Translated material
Lessons from Iraq
London investigates its war
In three weeks, on July 9, the last British soldier will leave Iraq. In just six years, 120 thousand British troops passed through the crucible of the Iraq campaign. 179 of them died, 222 remained disabled. The war cost the United Kingdom billions of pounds and led to a serious deterioration in the country's international standing.Was it necessary for London to get involved in this war together with Washington? How justified was the government's decision to enter Iraq without a UN mandate? Could huge civilian casualties have been avoided? How effectively did foreigners rule Iraq? All these questions were constantly asked by the opposition and ordinary British citizens. Finally, after nearly three years of resistance, the Labor government agreed to an independent inquiry into the full circumstances of Britain's involvement in the Iraq War. Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced in Parliament late Monday that a special commission of inquiry would be set up within the next month. She will examine the facts surrounding the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the investigation will cover the period from the summer of 2001 until the complete withdrawal of British troops from that country.
The prime minister said the lessons learned through the investigation "will help strengthen the health of our democracy, our diplomacy and our military." Gordon Brown emphasized that the work of the commission will be completely independent of the government, the results will be published and there will be debates on them in both houses of parliament. "I have asked the leaders of the investigation that the final report disclose all but the most sensitive information possible to our national security," Brown said.
The commission, according to the prime minister, includes “only non-partisan public figures who are recognized experts in their fields.” There will be no officials or parliamentarians there. The commission will be headed by 70-year-old Sir John Chilcot, a famous lawyer and expert on Northern Ireland. In addition to him, the committee included four more lords, including two prominent British historians and the famous diplomat, former British ambassador to Moscow Sir Roderick Lyne.
Brown promised that the government would provide full support to the investigation and provide access to all necessary documents, including secret ones. Members of the commission have the right to request for analysis any British or foreign document located in the archives of the United Kingdom. They will also be able to call any British citizen to give evidence.
“The lessons of Iraq can and should be taken into account in Afghanistan,” the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph noted approvingly. However, the opposition expressed doubt that the new commission of inquiry would be able to get to the bottom of the truth and complete its task, since the hearings would be closed. "A secret investigation carried out by a handful of bigwigs is not what Britain needs," said Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg. In his opinion, the commission should work openly.
Premier Brown does not agree with these arguments. Closed hearings will help protect national security, and without publicity, witnesses appearing before the commission (we are talking about former and current politicians, ministers, military leaders and officers) will be able to speak frankly and name the people who participated in the events. Each witness will appear at open hearings with his own lawyer, will be careful in his expressions and will not always be ready to name the true culprits. And then the work of the commission will turn into legal red tape, which may drag on indefinitely. “We already have a sad experience of the public commission on military actions in Northern Ireland,” said Brown, “it has been sitting for eight years, and there is no end in sight to the investigation.” The Iraq Commission should complete its work within a year.
“I don’t expect new sensational revelations from this commission,” William Stanley, a professor at the University of Birmingham, told Vremya Novostey. -- Most of the facts surrounding Britain's involvement in the Iraq war were revealed and analyzed in detail during the two previous investigations. Therefore, we are unlikely to learn anything that will change our ideas about this topic. The task of Sir Chilcot and his colleagues is to give a fair assessment of events, draw lessons and draw conclusions that will warn future politicians from making erroneous decisions. A politician starting a war must know that sooner or later his actions will be subjected to scrupulous independent analysis. He must understand that deceiving his people is a hopeless matter. There will definitely come a time when you will have to answer for what you have done.”
There have been two important inquiries into the events surrounding the Iraq War in the UK. The first dealt with the circumstances of the mysterious death in July 2003 of British Ministry of Defense biological weapons specialist David Kelly, who shared with journalists doubts about the adequacy of the information provided by the government about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The commission declared that the authorities were not involved in Kelly's death. The second investigation was carried out by Lord Butler's commission, created in early 2004, which examined the quality of intelligence data about Iraq. She did not confirm rumors of deliberate distortion of information, but criticized the intelligence services, which relied on unverified and unreliable sources. The head of the new commission, Sir John Chilcot, took part in that investigation.