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To: Sir John Chilcot
Publish The Iraq War Inquiry Results Now
Dear Sir John Chilcot,
Please publish the results of your report without delay and name those who have so far been obstructing its publication.
Why is this important?
In February of 2011, after more than a year of investigation, the Chilcot Inquiry into Britain's role in the invasion of Iraq concluded. It is outrageous that today, more than three years after the end of the inquiry, the public has still not been given the conclusion. What is equally reprehensible is, apart from the occasional meek entreatment to Chilcot by some politicians to get on with it, hardly any body of influence seems to be pressing for the results to be finalised and published.
The day Britain began its attack on Iraq was one of the blackest days in the history of our nation because, despite massive public opposition, our Government, with the full support of the parliamentary opposition, went ahead with the invasion, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent men women and children and a major increase in terrorism.
To their eternal disgrace, there are many in the 'establishment' and in political circles who supported the attack and in whose interest it is to keep kicking the report into the long grass.
Consequently, the only group who can try and bring about publication of the report is us. I would therefore like 38 Degrees, through its members, to campaign and pressurise Chilcot into releasing the report immediately. We must show that we will not be treated as inconsequential bystanders and be ignored and humoured as though we are simply an annoyance. We must force those we elect and nominate, to do the job we pay them to do and not simply make up their own forever changing timetable.
The British public were treated with contempt when the Government and the parliamentary opposition chose to ignore us and take us into an unprovoked war of aggression, the worst type of war crime. We must not let the Inquiry into that disgraceful episode also treat us with contempt.
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We now have the answer to the reason for the delay:-
12th Nov. 2013 "Cabinet boss must not decide on Iraq papers", says Owen:
David Owen, former Foreign Secretary demands Sir Jeremy Heywood is stripped of responsibility because he worked closely with Tony Blair
Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot said last week that his probe has stalled indefinitely because Sir Jeremy is blocking the release of correspondence
Sir Jeremy was Principal Private Secretary to Tony Blair between 1999-2003
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29th May 2014 CHILCOT WILL RELEASE THE ‘GIST’
It’s just another way of saying “we will withhold important information”
It would obviously be much better for us to see all of the documentation between Blair and Bush in the run-up to the invasion but the most important document we need, if it exists, is the one where Blair agreed to assist Bush in the attack come what may. That information is absolutely no threat to security but of course if it is a threat to Blair we may never see it.
If an 'independent' committee has sight of documents that clearly show that a Prime Minister or any minister for that matter, for their own reasons, committed our country to a course of action that had not been fully approved or discussed and which resulted in a massive loss of life for hundreds of thousands of innocent people, without question that information should be released. Why should those documents be for the eyes of the committee only and not for the rest of us when in that situation the minister in question has clearly acted incorrectly?. It means that they are above the law and can transgress with impunity, we are supposed to be a democracy!
The excuse that the documents cannot be released for either security or confidentiality reasons is totally spurious. The conversations between Blair and Bush are about a specific and unique situation. They were not conversations about the price of fish, they were conversations that resulted in Britain engaging in and waging a war of aggression against a country that was absolutely no imminent threat to us - a war crime.
Many believe the British people were lied to over the reasons for taking the country to war and those in power at the time know it and so do the families here and in Iraq whose relatives were killed as a result.
We must have a full and complete report describing how and why our Government decided to invade another sovereign country in our name. It has been deliberately stalled for far too long, we need it NOW
