Iraq enquiry row rumbles on
Last week Gordon Brown told us that the would be held "in private" because it would allow witnesses to be freer with their testimony. A week later and it's pretty clear the bulk of the inquiry will be held in public, with witnesses testifying under oath. Mr Brown's original statement was met with a wail of opposition from the Tories, Lib Dems, senior mandarins, the media, relatives of soldiers killed in action and, eventually, even the chairman of the inquiry himself. A senior Labour figure told me last night that the row could have been avoided if "Brown had consulted properly before announcing the inquiry, as Thatcher did with the Franks' inquiry [into the Falklands War]."
The Tories are forcing a debate on the subject today and, though Mr Brown will instinctively resist a U-turn brought about by Tory pressure, the case for a behind-closed-doors inquiry has already been lost. It was probably doomed the moment some papers reported at the weekend that Tony Blair had been privately lobbying for evidence to be given "in camera". Some even speculated privately that Peter Mandelson, still looking after his old master's bidding, had also urged Mr Brown to keep it private. That suspicion was probably the final nail in the coffin for many! 
A taste of what sort of testimony the inquiry will hear was given yesterday by General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff (i.e. the British Army's top banana), who told the Royal United Services Institute that Britain failed to stabilise Iraq after the 2003 invasion because it was too quick to move troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. He said that the failure to take advantage of a "window of consent" in the immediate aftermath of the invasion had opened the door to the Shia militias and that we had not kept enough troops on the ground. "We failed to maintain the force levels required, either of coalition forces or Iraqi forces," he said "particularly towards the later end of the campaign, by which time we were already committed to a new operation in Afghanistan."
He's not alone in thinking that. But remember: this is the same General who said in 2006 that British troops should get out of Iraq altogether because their presence was making the security situation worse.
And who then told the 91Èȱ¬ in 2008: "We have achieved what we set out to achieve ... we have been quite clear about what we had to do and we have done it ... The job is done and Basra and southern Iraq is a much better place now than it was under Saddam Hussein in 2002."
Some might be forgiven for thinking that this is a General who is all over the place -- and that it's not just the politicians who have some tough questions to answer come the Inquiry.
Comments
or to comment.