Channel 4 News Iraq inquiry blogger writes that as the Iraq inquiry gears up for tomorrow’s appearance by Alastair Campbell, the inquiry’s Dutch equivalent prepares to release its own report on the Netherlands’ involvement in Iraq.
Good morning and welcome to the first day of Phase Two of the Iraq Inquiry.
A leisurely start today; evidence doesn’t kick off until 14h00 when we’ll hear from the two most senior British Army officers in SE Iraq in 2006 and 2007, Lt-Gen Sir Richard Shirreff and Maj-Gen Jonathan Shaw.
Tomorrow as you may just about have heard by now will be the turn of one Alastair Campbell, about whom I hope to post more later on today.
Two weekend nuggets that you may have missed, especially if you’re not a Twitter follower. By a strange twist of synchronicity, exactly one hour before the Campbell session starts at 10h00, the Dutch equivalent of the Chilcot inquiry will release its own report on that country’s involvement in Iraq.
I won’t pretend to follow the minutiae of Netherlands politics but at least one media report suggests that “Tuesday could be the blackest day” of the Dutch PM’s career: it sounds as though he resisted the creation of the “Davids Commission” as long as he possibly could. No parallels there then.
The other thing worth a look at – or in this case a listen to – is this rather affectionate BBC Radio 4 profile of IraqInquiryBlog’s current favourite panel member, Sir Roderic “Columbo” Lyne.
The programme suggests that childhood Lyne was every bit as difficult as Inquiry Lyne, refusing to be sent to Marlborough public school because he’d heard that the lavatories didn’t have doors (more background on Lyne here). Thankfully I can report that the QEII centre has a more-than-adequate supply of cubicles.
Live Tweets from 14h00 – see you then.