Quel Surprise!

Baroness Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, has told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war that the invasion of Iraq "substantially" increased the terrorist threat to the UK and has "radicalised" a generation of young people in the UK and abroad.

She stated that a year before the war she had advised the government that the threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited".

Wilful Ignorance

The Guardian reports that a report "A State of Ignorance" issued by Action On Armed Violence (AOAV, formerly Landmine Action) shows that Labour ministers and officials bent over backwards to avoid engaging with the issue of how many people were killed in Iraq, except to try to confuse it.

The Guardian describe it as "wilful ignorance".

Now that Labour have their hands off the levers of power, more revelations will come out.

Blair Accused of Lying

Carne Ross, the first secretary to the British mission at the U.N. responsible for Iraq policy from 1997 to 2002, told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war that the British government intentionally exaggerated the threat of Iraq's WMD after the 9/11 attacks.

Ross said that documents issued by the British government "intentionally and substantially" exaggerated the intelligence after 9/11.

Ross stated that the documents were so exaggerated that they were "in their totality, lies."

Exaggeration

Sir Richard Dalton, Britain's ambassador in Tehran from 2003-06, has told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war that both the UK and US misread the intentions of Iran in the run up to the war.

Blair and Bush pushed the line that Iran would be hostile to the Iraq venture, when in fact Iran wanted the venture to succeed in order for a stable government to be formed and to ensure that US troops did not remain too long in the area.

Sir Richard said that Blair made "a series of very bad decisions" about the legality of the 2003 invasion.

Blair told Chilcot in January:

"What happened in the end was that they did because they both had a common interest in destabilising the country, and for Iran I think the reason they were interested in destabilising Iraq was because they worried about having a functioning majority Shia country with a democracy on their doorstep."

Sir Richard contradicted this:

"From what I saw of his evidence, I thought he very much exaggerated this factor."

Goldsmith's Advice To Blair Published

The Chilcot Iraq inquiry has released details of the legal advice given to Tony Blair, from the then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, prior to the invasion of Iraq.

In the released correspondence (dated February 12 2003), Lord Goldsmith told Blair that should military action be taken without further approval by the UN Security Council, he expected "the government to be accused of acting unlawfully".

In a letter to Blair on 30 January, 2003, Lord Goldsmith said he "remained of the view that the correct legal interpretation of resolution 1441 is that it does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the Security Council".

However, following Blair's meeting with Bush in 2003 (when Blair promised Bush that Britain would go to war) Goldsmith changed his view. The BBC quotes him as saying he was "prepared to accept that a reasonable case" could be made that military action was authorised by existing resolutions, including resolution 1441.

Chilcot To Resume

The Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war will resume its hearings after a four and a half month break.

The Legacy

The true legacy of the Iraq war is a power vacuum and ongoing unrest.

The Legacy

The environmental legacy of the Iraq venture.

The Cover Up

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

Brown "Misspoke"

I see that Gordon Brown "misspoke" during his recent appearance before the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war, when he claimed that defence spending had increased in "real terms" each year under Labour.

It transpires that it hasn't!

Brown has written to Chilcot to clarify his "error".

I wonder if he "misspoke" about other matters?