Defending the indefensible

Both the Guardian and the Independent have the story of the MoD press officer who is suing after being forced to tell both bereaved families and the media that servicemen killed in Iraq had been properly equipped.

It's not a straightforward story as it's not clear how the press officer came to know that he was lying, other than from media reports. But the role of the MoD here looks suspicious:

his job "was to visit families just hours after an officer had called to tell them the news that their loved ones were dead." He provided a "media shield" to help them deal with the press interest.

Was his job to help the families - or to make sure they were onside?

The Indy has the best headline: "Lying about Iraq made me quit, press officer claims".
For a minute, you might think it was Alastair Campbell, John Williams or one of the other spin doctors who sexed up the dossier.

Kilfoyle on the Inquiry

The Yorkshire Post has a piece from Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle, whose book, Lies, damned lies and Iraq, is , as you might guess, "An Indepth Analysis into the Case for War and How It Was Misrepresented". Kilfoyle says of the forthcoming inquiry:

Of prime importance is the political culture within which, ultimately, all key decisions on war and peace are made. Where spin – and, at times, mendacity – is the order of the day, the truth will suffer. Without truthfulness, decisions will be hedged by other considerations, including ambition and fear.

A truly objective inquiry will point out the ease with which those in senior positions in government, in the media, and in the forces, were able to convince themselves against the evidence of the justice of this war.

Thus, the very people who should have put the brakes on the rush to an illegal and immoral war, actually facilitated its implementation.

This moral failure at the very top of our civil structures is possibly the most instructive phenomenon of all.

The war is over - what next?

The BBC is now reporting that:

British combat operations in Iraq will come to an end on Thursday lunchtime with a handover to American forces.

It says that the move is a month ahead of schedule. The Guardian reports that

Britain's combat role – including patrolling the city of Basra – was originally due to end on 31 July but was brought forward.
...
The bulk of the 4,000 or so UK troops will have returned home by 31 May, leaving a residual number to clear up and pack whatever equipment the army wants to bring home or send to Afghanistan.

That leaves an awful lot of time to fill if the government is going to avoid announcing an Iraq inquiry before the end of July.

What does imminent mean?

The BBC says that "The end of the UK's military presence in Iraq is imminent after six years." What does this mean - and what does it mean for the promised inquiry?

The interesting thing about the BBC article is that it doesn't specify what it means by imminent. It says:

Defence officials say plans for the withdrawal of British forces in Iraq are well advanced.

It's clear - from other articles - that the troops are today being taken off combat duties and that it's a question of getting them home, but how long can that take? The point is of course that they surely must be home well before the end of July - three months away - and almost certainly before parliament rises earlier that month. In that case, the government will have to set up the inquiry it has promised.

So what is the cause of the vagueness? Is it operational - or to help the government out of a tricky political issue? The BBC has previously said that the troops will be out by the end of May but that may have been a slip of the keyboard. The Times today says that "all British troops" will have left by the end of June. Apart from that, the media coverage is sticking to the increasingly implausible line that it could take until the end of July.

I suppose we will find out soon enough.

Misleading

Meanwhile, the Times has a piece on the troops coming home six years on. It makes some good points but also engages in a shockingly cavalier rewriting of history.

British politics has been transformed by the Iraq war. The so-called dodgy dossier, the death of David Kelly, the debate over Guantánamo Bay and the allegations of torture have changed the political landscape. The perception, whether justified or not, that the British Government went to war under false pretences has seeped into public consciousness, and poisoned politics. Tony Blair's reputation will be judged on the Iraq war. The next election will be fought, in large part, on the issue of political trust, with the war as a backdrop.

More than half of British voters supported the war in 2003, earnestly believing that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. When that turned out to be untrue, the nature of British politics was changed for ever, increasing political mistrust in Britain to a level that may be higher than it has ever been. It is hard to imagine what level of justification will be necessary, in the future, to persuade the British people to back a “just war”.

The lies told about the war did indeed cause a significant further erosion of trust in the government and government in general. But more than half of British voters did not support the war believing that Saddam had wmd. Before the war, there was overwhelming opposition, as this BBC report shows and Blair's evidence convinced very few people. There is a well-known effect that once British troops are involved in a war, many people support them even though they did not support the war itself. That is what happened in 2003. So while it is tempting to argue that people were misled, the majority of people were only misled in that they were lied to, not that they believed it.

Breathtaking

Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay, who was very cross about Jack Straw's veto of the release of pre-Iraq war cabinet minutes, called the decision "breathtaking".

Is there a better word for the naivety of this news story from the BBC, about foreign secretary David Miliband's visit to Iraq?

Mr Miliband is expected to see evidence of improved stability in the region when he meets members of the newly-elected provincial council.

Interestingly, the story on the FCO website does not make the claim about evidence of improved stability. Where did the BBC get it from?

Politically incorrect

I didn't update the blog yesterday as I was commenting elsewhere on Jack Straw's outrageous decision to veto the release of the minutes of those two pre-war cabinet meetings.

I did pieces for Comment is Free and Index on Censorship. Not everyone agreed that Straw's veto was a bad thing. Some of the more conservative commentators - and the Conservatives - argued that it was necessary to maintain cabinet confidentiality. The point that a lot of people seem to have missed is that the potential for cabinet minutes to be released has not gone away. Straw said that he was blocking these particular papers because of their sensitivity.

This morning I was briefly in the BBC's Millbank studios, for BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland. In the studio booth next to mine was Hazel Blears, who gave me a very friendly smile although I doubt if she has a clue who I am. Blears was I presume talking about her "common sense not political correctness" speech, which will probably go down well with tabloid readers and Telegraph but was savaged in this Comment is Free piece by Ally Fogg.

On the other hand, Straw's veto has gone down very badly with the Daily Mail, which asks:

What do they have to hide?

Hutton five years on

Peter Oborne has a good long piece in the Mail today saying that five years on (yesterday) from the Hutton Inquiry, we still haven't been told the truth about the war based on lies.

As every day passes, Lord Hutton's judgment that Tony Blair and his leading officials were men of integrity looks more and more flawed. Five years on, his verdict has fallen to pieces. Britain now urgently needs a full-scale inquiry into the causes and prosecution of the Iraq War.

Unsurprisingly, Oborne says that:

The first step should be the publication - strenuously resisted by the Government - of minutes from two key Cabinet meetings in the build-up to war.

Keep up Chris

I've done a few comment pieces in the last 24 hours about the information tribunal's landmark decision that minutes of two pre-Iraq war cabinet minutes must be released.

Yesterday, I did a piece for Comment is Free with my immediate reactions. Today I have done a blog for Index on Censorship on the implications for freedom of information and transparency and a short piece for Independent Minds.

Egg on the commissioner's face

Last week I exposed as baseless another government claim on Iraq - that former attorney general Lord Goldsmith decided that the war would be legal before meeting two of Tony's cronies. In a new piece today for Index on Censorship, I suggest that information commissioner Richard Thomas also has egg on his face over for letting the government mix spin with fact.

It was Thomas who negotiated a shabby compromise with the Cabinet Office over a freedom of information request seeking to establish why Goldsmith had gone from doubting the war's legality on 7 March 2003 to unequivocally asserting that it was legal ten days later.

Instead of requiring the Cabinet Office to disclose actual documents, Thomas allowed them to construct a narrative account which would include claims that were not backed by documentary evidence. At the time, former minister Peter Kilfoyle called this a "sanitised timeline".

Faced with admitting that Goldsmith had met Sally Morgan and Lord Falconer on the same day (13 March) that he concluded that existing UN resolutions legitimised the war, the Cabinet Office merely asserted that he made up his mind mind before the meeting.

As I point out, Thomas failed not only to require the government to distinguish between fact and fantasy at the time, but to be open about the basis for the assertion when I asked him last November.

It seems the commissioner is still trying to get his head around the idea of openness.

More spin over Iraq

I've got a new story on Iraq in the online Guardian this morning:

Fresh questions over the legality of the Iraq war were raised today after the government admitted it could not substantiate its claim that Lord Goldsmith had changed his mind over the legal basis for the invasion before a highly controversial meeting with two of Tony Blair's closest allies.

The Times thinks that the presence of British troops in Iraq is in jeopardy as the country's parliament may not pass a law giving them legal cover by the end of the year. It isn't clear whether this would necessitate an full withdrawal - which would scupper Gordon Brown's plan to delay the inquiry - or merely confinement to the barracks they are mostly confined to already.

John Hutton thinks it's the latter but is worried:

Asked what would happen if no agreement were in place by December 31, John Hutton, the Defence Secretary, said: “That would be a very serious situation and obviously we couldn’t let it happen, but I don’t think it will happen. We have contingency plans.

Perhaps Hutton's quote has been compressed but it is intriguing to think what "we" would do to control the democratic process of supposedly free and independent country.

Restating the bleeding obvious

Tremendous piece in the Indy from Matthew Norman , who is very cross about Iraq. Looking back to October last year, Norman recalls that Brown:

torpedoed a reputation for straightness, as skillfully nurtured as it was ill deserved, with an act of political opportunism so cretinously transparent that it beggared all belief. The chump flew to Basra and announced troop reduction figures that proved, after 0.37 seconds of the barely numerate's inspection, what is known to professors of political science as a whopper, but which I guess, in honour of the week's hilarious shoe theme, we should know as arrant cobblers.

...

"Oh my God," yelped my wife as the penny dropped – like many, she had developed quite a crush on the old bruiser in his first months in power. "I thought the whole point to Brown was that he didn't play stupid games like Blair."

Aware that it's perhaps tedious to rehash an old line, Norman rails against the continuing absence of a proper inquiry and adds:

If the mild embarrassment of restating the bleeding obvious ad infinitum is the cost of sustaining the righteous fury that is Mr Brown's due for supporting the war back then, and for spinning such poisonously mendacious gibberish about victory now ... so be it.

Easily cleared up

The Guardian reports that:

The brother of an Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at George Bush claimed today that the television reporter was too badly beaten to appear in court.

but adds:

Iraqi officials have denied that Muntazar, a 29-year-old reporter for the private Al-Baghdadia TV station, has been injured. Under Iraq's legal system a judge investigates an allegation before recommending whether to order a trial. Initial hearings are often conducted informally rather than in court.

It should be easily cleared up, if the Iraqi government allow the media to see him.

Less on the Iraq inquiry.

I've done a piece for Indy Minds about this, with Downing Street refusing to say when the Iraq Inquiry will take place. My conclusion is that it's all about news management.

It is interesting to wonder why none of the journalists who went on the trip with Brown seem to have asked him about the inquiry. By inviting hacks to take part in a headline-grabbing surprise visit, Brown controls the agenda, even if he is only confirming something that was leaked last week.

Obviously the type of journalists who go on these trips have to promise to behave well and not leak or throw shoes. The case of Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi, who probably shouldn't have done it, represents a test for Iraq's "democracy" and "freedom of speech".

If the Iraqi government wants to prosecute him for throwing shoes, that's fine, but not for "insulting" politicians . Neither should they beat him up. With allegations being made that al-Zaidi has been quite seriously injured in custody, it will be telling how quickly he is released.

What exactly will Brown announce?

So Gordon Brown is in Iraq this morning. According to the Times, this is

to set an end date for Britain's mission in Iraq, announcing all but a handful of troops will be home by next summer.

Mr Brown thanked UK troops and declared Britain's mission in Basra complete.

The 4,100 troops stationed in Iraq will start to return home in March.

According to the Indy, Brown and the Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki said:

"The role played by the UK combat forces is drawing to a close. These forces will have completed their tasks in the first half of 2009 and will then leave Iraq."

So will Brown announce that an inquiry will start when the combat troops are home? Not one of the papers has yet asked this question.

Hissy fit over leaks

The Times says that Britain faces a "humiliating" withdrawal from Iraq, in that it will have to share its "status of forces" agreement with five other countries. I'm not sure it's a humiliation but, it's a good story, which quotes - on the record - Iraq's national security adviser and its industry minister. However:

A British government spokeswoman declined to comment on “leaked” information.

In what sense is this "leaked"? The government's desire to control information is such that if another party to a bilateral (or bigger) international agreement discusses it in public, it throws a hissy fit.

An unsung whistleblower

I've done a piece today for Index on Censorship about Atif Amin, the customs investigator who is being investigated by the IPCC (yes, really, the Independent Police Complaints Commission) over allegations that he broke the official secrets act.

He isn't a whistleblower in the true sense of the word as all he did was comment on information that was already in public domain, that he was prevented from investigating the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network after he found that it was smuggling proliferation-sensitive materiel to Libya.

As I commented in an Independent Minds blog, what seems to have upset the state is that he (very mildly) questioned whether it was a good idea to watch Khan proliferating for a further three and a half years. During this time the network supplied Iran and caused Tony Blair so much worry that he invaded Iraq.

So why is the IPCC investigating Amin and questionning BBC journalists, while the killers of Jean Charles de Menezes get away scot free - not to mention the proliferators?

More on the Iraq Inquiry - and the leak

I've just done a piece for Independent Minds on David Miliband's (sort of) announcement on the Iraq Inquiry.

Here's what William Hague said on that and on the briefing on the planned withdrawal:

The first issue is that it was announced to the Press overnight that “the withdrawal of the 4,000 British troops in Iraq will be completed by next June, a senior defence source has disclosed”, that “the Prime Minister is expected to make an announcement in the New Year laying out the timetable for the troops to pull out”.

‘This information, if true, should have been given to Parliament in the form of a statement to the House of Commons.

‘It has the appearance of an authoritative leak, and since this time it does involve national security, it might be appropriate for the perpetrator to be arrested.

‘We have a government that deplores leaks by day and lives by leaks at night, and in which ministers either have no control over their departments or are deliberately sanctioning such behaviour.

‘Perhaps the Defence Secretary can tell us when he winds up the debate which of these alternatives is true, and whether the leak is correct. We certainly hope that our troops can be withdrawn from Iraq as soon as is consistent with the security of that country.’

‘In his speech in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, the Foreign Secretary said that “Despite good intentions in Iraq, and current progress, it is clear that serious mistakes were made” and he must surely agree that if that is the case, it is important to examine what these mistakes were and what has been done to ensure that they will never be repeated.

‘When we last debated this issue in the House, on 25^th March he said that “there is agreement across the House that an Inquiry into the Iraq war will be necessary” and that “the dispute between us concerns not substance, but timing”. Since the government now speaks of “tasks completed” and “fundamental change” in our mission in Iraq, it must surely be the time for them to make clear their intentions on an Inquiry and I once again serve notice that if they fail to do so, we will again be returning to the issue this session and that the continued absence of an Inquiry, or its setting up on an inadequate basis will be rectified immediately upon the election of a Conservative government.’

Hypocrisy

The Guardian and the Independent have both been very well briefed by "a senior defence source" about plans to withdraw troops from Iraq next year. The Indy says:

The Prime Minister is expected to announce the pullout that, in effect, ends the UK's engagement in one of the most controversial wars in recent times, in the Commons next January.

So, either this is an officially sanctioned briefing, pre-announcing what Gordon Brown is going to say to Parliament, or it's a leak. Given that it includes details of troop and equipment movements, it would be a pretty serious breach of the Official Secrets Act. Pretty hypocritical either way.

Grateful for their information, what neither the Guardian or the Indy ask is whether Brown will announce that his promised Iraq Inquiry will follow the pullout.