Army Almost Seized Up

General Sir Richard Dannatt, former head of the British army, told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war that Tony Blair's decision to send troops to Helmand at the same time as they were in Iraq almost caused the army to seize up.

He said:

"I think we were getting quite close to a seizing-up moment in 2006."

The politicians let the troops down by placing them in an almost impossible position during this period, the consequences of this negligence are still being felt today.

The Iraq High

Dr Hans Blix, former UN weapons inspector, has told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war that the US and UK didn't feel that they needed "a permission slip" from the security council:

"The US in 2002...I think they were high on military at the time. They said 'we can do it'

They thought they could get away with it so they decided to do it."

The lesson here is don't start wars when "high".

Low Standards

Carne Ross, the UK's Iraq expert at the United Nations from 1997 to 2002, has a poor opinion of the quality of the questioning at the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war.

Ross told the BBC that chairman Sir John Chilcot was running a "narrow" investigation, with the standard of questioning "pretty low".

He went on to say that the Chilcot inquiry was not doing enough to ensure it got a full picture of events.

"The other government witnesses are giving a partial view... I think that the standard of interrogation by the panel is pretty low. The level of questioning is very easygoing.

In particular my greatest concern is that witnesses are not being challenged on the contradictions between what they are saying to the panel and what's in the documents."

These allegations are nothing new, from the very outset journalists have been saying that witnesses have been given a very easy time by Chilcot.

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.