The Iraq Inquiry -The Chilcot Report now online

[Stavros]

Seven years after it began, the Iraq Inquiry, chaired by Sir John Chilcot has been published, the link to the website and the report is below.

What we know so far:
-Tony Blair first exchanged views on 'dealing with' Saddam Hussein in memos to President GW Bush in December 2001.
-Military planning for the invasion began in the summer of 2002.
-The intelligence on which the government officially based its position was not properly challenged in its details and inherently flawed.
-The legal case for the war was not met in February 2003 but the Attorney General appears to have changed his mind and agreed there was a case in March 2003 (details on this may be in the relevant Annex to the Report which I have yet to read).
-Tony Blair exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein and the allegation that Saddam's regime had 'weapons of mass destruction' and that Iraq was planning to develop nuclear weapons.
-The UK could have remained with the majority opinion of the Security Council that containment of Iraq was working and should be extended for some time.
-As a result of poor planning and in spite of warnings, the British government failed to meet its military objectives.
-Blair was warned about the existence of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the potential for the de-stabilisation of Iraq by Iranian intervention, sectarian conflict indeed, that removing Saddam Hussein would create a vacuum within Iraq threatening the integrity of the state, the wider region, and pose a terrorist threat to Britain.

The full report is here-
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/

[nitron]

Stavro, why you think they did it? Just between you and me,I think there's some potential for conspiracy stuff happening here. To me it smell's like the americans were always planning , even before 9-11, to get rid of him. And seems Tony was there poodle from the start. After they invaded , clearly they were out of there league as to the chaos that was unleashed. Has that , "make it up as you go along feel" .

[trish]

Depends on what you call a conspiracy. Sure Cheney, Halliburton and associates wanted Saddam out of power ever since the end of the Gulf War. Revenge, politics, resources and money provide the motive. I do not believe the Old Bush League had, on day of W’s election, an executable plan to effect regime change in Iraq (that would be a conspiracy) but they certainly would’ve jumped on any excuse to get that ball rolling. Of course 9/11 was seen as providing that excuse. I think the conspiracy (if that’s what you want to call it) starts the improvised evidence of weapons of mass destruction. I was real sorry to see Blair draw Britain into it and giving W aid, comfort and support.

At the end of his two terms W deleted all of his emails. So if there were a conspiracy we may never know if it went as high up as the president. As an aside: Colin Powell and Conoleezza Rice used private email servers for communicating classified material and General Petraeus used public servers to move classified information.

[nitron]

Oh , I meant the senator Bob Graham("us senator:'us turned blind eye to saudi role in 9/11,fueling rise of isil")conspiracy. My mistake.

[Stavros]

Stavro, why you think they did it? Just between you and me,I think there's some potential for conspiracy stuff happening here. To me it smell's like the americans were always planning , even before 9-11, to get rid of him. And seems Tony was there poodle from the start. After they invaded , clearly they were out of there league as to the chaos that was unleashed. Has that , "make it up as you go along feel" .

Nitron, the facts that are not in dispute are that regime change in Iraq became the publicly stated policy of the USA in 1998 when Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act:
Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 - Declares that it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/house-bill/4655

In October 2002 Congress authorized the US Government to take practical steps to implement the Iraq Liberation Act (1988) through the Authorization for use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution:
SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

(a) AUTHORIZATION. The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to

(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.

https://web.archive.org/web/20021102072524/http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html

A key difference in the period between late 2002 and February 2003 was whether or not the Security Council needed a new resolution to authorize military action. Tony Blair wanted one but didn't get it, and Jack Straw in his evidence to the Iraq Inquiry claims this was the official position of the UK Government but when asked if in fact Blair had reached his own decision without the advice of the Foreign Office Straw replies the Inquiry must ask Blair. Straw makes it clear that 9/11 was the event that ended the 'containment' stance on Iraq to the pro-active policy to implement regime change and that, as with the military intervention in Afghanistan, this was designed to show the world that real threats to international security would be acted upon, and that it was because the intelligence on Iraq demonstrated that it possessed 'weapons of mass destruction' that the existing legal instruments the US and the UN had justified changing the status quo and removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Was this part of a longer term plan? The answer is yes, because the Project for a New American Century that was created in the 1990s was part of the 'Neo-Conservative' re-appraisal of US power that emerged from the debris of the 1970s -the failures of Nixon and Carter in particular- and was only partially changed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Crucially, the Neo-Cons took the view that Reagan flipped when he met Gorbachev and instead of exacting the maximum from the USSR went soft on arms control and sold them out. 'Never again' thus became the mantra, and if Iraq became the 'fall guy' it was because Iraq had form -the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in the 1980s (albeit with chemicals supplied by the USA when Iraq was at war with the greater enemy, Iran); the attempt to develop sophisticated long-range weaponry (the 'Super-gun'); the execution of Farzad Bazoft in 1990; the invasion of Kuwait in 1990; it had violated UN Sanctions throughout the 1990s; it had been developing 'weapons of mass destruction' and in the 2002 Resolution it is claimed al-Qaeda was operating in Iraq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

In a film on the Iraq war, Dick Cheney, of the PNAC hawks put it brutally if succinctly when asked why Iraq: Because it was doable.

Blair took the same view that after 9/11 everything changed, and needed to prove to the Republicans that his close friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton was personal and that he could be trusted to be 'on their side' in the decision to use military force. Jack Straw who was Foreign Secretary at the time also believed Blair could temper the worst excesses of the US military, and factor in wider Middle Eastern issues such as movement on the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians as part of the deal. A good indication of the extent to which by 2003 Blair thought he was one of the greatest political figures of all time. He even claimed that had he and not Gordon Brown been Prime Minister in 2010 Labour would have won the General Election (this is in the Clinton emails somewhere).

[peejaye]

Stavro, why you think they did it? Just between you and me,I think there's some potential for conspiracy stuff happening here. To me it smell's like the americans were always planning , even before 9-11, to get rid of him. And seems Tony was there poodle from the start. After they invaded , clearly they were out of there league as to the chaos that was unleashed. Has that , "make it up as you go along feel" .

Oil, ammunitions contracts and money! You know how much Blair is worth today? £60m! allegedly?
I'd like to wish & add; "Dead or Alive".

[Stavros]

Oil, ammunitions contracts and money! You know how much Blair is worth today? £60m! allegedly?
I'd like to wish & add; "Dead or Alive".

I see no conspiracy when regime change in Iraq was the policy of the USA from 1998. As for oil, it has been the primary source of revenue in Iraq since the 1920s so again the re-development of the country's petroleum resources should exercise no surprise (rather like the importance of tourism to the Greek economy), though the ownership of the northern resources is still disputed between the Arabs in Baghdad and the Kurds in the north in whose territory most of those resources are located.