"Why has this been put in writing?"

Some people will discount Clare Short's evidence to the Chilcott Inquiry because she has long been an opponent of Tony Blair.

Personally I disagree with Clare Short on a great many things, but at the end of the day, even if the timing of her resignation reduced its' impact, she did eventually give up a seat in cabinet because she strongly disagreed with the way the Iraq war was handled. Her explanation of why deserves to be listened to.

There are several number of contenders for the most damning bits of evidence so far given to the Chilcott Inquiry.

One would be Tony Blair's response to a question about the battlefield, short-range weapons which were referred to in the original intelligence source which suggested that Saddam could deploy weapons in 45 minutes. Short-range battlefield weapons are not usually referred to as Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Blair was asked if he understood the distinction and replied “I did not focus on it a great deal at the time”.

As John Rentoul points out, It is hard to imagine Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, Clem Attlee, John Major or Jim Callaghan presented with anything like the 45 minute claim, and not asking questions like

“What’s this? What do we mean by it? Yes, but what kind of weapons? Where could they hit?”

Instead Blair, on his own admission, did not focus on such details. He should have.


But perhaps even more damning as an indictment of the way Britain's entry into the war was mismanaged came from Sir Michael Wood, principal legal adviser to the Foreign Office, who thought that going to war wtih Iraq on the information Britain had at the time was illegal.

He told the inquiry that someone at No 10 had asked, "Why has this been put in writing?", when he submitted a paper on the consequences of invading Iraq without legal approval.

That is not a question which someone who wanted to take the right decision should have asked.

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