Former Blair aide says government covering up Iraq war meetings John Byrne

Published: Monday March 2, 2009





Print This Email This Minister says notes will show Blair cut off discussion on Iraq war The British government has refused to release minutes of a cabinet meeting held by Prime Minister Tony Blair in the lead-up to the Iraq war, which a former cabinet member says is being done because there was "no discussion" on the merits of invading Iraq.



Former cabinet minister Clare Short, who resigned as the UK's International Development Secretary after the war began, told a UK newspaper for Sunday editions that the minutes have been withheld because there was no conversation about invading Iraq -- and in fact, says she was cut off when trying to bring it up.



Details of two meetings are being withheld: Details of cabinet meetings on Mar. 13 and Mar. 17, 2003. The Iraq war began Mar. 19, 2003.



Short says the reason that government isn't publishing minutes of the meetings is not about confidentiality but instead to hide a "scandalous" decision not to discuss the war in the first place. She says that when the Iraq war decision was brought up, then-Prime Minister Blair said, "That's it."



"It is extraordinary when you hear people like [Blair Foreign Secretary] Jack Straw say that the Cabinet minutes cannot be published because you have to preserve Cabinet confidentiality and robust decision-making," Short told the Daily Mail.



"The bitter irony is that what they are doing is concealing the fact there was no robust decision-making," Short added. "The minutes will reveal there was no real Cabinet discussion about the Iraq War. That is the real scandal."



Current Prime Minister Gordon Brown is said to have strongly opposed the war. But, like President Barack Obama, he appears loathe to release the records of his predecessor in a possible effort to enable him to protect his own records in the future.



On Mar. 17, two days before the Iraq invasion began, Short said that participants received a notice from then-Blair Attorney General Goldsmith, attesting to the legality of the war -- but says there was no subsequent discussion.



"When we arrived, there was a piece of paper in front of each of us, a few paragraphs written by the Attorney General saying the war was legal, there were no problems etc," she said. "Lord Goldsmith started reading it out but we said, 'You dont have to, we can read it.' Then Tony said something like, 'That's it.' And that was it."



"They all said, 'Clare, be quiet, stop,'" she told the Mail. "No one else wanted to talk about it. I was shouted down."



Short's doubts about the war were not hers alone, according to the minutes of another meeting in 2002. The now-infamous "Downing Street Minutes," which contained records of a meeting between British intelligence and American officials, contained a striking quip from then-M16 Director Richard Dearlove.



In summary, Dearlove told the meeting , "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.



"But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," he continued. "The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."



Short, 63, was Secretary of State for International Development in the Blair government from 1997 to 2003. Currently, she is the Independent member of parliament for Birmingham Ladywood, and has been an MP since 1983.



She is the author of An Honourable Deception?: New Labour, Iraq, and the Misuse of Power, written about her experience in government and published in 2004.





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