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Okay.
I need
Welcome to a special edition of Sputnik
orbiting the world with me George
Galloway
and me Gayatri.
The world or at least this country waits
for the long delayed Chilcot report into
the Iraq war. 7 years, millions of
pounds later, will Sir John, knited by
Blair, have labored mightily only to
bring forth a mouse?
Or will, as last week's Sunday Time
seems to suggest, the Chillcot Report
inflicts savage criticism of Tony Blair,
Jack Straw, Richard Dearof of MI6, and
others.
Peter Oborn, the most respected
conservative writer in the English
language today, has been on this case
almost, though not quite as long as me.
His new book, Not the Chilcot Report, is
in the bookstores now and it will be
almost as exciting a read as the report
itself, not least because it is several
million words shorter. Peter joins us
now. Thanks for coming on the Sputnik.
We'll come to your book in a minute, but
uh Gatri mentioned the Sunday Times. Do
you think that leak has got it about
right? Well, I'm very interested in the
leak. the the the journalist Tim
Shipman, political editor of the Sunday
Times, is respectable. He's claiming
that as a minister, a former minister,
has told him uh all of this. Well, I
think we can take him at his word. In
other words, a former minister, we can
take it in the Blair government. It'll
be a minister who's seen the report
because it's been shown to him, has
gabbed, has has broken his promise, and
he's gabbed to the Sunday Times. I see
this as part of a very deliberate uh
attempt to prepare the way. Um a a
wellplaced leak to uh massage the
process and it's interesting that
they're fingering Jack Straw. Uh they're
saying it'll be severe. Um I'm um so I
think it's quite interesting
indeed. uh managing expectations is the
order of the day in these things and
this clearly had those fingerprints uh
on it. I suppose the moot point or there
are two moot points is will the savage
criticism be reputation destroying
criticism and will it be limited to
those names that were in the Sunday
Times report in your view? Well, what it
said in the Sunday Times was that it
would focus a lot more than we had
thought on the planning process, the
disaster which happened when the British
troops got to Iraq than we'd thought.
That makes sense. It was a disaster
after we got there. We It was a
humiliating defeat in effect for the
British army. Um, so, uh, what I think
though is the case is that they're going
to, we seem to know that they're going
to criticize maybe 40 or 50 people. And
it's going to be 2.6 million words. That
suggests to me a lack.
What did you say to me? Three times the
size of the Bible. Three times the size
of the Bible. Five times almost five
times the size of war and peace. Now,
that suggests an inability really to
focus on the key issues. It suggests
that they're doing a scattergun
approach. It suggests that they may not
answer the really important questions
about were the British people lied to
ahead of the war. Um was there a secret
deal of some kind? Was Blair always
committed to invasion? Um was the war
illegal? All these are the big many of
the big questions. I agree that the
mismanagement of the occupation is very
important. But the for me the most
important aspect is the leadup to war
itself. Well, the mismanagement of the
occupation is not actually of great
interest to me because being half an
Irishman, I'm entitled to say uh when
asked directions, I wouldn't have
started from here. They should never
have been there. Therefore, how they
managed their occupation is uh a matter
of little importance to me. the the
$64,000 question as we used to uh
describe it is the one you've just
posed. Were we lied to in the runup to
this uh invasion? And if Chilcot doesn't
deal with that, then in my opinion, it
will have been seven years and millions
of pounds wasted. I completely accept
that he has to if he's going to say that
we were not lied to then he has to show
why that should be. He has because it on
the face of things as I show in my in my
book on not the Chilcott report uh you
can look at the statements made by Tony
Blair to parliament and in the media you
can compare those statements to what
we've the underlying intelligence
uh which was came from the joint
intelligence committee to dining street
and you can show that Tony Blair
completely misrepresented what the
underlying intelligence was saying to
him about the exist distance of of
weapons of mass destruction as they were
called and the threat posed by Saddam
Hussein. So if if if Schulcott has to
explain what this gaping gap this abbies
between what the intelligence services
were being told were saying to Blair and
what Blair actually said to the British
people.
Sorry. Go on.
No. Um I recall you describing um in
your in your conversation with uh Blitz.
Yeah. The
the chief weapons inspector and Blitz
and Blitz. is that they uh interpreted
the ex the question marks into
exclamation marks
which is very vital.
That was very important that Hans Blick
said to me that in his f final speech to
parliament on March the 18th 2003 making
the case to war just a day or two before
everything started to move he that Blair
was incredibly selective of the weapons
inspector's report. He he chose only the
incendiary things. He misrepresented the
things that he sold parliament. He he he
changed unaccounted for as if they
actually existed and so forth. And you
can show a systematic pattern of
deception exactly
of the British people ahead of the wall.
Well, for me that's the the countdown to
my own expulsion from the Labor Party
began when I accused Mr. Blair on the
BBC of lying at the uh press conference
immediately after the Crawford Ranch,
Texas meeting where it's now, I think,
generally believed uh Mr. Blair pledged
uh war uh with Bush long before
Parliament had ever uh been consulted
long before he stopped saying that there
was no necessity for war. I mean
afterwards he said that uh that uh if
Saddam Hussein and his sons uh were to
disarm they could stay in power and and
thus the issue for me is deception.
uh if
he is not found to have deceived us then
as you say Chot has to explain this gap
mind the gap the gap between what the
intelligence actually said and the
conclusions that Mr. Blair uh drew from
it. Let me widen it though because I
know that in this corker of a book that
you've written uh you deal with this. Um
it would be entirely wrong in my view to
hang all of this on Tony Blair
because he had a cabinet.
Exactly.
I have interviewed some members of that
uh cabinet who say that Mr. Blair never
really brought these matters uh before
them which begs the question what kind
of cabinet were they and why they didn't
insist that he did. Uh but if a cabinet
has cabinet responsibility, there has to
be more than Tony Blair in this frame.
No. Oh, I completely agree with you. By
the way, I I I'm on the matter of
whether a deal was struck, but secret
deal. I've yet to see the smoking gun. I
get to see the sort of the the treaty
signed in blood. I mean, there's a lot
of circumstantial evidence and uh it
it's it's hard to make any other sense
of the pattern of events. We haven't got
anything which proves
which proves it happened. But I
completely agree with you that we I
think we need to look beyond Blair
because uh he he was saying a lot of
stuff which was turned out subsequently
to be untrue. Why wasn't he pulled up on
that by his foreign policy adviser David
Manning? Why wasn't the chiefs of the
intelligence services uh J Love and in
particular Scarlet the chief of the
joint intelligence committee Sir John
Scarlet as he know is why didn't he
complain to Blair that he was
misrepresenting the material he was
getting from the JIC very important
point why weren't the cabinet raising
difficult questions uh asking the right
questions why were they content not to
see the legal advice so they got a
pathetic few paragraphs at the very last
minute these questions go on and I do
and and the press By the way,
I was a journalist. I'm glad you have.
I'm a journal. I And I feel as I wrote
that book, I started to feel a deeper
and deeper shame. There were people who
honorably opposed and saw through the
war from the start like yourself,
but there were many I'm afraid to say I
was sort of neutral on it. And I didn't
I I now I can see writing through that
there's a lot I should have picked up at
the time which I didn't do.
Well, it's very honorable that you say
so. And David Davis uh is another who
voted for the war and because he did
he's also ashamed and more determined
David Davis the Tory Gy
uh to uh get to the uh bottom of this
but I'm glad you raised it because the
media was a chorus
uh it was an echo chamber of the Blarite
clique at that time and those who
opposed it were treated as bad or mad or
both. uh when it turns out that we were
uh right. Uh but the people in the media
who were that chorus are still there
today and continue to chorus government
propaganda. This seems to me therefore a
crisis of every estate in the realm.
Not just the political class, the civil
service, the mandarins, the foreign
service, but also the the uh media that
we have. I do I absolutely agree with
that and I I I think that if you look
through the people who warned against
the war
how what's happened to them we all lost
our jobs
you looked and you looked at those
seriously Greg Dyke Piers Morgan myself
and many others we we all lost our jobs
and whereas those who trumpeted the war
has anybody paid any price at all
um and so
John Scarlet is now Sir John Scarlet uh
uh uh the foreign policy adviser is now
a knight of the of the
nobody has paid a price.
Scarlet was promoted. If you were so
wrong
as I think Choco is going to conclude,
doesn't it add insult to injury that
they've gone on to become
Well, we know that he's even Obama said,
he said, you know, the rise of ISIS,
yes,
the rise of the Islamic State Dash can
be traced
to the catastrophic of the invasion of
of Iraq in 2003. So we there's no real
doubt there's no doubt at all that this
was the greatest calamity of the postwar
postcold cold war era and and it's led
to so much else and it's created but
just returning to Britain it's created
this crisis of trust in in in British
institutions because can we believe what
we're told by not just by the prime
minister but by the civil servants by
the by the intelligence services a and
in Britain
until 2003. Generally speaking, you and
I are from different traditions, but I
felt that I trusted the British state.
You probably didn't actually, and I've
come to the conclusion that you were
right and I was wrong. But if you go
back to World War II when we as a
country, as a nation united against
fascism, uh, and it was the greatest
moment of a thousand years of English,
British history,
our finest star,
uh, you know, we we did trust the state,
didn't we? We believed in in in the
organs of the state and really unless
they deal with Chilcott can deal with
the the horror of Iraq and what and what
how it came about I don't think we can
anymore because it shows that the state
cannot investigate itself.
No. Stay with us after the break. More
on Chilcot the Iraq war with the great
Peter Oorn.
Welcome back to Sputnik. Peter Oborn,
writer, broadcaster, and exoset seeker
after truth, has written a corker of a
book, not the chillcot report, and he's
with us to discuss the issue which will
dominate the summer and beyond in
Britain. Uh, Peter, before the break, we
were uh uh just laying out some of the
great issues that are involved. You've
done a signal service in uh producing
this book. tell us uh who published it,
what you intend to achieve uh by it, and
it's a slim volume uh so it's millions
of words shorter than Chilcot, but I'm
willing to bet it's rather more forensic
than he's going to produce. Tell us
about it.
Well, I I started off, by the way,
co-writing it with David Morris, Dr.
David Morrison, who's been such a
brilliant and an analyst.
He has. I've been uh I've been the
beneficiary of his advice for uh well
over a decade.
David and I, as you know, wrote a co
co-wrote a piece on a book on Iran about
three or four years ago, saying it's
time to talk to Iran and
and exposing the lies told about that
and uh we it's it's really a joint book
of ours, but we disagreed. It was most
annoying about some issues
and David being a man of enormous
integrity,
tremendous integrity. Yeah. um he
refused in the end to put his name to it
and it was um I'm really upset about
that but I want to pay homage here to
his contribution also Richard Hela I'm
sure you know
I do know Richard also yes
and Richard wrote several passages long
long per and so it's and what he's
trying to do
is just set out the basic facts and the
basic arguments
about um about the leadup to the Iraq
war in principle but we also go beyond
which chilot needs to address. And so
you it's 35,000 words. I'm I'm p I think
it's very clearly written and you can
read it and you it gives you a way of
reading the when the 2.6 million words
comes out here.
You can say has Chilcot address this
issue. We because we show that the Blair
government lied
about uh to to the British people.
We set up the arguments. We set up what
is a lie? how you show that somebody's
lied and we make the we show that the
black government lied and Blair was the
head of that government. We show that
the war was illegal. we go through the
arguments and so in a very simple way
the key passage is we and I think that
if and if Chot is going to say it wasn't
illegal or he's going to say he didn't
lie then I think you you got to we the
arguments making the case that he did
are there and at least we can know if
she'll address them well enough you see
what I mean it's a sort of primer
a primer yeah
well that's very important very valuable
and I hope thath people snap it up as
I'm sure They're uh they're uh going to
I described the panel, the Chilcot panel
on the day that it was announced in
parliament as a parade of establishment
flunkies. Uh several of whom had openly
proitized for the war. Uh and two of
them in the most brazen way. One of them
comparing Bush and Blair to uh to Truman
and and Churchill.
Roosevelt Roosevelt and that was Sir
Martin the late Sir Martin Gilbert. Yes,
this has gone on so long some of the
members have died.
Uh but uh I've come to think that I may
have been wrong uh about that.
Uh certainly if it turns out to be a
whitewash after this length of time, it
seems to me that the establishment, the
British state itself will be taking a
very great risk because the seeping away
of its authority and credibility will
could turn into a flood. Are you
expecting Chilcott to come to anything
like the conclusions you have in this
book?
Well, I I literally don't know. I mean,
all we've seen the um the leak in the
Sunday Times we were just discussing
which in my view comes from Blairite
sources.
All the leaks will come from the from
the from the the old new old new Labour
Blite sources.
You know, I'm what I'm curious about.
George um said it mentioned it in the
introduction. The world or at least this
country is awaiting, but does he have a
point? Is the world awaiting this
report? How is how are the people across
the Atlantic? Are they awaiting this
report? Are they going to is the Bush
former administration going to fear
something like that happening there too?
For me, this is about Britain. It's
about how we in Britain govern
ourselves. I don't think the Americans I
mean Americans actually to their
enormous credit have actually looked
into some of the horrors the incredible
Feinstein reported of torture. they
they've been much more
clearsighted about the crimes committed
by by by the Americans than they've than
we have. And but for me it's about
Britain and actually it raises a lot of
questions. Uh we do we want to have this
alliance of the United States. I mean it
was the alliance of the United States a
determined nation to stay with the
United States that led us. It was part
of the reason why Blair and it's
perfectly honorable view by the way but
we have to do what the Americans do. we
were going into war with the Americans.
I think we have to answer that question.
Do we want to stick with the American
Hegelon uh and I because it's taken us
into some very bad places.
It has.
Um then I think you have to look I mean
we have become we've adopted
neoonservatism. If you look one of the
interesting things is it was a
neoonservative adventure as we know the
circle around Bush. We now have we still
have in Britain a neoonservative
government. We you know the the the the
key figures in the air cons they they
look to the right wing of the Republican
party for spiritual and intellectual and
political leadership and is that what we
want in this country or do we need to
sort of say do do we want to get
involved in these uh expeditions? Um
isn't there another tradition of foreign
policy we might like to engage with?
These are all great issues. I hope that
Chilcot engages with those and and do we
want to have a system of integrity in
our civil service and in our
intelligence services or do we want them
to become uh instruments of of of
charismatic political leaders as
happened in the 2003 case?
Well, the uh issue of whether or not it
was a crime is I suppose therefore still
open. But the issue of whether it was a
blunder is not open. uh as you say,
President Obama has openly conceded that
uh it's a good lesson. He said uh that
you should aim before you shoot and he
was unequivocal that ISIS, the
phenomenon which is the gravest threat
uh in the world today in my view uh
comes directly out of this foreign
policy uh disaster. So that's not an
open question. But on the legality, I
just want to test you speculatively on
this. If Chilkco concludes that we were
deceived and that we were lied to and
that the country was taken to war on a
false pretext, what can we do about it?
Is Alex Salmon's idea of an impeachment
or other people who talk about court
action and so on? Is that possible? I
don't think it I mean think it is. Let I
I think it was a war of aggression.
I I think it was an illegal war.
Both of these are crimes then.
Yes.
Yeah, they are. But I don't see the
mechanism to go ahead and prosecute. Um
the uh the long legal note before the
war from the attorney general dealt with
this very clearly that the ICC the
international criminal court could
there's no was not authorized to deal
with crimes of aggression. Britain is a
member of the security council and you
can't there's no real me as a security
council member you're not going to get
criticized get get prosecuted for a
crime of aggression war of aggression if
we can't do anything legally we must do
something politically
Blair is the uh culprit chief his
cabinet secondary but the parliament
also
has to take some responsibility
Because what is a parliament if it is
not an organ that holds the executive,
the government to account? Mustn't we
make some change in the way our
parliament works? Perhaps even make it a
bit more like the American.
Yes. American functions in a way much
more democratically than ours does.
What parliament didn't do was to expose
the falsehoods which were being told it
and ush
at the time. There was actually I showed
this in the book uh even a lie embedded
in the motion on the 18th of March
to do with the position of the French it
was misstated.
Yes.
Uh and so um parliament was very and
there were one or two um Labour MPs who
who did actually start to expose that
that they were laughed at by the others
in parliament. And so of course
parliament failed the media failed. It's
a terrible failing by the me as we
discussed a little while ago and and
those who were right you the stop the
war coalition
Jeremy Corbyn
I mean uh and there were a number of
journalists Paulie Toybe was right I
think I mean there were a few
journalists who got it absolutely right
but not all liberals or lefts by the way
I think the daily Peter Hitchens was
completely against it Alexander in the
Daily Mail
there were many people actually in
conservative newspapers
who refused to join the the rush uh to
war. My last point on that
uh it was said of the Bourbons that they
they learned nothing and forgot nothing.
Uh, aren't we in the same position
today? Because I still hear the same
kind of arguments advanced on other
issues, other wars. Iran, you mentioned
uh the Syrian war, the posture of uh
hostility towards Russia. I still hear
the same people saying the same things,
and it's like a a Groundhog Day for me.
Uh I'm not sure what we can do about
that, but it's a real pressing problem.
Absolutely right. I mean, when David
Cameron was making the argument for
bombing Syria,
he suddenly produced this figure of
70,000 moderate rebels.
Yes.
And which he attributed to the joint
intelligence committee. I remember
watching that and thinking criy 13 years
on.
Yes.
And the same things happened
and it was another phantom. Libya, the
invasion of Libya based on the idea
which the government ministers continue
to repeat that there was they were
preventing a genocide. Well, you know,
the the the reports are since have made
quite clear that there was no
possibility or there's no no hint of a
genocide about to occur in Benghazi. A
and I think that that is an so we we are
still going to war on the basis of lies.
Peter Auburn, we're blessed to have you.
Thanks very much indeed.
And now it's your turn to tell us what
you think through the portals of social
media. What's rattling guy?
So the long long long awaited Chilcot
report. Gary Edward Drury says arrest
Blair first and foremost and all his
blood drenched pitiful sheep. Terry
Clark says it's unrealistic not to
expect a cover up. That's what I think.
And then Ricardo Picasso. The most
important thing is that Chilo tells the
truth, but I'm sure the Blair will.
Uh, yes. that that we can guarantee. I
don't think that it will be a cover up
because I don't think Britain can afford
one.
Well, that's all for today then,
which alas means that's the end of the
show.
Well, you can stay in touch with us
through Twitter at RT Sputnik or on
Facebook, Sputnik on Russia Today. It's
goodbye from me, Gayatri,
and from me, George Galloway. It's been
marvelous.
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