Chilcot Iraq Inquiry must tell us the truth, Hull Stop the War demands.

Chilcot Iraq Inquiry must tell us the truth.

We welcome the new inquiry into the Iraq War – but with a few caveats.

Martin Deane says, "The Stop the War Coalition has consistently worked against the badly mistaken so-called War on Terror, especially against the War on Iraq knowing already how terribly people had suffered under US-UK sanctions and air attacks - and knowing the determination of the Bush administration to press for illegal regime change against Saddam Hussein.

"After 6 years of fighting in Iraq, British troops have finally been brought home often only to be sent back to Afghanistan - a conflict which also should have ended.

"The Butler Report completely exonerated Blair of any wrongdoing. We hope the Chilcot Inquiry doesn't repeat that mistake."

Even Lord Butler himself was not content with his Report alone and went public to say the dossiers on Hussein left out important caveats on the quality of intelligence and also regretted the “grave flaw” that Parliament “had insufficient control over the executive”.

Now we fear the Chilcot Inquiry will be another "stitch-up" since it :

• is to be held in secret – as Blair apparently pushed for
• does not require statements under oath,
• does not have power of subpoena,
• will report only after a year - by which time elections will have taken place and we'll probably have a new government.

Chilcot will fail to restore people’s faith in government if it does not officially reveal Blair’s role in deciding to go to war by early 2002. An honest inquiry will reflect more clearly how the Prime Minister made this early decision and how indeed intelligence, facts and dossiers were fixed, manipulated and moulded to get precisely that outcome.

Finally Chilcot should underscore the rule of international law and attack the specious last-minute legal justifications that the Blair government undertook.

"Prior to hostilities, the war on Iraq inspired the biggest peace demonstration in British history," Martin Deane goes on: "As the unfixed facts show, the British people were right and Bush and Blair were wrong."

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Notes

Martin Deane

Sec. Hull Stop the War Coalition

Butler Report

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3892809.stm

Butler - dossiers on Hussein left out caveats on quality of intelligence

had insufficient control over the executive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/dec/10/uk.butler

Blair pressed for secret inquiry

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blair-demanded-hold-iraq-inquiry-in-secret-1711549.html

We have lost nearly 200 UK lives in Afghanistan now.

In the news...

Reprieve, a British-based legal rights group, has begun legal action against the UK government for allowing the illegal transfer of a terrorism suspect from Indonesia to Egypt where they say he was tortured for three months before being moved to Gitmo. (alertnet.org)

Britain to withdraw last forces from Iraq - Iraqi parliament fails to pass deal for troops to protect oil, help in training (msnbc.msn.com)

Calling time on Afghanistan

Letter to Hull Daily Mail

We held a stall in Hull on Saturday where our petition called for all the UK troops in Afghanistan to be brought home.

For 8 years we have been fighting Afghans, first longer than the Great War and now longer than the Second World War. The costs are huge and recently estimated at £12 billion.

Many people signed our petition including mothers and other relatives of soldiers serving out there. There are military families against the war in Hull and they know about huge levels of corruption in the government, the staggering amount of heroin produced there, and its history where empires have fought over it, whether the British Empire, or the Russians, or now American-led NATO - and usually they have lost.

The proper principle that should be at work here is not the decision of powerful, militaristic countries to conquer others and remake them in their own image, or take advantage of oil reserves or territory, but the principle of self-determination where a people find their own way.

Of course the real cost is in lives, British soldiers on the one hand and Afghan militants on the other and then their civilians too in far greater numbers.

Soldiers and armies have to follow orders. We don't. We have every right and duty to question what our country gets involved in and when it sends our forces into harm's way and that includes knowing when to call time.

Martin Deane
Secretary

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Saving the Bankers With a Make-Believe War

By Peter Chamberlin

July 26, 2009 ""Information Clearing House" -- Pakistanis and Americans have a common problem, which is also shared by every other country on the planet–corruption in high places. The world is made to fret over the impending loss of the entire capitalist system by the overlords of the Western media, even though, the only loss for the common man will be the chains that bind him. We are all supposed to be grieving deeply for the collapse of the money system which has made so many people rich, people whom the media tells us we all want to be just like.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23143.htm

A Generation Betrayed - in memory of Harry Patch

A generation lost
in mire and blood
a generation betrayed
in the Flanders mud

For country and empire
vast numbers died
as generals blundered
and politicians lied

And still they are lying
as in some foreign field
our young men are dying
for some dubious ideal

hatched by statesmen
in the service of greed
they lie to the public
and the public take heed

just as they did
generations before
and send off their children
to die in the war

organised murder
as Harry Patch said
and each day swells
the legion of dead

when will we learn
from the grief and the pain?
when will we turn
from this pointless campaign?

who is to blame
for this vain sacrifice?
a new generation
is paying the price

now Harry's wise words
are endorsed and exclaimed
by those who sent millions
to be slaughtered and maimed

And the newly sacrificed
in fresh graves are laid
the fruit of another
generation betrayed

by Dave, Hull.

Hull PSC at Youtube: Gaza Demo, Jan 2009