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The Iraq Inquiry Blogger continues to document the inquiry. This time it’s the military men’s turn.
Good morning all, as the inquiry turns one week old. Our witnesses today are Sir Edward Chaplin (UK ambassador to Jordan 2000-02 and then FCO director, Middle East & North Africa 2002-04) and a return appearance by Sir Peter Ricketts (who we saw last week in his previous incarnation as JIC chairman 2000-01 but who…
Gary Gibbon
Sir David Manning gives the Iraq inquiry the first insider’s account of the infamous Crawford Texas summit of April 2002 where Tony Blair and George Bush are supposed to have signed up to go to war.
The Channel 4 News Iraq Inquiry Blogger looks at the press reactin to the first day at the Iraq Inquiry.
Jon Snow is not the only one in Brazil this week. While he is there exploring Brazil’s response to climate change, Middle Eastern leaders have also been flying in for some high profile visits. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – Lula to you and I – has been hosting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in…
Lunch break at the inquiry and the Fourth Estate gather to discuss what “The Story” currently looks like being. Several journalists say they’re going with the internal Foreign Office “options paper” that Sir William Patey mentioned this morning. Although the former head of the Middle East department made clear that regime change was just one…
The Obama administration have all but admitted that their attempts to re-start the Middle East peace process have failed. The State department are now advocating a new tactic – where both sides take “baby steps” toward lower level talks because they know there is no chance of getting Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to sit down…
Jon Snow
Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow asks why there was such a strong reaction to the idea the Tony Blair could become president of the EU.
Jon Snow
I awaken to the radio telling me that 15 years ago today, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The thought throws Barack Obama’s award last week into sharp relief. The more I think of it, the more I wonder why, wakened early to be told about his win,…
Prose on the Afghan frontline, by Lindsey Hilsum: I had a book of World War II poetry with me while in Helmand with British troops.
Jon Snow
Breaking the Silence is one of the myriad groupings in Israeli civic society that offers a thread of hope in the current impasse in the Middle East.
Jon Snow
“I’ve always assumed my phone was tapped”, John Prescott told me last night on Channel 4 News. I guess I hadn’t. But now that I read the Guardian revelations about the goings on inside News International, I suppose I should. Any rational assessment recognises that email is unsafe. It is clearly hackable by anyone from…
Perhaps the most interesting line in the US homeland security secretary’s interview with me this morning concerns her fears over Somali Americans carrying out terrorist attacks inside the United States. She concedes that a small number of Somalis have travelled from the US to Somalia to train in jihad. “Right now we are talking about people going…
Jon Snow
Iraq is a country I have visited many times since I was first there to report from the front line of the harrowing Iran/iraq war in 1980. Foreign intervention and interference has dogged it for more than a century. No wonder Baghdad is seized with parties and celebration. For the promised American pull-out from Iraq…
Jon Snow
A former CIA contact of mine with specialist knowledge on the Middle East, and good connections, suggests there could be moves inside the embryonic Netanyahu government to reopen the question of bombing Iran. Such rumours – and I will restate we are just talking about the reopening of a question – have to be taken…