The Chilcot Report is perhaps the greatest whitewash of
state crimes in modern history. It’s now been revealed as we said in the past
that the Chilcot Inquiry was designed to prevent true accountability.
Regardless of the 2.5MN words, the political narrative goes
as follows;
“We need to take greater care bombing Muslims in the future”
“We didn’t have adequate equipment so we need higher defense
budgets”
“We only voted based on the information we had”
“This report is not legal evidence, it’s just an inquiry”
“We can never foresee the full implications of our actions”
“America remains the greatest friend and ally of Britain”
“We have to wait until we read the 2.5MN words before we can
make any reasonable judgements”
The heinous crimes of the British Government have been
completely whitewashed. At the end of a decade long struggle for justice, all
the families of soldiers received was a non-legally binding report!
The reality is that, Capitalism can never provide true
accountability and justice for people due to its inherent design in
safeguarding the interests of the capitalist elites and ideologues. Unlike
Capitalism, Islam offers a unique ruling system that puts no one above the law
and achieves this through the institution of the Qadhi Al-Mazhalim (Court of Unjust
Acts) that has the power to remove any ruler including the Khaleefah
immediately upon violating the states constitution.
ما من وال يلي رعية من المسلمين فيموت
وهو غاش لهم إلا حرم الله عليه الجنة
“There is no governor/wali who takes charge of governing the
Muslims, and then dies, and he had been cheating them, except that Allah
prohibits him from Paradise” (Bukhari/ Muslim)
The world needs the Islamic civilisation led by a Caliphate
(Khilafah Rashidah), that can challenge Britain and account it for such heinous
crimes. Until then we will continue to witness capitalist driven wars, as we
are witnessing in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and Libya.
News
Secret cabinet documents show Iraq hearings were set up to
stop individuals being held accountable
The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war was designed to “avoid
blame” and reduce the risk that individuals and the government could face legal
proceedings, newly released documents reveal.
The papers show the thinking and advice at “the highest
level of government” prior to Gordon Brown’s announcement of an inquiry. They
were disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, after the Cabinet Office
lost a two-year battle during which it stated that disclosure threatened to
“undermine the inquiry”. They confirm that many officials who took part in the
events that the inquiry investigated, including former spy chief Sir John
Scarlett, were involved in setting it up.
And they reveal that Sir (now Lord) Gus O’Donnell, cabinet
secretary under Brown, went against Whitehall protocol when he appointed a
civil servant with significant involvement in Iraq policy during the period
covered by the inquiry to the key role of inquiry secretary.
The documents, a series of memos by Whitehall officials,
cover a four-week period in May and June 2009. They show the officials favoured
from the outset a secret inquiry to be conducted by privy counsellors, based on
the Franks inquiry into the Falklands war. In a memo to O’Donnell, Cabinet Office
official Ben Lyon advised that the format, scope and membership of the inquiry
could be designed to “focus on lessons and avoid blame”. He noted that
politicians and campaigners, including Plaid Cymru and the SNP, were seeking
other types of inquiry with some advocating “a full public inquiry that would
place blame on individuals”.
Chris Lamb, a freedom of information campaigner from Bristol
who won an information tribunal ruling in May requiring the Cabinet Office to
disclose the papers, told the Observer: “Avoiding blame is civil service
code for not holding people accountable.” Despite the inquiry being designed to
“avoid blame”, the then foreign secretary, David Miliband, subsequently claimed
it could blame “whoever it likes”.
Lyon noted that former foreign secretary Lord Hurd had
suggested a parliamentary inquiry. But Lyon warned that would “attract a daily
running commentary”, like the 2003 Hutton inquiry into the death of Iraq
weapons inspector David Kelly. In a subsequent note to Brown, O’Donnell repeated
the “daily commentary” warning and advised against a full public inquiry for
other reasons, including cost, that it would “threaten legal liability for
individuals” and, ironically, “take a long time”. “The deliberate lack of
transparency and attempts to use price to justify further secrecy is deeply
concerning,” said Lib Dem leader Tim Farron.
O’Donnell also advised against appointing judges or lawyers
who would adopt a “legalistic” focus. He recommended using the inquiry’s terms
of reference to prevent it reaching “any conclusion on questions of law or
fact, which create circumstances which expose organisations, departments and/or
individuals to criminal or civil proceedings or judicial review”. No such
instruction to the inquiry was ever made public.
Lamb told the Observer: “This shows the inquiry was
hobbled before it even started, with tight restrictions on what it could do
that were not fully made public.” In June 2009, Brown announced a secret Privy
Council “lessons learned” inquiry, as officials had recommended. However, a
public and political backlash forced him to agree to some hearings being held
in public.
In another memo to O’Donnell, Lyon advised that the
inquiry’s secretariat, though drawn from the civil service “should not have
been involved in Iraq policy since 2002”. However, he conceded that appointing
staff with “understanding of the nature of the business to be addressed” had
advantages. This concession paved the way for appointment of Margaret Aldred, a
Whitehall official who had chaired the Iraq senior officials group during the
period Chilcot was investigating, as the inquiry’s secretary.
Many others who helped design the inquiry had also been
closely involved in the issues it would investigate. They included current
cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, who was Tony Blair’s parliamentary
private secretary until 2003, and Scarlett, former chairman of the joint
intelligence committee who had become chief of MI6 in spite of his central role
in producing the notorious dossier on Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass
destruction.
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