Channel 4 News’s Iraq inquiry blogger looks back over coverage of the inquuiry during the Christmas break and ahead to evidence this week and later in the year.
Hello hello – a belated happy new year to you (if that happens to be your calendar) and welcome to the reopening of the Iraq inquiry.
If Sir John thought his statement at the end of December’s evidence might put discussion of the Inquiry and its work on hold for a few weeks he was quite wrong.
Before the year was even out there was criticism of the committee’s decision to delay taking evidence from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Development Secretary Douglas Alexander until after the General Election – whenever that may be.
The Chilcot panel explained that in order to keep proceedings impartial, ministers who are still doing the job the inquiry wants to ask them about (remember, its remit stretches right up to July ’09) should wait until then to prevent “hearings being used as a platform for political advantage.” Opposition parties smelled a rat and said as much.
Then, just this past weekend, the former Tory PM Sir John Major – who, it must be said, backed Blair’s decision to go to war in 2003 – let loose: unlike some of its critics he said the Inquiry had already raised big questions about how and why the UK joined the invasion.
In the absence of firm intel on WMD, he said, “the argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and … an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change.” Was that using the hearings as a platform for political advantage? You decide.
A fair amount of coverage while we’ve been away, then, and that’s without even mentioning Sunday’s strange tale quoting “impeccable inside sources” who claimed that Prince Charles attempted to prevent the war – no word yet on his being called as a witness…
So: what next? This week we hear from another 14 civil servants, diplomats and soldiers in order Chilcot says “to complete the narrative” of events from 2007-2009. Then we’ll move to a month of evidence from the senior decision-makers themselves – people like Blair, former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, Alastair Campbell and Clare Short, but also people like the FCO legal adviser who resigned over the legality of the war, Elizabeth Wilmshurst. We should get some new appearance dates soon. I predict that the press room may be a little fuller than it is today for each of those witnesses.
Today’s witnesses in brief, as the evidence approaches the end of the UK’s role in Iraq in mid-2009. Sir William Patey was UK ambassador to Iraq 2005-06. General Sir Nicholas Houghton was the senior British military representative in Iraq 2005-06 and Chief of Joint Operations 2006-09. Vice Admiral Charles Style was Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Commitments) 2006-07. In the afternoon we hear from Simon McDonald, who’s listed as Prime Minister’s Foreign Policy Adviser and Head of the Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat 2006-09.
Evidence from 10h00, Tweets at twitter.com/iraqinquiryblog. It’s good to be back.