News / Chilcot inquiry is ‘last chapter in sorry episode’
THE COUNTRY will “pay the price for years to come” for the New Labour government’s decision to go to war in Iraq back in 2003, Northern Isles MP Alistair Carmichael has said following the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry.
The much-delayed inquiry report contains major criticisms of Tony Blair’s decision to commit UK forces to take part in the conflict “before peaceful options for disarmament” had been fully exhausted.
A private memo from Blair to US president George W. Bush in July 2002 stated: “I will be with you whatever.”
The 2.6 million-word, 12 volume report – along with a 145-page executive summary – concludes that there was no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein’s regime.
It states that intelligence wrongly claiming Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was presented with a level of certainty that was “not justified”, and that there was wholly inadequate preparation and planning for the aftermath of the invasion.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, along with 179 British service personnel and civilians, were killed between 2003 and 2009 and a spokesman for some of the UK victims’ families said they had died “unnecessarily” and “without just cause and purpose”.
Carmichael said the inquiry’s publication should be the “last chapter in a sorry episode of our country’s history” and vindicated the decision by the Liberal Democrats, then under the leadership of the late Charles Kennedy, to oppose the war.
“That was not an easy decision but I have never doubted that it was the right one,” he said.
“It has long been clear that this was a war into which we should never have entered and which has had enduring consequences for the Middle East and the west.
“As a result of that war we are less safe today than we have ever been. This was unnecessary. Parliament and government both failed the people and we shall pay the price for years to come.
“In the future it is essential that parliament should have a proper understanding of intelligence material before it votes and every MP will have a duty to assess that evidence fairly and calmly before deciding how to vote.”
Speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Carmichael recalled debates in February and March 2003 when “many of the members then who asked questions and demanded evidence were heckled and barracked and shouted down”.
He asked outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron for an assurance that the country will “never again base its foreign policy judgments” on evidence or information obtained from people who “had been tortured having been illegally rendered”.
Cameron responded: “I can certainly give him that assurance. That is something specifically addressed during the coalition government that we should not rely on or use in any way evidence that was delivered by means of torture.”
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