Damning Evidence Given to Chilcot Iraq War Inquiry
The second day of the official Chilcot inquiry into the origin of the Iraq War has heard that there was no “legal basis” for the conflict, that the Blair Government had been told by intelligence services that there were no “weapons of mass destruction” and that there were no links between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
The dramatic evidence is proof that Blair and the other senior Westminster politicians lied blatantly to trick the British public into supporting the war. The British National Party was the very first political party to publicly dismiss the “reasons” for the war as lies in April 2003 when it published on this website an article refuting some of the more prominent lies being told at that time.
One of today’s witnesses, Sir William Ehrman, the Foreign Office’s director of international security from 2000 to 2002 and director-general of defence and intelligence from 2002 to 2004, fully justified the BNP’s cynicism of the war.
According to Sir William, intelligence that Saddam Hussein had dismantled all WMDs was put to the Foreign Office before Mr Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq.
In addition, Sir William also said that there were no links between the Saddam Hussein regime and al-Qaeda. This claim had been at the core of the original case for the war as Hussein had been blamed for helping the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.
Another witness, Tim Dowse, the Foreign Office’s former head of counter-proliferation, detailed how the evidence presented to the Foreign Office specified that Iraq did not have a large number of long-range missiles — a critical element of the Blair tissue of lies — and that Mr Blair had also utterly distorted the claim about Iraq being able to launch WMDs in “45 minutes.”
Asked about suggestions that the 45-minute claim which Mr Blair said could enable Iraq to strike other nations, Mr Dowse said: “I don’t think we ever said that it was for use in a ballistic missile in that way.”
Mr Dowse was also asked if Mr Blair had been correct to announce in public in December 2003 that the inspectors hunting for weapons of mass destruction had found evidence of massive, clandestine system of laboratories. Mr Dowse replied: “I did not advise him to use those words.”
Mr Dowse also confirmed that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other non-proliferation agencies had been very successful throughout the 1990s in effectively disarming Iraq.
“The Foreign Office felt there was little threat from nuclear weapons and no serious fear for international security in regards to chemical and biological weapons,” he said.
At the time, one of Mr Blair’s justifications for the war was that Iraq was building an atom bomb.
Other witnesses revealed that British and US officials held “secret discussions” about ousting Saddam Hussein two years before invading Iraq and months before the September 11 terrorist attacks. Foreign Office officials had even drawn up an internal “options” paper that included the “possibility of regime change” in Iraq.
However Sir William Patey, the then head of the Foreign Office’s Middle East department, said the idea had been swiftly rejected on the grounds that there was “no basis in law” for such action.
The evidence so far has been extremely damning and could easily form part of an indictment against Tony Blair and all the other politicians responsible for generating the Iraq War.
The BNP was not only the first party to publicly reject the “reasons” for the war as a pack of lies, but also the only party to call for war crimes trials against Messrs Blair and company. This remains a BNP election promise.
