A Journey_ My Political Life Part 19

By the way, I am emphatically not saying we did everything well or could not have done many things better. So it is with any such situation. But above all, I certainly misjudged the depth of the failure of the Afghanistan state; and the ability of the Taliban to immerse themselves into the local communities, particularly in the south, and to call upon reinforcements from across the border in the mountainous highlands that seemed a law unto themselves. Thus immersed, they were able by a continuation of intimidation, organisation and sheer malevolence to rea.s.sert control of parts of the territory, or at least to disrupt the work we were doing.

Also, their fanaticism meant that the end justified the means. They would kill, terrorise and torture without compunction or conscience. Villagers, uncertain of which masters they were going to have to deal with, hovered between support for the allies and obedience to their local religious extremists. Meanwhile, the central government in Kabul, led by Hamid Karzai, struggled to have their writ run.

What happened was that even as 2001 wore on, even as the news eventually moved on at first reluctantly, but then gladly what had been a supreme international effort started to resemble more and more an effort by the US and its closest allies. We didn't get another September 11. The stories of chemical attacks gradually slipped away. The world consciousness of a menace needing to be confronted slowly melted, losing its shape and its prominence, as life got back to and seemed normal. Hesitantly at first, but then picking up confidence, several strands of opinion emerged that were to have a deeply corrosive effect on the will to keep going.

The first of these was that over time, and as the pictures of allied bombing missions made their impact, the strength of Muslim support for the campaign started to waver. The mindset that our enemies sought desperately to impose namely that this was a war against a Muslim nation gained traction. Much more fundamentally, from the outset this was seen as an essentially Western affair. There were Turkish forces involved and later others, but for Arab and Muslim opinion, the offensive was conducted for America, not against terrorism. Those elements deep within Islam that saw it as a victim rea.s.serted themselves, questioning our motives, seizing on any language of an unfortunate nature. Both George and Silvio had used the word 'crusade'. It was completely obvious that they were using it in a generic sense, as one would refer to a crusade against drugs or crime, a term commonly used in our politics; but it was twisted to suggest they used it in reference to the Crusades of old. Many of the Arab and Muslim governments did not see perhaps unsurprisingly the cause of democracy as one to which they should rally.

The moral force with which the action had been launched began to dissipate in Western circles as well. For a few years after Afghanistan retreated from the top of the bulletins, this dissipation seemed to make little practical difference, but it meant that time and time again when we needed top-quality focus, it wasn't there, except from the US and UK; and it was clear we could not do it all on our own. The Europeans were with us, but within limits set by their own public opinion, which was prepared to support the mission in general terms but was deeply reluctant to commit forces and to suffer casualties.

Without doubt things could have been done better and differently; but the princ.i.p.al reason for progress stalling was that our enemy began to sense the boundaries of our endurance and the strength or otherwise of our stomach for the long fight. In both Iraq and Afghanistan they started to understand that we were unprepared for a fight that might mean we take substantial losses; that if they showed they were prepared to carry on, day in, day out, in territory they knew well, and with a people who had seen so much brutality and oppression over the decades, then they could win, not by superior force or greater resources or a broader appeal, but by dint of perseverance.

In my darker moments, I would consider the parable in which Jesus asks: 'Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?' We had counted on a long steady march; we had of course counted on immeasurable difficulties along the way. But we had not counted on the deep grip this extremism could exercise on the imagination, will and way of life of its adherents.

The fact was that even many who were not extremists nevertheless shared the sense that they were justified in fighting us; that this was a battle between the West and the people of Afghanistan. Such an argument was patently false, since the people of Afghanistan had shown in an election what they desired. I tried to counter it by constructing a broad strategy based on values that required soft as well as hard power.

In my conference speech of 2001, I set out what I thought could and should be a new order of things. I drew a historical parallel with the defeat of revolutionary Communism. Military strength played its part, of course if the Soviet Union had not understood that its might would be confronted with our might, it could have triumphed despite what was right but ultimately it was defeated by the strength of an idea: human freedom. In time, people saw Soviet Communist regimes for what they were: dictatorships. Communist economies in practice were disasters. Communist societies deprived their people of all that motivates and enriches the human spirit. Along the way our mistakes were manifold, but our insistence on waging a battle was right.

As the twenty-first century opened, those battles for political ideological supremacy had fallen away. Even in China socialism with Chinese characteristics the system had become a balance between market and state. Other than in North Korea, the collapse of the Berlin Wall had indeed ushered in a new era.

Now we were confronted with a new battle one about culture and religion more than politics per se, yet the route to victory was, in my judgement, the same: stand up militarily, but realise that the way to defeat a bad idea is with a better one. I thought we had to provide a comprehensive strategy for changing the world and in doing so exhibit the values that, at our best, we believe in and act upon.

Western nations have many faults, but as I always used to say, there's a simple test of a country: are people trying to get into it or get out of it? On the whole, immigration not emigration was our problem. In the final a.n.a.lysis the people were the boss, not the politicians. We also stood for justice; so I set out how, as part of this broader fight, we had to show our determination on Middle East peace, our concern for Africa 'a scar on the conscience of the world' and our commitment to the environment. We had to demonstrate, in sum, that what we wanted for ourselves, we wanted for all.

The premise of my speech was the world's defining characteristic of interdependence.

Round the world, September 11 is bringing governments and people to reflect, consider and change. And in this process, amidst all the talk of war and action, there is another dimension appearing. There is a coming together. The power of community is a.s.serting itself. We are realising how fragile are our frontiers in the face of the world's new challenges. Today conflicts rarely stay within national boundaries. Today a tremor in one financial market is repeated in the markets of the world. Today confidence is global; either its presence or its absence. Today the threat is chaos; because for people with work to do, family life to balance, mortgages to pay, careers to further, pensions to provide, the yearning is for order and stability and if it doesn't exist elsewhere, it is unlikely to exist here. I have long believed this interdependence defines the new world we live in. Today conflicts rarely stay within national boundaries. Today a tremor in one financial market is repeated in the markets of the world. Today confidence is global; either its presence or its absence. Today the threat is chaos; because for people with work to do, family life to balance, mortgages to pay, careers to further, pensions to provide, the yearning is for order and stability and if it doesn't exist elsewhere, it is unlikely to exist here. I have long believed this interdependence defines the new world we live in.

I set out the need for concerted action across the range of international issues and described the challenges of globalisation. I then said: The issue is not how to stop globalisation. The issue is how we use the power of community to combine it with justice. If globalisation works only for the benefit of the few, then it will fail and will deserve to fail. But if we follow the principles that have served us so well at home that power, wealth and opportunity must be in the hands of the many, not the few if we make that our guiding light for the global economy, then it will be a force for good and an international movement that we should take pride in leading. Because the alternative to globalisation is isolation. Confronted by this reality, round the world, nations are instinctively drawing together. In Quebec, all the countries of North and South America are deciding to make one huge free trade area, rivalling Europe. In Asia, ASEAN. In Europe, the most integrated grouping of all, we are now fifteen nations, with another twelve countries negotiating to join, and more beyond that. A new relationship between Russia and Europe is beginning. Confronted by this reality, round the world, nations are instinctively drawing together. In Quebec, all the countries of North and South America are deciding to make one huge free trade area, rivalling Europe. In Asia, ASEAN. In Europe, the most integrated grouping of all, we are now fifteen nations, with another twelve countries negotiating to join, and more beyond that. A new relationship between Russia and Europe is beginning. And will not India and China, each with three times as many citizens as the whole of the EU put together, once their economies have developed sufficiently as they will do, not reconfigure entirely the geopolitics of the world and in our lifetime? And will not India and China, each with three times as many citizens as the whole of the EU put together, once their economies have developed sufficiently as they will do, not reconfigure entirely the geopolitics of the world and in our lifetime?When we act to bring to account those who committed the atrocity of September 11, we do so not out of bloodl.u.s.t. We do so because it is just. We do not act against Islam. The true followers of Islam are our brothers and sisters in this struggle. Bin Laden is no more obedient to the proper teaching of the Koran than those crusaders of the twelfth century, who pillaged and murdered, represented the teaching of the Gospel.It is time the West confronted its ignorance of Islam. Jews, Muslims and Christians are all children of Abraham. This is the moment to bring the faiths closer together in understanding of our common values and heritage, a source of unity and strength.

I also gave a strong defence of America, not just as a nation but as a concept: America has its faults as a society, as we have ours. But I think of the Union of America born out of the defeat of slavery. I think of its const.i.tution, with its inalienable rights granted to every citizen still a model for the world. I think of a black man, born in poverty, who became chief of their Armed Forces and is now Secretary of State Colin Powell, and I wonder frankly whether such a thing could have happened here. I think of the Statue of Liberty and how many refugees, migrants and the impoverished pa.s.sed its light and felt that if not for them, for their children, a new world could indeed be theirs. I think of a country where people who do well don't have questions asked about their accent, their cla.s.s, their beginnings, but have admiration for what they have done and the success they've achieved. I think of those New Yorkers I met, still in shock, but resolute; the firefighters and police, mourning their comrades but still heads held high. I think of all this and I reflect: yes, America has its faults, but it is a free country, a democracy, it is our ally and some of the reaction to September 11 betrays a hatred of America that shames those that feel it. I think of all this and I reflect: yes, America has its faults, but it is a free country, a democracy, it is our ally and some of the reaction to September 11 betrays a hatred of America that shames those that feel it. So I believe this is a fight for freedom. And I want to make it a fight for justice too. Justice not only to punish the guilty, but justice to bring those same values of democracy and freedom to people round the world. So I believe this is a fight for freedom. And I want to make it a fight for justice too. Justice not only to punish the guilty, but justice to bring those same values of democracy and freedom to people round the world.And I mean: freedom, not only in the narrow sense of personal liberty, but in the broader sense of each individual having the economic and social freedom to develop their potential to the full. That is what community means, founded on the equal worth of all. The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause.This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us reorder this world around us.Today, humankind has the science and technology to destroy itself or to provide prosperity to all. Yet science can't make that choice for us. Only the moral power of a world acting as a community can. 'By the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more together than we can alone.' [A quotation from the new Clause IV]For those people who lost their lives on September 11 and those who mourn them, now is the time for the strength to build that community. Let that be their memorial.

As with all visionary speeches, it attracted both plaudits and sneers. I had written it myself, virtually straight out. There was none of the usual agonising. The redrafts were minimal. I sat in Chequers in the study overlooking the Rose Garden, as the first autumn colours began to appear, and wrote. I remember picking up from the desk a silver-and-gold inkstand that had been a present to Chamberlain in 1937, with a Latin inscription that translates as 'To stand on the ancient ways, to see which is the right and the good way, and in that to walk'. I felt we were on the eve of a mighty decision about the world's future. I wrote easily because I wrote what I thought.

Looking back, it was extraordinarily idealistic; but it was also a strategy. And it rested on one very important but highly contestable decision.

In the Chicago speech of April 1999 I had already set out a doctrine that put intervention if necessary, military intervention at the heart of creating a more just international community of nations. I had enlarged the concept of national interest, arguing that in an interdependent world, our national interest was engaged whenever injustice or danger existed. So I came to this new challenge with what was already a highly developed instinct for the bold approach and for being prepared to intervene rather than let be.

In essence, there are two views of how foreign policy should be conducted. They are often presented as a choice between idealism and realism, but that is unfair to both schools of thought. The idealist believes that a foreign policy driven by principle is the only one that works, because it is the only one that changes and persuades. The realist believes that by realpolitik we save lives and money and conflict, and that is surely worth achieving. They are simply two different a.n.a.lyses of what is effective.

Because it was such a shocking and terrible act, September 11 threw the world's pieces into the air. It was accepted totally as altering our view of the world fundamentally. At that moment, people were completely prepared to intervene radically so that the pieces settled in good order and harmony.

But as time pa.s.sed, people wondered whether maybe its consequences hadn't been exaggerated; perhaps it really was just a one-off, in which case, the argument developed, should we just try to manage this situation, maybe evolve it over time, but above all tranquillise it? As the mission became more painful and the will of the enemy to keep on fighting grew clearer, such an argument became increasingly attractive. Maybe this extremism could be cauterised. Maybe with a big push on Israel and Palestine, for example, we would evolve out of it. Maybe if we sought a lesser ambition and merely managed world affairs, recognising that different cultures have different ways, we could all get along better. So, they argued, it's not really a 'War on Terror' how unhelpful such intemperate language sounds. This isn't really to do with Islam or indeed religion. The disputes that seemed to be connected are possibly not connected, but local. To bring democracy to these nations is to try to enforce Western ideas on non-Western peoples. It's a form of cultural colonialism born of ignorance. So the argument went.

To which the response of people like myself was that we had been given a warning and we should heed it. You can't categorise al-Qaeda as a simple offshoot of some weird fanatical ideology. In later time, as I studied the issue closer still, I saw the significance of the Iranian Revolution. While it was true that in 2001 Iran was hostile to the Taliban and Saddam, and therefore to al-Qaeda, the hostility was centred on the Shia/Sunni divide, not on the methods or world view of either. The battle was about who would lead a reactionary movement within Islam, not who could construct a progressive movement.

I looked at the storming of Mecca in late 1979 by Sunni extremists, anxious in case the Shia Muslims were stealing a march. It had been put down with total firmness, and the House of Saud had also learned its strength. From then on, there was an increasing disposition to allow religious forces to fashion Saudi society.

I also believed that the answer to one threat was not to conjure up another. I examined how in Afghanistan we had supported what became the Taliban in order to stop the Russians, precisely in the name of managing the situation; how we had armed Saddam to be a brake on Iran; and how in each case the consequence of such 'realism' had been simply to create a new, and potentially worse, source of instability.

Above all, though, I conceived of September 11 as making all previous a.n.a.lyses redundant, or at least duty-bound for re-examination. We could no longer presume that countries in which this virus persisted were none of our business. In the choice between a policy of management and a policy of revolution, I had become a revolutionary. No more did I think this situation could be managed safely. It had to be set on a path of fundamental change.

In January 2002, with the memory still present of a happy few days in the sun with the family and baby Leo in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, I visited Bagram airport in Afghanistan. I stepped off the C130 transporter to see that a red carpet had been rolled out. We were warned not to step off it since large parts of the airfield were still mined.

As I came down the steps to be greeted by Karzai, I looked at the a.s.sembled guard of honour. They had been hastily put together, their uniforms begged, borrowed or stolen from what appeared to be the armies of the world. The men were thin; the place was a ma.s.s of burnt buildings and craters.

As Karzai and I walked down the line inspecting the guard, photographers and cameramen were ahead of us trying to take pictures, clashing with the Afghanistan security detail, who would throw them off the carpet, which they then bounced back on to, like something out of a comedy sketch, the two of us having to react normally with cameras trained on us, as this St Vitus's Dance was performed in front of us.

'I want you to meet my Cabinet,' Hamid said. We walked to a bombed-out building by the edge of the strip, went inside and sat on makeshift benches and plastic garden chairs. One man, introduced to me, I think, as the arts and culture minister, sat quite motionless. He had lost one eye, and the good eye stared at me, not leaving my face for an instant. It never blinked.

They spoke of their hopes and fears. Hamid knew exactly what to say and how to say it. His perfect English, his perfect poise and a.s.surance, lifted my spirits. I came away inspired by their heroic expressions of determination, but daunted by what a few small glimpses of the country's condition had told me.

This would take time. But how long, and how hard it would be, I did not know.

THIRTEEN.

IRAQ: COUNTDOWN TO WAR.

As I thought on how to answer the question put to me at the end of my evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War in January 2010, I felt sick, a mixture of anger and anguish. 'Do you have any regrets?' This wasn't a question being asked or answered in the quiet reflections of the soul; not something that could be weighed, considered and explained with profundity and penetrating clarity or even an easy honesty.

It was a headline question. It had to have a headline answer. Answer 'yes' and I knew the outcome: 'BLAIR APOLOGISES FOR WAR', 'AT LAST HE SAYS SORRY'. Choose a variant. The impact would be the same. Those who had opposed the war would rejoice; those who had supported it would be dismayed, imagining their support and in some cases their sacrifice had been in vain. Answer 'no' and you seem like some callous brute, indifferent to the suffering or perhaps worse, stubbornly resistant, not because of strength but because you know nothing else to do.

So I said I took responsibility, accepting the decision had been mine and avoiding the headline that would have betrayed. However, it was an answer that was incomplete.

The anger was at being put in a position in an inquiry that was supposed to be about lessons learned, but had inevitably turned into a trial of judgement, and even good faith; and in front of some of the families of the fallen, to whom I wanted to reach out, but knew if I did so, the embrace would be immediately misused and misconstrued. But the anger was selfish, trivial comparatively at any rate and transient.

The anguish remains. The princ.i.p.al part of that is not selfish. Some of it is, to be sure. Do they really suppose I don't care, don't feel, don't regret with every fibre of my being the loss of those who died? And not just British soldiers but those of other nations, most of all of course the Americans, but also the j.a.panese and Dutch and Danes and Estonians and Spanish and Italians and all the others of our coalition. And the Iraqis themselves, and not just those who were the casualties of our forces in war, but those who died at the hands of others, whose deaths we failed to prevent. The diplomats, like the wonderful Sergio Vieira de Mello, who gave their lives in a cause they never advocated. The random casualties of the vagaries of war, like Ken Bigley, and the private security guards taken hostage with Peter Moore.

To be indifferent to that would be inhuman, emotionally warped. But it is not that accusation that causes the anguish.

The anguish arises from a sense of sadness that goes beyond conventional description or the stab of compa.s.sion you feel on hearing tragic news. Tears, though there have been many, do not encompa.s.s it. I feel desperately sorry for them, sorry for the lives cut short, sorry for the families whose bereavement is made worse by the controversy over why their loved ones died, sorry for the utterly unfair selection that the loss should be theirs. Why did it have to be their child, their husband, their family, at that time, in that place, on that journey or mission or appointment?

The reason fate could make that choice derived from my decision. But then there were the myriad chance factors that conspired to bring about the circ.u.mstance of each life lost.

The anguish arises from an urgency to act, to commit, not to feel, but to do.

I am now beyond the mere expression of compa.s.sion. I feel words of condolence and sympathy to be entirely inadequate. They have died and I, the decision-maker in the circ.u.mstances that led to their deaths, still live.

I used the word 'responsibility', incomplete though it is, with deliberation.

I can't regret the decision to go to war for the reason I will give. I can say that never did I guess the nightmare that unfolded, and that too is part of the responsibility. But the notion of 'responsibility' indicates not a burden discharged but a burden that continues. Regret can seem bound to the past. Responsibility has its present and future tense.

Even out of office, playing now a wholly different role, I am still engaged in the same struggle that gave rise to the events I shall describe. When I say I think about Iraq and Afghanistan and their consequences and their victims every day of my life, it is true; but more than that, I use that reflection to recommit to a sense of purpose in the bigger affair, a business as yet unfinished. I cannot, by any expression of regret, bring to life those who died; but I can dedicate a large part of the life left to me to that wider struggle, to try to charge it with meaning, purpose and resolution, and keep my responsibility intact and functioning, in however small or large a way. I can't say sorry in words; I can only hope to redeem something from the tragedy of death, in the actions of a life, my life, that continues still.

One other thing before I start: many who read this will have disagreed with the decision, maybe strongly; maybe you just can't bring yourself even to debate it now. I am sorry about that too. But for the moment let each of us go back to the beginning and I will try to explain what was going on in my mind.

The trouble with debating Iraq is that, by and large, people have stopped listening to each other. There are probably more 'uncommitteds' among the public than generally thought. In my experience, 'the people' as opposed to others, the players, the commentators, the hangers-on, the aficionados in the narrowly obsessive beltway of politics have an innate appreciation of the complexity of decision-making. They come to a view instinctively. They are prepared to shift it from time to time. They understand leadership is a hard business. And they have a different process of reasoning from politicians, at once both startlingly superficial and at points more profound. Nowadays they won't think of Iraq much. But if they did, they would remain reasonably open to persuasion.

Not so those who feel strongly and have taken a keen interest. Their minds are made up, and the conventional wisdom certainly among progressives has hardened pretty much to granite; and is negative: it was a mistake. It is also, of all the decisions I took, the one that even closest friends disagreed with; indeed, not so much simply disagreed with, but found hard to comprehend. My oldest political friend Geoff Gallop used to say not that he took a different view from me, but: 'Just can't understand why you did that, Tony.' Many supporters will acknowledge I did it for the correct motives, but still regard it as 'the stain' on an otherwise impressive record. And of course those who aren't supporters regard it as final proof of villainy.

I understand entirely why people take this view. The stated purpose of the conflict was to enforce UN resolutions on Saddam's WMD, and we found no WMD after taking control of the country. We thought there was an active WMD programme and there wasn't. The aftermath, following Saddam's removal in May 2003, was b.l.o.o.d.y, destructive and chaotic. If we had found actual WMD, the view would be different; and if we had ended the conflict in May 2003 and the aftermath had been like that in Kosovo, the debate would be rather distant and academic. But the former seemed to disintegrate the casus belli casus belli; and the latter has served to keep the fact and consequence of it constantly in our thoughts.

So that is one reason, and a perfectly comprehensible one, for the conventional wisdom; but there is another reason. Politics today works by reference to paradigms of opinion that are formed, harden fast and then become virtually unchallengeable. People have a short time to reflect and consider; issues are weighed quickly, little care is put into what goes on the scales and so judgements are made with a speed and severity that a more deliberative process would eschew. Once such judgements are made, stories are written that tend to reinforce the judgement. Stories to the contrary are ignored, until eventually to challenge the judgement is deemed almost delusional. Balance is an alien concept in today's world. It wants opinions that are certain and are made fast.

For these purposes, therefore, my task is a modest one: not to persuade the reader of the rightness of the cause, but merely to persuade that such a cause can be made out. It is to open the mind. I have often reflected as to whether I was wrong. I ask you to reflect as to whether I may have been right.

The intelligence on Saddam and WMD turned out to be incorrect. It is said even I have said that how this came to be so remains a mystery. Why should Saddam keep the inspectors out for so long when he had nothing to hide? Even when he let them in, why did he obstruct them? Why bring war upon his country to protect a myth? Was it really, to paraphrase the former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, as paradoxical as this: that he thought the US and its allies were bluffing when we threatened force and actually we were sincere; and we thought he genuinely had WMD when actually he was bluffing?

When I went back over all the facts again for the purposes of the Chilcot Inquiry, I reread in full the final Iraq Survey Group Report from 2004, and had greater time to reflect on its purport. Compiled by the US/UK team headed by Dr David Kay and then Charles Duelfer to determine the truth about Saddam and WMD, the report was published in two stages. The first, while David Kay was heading the group, concluded in 2003 that Saddam had no active WMD programme. That took the news headlines, and unsurprisingly led to the view that therefore the intelligence was just plain false, that Saddam had evidently been in compliance with the UN resolutions and that the war was unjustified. The caveats entered by Dr Kay were largely overlooked, including his a.s.sertion that Saddam was possibly a greater threat than we had known, a remark seen at the time as inexplicable, given the primary finding.

The second report from Charles Duelfer was not published until September 2004. It received far less attention, yet this was the complete a.n.a.lysis. Under the pressure of the challenges of the time in Iraq, I didn't digest it in full. Furthermore, it was only some years later that Charles Duelfer published his book describing in detail the compilation of the report. For the purposes of the Chilcot Inquiry, I studied both. What had been inexplicable was there explained.

The ISG team under Duelfer had managed to conduct interviews with the key personnel from the regime, the top a.s.sociates of Saddam. In an extraordinary process lasting some months, an FBI agent, George Piro, also secured interviews with Saddam himself. The team uncovered tapes of meetings that Saddam had had with senior staff at which the WMD programme was discussed. The real story emerged. And it's worth reading.

Essentially, after sanctions were imposed, Saddam's regime became severely constrained. The constraint became even tougher when revelations from Saddam's son-in-law about his continuing interest in development of WMD were broadcast to the world in 1996. (He was later lured back to Iraq and killed.) Saddam made a tactical decision. From the mid-1990s onwards, Saddam's policy became to remove sanctions at all costs. The active WMD programme was shut down. The material that had not been destroyed by the inspectors in 1991 was disposed of. He knew he could no longer risk producing WMD and trying to conceal them.

However, he retained completely his belief in the strategic importance of WMD to his regime and its survival. He believed that the use of chemical weapons had been vital in repelling the Iranian soldiers who, filled with religious zeal, had thrown themselves in waves against Iraqi forces in the IranIraq War. Only their use had, he thought, compensated for the superior number of Iran's forces. The ga.s.sing of the Kurds had delivered not just a military but a psychological blow to their hopes of challenging Saddam, so these weapons had played a pivotal role in suppressing internal dissent. Saddam knew that Iran was acquiring nuclear weapons capability, and believed Israel had that capability already. For him, the acquisition of such nuclear capability would serve his basic purpose: to be the dominant force in the Arab world.

He therefore did indeed conceal or remove any evidence of an active programme for nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. However, what the ISG discovered was that this was merely a tactical decision to put such a programme into abeyance, not a strategic decision to abandon it.

The ISG concluded: Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capacity which was essentially destroyed in 1991 after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilised, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.

This conclusion on nuclear weapons was actually endorsed by the Butler Report of July 2004, though that was written prior to the full ISG Report of September 2004. The Butler Report concluded: As a result of our Review, and taking into account the evidence which has been found by the ISG and debriefing of Iraqi personnel, we have reached the conclusion that prior to the war the Iraqi regime had the strategic intention of resuming the pursuit of prohibited weapons programmes, including if possible its nuclear weapons programme, when United Nations inspection regimes were relaxed and sanctions were eroded or lifted.

In pursuit of this strategic ambition, Saddam kept together the scientists and technicians necessary to reconst.i.tute such a programme; he imported dual-use goods in breach of the sanctions, and maintained laboratories undisclosed to the UN that could quickly be reactivated for WMD purposes. These activities were financed by illegal manipulation of the oil-for-food programme in which some oil revenues were allowed in order to buy food and medicine.

According to the senior officials they interviewed, the Iraqi Intelligence Services (IIS) maintained throughout 19912003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories to research and test various chemicals and poisons. They went on to say: ISG has no evidence that IIS Directorate of Criminology (M16) scientists were producing CW or BW agents in these laboratories. However, sources indicate that M16 was planning to produce several CW agents including sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, and Sarin. The existence, function, and purpose of the laboratories were never declared to the UN. The existence, function, and purpose of the laboratories were never declared to the UN.The IIS program included the use of human subjects for testing purposes.

All of this emerges in the interviews conducted by the ISG that were, of course, the sticking point in the Hans Blix inspections between November 2002 and March 2003. They are not evidence that supports the intelligence of an active WMD programme on which we relied. So the true facts are different from those we thought to be true as at March 2003. But the true facts do provide the clearest possible basis to a.s.sess that he was indeed a threat and, in particular, that the charge that he was in breach of the UN resolutions was fully correct.

The danger, had we backed off in 2003, is very clear; the UN inspectors led by Blix were never going to get those interviews; they may well have concluded (wrongly) that Saddam had given up his WMD ambitions; sanctions would have been dropped; and it would have been impossibly hard to reapply pressure to a regime that would have been 'cleared'. Saddam would then have had the intent; the know-how; and, with a rising oil price, enormous purchasing power.

Now, you can dispute many parts of this thesis. Maybe he would have decided he didn't need WMD after all; had he tried to develop them, maybe the international community would have acted; in any event, it could all have taken time. But if you read the ISG Report, the picture that emerges is of a regime whose only constraint was one externally imposed. The nature of it was utterly dark. For example, a small point: the descriptions of the experimentation they conducted on humans for research into biological poisons admittedly for a.s.sa.s.sination purposes, not WMD are indicative.

My point here is not to persuade that we were right to remove him, but only to make those who adhere to the conventional wisdom at least pause and reflect. I don't claim that the thesis is an indisputable one, that had we failed to act in 2003 Saddam would have re-emerged stronger, a compet.i.tor to Iran both in respect of WMD and in support of terrorism in the region the opposite case can be made but it is surely at least as probable as the alternative thesis, namely that he would have sunk into comfortable, unmenacing obscurity and old age; and his sons, groomed to succeed him, would have reformed.

The same is also true for the moral case against what we did, which, in essence, comes down to the chaos and death that followed Saddam's removal. There is no moral judgement that can or should be based on mathematics: here's the number Saddam killed; here's the number that died after his fall. Such a calculation is necessarily invidious. However, since so much is said about the numbers of Iraqis who died after March 2003, it is at least worth conducting the debate on the best evidence available, not the worst.

To the question 'Is Iraq better now than in Saddam's time?', there is really only one sensible answer: of course. The best estimate of those who died under Saddam is as follows: .

IranIraq War, 19808: 600,0001.1 million total fatalities from both countries (Anthony Cordesman, The Lessons of Modern War The Lessons of Modern War, Vol. II, p. 3) Anfal Campaign against Kurds, 1988: up to 100,000 Kurdish fatalities; many more injuries and displaced persons (Human Rights Watch, 'Genocide in Iraq', 2003) 1991 Invasion of Kuwait/Gulf War: 75,000 fatalities (Milton Leitenberg, 'Deaths in Wars and Conflicts in the 20th Century', Cornell University, Peace Studies Program) 1991 campaigns/reprisals against Shia: 50,000 fatalities (Leitenberg) Other political killings over the years: 100,000 or more (Human Rights Watch, 'Justice Needed for Iraqi Government Crimes', December 2002) .

But this only tells a part of the story. As Saddam came to power in 1979, Iraq was richer than either Portugal or Malaysia. By 2003, 60 per cent of the population was dependent on food aid. Millions were malnourished, and millions were in exile. One statistic above all tells us what Saddam's Iraq was like. According to the UN, by 2002 the number of deaths of children under the age of five was 130 per 1,000, a figure worse than that for the Congo. By 2007, as a result of the coalition and then the Iraqi government introducing proper immunisation and nutrition programmes, this figure had fallen to just over 40 per 1,000. The difference equates roughly to 50,00060,000 children's lives saved each and every year.

Before anyone says 'Ah, but it was sanctions', it should be remembered that Saddam was free to buy as much food and medicine as he wanted. He chose not to do so, in order falsely to claim it was the West causing the deaths of Iraqi children. In the Kurdish area, despite Saddam and despite sanctions covering them too, the death rate for children was half that of central and southern Iraq.

One third of all Iraqi children in the centre and south of Iraq suffered from chronic malnutrition by 2003. The deaths from diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections were easily preventable. Even in the midst of the war that followed, between 2005 and 2007 malnutrition for the population was reduced to under a quarter of what it was in the era of Saddam.

These were the deaths we never saw; the carnage we never witnessed; the grief that never appeared on our television screens. But they were every bit as real as the tragic loss of life after Saddam was removed.

What was that loss of life? Here, again, 'facts' were seized on and rapidly became una.s.sailable. Frequently it will be said that 500,000 or 600,000 died between 2003 and 2009. Once claimed, it just pa.s.ses into the cuttings and is then repeated.

The origins of this figure lie in the Lancet Lancet report published in October 2004 which purported to be a scientific a.n.a.lysis of deaths in Iraq. The figure they gave 600,000 led the news and became dominant, repeated as fact. Later the methodology on which this report was based was extensively challenged; its figures charged with being inaccurate and misleading; and the a.s.sessment made comprehensively questioned by other publications. This got practically zero publicity. report published in October 2004 which purported to be a scientific a.n.a.lysis of deaths in Iraq. The figure they gave 600,000 led the news and became dominant, repeated as fact. Later the methodology on which this report was based was extensively challenged; its figures charged with being inaccurate and misleading; and the a.s.sessment made comprehensively questioned by other publications. This got practically zero publicity.

The International Red Cross, who did a detailed examination of all the evidence, concluded that the Iraq Body Count, plus the wealth of data from the Iraq Living Conditions Survey and Family Health Survey, is the most accurate estimate. The Brookings Inst.i.tution, which compiled its own findings, came to a similar view as the Iraq Body Count (a group which, by the way, was against the war). The figures both came out with are between just over 100,000 and 112,000.

That is 112,000 too many, but a far cry from half a million. However, the additional point is their finding that the majority almost 70,000 were killed not by coalition forces but in the sectarian killings of 20057 that were the work of al-Qaeda and Iran-backed militia.

Again, this is stated not to prove that removing Saddam was therefore better for Iraq than keeping him, but just to put in the balance what Iraq was really like under Saddam, and what it was really like when he went. What it is really like today we will come to.

So this is not just a case of 'if we knew then what we know now'. On the basis of what we do do know now, I still believe that leaving Saddam in power was a bigger risk to our security than removing him, and that terrible though the aftermath was, the reality of Saddam and his sons in charge of Iraq would at least arguably be much worse. None of this in any way dismisses the force of the criticism that we failed to foresee the nature of what would follow once Saddam was gone. The planning for the aftermath is a point of fierce debate and I shall come to it. The truth is we did not antic.i.p.ate the role of al-Qaeda or Iran. Whether we should have is another matter; and if we had antic.i.p.ated, what we would have done about it is another matter again. know now, I still believe that leaving Saddam in power was a bigger risk to our security than removing him, and that terrible though the aftermath was, the reality of Saddam and his sons in charge of Iraq would at least arguably be much worse. None of this in any way dismisses the force of the criticism that we failed to foresee the nature of what would follow once Saddam was gone. The planning for the aftermath is a point of fierce debate and I shall come to it. The truth is we did not antic.i.p.ate the role of al-Qaeda or Iran. Whether we should have is another matter; and if we had antic.i.p.ated, what we would have done about it is another matter again.

It is for these reasons that I am unable to satisfy the desire even of some of my supporters, who would like me to say: it was a mistake but one made in good faith. Friends opposed to the war think I'm being obstinate; others, less friendly, think I'm delusional. To both I may say: Keep an open mind.

Whereas I must accept the reality of what happened in removing him, those who take a different view must accept there would have been a reality if he and his sons were still in charge of Iraq. Look at the twenty-five-year history of his reign and tell me the next five, ten, fifteen or twenty years would have been better.

However, I am leaping ahead. Let us go back to the time of 20013 and begin at the beginning. There are two ways of describing what happened: one by reference to the psychology of the decision-making; the other by reference to the chronology of events. I will begin with the nature of the decision.

First, perhaps by way of a preliminary, we should dismiss the conspiracy theory part of the story. There was no big 'lie' about WMD. You can examine the intelligence I had received on various government websites. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) reports were spread over many years, and all a.s.sumed an active chemical and biological programme. There were those in the international intelligence community who disputed the extent of the programme, but no one seriously disputed that it existed. UN Resolution 1441 of November 2002, unanimously pa.s.sed, said as much.

The reason for this was very simple. In 1981, Israel had bombed the nuclear weapons research facility at Tuwaitha near Baghdad, on good evidence that this was part of an active and accelerating programme to acquire nuclear weapons capability. The chemical and biological programme continued. In 1988, as part of the Arabisation policy, to clear Kurds out of the country just north of Baghdad, there were several chemical weapons attacks on Kurdish villages in which 100,000 or more people were killed, including one on Halabja in which several thousand were eliminated in one day.

In March 1990, the Observer Observer newspaper journalist Farzad Bazoft was hanged, supposedly for spying on military installations. As part of the ceasefire after the Gulf War following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, weapons inspectors were put into Iraq in order to locate and destroy their chemical and biological munitions. Concern was less, it has to be said, about their use on the Iraqi population, but more about their potential use in Scud missiles, which had been fired on Israel during the course of the conflict, and the potential, therefore, for their use in wider regional battles. newspaper journalist Farzad Bazoft was hanged, supposedly for spying on military installations. As part of the ceasefire after the Gulf War following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, weapons inspectors were put into Iraq in order to locate and destroy their chemical and biological munitions. Concern was less, it has to be said, about their use on the Iraqi population, but more about their potential use in Scud missiles, which had been fired on Israel during the course of the conflict, and the potential, therefore, for their use in wider regional battles.

The weapons inspectors listed the material they found, but also the material they didn't. In a report in January 1999, subsequently much quoted, they said they listed the large amounts of WMD material unaccounted for.

From the outset there had been obstruction. By March 2003, when conflict began, there were no fewer than seventeen separate UN resoltions on the Iraqi refusal to cooperate with the inspectors. In 1998, the inspection team had left in protest. As I said earlier, in December 1998 President Clinton and myself authorised an air attack on Baghdad with the aim of degrading their facilities. It made the point, but no one was sure how effective it had been. The a.s.sumption, pretty much universal, was that the programme continued.

I write this not as the justification for the 2003 conflict, but to recall a sense, now stored deep at the back of the memory bank, of what Iraq under Saddam was really like. His government was, internally, a source of appalling brutality and oppression; and externally, a cause of instability and conflict. Some flavour of this can be found in reports from 1999.

The situation of human rights in Iraq is worsening and the repression of civil and political rights continues unabated. The prevailing regime of systematic human rights violations is contrary to Iraq's many international obligations and ... remains a threat to peace and security in the region. (Interim Report by Max der Stoel, UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq 19919, to the 54th Session of the UN General a.s.sembly [UNGA], 14 October 1999)Gross human rights violations are taking place systematically in Iraq ... while the Iraqi government has used every opportunity to publicise the suffering of the population under the sanctions regime ... it has exercised a complete news blackout on the atrocities that its security forces have been committing. (Amnesty International Report, 24 November 1999) The point is that while none of this without more justifies war, it does underline the absurdity of the notion that Bush effectively stuck a pin in the atlas and decided, inexplicably, to go to Iraq. It is true that what happened in the first Gulf War, when the decision was taken not to go on to Baghdad after having expelled Iraq from Kuwait, influenced US thinking. It did so for a perfectly valid reason: following the March 1991 ceasefire, Saddam engaged in a further b.l.o.o.d.y suppression of his population in which thousands more died and in which his grip on the country tightened.

Through the oil-for-food programme, the international community had tried to alleviate the suffering of the people. Such a programme was necessary because of the sanctions that remained in place, precisely because of WMD and other concerns over Saddam. But it never really worked; the money was constantly filched by Saddam, his sons and his a.s.sociates. The result, as I have said, was that the food and medicines often failed to get through.

The issue of oil raises another allegation: that it was all about oil. Although fatuous as an explanation, it gained enormous currency and still has its adherents today. In truth, if oil had been our concern, we could have cut a deal with Saddam in a heartbeat. He would have readily given more in return for the lifting of sanctions and the threat of inspections. After the 2003 conflict, and as part of the UN resolution, we established a UN-administered framework for ensuring that money from oil production went to the Iraqis, and today, for the first time in decades, that money is being used to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure, schools and hospitals; and is one reason why GDP per head in Iraq in 2010 is three times that of Iraq in 2003.

At this point it is perhaps worth dealing with the very serious charge that sanctions were containing Saddam and would have continued to do so, thus eliminating the threat he posed. So, the argument goes, war was unnecessary.

The fact is that by 2001, the existing sanctions framework was disintegrating. It was because of this that discussion began in the UNSC, in mid-2001, for a replacement sanctions policy. Saddam had successfully conned people into believing sanctions were responsible for the appalling plight of his people. Sanctions were being breached. He was taking billions illicitly out of the oil revenues.

The discussion focused on so-called 'smart sanctions', which were to be more targeted. The argument that those 'smart sanctions' would have constrained Saddam simply doesn't stand up to detailed scrutiny. The 'smart sanctions', as originally conceived, depended crucially on the surrounding countries to Iraq changing policy and preventing leakage of illegal goods and services, which was a major factor undermining the original framework. To this end, the initial draft of the new 'smart sanctions' policy contained strong prohibitions on such trade and other key restrictions on Saddam.