[A-List] UK state: Iraq crisis

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Unlike the Herald and the Scotsman, the Guardian highlights Tory Kenneth
Clarke's role as a leading critic of Blair. Clarke, of course, is also
pro-eurozone membership and one of the leading challengers to Iain Duncan
Smith's leadership of the Conservative Party.

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Cook and Short harry Straw as he fights to hold the line on war decision

Michael White and Patrick Wintour
Thursday June 5, 2003
The Guardian

Leading war critics Clare Short, Robin Cook and Kenneth Clarke yesterday
gave the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, a rough time in a Commons debate
called to demand a full judicial inquiry into the basis for the war on Iraq.
Ms Short accused the government of deceit and Mr Cook urged ministers to
admit that the policy of containment of Saddam Hussein had been working.

Mr Clarke, a former Tory chancellor, claimed the government would never have
won a majority for war in the Commons had MPs known, as they do now, that
Saddam did not pose the imminent threat ministers had claimed.

Mr Straw flew back early from a Nato meeting in Spain to attend the debate,
called by Liberal Democrats. With much of the debate focused on the need for
the government to restore public trust - either by admitting mistakes or
convincingly proving it was right - Mr Clarke asked: "Does the foreign
secretary think that if he had come here on March 18 and said 'we don't
actually know if he has got weapons of this kind ready for immediate
deployment, we are not sure we are ever going to find any, and we are going
to set up a whole new inspection system of our own to find weapons eight
weeks after the war ended', that he would have got the authority of the
house to start this war?"

Ms Short said: "We must not make decisions like this. There must be better
ways of making sure that information is properly used and decisions are
properly made, especially when large numbers of human beings' lives are at
stake."

Citing exchanges with senior Whitehall officials last summer she insisted
there was "overwhelming" evidence that Mr Blair had agreed to a date for war
in Iraq - February 15 - which later slipped a month as the UN haggled over
the abortive second resolution. She claimed she had been informed by three
very senior figures in Whitehall that Mr Blair had made the commitment to
war in the summer.

In an emotional speech she said 70 people a week were dying in the current
chaos.

Mr Cook repeatedly asked why the government could not admit it was simply
wrong over Iraq's alleged 45-minute readiness to use weapons of mass
destruction. "If the US Marine Corps can now say we were wrong, why cannot
we say it?" he asked.

Mr Straw argued Britain had gone to war because Iraq had rejected the final
opportunity comply with UN resolutions, and not because of an imminent
threat.

Mr Straw rounded on those who claimed Saddam had not possessed weapons of
mass destruction. "Do they seriously argue that Saddam disposed of all his
poisons, toxins and missiles and then deliberately chose not to prove their
destruction, but to go down a path that led to his downfall?"

Opening the debate, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Menzies
Campbell, said only a public inquiry, headed by a judicial figure, could
provide the level of scrutiny required to get to the bottom of what had
passed between 10 Downing Street and the intelligence services.

The former Tory minister Tony Baldry backed his party's demand for a full
public inquiry, warning that the foreign affairs committee inquiry would
"only be told what it convenient for the government".

But Labour MP Mike Gapes spoke for loyalist backbenchers in attacking the
media and unnamed ex-ministers "biting the hand that had fed them".

Eleven Labour MPs voted for the Lib Dem motion: Harry Barnes (Derbyshire
North East), Harry Cohen (Leyton & Wanstead), Jeremy Corbyn (Islington
North) Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow), Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North), Glenda
Jackson (Hampstead & Highgate), Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway), Brian
Sedgemore (Hackney South & Shoreditch), Alan Simpson (Nottingham South),
Llew Smith (Blaenau Gwent), and Robert Wareing (Liverpool West Derby).