But WMD are not a red herring in that what they represented was a deliberate and successful attempt by the government of the day to mislead the public in order to take the country to war. That is the grossest possible abuse of our political system and, in a former and more enlightened age, could well have been considered treason.

Everything else that followed - inadequate equipment and preparation, inadequate planning for the aftermath and lack of political support with all that meant for the operation, stemmed directly from the way that the attack on Iraq had been sold. At a stroke, Tony and his crew crippled our moral component, our support ebbed away and it all became a toxic policy to be swept under the carpet along with the dead and injured.

Certainly let's examine and understand everything that went wrong but, in the case of Iraq, that cannot be done without the context of the pre-conflict politics and that includes the WMD story. It was the arrogant attitudes underlying the belief that the end justified the means and that anything could be sold to anyone, be they British, American or Iraqi, as long as it was packaged correctly, that drove so many of the errors and cynical policy choices that followed.

Originally Posted by cpunk

The invasion and the brief 'honeymoon period' caused a seismic shock throughout the ME and there were a number of democratic 'twitterings' in different states across the region. The huge c0ck up which then played out over the next five years certainly put a stop to that.

For example: in the late summer and early autumn of 2003 I organised a series of democratic-ish local elections in part of southern Iraq. These gained world-wide coverage at the time (although, unbelievably, Paul Bremer and the CPA then tried to stop them) and created genuine enthusiasm across the local Shi'a and Sunni spectrum, and more widely across the ME to the extent that organisations like Al Jazeera wanted to cover them.

Whatever the reasons for going to war - and personally I think that getting rid of Saddam was good enough - we managed to make such a bollox of the occupation that we ensured that nothing good could come of it. I doubt that there are many further lessons to be learned from examining the whys and wherefores of the decision for war, but there are real, substantive lessons to be learned from how we the military, and our civilian counterparts, conducted the campaign and I think these will be lost if the enquiry over-focuses on the decision to commit troops in the first place.

A very interesting post. Thank you.

However, is there any genuine evidence that any serious consideration was given by the leaderships in Iran, Syria, Saudi, North Africa or the various Gulf Kingdoms or elsewhere to commence a transition to liberal democracy?

There is a wealth of academic research into post-conflict transition to peace, democracy and/or economic prosperity. Most suggests that rapid democratisation in unhelpful to longer term goals. This book is a good start point if you're interested: http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogu...sbn=0521541972

If the 'domino effect' was to take place as hoped - and in a stable fashion - it would only occur after Iraq had proven to be successful - and that was realistically a minimum of 5 years of significant progress. Any attempt to squash that into a shorter time frame was doomed to failure. The other alternative was for 'democracy twitterings' to manifest themselves in the form of revolution. It was the only likely short term possibility - and one that was far from the stable, orderly transition hoped for.

If there is going to be an enquiry into the legality of the decision to go to war then that enquiry has to focus on the procedures in place and whether the correct procedures were followed or not. If International Law says that if you are under a real threat or believe yourself to be under a real threat then the actual threat doesn't have to be substantiated, just the belief in that threat. If you say "ah but you were wrong, there was no clear and present danger" then the defence is "Yes, we know that now but we didn't know that then and we were dealing with someone with a past history so therefore we based our belief on sound reasoning which we held to be the truth at the time".
If the Iraq invasion comes down to a judgement call and all the correct procedures such as ultimatum, time to meet that ultimatum etc had been followed then what can you do? If the ultimatum says you must surrender or render all WMD useless by such and such a time and you haven't got any WMD what can you do? Sadam needed to maintain the impression that he had WMD and he was very much in control because that is how he maintained his power balance. The one thing the enquiry can't do is look at this retrospectively on the basis of knowing what we know now; because that is not the basis upon which any decisions were made in 2003.
So it may well be that how well prepared and equipped the troops were and how much thought had been given to an exit strategy may not come into the mix as they don't form part of the "steps to declaring war" flow chart.

As I understand it the Inquiry is into the the whole war. Which includes the reasons we went to war as well as the conduct of it.

Originally Posted by BuggerAll

As I understand it the Inquiry is into the the whole war. Which includes the reasons we went to war as well as the conduct of it.

I hope so but have the parameters of the enquiry been made public yet?

Originally Posted by Markintime

... Sadam needed to maintain the impression that he had WMD and he was very much in control because that is how he maintained his power balance.

His propaganda was so good that I still think they are there, especially I am not convinced that Iraq was properly searched after the war either.

Just the havers of an old man, I'll go and rub some embrocation on my head to make it smart.

Taxi!

Gordon has done a U turn. He has now told the Inquiry chairman that its up to him whether or not he wants to make the hearings in public.

Brown really is totally out of touch what cnut.

The whole disgraceful business is being shredded by the House of Lords. Only the pusillanimous 'Stalin' Brown 'peers' are standing up for him.

He is so far out of touch, I wonder who holds his willy whilst he piddles!

Originally Posted by whitecity

...
However, is there any genuine evidence that any serious consideration was given by the leaderships in Iran, Syria, Saudi, North Africa or the various Gulf Kingdoms or elsewhere to commence a transition to liberal democracy?
...

It's hard to say whether any of them were in the slightest bit serious but there were rumblings about democratisation in Egypt, Syria, Kuwait and some of the smaller Gulf States. Sadly these stopped when everyone saw how tits-up the situation in Iraq was.

Being facetious for a moment, we should have followed up the invasion of Iraq with a swift move on Saudi: then the dominoes would have started to fall!

Originally Posted by cpunk

Originally Posted by whitecity

...
However, is there any genuine evidence that any serious consideration was given by the leaderships in Iran, Syria, Saudi, North Africa or the various Gulf Kingdoms or elsewhere to commence a transition to liberal democracy?
...

It's hard to say whether any of them were in the slightest bit serious but there were rumblings about democratisation in Egypt, Syria, Kuwait and some of the smaller Gulf States. Sadly these stopped when everyone saw how tits-up the situation in Iraq was.

The main point wasn't about democratic reform within existing regimes (except the smaller gulf states), it was about presenting the people of the region with a post-current leadership political model that didn't involve running to whatever gobshite inhabited the local mosque. That was the point - the current regimes arn't a serious threat bar their support of various terrorist groups - a realist would say that if there was some way of maintaining that status quo, it should be taken. He would also however tell you that there isn't any way of maintaining it. Things are going to change in these countries - for better or worse.