Government established in February 2004 to investigate, inter alia, “the accuracy of intelligence on Iraqi WMD up to March 2003”. It reported in July 2004, by which time it was certain that significant quantities of proscribed material were not going to be found in Iraq.



The Butler report mentions Kamel several times, but without specifically referring to his most striking piece of information – that all proscribed weapons had been destroyed. The report summarises the available sources of intelligence as follows:



“Iraq was a very difficult intelligence target. Between 1991 and 1998, the bulk of information used in assessing the status of Iraq’s biological, chemical and ballistic missile programmes was derived from UNSCOM reports. In 1995, knowledge was significantly boosted by the defection of Hussein Kamil. But, after the departure of United Nations inspectors in December 1998, information sources were sparse, particularly on Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programmes.” (Paragraph 433)



Section 5.2 of the report (Paragraphs 155-209) deals with the intelligence from 1992 to 1998. Kamel’s contribution to the Joint Intelligence Committee [JIC]’s increased knowledge of Iraq’s nuclear programmes is recorded in Paragraph 169, of chemical weapons in Paragraph 177, of biological weapons in Paragraph 185 and of missiles in Paragraphs 199-200.



On chemical agents and weapons, Paragraph 177 says:



“In the same vein, in August 1995, drawing on evidence provided by Hussein Kamil after his defection, the JIC concluded that: ‘We assess [Iraq] may also have hidden some specialised equipment and stocks of precursor chemicals but it is unlikely they have a covert stockpile of weapons or agent in any significant quantity; Hussein Kamil claims there are no remaining stockpiles of agent.’ [JIC assessment, 24 August 1995]”



From that, it is fairly clear that the JIC believed Kamel when he said that chemical agents and weapons manufactured before the Gulf War had been destroyed. And there is no indication later in the report that the JIC’s original confidence in Kamel’s claim was overridden by later information.



But this material was still on UNSCOM’s “unaccounted for” list when its inspectors were withdrawn in December 1998, and was still on UNMOVIC’s “unaccounted for” list in March 2003. As we will see, on 18 March 2003, the Prime Minister reeled off a list of chemical agents and weapons from this “unaccounted for” list, and gave the impression that we had on UN authority that they definitely existed – even though it appears that in August 1995 the JIC believed Kamel when he said they had been destroyed.



From Paragraphs 199 and 200 of the report, it is clear that in August 1995 the JIC also believed what Kamel said about missiles and missile components having been destroyed:



“... the JIC assessment of August 1995 included an analysis of Iraq’s residual ballistic missile capabilities, taking into account information provided by Hussein Kamil after his defection. We noted in particular that the JIC recorded that: ‘UNSCOM has verified destruction of the declared Scuds (and the Iraqi derivatives) and their launchers and believes it has a satisfactory account of what happened to the rest. UNSCOM has also supervised destruction of components and much of the missile-related infrastructure . . .’ [JIC assessment, 24 August 1995]



“In the same reassuring vein, the JIC said that: ‘We would expect Kamil to know a lot about the missile programme . . . He has also said that all the Scuds and their components have been destroyed . . .’ [ibid]”



Nevertheless, the Prime Minister felt able to tell the House of Commons on 18 March 2003 that “an entire Scud missile programme” (whatever he meant by that) had been “left unaccounted for” by UNSCOM in 1998 and it was “palpably absurd” that Saddam had destroyed it.



However, it seems that the JIC did not believe Kamel about the destruction of biological agents and weapons. Paragraph 185 of the report says:



“... following the defection of Hussein Kamil and the Iraqi admission of an extensive biological weapons programme, the JIC had growing concerns that Iraq was concealing biological agent stocks.”



Newsweek report

One might have thought that the public assertion by Hussein Kamel on CNN in September 1995 that “Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction” would have been cited in public controversy about the existence or otherwise of these weapons in the lead up to the US/UK invasion of Iraq. But it wasn’t.



A few weeks before the invasion, the UNSCOM/IAEA “note for the file” on their interview with Kamel was leaked to Newsweek journalist John Barry. He wrote an article based on its contents, which was posted on the Newsweek website on 24 February 2003 and published in the 3 March 2003 issue (see, for example, [18]). The article began:



“Hussein Kamel, the highest-ranking Iraqi official ever to defect from Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, told CIA and British intelligence officers and UN inspectors in the summer of 1995 that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them.”



Barry was an experienced journalist – he headed The Sunday Times Insight team in the early 70s – who had acquired an extraordinary scoop. It merited a Newsweek cover story, but his editors placed it in the miscellaneous Periscope section of the magazine with the uninformative headline, The Defector’s Secrets. Furthermore, Newsweek’s online version had a sub-heading Before his death, a high-ranking defector said Iraq had not abandoned its WMD ambitions, which went against the main thrust of the story.



Barry’s article ended:



“The notes of the U.N. interrogation – a three-hour stretch one August evening in 1995 – show that Kamel was a gold mine of information. He had a good memory and, piece by piece, he laid out the main personnel, sites and progress of each WMD program. Kamel was a manager – not a scientist or engineer – and, sources say, some of his technical assertions were later found to be faulty. (A military aide who defected with Kamel was apparently a more reliable source of technical data. This aide backed Kamel’s assertions about the destruction of WMD stocks.) But, overall, Kamel’s information was ‘almost embarrassing, it was so extensive’, Ekeus recalled – including the fact that Ekeus’s own Arabic translator, a Syrian, was, according to Kamel, an Iraqi agent who had been reporting to Kamel himself all along.”



Clearly, Barry had contacted Rolf Ekeus (who interviewed Kamel in August 1995) in writing his story. Note that, as reported by Barry, Ekeus gave the impression that Kamel had been an informative and reliable witness.



One might have thought that this revelation would have provoked a major public controversy at a time when Bush and Blair were pushing hard to persuade the Security Council to endorse military action against Iraq, ostensibly because of its possession of “weapons of mass destruction”. But it didn’t. The Governments in Washington and London succeeded in quashing the story (with a little help from Rolf Ekeus) by telling a barefaced lie – both Governments denied that Kamel had said in 1995 that Iraq no longer possessed “weapons of mass destruction”.



The publication of Barry’s story online on 24 February 2003 stimulated Reuters to write a report the same day, headed US, Britain Deny Newsweek Defector Report [19], which began:



“The CIA on Monday denied a Newsweek magazine report that Saddam Hussein's son-in-law told the U.S. intelligence agency in 1995 that Iraq after the Gulf War destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them.”



In it, a CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, is quoted as saying:



“It is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue.”



and a “British government source” is quoted as saying:



“We’ve checked back and he didn’t say this. ... He said just the opposite, that the WMD program was alive and kicking.”



Other stories

A week later, on 1 March 2003, a small number of media stories appeared on both sides of the Atlantic (prompted, presumably, by the print edition of Newsweek reaching the news stands) – for example, in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Guardian and The Scotsman (see the website of the Traprock Peace Center [20] for the text of these). In several of them, Rolf Ekeus is quoted. Unlike the two Governments, he didn’t deny that Kamel had said that all proscribed material had been destroyed, but dismissed him as “a consummate liar”, without giving any examples of his lying – which seems to be at variance with what he had said to John Barry of Newsweek a week earlier. I remember Ekeus dismissing Kamel in a similar manner on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, in response to a story by Andrew Gilligan.



Happily for the US/UK, Ekeus’s dismissal of Kamel as “a consummate liar” was sufficient to kill the story – and a few weeks later the US/UK invaded Iraq.



Around the beginning of March 2003, the complete UNSCOM/IAEA “note for the file” came into the public domain, thanks to Glen Rangwala. It was his comment on it in February 2003[21] that first brought it to my attention.



Scott Ritter

An article by Scott Ritter called The Case for Iraq's Qualitative Disarmament was published in the June 2000 issue of Arms Control Today [22]. Ritter resigned as an UNSCOM inspector in August 1998. In this article, he quoted from the UNSCOM/IAEA “note for the file” on the Kamel interview (about Iraq’s crash nuclear weapons programme in 1990/91), so he must have been in possession of a copy at that time.



The thesis of his article was



“... because of the work carried out by UNSCOM, it can be fairly stated that Iraq was qualitatively disarmed at the time inspectors were withdrawn.”



(It should be noted that, in December 1998, he had advanced the very different thesis that “even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed” in an article in the New Republic – see, for example,[23]).

This view that Iraq was qualitatively disarmed underpinned his subsequent, vigorous opposition to the US/UK invasion of Iraq. But, he didn’t mention in this article Kamel’s statement to UNSCOM that Iraq no longer possessed “weapons of mass destruction”, which you might have thought was relevant to his thesis.



Nor did he mention it later, when he could have caused the US/UK warmongers considerable difficulty by releasing it, given that they were forever mentioning Kamel in support of their case. Imagine the confusion that would have ensued had he released the UNSCOM/IAEA “note for the file” on 24 September 2002, the day the British Government published its dossier on Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”.



Weapons being produced

Hussein Kamel got a mention in the British Government’s dossier [24]:



“Following the defection in August 1995 of Hussein Kamil, Saddam’s son-in-law and former Director of the Military Industrialisation Commission, Iraq released over 2 million documents relating to its mass destruction weaponry programmes and acknowledged that it had pursued a biological programme that led to the deployment of actual weapons.” (p37)



However, his revelation that “all weapons – biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed” was missing from the dossier.



Of course, Kamel was referring to weapons produced prior to the Gulf War in 1991 and destroyed afterwards. The dossier asserted that Iraq had retained some of these but also thatIraq was continuing to produce chemical and biological weapons in September 2002. Thus Prime Minister Blair said in his foreword to the dossier:



“What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons ...”



In presenting the dossier to the House of Commons on 24 September 2002, he asserted unequivocally [25]:



“... [Saddam Hussein’s] chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programme is not an historic left-over from 1998. The inspectors are not needed to clean up the old remains. His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The weapons of mass destruction programme is not shut down; it is up and running now.”



Only old remains

However, for reasons that can only be speculated about, Blair’s message on Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” shifted dramatically in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq – he stopped claiming that Iraq was currently manufacturing chemical and biological agents and weapons. To the best of my knowledge, he never repeated his confident assertion of 24 September 2002 that Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing” and producing agents and weapons.



Certainly, you will search in vain in the Prime Minister’s speech in the House of Commons on 18 March 2003 for any hint that Iraq had operational production facilities in March 2003. All he spoke about then was “old remains” manufactured before the Gulf War, which UN inspectors deemed “unaccounted for” in December 1998 – and which Hussein Kamel said had been destroyed. For example, he told the House of Commons that day [5]:



“When the inspectors left in 1998, they left unaccounted for 10,000 litres of anthrax; a far-reaching VX nerve agent programme; up to 6,500 chemical munitions; at least 80 tonnes of mustard gas, and possibly more than 10 times that amount; unquantifiable amounts of sarin, botulinum toxin and a host of other biological poisons; and an entire Scud missile programme. We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years – contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence – Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.”



Listeners were meant to understand from those remarks that UN inspectors had stated that this vast array of weapons and agents actually existed in 1998 and therefore must still exist in March 2003, since it was absurd to believe that Saddam Hussein destroyed it unilaterally in the interim. (In fact, it wasn’t all that absurd, since Saddam Hussein had destroyed loads of proscribed material unilaterally in 1991).



Of course, UN inspectors merely said that this material was “unaccounted for” in 1998, and was still unaccounted for in March 2003. They never said it actually existed. The Prime Minister engaged in verbal trickery to conjure “unaccounted for” material into existence in order to persuade the House of Commons to vote to take military action.



And he omitted to tell the House of Commons that a reliable witness had told UN inspectors that “all weapons – biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed”, causing the Joint Intelligence Committee to conclude that Iraq hadn’t much in the way of missile or of chemical weapons or agents.



What is more, he omitted to tell the House of Commons that any “unaccounted for” sarin, VX and botulinum that did exist would no longer be effective as warfare agents. A UN documentUnresolved Disarmament Issues: Iraq’s Proscribed Weapons Programmes [8], published on 6 March 2003, a couple of weeks before he spoke, said so:



“There is no evidence that any bulk Sarin-type agents remain in Iraq - gaps in accounting of these agents are related to Sarin-type agents weaponized in rocket warheads and aerial bombs. Based on the documentation found by UNSCOM during inspections in Iraq, Sarin-type agents produced by Iraq were largely of low quality and as such, degraded shortly after production. Therefore, with respect to the unaccounted for weaponized Sarin-type agents, it is unlikely that they would still be viable today.” (Unresolved Disarmament Issues, p73)



“VX produced through route B [the method used by Iraq in 1990] must be used relatively quickly after production (about 1 to 8 weeks), which would probably be satisfactory for wartime requirements.” (ibid, p82)



“Any botulinum toxin that was produced and stored according to the methods described byIraq and in the time period declared is unlikely to retain much, if any, of its potency. Therefore, any such stockpiles of botulinum toxin, whether in bulk storage or in weapons that remained in 1991, would not be active today.” (ibid, p101)



Iraq Study Group

Was Hussein Kamel telling the truth? It seems so. After the invasion, the CIA established the Iraq Study Group (ISG) to find Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”. Here are the key findings of its report [26] published on 6 October 2004.



On the central question - had Iraq any “weapons of mass destruction” in March 2003? – the ISG concluded:



“ISG has not found evidence that Saddam Husayn possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but the available evidence from its investigation – including detainee interviews and document exploitation – leaves open the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq although not of a militarily significant capability.” (Chapter 1, page 64)



When were the stocks unaccounted for by UN inspectors destroyed? Answer:



“Following unexpectedly thorough inspections, Saddam ordered Husayn Kamil in July 1991 to destroy unilaterally large numbers of undeclared weapons and related materials to conceal Iraq’s WMD capabilities.” (Chapter 1, page 46)



Specifically, on delivery systems:



“Desert Storm [1991 Gulf War] and subsequent UN resolutions and inspections brought many of Iraq’s delivery system programs to a halt. While much of Iraq’s long-range missile inventory and production infrastructure was eliminated, Iraq until late 1991 kept some items hidden to assist future reconstitution of the force. ...



“The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) has uncovered no evidence Iraq retained Scud-variant missiles [capable of reaching Cyprus], and debriefings of Iraqi officials in addition to some documentation suggest that Iraq did not retain such missiles after 1991.” (Chapter 3, Key Findings)



On nuclear weapons:



“Iraq Survey Group (ISG) discovered further evidence of the maturity and significance of the pre-1991 Iraqi Nuclear Program but found that Iraq’s ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after that date.



“Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.



“Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years.” (Chapter 4, Key Findings)



On chemical weapons:



“While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.” (Chapter 5, Key Findings)



On biological weapons:



“ISG judges that in 1991 and 1992, Iraq appears to have destroyed its undeclared stocks of BW weapons and probably destroyed remaining holdings of bulk BW agent. However ISG lacks evidence to document complete destruction.” (Chapter 6, Key Findings)



It seems that Hussein Kamel told the truth in August 1995.





David Morrison

4 May 2007

www.david-morrison.org.uk





References:

[1] www.cnn.com/WORLD/9509/iraq_defector/kamel_transcript/index.html

[2] [Unsuitable/broken URL removed by Moderator]

[3] www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html

[4] [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

[5] www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo030318/debtext/30318-06.htm

[6] www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo030326/text/30326w05.htm

[7] www.un.org/Depts/unscom/s99-94.htm

[8] [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

[9] www.david-morrison.org.uk/scrs/1991-0687.htm

[10] secretary.state.gov/www/statements/970326.html

[11] www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Legislation/ILA.htm

[12] [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

[13] www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/Amorim%20Report.htm

[14] [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

[15] www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2000/msg00701.html

[16] www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2000/msg00904.html

[17] www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmfaff/813/30617a03.htm

[18] www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0226-01.htm

[19] web.archive.org/web/20030306211839/http:/abcnews.go.com/wire/US/

reuters20030224_550.html

[20] traprockpeace.org/kamelcoverage.html

[21] middleeastreference.org.uk/kamel.html

[22] www.armscontrol.org/act/2000_06/iraqjun.asp

[23] www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/12/21/981221-scott.htm

[24] [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

[25] www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo020924/debtext/20924-01.htm

[26] https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>









Iraq aftermath: both Blair and Saddam were leaders without any clothes

By Dr David Lowry


With the Chilcot Inquriy into the invasion of Iraq and its catastrophic aftermath now quizzing the Prime Minister, this article highlights some under-reported facts on the fantasy WMDs claims.



Ex-prime minister Tony Blair' nauseating self-serving assertion he would have found a pretext to invade Iraq even if he had known Saddam Hussein had not possessed WMDs is another example of Blair distorting the truth over Iraq. Blair knew Saddam had no WMDs at least six years before he colluded with Bush to illegally invade Iraq. Now Brown is compounding the dissembling.

This was reported originally in US magazine Newsweek, in its 3 March 2003 edition, but it then disappeared from the pre-invasion public debate.

The evidence comes from General Hussein Kamel, the former director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation, in charge of Iraq's weapons programme, who defected to Jordan on 7 August 1995, together with his brother Col. Saddam Kamel. Hussein Kamel. They took with them crates of documents revealing past weapons programmes, and provided these to UNSCOM, the United Nations WMD inspection team. Hussein and Saddam Kamel ill-advisedly agreed to return to Iraq, where they were assassinated on 23 February 1996.

The interview was conducted in Amman on 22 August 1995, 15 days after Kamel left Iraq. His interviewers were: Rolf Ekeus, the former executive chairman of UNSCOM (from 1991 to 1997).

Professor Maurizio Zifferero, deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and head of the inspections team in Iraq.; and Nikita Smidovich, a Russian diplomat who led UNSCOM's ballistic missile team and former Deputy Director for Operations of UNSCOM.

In the transcript of the interview, Kamel states categorically: "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed"
(p. 13).
Kamel specifically discussed the significance of anthrax, which he portrayed as the "main focus" of the biological programme (pp.7-8). Smidovich asked Kamel: "were weapons and agents destroyed?" Kamel replied: "nothing remained".
Furthermore, Kamel describes the elimination of prohibited missiles: "not a single missile left but they had blueprints and molds for production. All missiles were destroyed." (p.8)
On VX nerve gas, Kamel claimed: "they put it in bombs during last days of the Iran-Iraq war. They were not used and the programme was terminated." (p.12).
Ekeus asked Kamel: "did you restart VX production after the Iran-Iraq war?"
Kamel replied: "we changed the factory into pesticide production. Part of the establishment started to produce medicine [...] We gave instructions not to produce chemical weapons." (p.13).

The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Newsweek reported. All this is available at: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]



Former left Labour MP Llew Smith, who represented Blaenau Gwent in South Wales, in fact also raised these matters in an unreported Parliamentary debate on Iraq held in June 2003, barely a month after George W.Bush proclaimed “mission accomplished”

(full debate in Hansard, 4 June 2003, columns 224-226). Smith pointed out “We continue to be told that war with Iraq was necessary because Iraq had those weapons of mass destruction, which were a threat to the world, and because it was willing to use them and could deliver them within 45 minutes, yet we have still not found those weapons.”



In fact Smith had been the first MP to raise doubts over the now infamous 45 minute claim. As long ago as October 2002 - just a month after the Government’s now notorious distorted dossier on Iraq’s fantasy WMDs was published - Smith asked Blair: ”
(1) what the basis is of the assertion at page 17 of his dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein is determined to retain the weapons of mass destruction that the dossier discusses; and if he will set out the technical basis for the assertion made at page 19 in the dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that chemical or biological weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes of an order to do so? Blair disingenuously and shamefacedly lied: “These points reflect specific intelligence information.”



Late Smith put the quotes set out above from General Kamel on the Parliamentary record, and revealed that on 26 March 2003 - barely days after the invasion began – he had asked Tony Blair as Prime Minister if he would place in the Parliamentary Library the text of the interview provided by Kamel on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The Prime Minister replied:
"Following his defection...Kamel was interviewed by UNSCOM and by a number of other agencies. Details concerning the interviews were made available to us on a confidential basis. The UK was not provided with transcripts of the interviews." [Official Report, 26 March 2003, 235W]



However, Smith rightly revealed that the BBC had those transcripts, and asked: Why then were the Prime Minister, the security services and President Bush's Administration prepared to believe the defector Kamel's information on the extent of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction procurement and development network, but not to listen to information on the Iraqi regime's destruction of weapons of mass destruction?



Sir John Chilcot should surely obtain the text of the interview from the Special Intelligence Service (M16) – or the BBC- at the earliest opportunity, and put its contents to Blair when he appears early next year at the Iraq Inquiry.



Just before Parliament’s Christmas recess, independent left MP Dai Davies, Llew Smith’s successor in Blaenau Gwent, submitted a Parliamentary early day motion (EDM number 455) which recalled the Kamel revelations and concluded with the call for “appropriate legal action to be taken [against Blair] to rectify this deeply disturbing situation.”

(https://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=40025&SESSION=903)

26 verymuchso

If you had no body armour when you were promised and everyone else has it then you would be complaining, mates of mine did but were told not enough purchased awaiting delivery, a cock up in logistics loaded RoRo this end no Ro Ro disembarkation facilities at other end, a private company in Kuwait manufactured a ramp to enable equipment to be delivered, it is said that Snatch landrovers were developed for NI, we were not allowed to use them in South Armagh because of IED threat, helos and feet only, so was desert IED's any different, I do not think so, helos were cut, equipment was short not from some whinger but someone who has suffered from equipment shortages.

Saga, I bet your weekends are a barrel of laughs if those are the thoughts you have. Gurning and grinning when you're answering questions on matters of state - revise that, avoiding answering questions on matters of state - can hardly qualify you as a "late developer".

Either you've been at mother's sherry again, or you watched a completely different car crash to the rest of us.

As these weekend thoughts tend to put a crimp on the weekend for the rest of us, would you mind removing it from your list of duties, this veritable Friday Afternoon Cranium Dump? Or at least broadcasting the contents of it??

33. saga.
i didnt agree with the war, especially now i know some of the facts...but as a person brown seemed quite cool and sincere to me. going against the majority right wing attack rabble on here over the last few bloggs... it seems clear to me that although he is not media friendly he appears to be statesman like, genuine enough....at least in comparison to the novice cameron and his side show of smiles, hot air and falseness.

33 sagamix

"Gordon Brown....... Guess you all saw him at Iraq today, right? And whatever one's views on the merits and demerits of what he said, we can all agree that the way he said it was impressive. He said what he said and said it very well is what I mean. Relaxed, amiable yet full of gravitas, no sign of the petulant bully we heard about last week. And looking good too. Really fresh and sober and clean. Almost like the Man from the Pru. Whatever he was selling you'd buy it, wouldn't you?"
======================================================================

It was a fairly good act if that's what you mean. He didn't really actually answer the questions put to him, and what he said seems to contradict the statements of many others involved in the issue. But he said it beautifully according to you - style over substance! And substance of dubious veracity at that. I'm surprised to see you speak so glowing of this. Today's pru man could be tomorrows PR man don't you think ? I suspect it'll be business as usual at the next PMQs - the sneering, grinning, evasive and angry Gordon will be back. We'll have to wait and see.

There is one problem, however, and that is with Gordon Brown, you have to watch not what he says, but watch what he actually does. And there lies the problem with we have seen today. This beautifully delivered account bears very little relation to what actually happened in reality. Like many things in Brown's sphere of influence.

And I don't think it's really for you to say "we can all agree.." on our behalf thank you very much. Speak for yourself. And as for "Whatever he was selling you'd buy it, wouldn't you?" ... errrmmmm..... no I wouldn't, and I didn't buy it today, and I woun't be buying it in the future either. If you did then, this is again entirely a matter for you. And "looking good" ????!??!?

PS I did reply to your reply to me on the other blog about the Bulger case, but it closed before I could post it. I noted that your lengthy and detailed reply consisted entirely of the issues and problems of the offenders. The victim and his family were not mentioned at all by you. This is exactly the problem I was talking about.

39. HanoiHooton

"3,4,11: Come on you lot, give the man a break. Would you prefer he didn't express regret?"

===================================

Actually, he didn't express regret ........

Eatonrifle 28

Yawn yawn, ho hum, while tapping fingers.

I see this is another intellectual, scintillating retort, that has not been used before. Original; I think not.

At least if you want to be derogatory use your own words.

36 AI

"I have to agree 100% with an earlier poster who said that the ex-generals complaining about funding is as predictable as farmers complaining about weather/trade unions complaining about pay etc etc."
========================================================================

An astonishingly ignorant comment, even by the standards of this blog. Analogies involving personal gain to make a point about against people concerned for the welfare of the men in their command, which incidently is their job by the way. Well thought out eh ?


"I actually think its slightly disgusting that everyone wants to pin the deaths of our soldiers in Iraq on somebody in charge of the budget."
=====================================================================
Even if it's true ?


"I think its doubly disgusting that ex-generals feel it is correct to come out in public and criticise."
======================================================================

Well, we can always rely on the government politicans to tell us the truth about what's going on.

Interesting that you can see "disgusting" qualities in other posts with such certainty, but seem to be completely oblivious to such qualities in your own.

38. At 6:12pm on 05 Mar 2010, Al wrote:

"@32

"Brown will be telling us next that the NHS isn't underfunded either.... "

Is this really the argument you're making? NHS which has had the biggest investment in its history. From Brown/Blair. Start checking some facts."

I agree, to suggest that the NHS is poorly funded is totally wrong, there is no shortage of funding, it's just that far to much is being spent on either top level management or crack-pot health campaigns (rather then on the areas that really matter) - all at the behest of the Government policy and targets.

39. At 6:15pm on 05 Mar 2010, HanoiHooton wrote:

"3,4,11: Come on you lot, give the man a break. Would you prefer he didn't express regret?"

He would be a very 'cold' person is he didn't hold that regret, it's the fact that he has to state the obvious, but then perhaps Brown does think that he sends out the 'I'm emotionally cold' message, which is quite possible considering some of the questions he chose to to be asked in that set piece interview the other weekend.

Sometimes stating the obvious is not required, and to do so sends out a completely different message...

# 38 Al

"NHS which has had the biggest investment in its history. From Brown/Blair. Start checking some facts"

Instead of telling me to check some facts, why don't you check what I actually wrote?! (# 32)

I wrote "Chucking money around does not solve the problem when everything is micromanaged by people who are institutionally incompetent."

We have great doctors and nurses, but the NHS is awash with bean-counters and target-chasers, yet there isn't enough money to pay for drugs (according to NICE).

I think the vitriol tonight is partially driven by, though of course it could never be admitted, that Brown came over in a very assured and statesman like way. Add that to the narrowing polls and the "Ashcroftgate" scandal and the panic is palpable.

It won't be long until further Tory cracks appear and the likes of Daniel Hannan and Redwood start to demand more and more right wing slash and burn europhobe policies to keep the core vote happy. Interesting few months ahead but my gut tells me to late to avoid the "bought election" victory for the Cons.

Ok lets except the money for the war was there, what wasnt there was the equipment needed to propect our troops, so the question is, who sent the troops into war knowing they didnt have the necessary equipment to protect them?.Just who is responsible, have we as a Country sunk to such depths that nobody in power will ever stand up and take responsibility.
Listening to Blair & Brown you think our troops went to war with everything in place which just beggars belief.

strictly,

"The victim and his family were not mentioned at all by you"

If you feel this then you didn't get the main thing I was trying to put across - probably my fault, I wrote the post in a bit of a hurry. Because it's a great deal about the victim and their family. That's the punchline - that the redemption of the damaged and brutal child, their living of a productive adult life, while understanding what they've done and somehow coming to terms with the spiritual agony of their guilt, this is the most moving and worthwhile tribute - monument if you like - to the innocent life lost. It's as much about the victim (and family) as it is about the perpetrator. If I was ever (god forbid) in that situation, it's how I hope I'd feel. I can't know, of course - no way can I know - but it's the only thing which I think would make me feel better. The ONLY thing. Vengeance wouldn't help me. When it comes to children we must go the extra mile and it's a credit to our justice system that (on the whole) we do.

Two blogs from Nick and both impressively miss the point. Brown was chancellor at the time of the war so the questions around his involvement should really focus on the funding.

As we know from Kevin Tebbit, the Treasury guillotined the MOD budget without any spending review. For me the most interesting of Brown's answers today was effectively confirming that this is true. OK, he did try and confuse the issue by repeatedly insisting that Treasury had increased MOD's money available. But if you listened to what he was saying them there was an admission that Treasury had changed the accounting rules without warning, and MOD had to make emergency cuts to spending plans to avoid overspending.

WWW9

The difficulty facing all politicians on issues affecting war and peace is their judgement is based on limited information.This was the case in relation to Iraq where the inspectors were obstructed,expelled from 1998-2002 while Saddam gave the impression he had WMD.

Consider the record,poison gas used against the Kurds,5000 dead,attempt to build nuclear bombs and strategic missiles,invasion of Iran and Kuwait.

His policy was to suggest he had WMD so as to intimidate his regional enemies while giving enough inspection not to provoke an US led invasion.
The problem was that by 2003 he was mistrusted and dangerous,either one of those enough to trigger military action.

Don`t assume bad faith,it`s assesment of risk,9/11 woke people up to the dangers of militant Islam,Saddam seemed to be a clear and present danger.We know there was no WMD but that`s in retrospect.Hindsight is the vanity of retrospective wisdom.

You would have thought he was being interviewed by his mate Piers...

What a let down - all those questions he could have been asked but, as always, the "Chin Wins"

Total electioneering!

BDZ,

"As these weekend thoughts tend to put a crimp on the weekend for the rest of us, would you mind removing it from your list of duties"

Not sure you're qualified to comment on anything with "thinking" or "thought" in the title.

27. Eatonrifle wrote:

"The Chillcott inquiry will I'm afraid prove pointless because all those who hold strong opinions are not going to change their views one iota, they are set in stone.
If this was the "Mother Theresa" inquiry with a panel of Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad and the Pope (just to ensure "truth" for those of faith) and a legal team of Perry Mason, Rumpole and Judge John Deed... If the outcome wasn't what the anti war and anti labour voices want (ie Blair/Brown blamed and the war declared illegal) the cry of "whitewash, whitewash" is as certain as night follows day."


A legal team... now there's a thought, Eaton. Someone with a background in international or constitutional law. Like the Dutch inquiry had.

Nah, daft idea, isn't it?
What can they offer that a good historian or civil servant can't?
And the illegality of the war?
The UN Charter supported by The International Court of Justice says it was... what have you got? A higher authority? God?

I managed to catch some of the live debate on radio, and then some of the accounts from the reporters and others. I am sure that there are people that liked the cool delivery of Brown on this occasion. Yet only las week, all his mates were telling us that the real Gordon is passionate and in a hurry to get things done (i.e. brusque and ill-mannered). So have we seen the real GB on this occasion?

Some also seem keen to point out how reassured we should all be based on his gravitas, authority and his wisdom / foresight. This will be the same Gordon who in his final Mansion House speech to the City (those nasty bankers no less), stated that

So I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London.

and

By your efforts Britain is already second to none:
• for our openness, pro Europe, pro free trade,
• a world leader in stability, and we will entrench that stability, by ensuring Britain's macroeconomic framework remains a world benchmark, and
• we are flexible, and in being vigilant against complacency, we must be, as I believe we are ready to become even more flexible.

Now he claims that the War was right but admits that he did not pay much attention to the role / advice of the Attorney General, even when Robin Cook, who had access to the same material, resigned on principle.

Yes, I am sure there are some who are delighted with our great leader who is always 'Right'. Just don't count any of the reasonable posters / voters who remain unconvinced to say the least.

Cheers

I wasn't there. It wasn't my fault. The bigger boys made me do it. I had a dentist appointment at the time. My head fell off so I couldn't hear what anyone in the military was telling me. The wizard told me that my magic beans would work fine. If anything went wrong, it must have been the American's fault.

yep, well, sorry, but I'm not convinced.

If he knew what was going on and still bankrolled it then he's complicit in the lies that Blair told the country and Parliament. If he didn't know what was going on then he's negligent beyond belief.

Either way, he does shoulder the blame, and he can't pass that political blame onto the military or the americans.

The first 15 (At least)

OK,so you`re disappointed.He was rsational,composed and had mastered his brief.You were not persauded,why should you be,but it lacked the demolition of Mr.Brown you were hoping for.

So you say it was a waste of time,or he didn`t answer the question,or slope off into the waste paper basket of collateral damage,the hospitals,the economy,the solar system.

Your problem,and that of the right generally,is you have underestimated this man who is a formidable leader.The great test of his leadership is the economic crisis where he has kept his nerve and avoided catastrophe,nor has he dismantled the achievements of the government in health and education in panicky subservience to self interested currency speculators and ratings agency.The guys who caused the problem in the first place and hope their allies in the political class will pin the blame on the government.

He`s still in the game,but Cameron,Ashcroft,Hague....just let the names roll of the tip of your tongue...

61#

Likewise mate. If you seriously think that Brown would one day get a state funeral to rival that of Winston Churchill, then you're on drugs.

Sagamix at #33. Terrific post. Is it possible - maybe. The thought of the Tory bloggers on here having convulsions reading your post cheers me up no end.
The Tories are becoming increasingly rattled. The "Cameroons'" project is a House of Cards. Can the Tory right keep cool over the weekend or will there be some helpful advice about "clear blue water" in the Sunday press?
Can't wait to find out.

65#

"Your problem,and that of the right generally,is you have underestimated this man who is a formidable leader."

Ah, how the scales have fallen from my unthinking, unseeing eyes... a leader so formidable that there have been three attempted coups against him... if you're going to lie bryhers, at least try and lie convincingly.

It was a really good performance by Gordon Brown and this is really his milieu. The TV debates are really going to play to his strengths deep detailed knowledge and experience. Also without the bear baiting of the commons he will be able to conduct it on his terms. - I think we might see David Cameron try and duck out of them at the last minute, he will worry that he will come across as smarmy and shallow.

Oh and Rock Robin the elections coming - don't you worry about that but not at your time of choosing - the polls are converging nicely the momentum squarely with Labour and a good few weeks to go - your loosing 3-4 % a week by then you might only be on 19%.

And still the David Cameron character questions have not yet been asked what happens when they are?

bryhers,

"panicky subservience to self interested currency speculators"

This is key. Let's have no self flagellating just to try and appease a bunch of people - the markets - who have been exposed beyond all reasonable doubt by recent events as being incapable of pricing a banana, let alone the risk on a fixed income security.

Not withstanding Brown's performance today, because that what it was, there is more than enough evidence from numerous sources that directly contradicts his telling of the story, for anyone to be arguing against that it beggars belief.

As for attacking Tories on this they were not on this watch, Labour were.

As for general Tory performance pretty lacklustre lately bordering on, we do not want this poisoned chalice from them.

Vote for the candidate in your region who will do most for the region not part liners. A good dose of independent MP's might give them all a fright.

68 Peteholly

Actually I think the Times narrative is that the tories have not moved far enough yet - I posted on an issue under another name and they wanted to use it for something that backed up there sunday times thing of Cameron and the Toffs not being normal. Interesting anyway.

I am not sure Labour has got going yet - they need to get their wider coalition involved.

Mr Brown claims to have supported the Armed Forces financially. I beg to Differ.

Extract taken from the Haddon-Cave QC report into the Nimrod Crash – Summary Chapter 13 page 355, 356:


“” 1. The MOD suffered a sustained period of deep organisational trauma between 1998 and 2006 due to the imposition of unending cuts and change, which led to a dilution of its safety and airworthiness regime and culture and distraction from airworthiness as the top priority.

2. This organisational trauma stemmed from the 1998 Strategic Defence Review which unleashed a veritable ‘tsunami’ of cuts and change within the MOD which was to last for years.

3. Financial pressures (in the shape of ‘cuts’, ‘savings’, ‘efficiencies’, ‘strategic targets’, ‘reduction in output costs’, ‘leaning’, etc.) drove a cascade of multifarious organisational changes (called variously ‘change’, ‘initiatives’, ‘change initiatives’, ‘transformation’, ‘re-energising’, etc.) which led to a dilution of the airworthiness regime and culture within the MOD and distraction from safety and airworthiness issues. There was a shift in culture and priorities in the MOD towards ‘business’ and financial targets, at the expense of functional values such as safety and airworthiness. The Defence Logistics Organisation, in particular, came under huge pressure. Its primary focus became delivering ‘change’ and the ‘change programme’ and achieving the ‘Strategic Goal’ of a 20% reduction in output costs in five years and other financial savings.””

Gordon Brown, using evidence taken from a Government report commissioned by your own Government, you are deliberately misleading the public in a public enquiry. I call upon you to resign your position immediately.

Sagamix @ 33

Thanks for the TFTW. It's a good one.

In the 1999 Cricket World Cup final at Headingley, Steve Waugh made a crucial hundred. He shouldn't have been allowed to. South African fielder Herschelle Gibbs dropped a sitter early in Waugh's innings. When the catch went down, Waugh turned to Gibbs and famously said: "You just dropped the World Cup, mate".

I wonder if, when people look back, they'll say that this was the week when Cameron dropped the keys to number 10.

66 Bill de Zas

re Churchill you obviously don't know your history - before his WWII role Churchill was an incredibly hated often ridiculed figure especially by working class people sending troops in against strikers. He was capricious about party allegiances and made a terrible mistake in regards to the gold standard - He also had a filthy temper drank too much and had depressions. Who knows the similarities may be greater than you think.

#33, saga:

"Could just be, couldn't it?"

How shall I put this, saga old chap?

Er...






... no. Really, not. Not a snowball in hell's chance.

75#

I'm perfectly aware of Churchill's history thank you and yes, not all of it was rosy, I'm well aware of that.

One key thing that separates the two though is true leadership qualities and the ability in times of crisis to inspire the populace. Something that only one of them had.

IPGAP1 17

Scounter, I will not go through the whole financial crisis. However Britains problems were home grown. Brown allowed a credit bubble to develop in our economy. His change of regulation to the FSA in 1997 allowed the Banks to operate virtually unfettered. This meant there was no check on capital to lending in banks, mergers etc. Personal debt was allowed to get out of control. Furthermore the Government itself ran a deficit year on year by building up an unaffordable public sector which taxation could not pay for.

Once Brown had caused the problem it was pretty easy for him to just throw taxpayers money at the issue and claim it as a solution. I have spoken before that there was a much cheaper option for the taxpayer, however this would have cost Brown votes as the separation and run off of toxic debt would have been necessary. Now the taxpayer is responsible for all this toxic debt which will fail in the future but Brown will make sure it is after the election.

Brown did not save the World he did not even save Britain the problems are yet to come, they have just been delayed.

As to my honesty, this has never been put in question by any of my employers, friends, associates, family or such like people. Browns honesty has and it is him that we are discussing not me.

drdavidlowry 44

I appreciated your report and found it a very interesting read.

I'm no wiser after Browns appearance than I was before it, once again he failed to answer any of the questions asked and instead answered with what suited him with some extended waffle to cloud it even further. The enquiry needed someone willing to press him on the issues and shut him up when started waffling on.

#33 Sagamix said:

A narrow win on June 3rd, a full term with his own mandate, and then another after that. Retirement with full honours at the age of 70 or so, as a much loved and much respected elder statesman. Then a quarter century of happy retirement and when the man comes calling, a Churchill like parade through Central London to the Abbey. Could just be, couldn't it? And maybe not, of course, but very very possible. Quite a thought, isn't it? ... for the weekend.

Are you trying to qualify for OBN in Private Eye ?

A bit like Tiger Woods - primed and prepared - it all sounds very hollow to me.

Sorry I wanted to listen but the monotonic non-answers he gave when I was listening lulled me to sleep. Maybe after the election he should sell tapes for insomniacs.

33 Saga

Oh my. You should be writing screenplays .

I was impressed with Brown today for all the wrong reasons. That anyone can stonewall for 4 hours whilst looking relaxed and comfortable is amazing.

A few answers to the questions asked would have been nice.

I couldnt work out if the panel was incompetent at cross examination or defferential to his office. Either way they were not up to the job. Oh for Paxman.

I don't suppose someone could tell me what this "serious lack of resources" actually involved? It is imperative, of course, that our armed forces are as secure as possible, but death is an inevitable consequence of war and less than 1 in 1000 soldiers deployed in Iraq died in IED attacks, so to suggest that having better transport would somehow have led to a drastic decrease in the number of deaths is misleading to say the least. The entire issue of funding from the Treasury is nothing but a distraction from whether it was, with hindsight, the right decision to go to war.

Dr David Lowry

Sir, a stunning piece of research!

susan @ 78

Good to see you favouring us again with your views! With all that stuff from you on the other thread - you know, how your political opinions were "none of our business" - I was a bit worried we might have seen the last of you. So, as I say, good.

Not so good, though, to hit "post" on a summary of our financial crisis before you had the time to check it and spot the omission of any reference to the biggest factor of all ... the excessive creation and proliferation of American mortgage backed securities, and the reckless (often fraudulent) misselling, misrating and misvaluation thereof.

Because I'm feeling charitable, and because it's such a relief that you're back - and plus it is the weekend - I'm going to put it down to you being in a hurry to dash off to something exciting, and not to you being an incorrigible peddler of inaccurate Tory propaganda.

75. At 8:05pm on 05 Mar 2010, balancedthought wrote:

"66 Bill de Zas

re Churchill you obviously don't know your history - before his WWII role Churchill was an incredibly hated often ridiculed figure especially by working class people sending troops in against strikers. He was capricious about party allegiances and made a terrible mistake in regards to the gold standard - He also had a filthy temper drank too much and had depressions. Who knows the similarities may be greater than you think.

But in times of war Churchill proved to be a man and not a mouse, and considering this nation is (technically) a nation at war.......

Brown may have proved that he can walk the same walk as Churchill, but can he talk the same talk, so far the evidence suggests he can't.

pd @ 74

Mmm I wonder. That is also quite a TFTW. Two for the price of one this week!

59. bryhers

"Don`t assume bad faith,it`s assesment of risk,9/11 woke people up to the dangers of militant Islam,Saddam seemed to be a clear and present danger.We know there was no WMD but that`s in retrospect.Hindsight is the vanity of retrospective wisdom."


I refer you to post 44.
Well researched and more meaningful than glib quotes.

84. At 8:57pm on 05 Mar 2010, xTunbridge wrote:

"[the Iraq inquiry panel members ability] Oh for Paxman."

If you don't mind the same question and answer 1000 times...

I think both the public and panel can work out when someone is not answering a question, asking it again when the 'witness' is not under legal oath (and thus at risk of legal sanction) is rather pointless as exactly the same answer can be given, a non answer can be as telling as a forced explicit answer.

Tony Blair
- entered via back door avoiding protestors
- ballot for seats 3,041 applications
- visibly shook, his voice quavered
- periodically was called "liar" and a "murderer"
- maintained that Saddam was deadly external threat with or without WMDs
- Tony "no regrets" from the war.

Gordon Brown
- entered through front door, protesters negligle
- 323 people applied to hear his evidence
- "right decision made for the first reasons" – line he often repeated.
- decision was right because the invasion served as a warning to other rogue states that this would be their fate if they fell foul of their international obligations
- expressed sadness at the deaths of UK service personnel as well as Iraqi civilians.

In short, Gordon Brown seemed unflustered, intellectual, empathetic.
Best of all, he was able to leave the QE2 Conference Centre via the front door, head held high.

85#

Lack of resources, so far as the military were concerned fell into several key capability gaps that they encountered.

1) Lack of helicopters and available crews that were suitable for use in the area. This forced many of the patrols to be conducted by foot and by lightly armoured vehicle. In a broadly similar counterinsurgency campaign in bandit country in Northern Ireland, my recollection is that most patrols and troop movements were carried out by chopper rather than by foot or vehicle, although there was no way that these could have been totally avoided. This was exacerbated by poor MOD project management that deprived the forces of at least 8 chinooks that had been bought years before but were not cleared as fit to be released to service.

2) So far as the invasion was concerned, lack of body armour. I'm not 100% sure whether it was lack of availability of it as it had not been bought and paid for, or whether it was paid for but not yet delivered and then fell foul of the long, ill-prepared logistics tail.

3) From testimony from those earlier on in Chilcot, ammunition. Some went into the enquiry testifying that they could not issue their troops more than a third of a magazine full of rounds on the day the invasion started. Again, although I'm happy to stand corrected, I have a feeling that this is likely to have been a problem exacerbated by the logistics tail rather than treasury parsimony, but I cannot be 100% certain on that.

4) Insufficient Explosive Ordanance Disposal resources, both detectors and available training for personnel who were going to be charged with the responsibility of either accompanying patrols or for IED disposal. Largely an internal MOD issue.

5) The famous Snatch Land Rover issue. In a case of breathtaking irony, the vehicles that were withdrawn from Northern Ireland (better armoured than the Snatch Land Rover) following the peace process there were not given to the troops to be able to use in Basra... but were sold to the Iraqi police forces. The Snatch question was largely addressed by the UOR submitted, as the prime minister stated, but the time it took to select the vehicle, prepare it and send it to theatre took the best part of a year. By the time they arrived in theatre, not only had there been a large number of deaths and injuries that may not have happened had they had the better vehicles in the first case, but also the Iraqi insurgents had honed their IED manufacturing and placing skills using shaped charges which began to eat away at any advantage that better armour gave the troops. No armour is completely invincible to either overwhelming power or the right shaped charge at a weakspot at the right time. As an aside, the result of one UOR for resulted in a vehicle being chosen that certainly initially seemed like it would be up to the job, but when it was deployed was found to be completely unsuitable and not mechanically robust enough to stand up to road conditions, resulting in a lot of unserviceabilities. This again led to a capability gap. Problem with the UOR system although it seems a good fast track idea is that the services very quickly learned that if you wanted anything quickly and to stand a chance of getting it, like in the old days, all you had to do was justify it against the war and submit it as a UOR. A lot of the older commanders had no notion of the new accounting strategies and preferred the simpler older days of ask for it then get it, regardless of what it cost. This is another area where they went wrong and tried to use the UOR system to make up for poor planning and procurement in previous years and money lost due to bunfights with the other service chiefs in lost/over-run/badly managed projects from years before.

Whether the FRES programme, as Brown said, would have made any difference is moot. That has stalled due to a combination of shaved budgets, poor project management and industry shenanigans and changing requirements. Those things are long term projects whereas for this campaign, it should have been obvious to those doing the planning that there were going to be serious gaps between what would be needed to carry out the task and what was available to the troops. Bearing in mind that a lot of the inventory that was left over from the cold war that we were still using was designed and built for a northern european climate and as such is inherently unsuitable for the hot, arid conditions of the Gulf without producing serious limitations. Not many of these shortcomings, such as the sand filters for Challenger II engines were discovered until the equipment actually got to theatre and then started conking out, which is poor planning on MoD's part. Likewise the helicopter rotor blades that Brown referred to in the afternoon session.

Brown explained in great detail the mechanics of the accounting system that he had brought into use and how the guillotine that was reported became obvious to see. The MOD's abject planning and procurement cannot be excused, it was a contributory factor in how things went wrong. But, as another contributor has pointed out, with an excerpt from the Haddon Cave report, following the 97/98 Strategic Defence Review, there was a significant amount of money being taken out of the Defence Budget where they were asked to do as much with less, less people, less equipment and there was increasing civilianisation across military trades that had previously been exclusively manned by those in uniform, including medics, supply and logistics, military hospitals, transports and others. All of these things whilst probably not anticipated at the time of the SDR led to the results that we had in Iraq and what we are experiencing now. Going forward, the statement from the Chief Of The Defence staff has made about Afghan being the top priority and a majority of procurement being switched to deal with that requirement could mean, in theory that in ten years time, the only types of wars/conflicts that we will be able to fight will be other Afghanistan type Counter Insurgencies which may not be how the world actually pans out.

Whilst I accept some of Brown's explanations, particularly in the afternoon session, there was some detail missing that did have an impact. Not many of these things, apart from the budget reduction can be laid at his door. And he did spin the line about "in real terms", as in real notes, real cash, but he did not take into account inflation particularly encountered when you remove a capability that the military did for itself before and now has had to outsource to the likes of BAe, EDS, Logica, BT, etc because they wanted to spend less on defence. Prices that are charged by service providers go up, especially in times of conflict. The outsourcers know they have a captive audience. Again, a lot of problems encountered were with MoD not being savvy enough to know how to manage a lot of these outsourcing contracts. It was an alien world to a lot of them and even now there are still major issues with it. Whilst Iraq should have been a Joint operation and indeed it was commanded that way, the single service chiefs still dont act in a joint way, particularly when it comes to procurement and all three have their headline projects to make the army/RAF/Navy look good and industry capitalises on it. We end up buying British to protect British industry (and jobs and votes) even though moreoften than not, the product is late, overpriced, inferior and doesnt do what it was originally intended to do. That is not only an MoD problem, it is a political leadership problem at Def Sec level (and if you count the example of the E3/AEW Nimrod fiasco) and at PM level as well. Brown has had a known antipatht towards defence for many many years and is known to avoid engaging with the service chiefs at any possible cost. He has treated, as PM, the role of defence secretary with disdain - we've had 4 defence secretary's in as many years, one of whom had the dual hatted role of being minister for Scotland as well, when the country was at war on two fronts, which is scandalous, IMHO. Ainsworth, after a very poor start is starting now to get a feel for it, but he is still out of his depth.

Not all of what went wrong can be laid at Browns door. The MoD must accept their share of blame too. If they didnt think they were ready, someone should have had the balls to say so. Mind you, if we're going to get that granular, the question of should we have gone into Iraq in the first place to remove Saddam also needs to be answered. My feeling, personally, is that we should not have. He didnt have WMD's he hadnt done for ten years. Saddam had thumbed his nose at the Bush family one too many times and the Washington neocons, following 9/11 found the perfect excuse to do what they'd wanted to do for years. This wasnt about WMD's, it was about regime change and it is to Blairs eternal shame that he went along with it and acceeded to it. In this case, because of his obsession with getting to be King, Brown was just a mere passenger. But, as Chancellor, second most powerful position in government, he too must share collective responsibility for what happened.

I know there are a couple of Gulf War I and II veterans who occasionally post on here, so I'll apologise in advance if I've got any of the nitty gritty details wrong, but from my recollection, I'm pretty sure its largely correct. Hope that answers the question.

Once again Gordon Brown blames the USA. He said: "It was one of my regrets that I wasn't able to be more successful in pushing the Americans on this issue - that the planning for reconstruction was essential, just the same as planning for the war."
Oh, you were pushing the Americans on this were you Gordon?
Having already said that the USA caused the recession (the bust he had abolished) he now accuses them of all the post war problems (death and destruction) in Iraq also.
It's absolutely shameless, to say the least.

#85 DonQuixote 123

I refer you to my 73,

11 men died because the treasury did not provide sufficient funding to maintain an ageing weapons system in an airworthy condition. That aircraft platform is still flying today, and no additional funding has been provided to maintain it. I bet you would be howling about lack of appropriate funding if one came down on your children’s school.

sagamix 87

Your jibes are uneffective, boring as they are predictable.

Next you will be saying it started in America.

Anyway, I know you cannot do without someone to feed off but sorry I am away for the weekend.

92. At 9:37pm on 05 Mar 2010, BluesBerry wrote:

"In short, Gordon Brown seemed unflustered, intellectual, empathetic.
Best of all, he was able to leave the QE2 Conference Centre via the front door, head held high."

That might have something to do with the fact that, as the Prime Minister, he has all the security and civil service briefing sessions he could ever ask for, also Brown for all his faults, is never going to be labelled as the "was munger", he might well be implicated in the decision to go to war, he may well be highly responsible for what funds the MOD has pa, he might well be the leader who has inherited a war (like Obama has) but the one thing he will never be is a Prime Minister who sends the nation to war (unless that's the plan behind the mixed messages being sent to Argentina at the moment...).

susan,

"I know you cannot do without someone to feed off but sorry I am away for the weekend"

Why not forget that and spend the whole weekend bickering with me about what caused the financial crisis? Be far more exciting. And quite rewarding for you too.

95. At 9:52pm on 05 Mar 2010, feduplittlefellow wrote:

"#85 DonQuixote 123

I refer you to my 73,

11 men died because the treasury did not provide sufficient funding to maintain an ageing weapons system in an airworthy condition. That aircraft platform is still flying today, and no additional funding has been provided to maintain it. I bet you would be howling about lack of appropriate funding if one came down on your children’s school."

That couldn't actually be more wrong, but that is as much as I'm prepared/able to say about the case at the moment except that it is my understanding that the crew were blameless, but were following operational orders. I strongly suspect that there will be more to come out about this, but probably not until after the next election, depending on how the wind blows...

sagamix 87

Well, sagamix, in your desperate desire to kill two birds with one stone (patronise S-C yet again and peddle pro-Labour propaganda yet again), you have intentionally obscured the fact that Susan makes a number of good and reasonable points in her post, whereas all you have contributed in reply is tired, much discredited, old tripe.

Susan, in her 78, is quite right to refer to Brown's year-on-year accumulation of debt through an expansion of the public sector beyond the limits of what could be paid for by taxation. She is also right to point out the extended consumer boom, financed by crippling individual private debt, that Brown gee-ed along for the tax take. And though she doesn't explicitly mention it, the net result of Brown's policies was an economy that was grossly vulnerable to the slightest downturn.

I will give you that the straw that broke the camel's back was American in origin. I will not give you, however, that the crisis that we are in, and will be in for the next two decades, was any more than focussed and accelerated by the problems in America.

I'm sure you would like to counter that ours is but one of twenty or more substantial economies that have seen some kind of slow-down or worse, so surely that proves that it wasn't Brown's fault. We have discussed this before, and that response is predictable. So let's not do that. Instead, you tell me, and Susan too, why it is that our economy, which you seem to want to tell us was managed with true expertise by Brown, has, in fact, fared worse, why our recession started first, was deepest and ended last (indeed may not yet have ended), among all our serious competitors.

The fact is while the timing of the recession was "made in America", its depth, duration and its long-term consequences all have much more to do with Brown and Labour's stewardship of the economy than anything that happened on the other side of the pond.

In short, quit with the propaganda and face the facts.