Chilcot
Reminders of Iraq
I was sorry to learn from Paul Waugh of the death of Brian Jones, the former Defence Intelligence Service official (right) who felt that his doubts about some of the intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programme had been ignored by the Government before the Iraq war.
He was a decent public servant who thought that some [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Wednesday, 15 February 2012 at 7:25 pm
False Premises
The US withdrawal from Iraq has produced another blip on the anti-war Blair-rage meter, in which open-minded people considered positions they had previously adopted and reassessed them from first principles.
“The war was based on the false premise that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction,” Mark Mardell, the BBC North America Editor, said on the News [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Saturday, 17 December 2011 at 9:27 pm
“We can’t allow documents like that to reach anyone who really knows”
I guessed last month that the Daily Mail, having bought the serialisation rights to Gordon Corera’s book about the British Secret Service, The Art of Betrayal, did not like what was in the book, so used it as an excuse to regurgitate its pre-cooked anti-war slogans.
I have now read Corera’s excellent work, and can confirm [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Wednesday, 14 September 2011 at 10:20 pm
The “If you had known then what you know now” question, again
Tony Blair is asked the hindsight question about the Iraq war again in an interview with The Times today (pay wall).
Philip Webster: Would you have been prepared to take Britain to war if you had known then what you know now, i.e. there were no WMD – you used that as the basis for the [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Friday, 9 September 2011 at 11:42 am
Breaking News: Eight years on, some people are still against the Iraq war
Eight years on and for some people it was as if the Iraq war were yesterday, only they cannot remember the detail, so they report it again through their anti-war prism. Chris Ames and Richard Norton-Taylor were there, I know, but the only thing that they remember is that they were against it. In The [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Monday, 29 August 2011 at 7:19 pm
The Great Defamation, part 194
Feeble addition to the Daily Mail’s propaganda campaign against a war eight years ago about which it hedged its bets at the time. It would appear that the newspaper has bought the rights to Gordon Corera’s new book, The Art of Betrayal, but that, as might be expected of a scrupulous journalist such as Corera, [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Saturday, 13 August 2011 at 6:07 pm
“Planning for war”
Resuming my pre-holiday catch-up on the Chilcot inquiry, Chris Ames at Iraq Inquiry Digest drew attention to interesting evidence given by Sir Anthony Brenton (below), minister at the British embassy in Washington, 2001 to 2004.
It is interesting not because it was secret but has now been published, or because, as Ames thinks, it supports the [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Thursday, 11 August 2011 at 9:48 am
Wish-Fulfilment As News
Next in my Catch-Up Service, in the Mail on Sunday, 31 July, there was a Chilcot-by-numbers front-page anti-war wish-fulfilment special. It was loosely based on a report by my colleague Jane Merrick in The Independent on Sunday the previous weekend, that the Inquiry was preparing to send letters to people who might be criticised in the report (which [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Wednesday, 10 August 2011 at 9:47 pm
Planning the Iraq war in public
The Chilcot inquiry published new documents on 14 July. I noted one here, which was not reported in the newspapers or by the BBC because it helps to explain why military action in Iraq was justified. The only thing that was reported were the views of SIS 2, an intelligence officer, including that Alastair Campbell [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Tuesday, 26 July 2011 at 8:46 pm
Iraq Inquiry Recap Service
To respond to all the recent elaborations of the anti-war conspiracy theory by Chris Ames at Iraq Inquiry Digest would take time. Ames is scrupulously well-versed in the textual detail, which makes it hard work to rebut his one-track interpretation.
As the Chilcot inquiry prepares to send letters to some of the people to whom it intends to refer critically [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Monday, 25 July 2011 at 11:22 am
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