Lack of Intelligence

Sir David Omand testified at the Chilcot Inquiry yesterday and what should have been a good day for our Intelligence Services descended into farce.

Like something out of a John Le Carre plot, Omand described the construction of the infamous Iraq dossier that was 'sold' to the public as the reason why invading Iraq was legitimate and fitted with UN Resolution 1441, was just a series of colourful assertions.

The grim hope that all of us will now be convinced that Tony Blair and his Ministers were absolutely convinced that WMDs existed with deadly and immediate capability along with vast chemical warfare factories, seems to be evaporating. The picture that is emerging is that each person called before the enquiry is carefully covering their tracks and trying to detract us from the real chain of events. There is a systematic plan to park the Iraq dossier as just a bit of Joint Intelligence doodling and that no one really believed that a) it would be taken so seriously, b) it would presented as the reason why war was required and c) that the Prime Minister's preface would be taken as gospel. There is also the aura being created that the Weapons Inspector Team was some kind of clown act being teased by Iraq like a pantomime scene, 'He's behind you' and when they look there is no one there.

It's all very quaint and relaxed - Alistair Campbell was polished and as credible as ever. The chilling undertone is that these people created a myth and caused a war that has destroyed lives and cost fortunes. Yet they make it sound as though it was all a bit of fun and that really Saddam Hussein was bad so we should not get hung up about the dossier or the war. Right won in the end.

Well, there is a serious outcome of trivialising all this. The question now must be asked, if the dossier, Al Qaeda connections, The Axis of Evil and the WMDs were all a myth, just how much should we all believe about Iraq at all?

I can feel another enquiry coming on that will prove nothing and condemn no one. So how many lives have to be lost before anyone cares why we started a war that has stirred up Islamic extremism that will last for generations?

The answer is plain to be seen. It doesn't matter when us Christians and Westerners cause it - because we are the 'good guys'.

Defending The Indefensible

Well we got what we wanted. Alistair Campbell gave his version of events leading to the Iraq Invasion at the Chilcot Inquiry yesterday and it just made us more angry at the arrogance of the whole affair.

It could have been any of the recollections to set me off but what really astounded me was Campbell's unfathomable defence of the 2002 dossier on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) - the crux of the argument to go to war. Campbell said he, 'Defends every word of it.'

I find this incredible given that we knew not long after that parts of it relating to the infamous '45 minute' assertion that WMDs could be deployed in the field to threaten British Sovereign territory within 45 minutes were plagiarised from an internet version of an old student thesis. Further, how can you defend a document's credibility when at the very time Hans Blix and his weapons inspectors were indicating that no WMD or manufacturing capability had been found. In fact, Blix was pleading with the US and UK to hold off and give his team more time to find the weapons or chemical factories - and as this was central to the UN Resolution which the UK and US used to go with the invasion it was morally right that evidence should be found. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein was issuing statements that there were no WMD which was the truth while the UK and the US just said he was lying.

At best this was Intelligence communities gone so far wrong as to make their credibility defunct or, at worst, Government arrogance in the face of clear evidence against a war under UN law. Campbell now, and then, behaves as if this is irrelevant but it isn't. It is the foundation for a model of peace that came out of the World Wars - the statute that stops a country or countries from invading just because they don't like what the others do. Violate this principle and we have anarchy on the planet once more.

For me, the faith-based zeal of leaders like Bush and Blair was no better than the zeal of faith-based terrorists who attempt regime change through atrocities. Blair and Bush just used armies and economies instead - manipulating international law to their favour through misuse of power.

I believe it was a time of great shame for Britain. The outcome in Iraq is as questionable as the outcome in Afghanistan - when the plan is merely to kick out the old and install a new friend, beware of getting what you ask for .