MINISTERS SERVING former UK prime minister Tony Blair would have had to have been “deaf, dumb and blind” not to understand that an invasion of Iraq was a significant possibility in the year before it was launched, former foreign secretary Jack Straw told the Iraq Inquiry yesterday.
It was the inquiry’s last public session – its report is due later this year.
Debate at the cabinet table was limited because of a concern that details might leak, said Mr Straw, who was one of over 120 witnesses called before the inquiry led by Sir John Chilcot.
Given the failure to win a second UN resolution, Mr Straw said he went to Mr Blair in the days before the invasion began in March 2003 urging him to consider not sending in British troops until Saddam Hussein had been overthrown, as the Italians and Spaniards chose to do.
His move came before then-attorney general Lord Peter Goldsmith finally gave legal sanction for the invasion: “I was anxious that we should explore all possible alternatives,” he said.
“I owed the prime minister my loyalty and I also owed him the best and most robust advice that I could give. I don’t think anybody was keen on military action. It’s horrible and people are going to get killed.”
Questioned about the level of knowledge shared with other cabinet ministers, Mr Straw said: “It was the prime minister’s style to use the cabinet for briefing purposes more than for decisions.”
During his second round of evidence last month, Mr Blair insisted that his ministers had been fully aware that he personally favoured removing Saddam, by force if necessary, up to a year before the war began, though a series of serving and former ministers told the inquiry about their unhappiness at the way in which the cabinet was side-lined.
Mr Straw’s appearance and accompanying documentation published by the inquiry yesterday showed the fury of then French president Jacques Chirac towards London, who he blamed for misrepresenting his declaration that he would vote against a second United Nations resolution in all circumstances.
French diplomats hurriedly told London that Mr Chirac had not meant to rule out supporting a resolution in all circumstances, even though he used those words in a television broadcast.
Nonetheless, his declaration was quickly used by the British government to justify the decision to go to war without a second UN sanction.
Mr Straw said he had been “steaming” about Mr Chirac’s remarks: “He was chucking a bomb into the room and seeking to disrupt negotiations.
“He knew exactly what he was doing. This was not the president popping out the back door of the Élysée Palace to buy a baguette and bumping into a journalist and saying something unscripted,” he said.
The Labour politician, who is now a rank-and-file backbencher in the Commons, said he had “profound objections” to US president George W Bush’s decision to link Iran with Iraq and North Korea in his “axis of evil” speech, which he said undermined efforts being made then by some in Iran “to reach out to the West”.
However, he said that Mr Bush, unlike some others in the US administration who had “a gleam in their eye” when an Iraq invasion was mentioned, had not been set on war in all circumstances.
“My experience of President Bush was that, in the end, when faced with decisions, he was much more thoughtful than he was often credited for,” he said.