Blair’s performance today was as expected: consummate and brilliantly argued. For all the objective and dispassionate people listening who have not made up their minds he’ll have swung them behind him.
George Foulkes MSP

Too many people have forgotten just how vile and vicious was the regime of Saddam Hussein. A million or more people died as a result of his policies. Saddam personally executed some of his opponents. It was the Republic of Fear. In these circumstances it is probable that even senior figures in the regime would have thought it unwise to tell Saddam that there were no longer any weapons of mass destruction, which he most definitely had had and had used. If the intelligence were drawn from conversations between senior military figures, given their probable reluctance to tell the truth to each other let alone the world, it wouldn’t be surprising if a false picture were built up. In the end, there were no WMD found but this mistake is not a lie.

The inquiry is also examining the aftermath of the intervention and should examine and learn from the initial abysmal failure to plan and implement post war reconstruction.

This allowed a diehard minority of insurgents a fresh and undeserved boost and took many years and wasted lives to overcome.

I also hope that the Chilcot inquiry recognises that Iraqi security and political and economic prospects are steadily improving. Iraqis now have the freedom to build freedom. I have seen in six visits over four years major and growing change for the better. This is particularly the case in the Kurdistan region where political violence has been minute and which could be a magnet for international trade and investment and a gateway to the rest of Iraq in due course.

The priority for us as an organisation that unites supporters and opponents of intervention is to do much more to help Iraqi unions and others.

We should also persuade the UK government to increase its efforts to overcome Iraq’s isolation through trade investment and a whole host of cultural exchanges
Gary Kent, Labour Friends of Iraq

I was at university on the 11 September 2001, in an open plan office with other postgraduate students. It’s not a day I or anyone else will forget. So many people said at the time that ‘the world will never be the same again’. It was an obvious point but how right they were. The most immediate tangible change to the feel and tone of politics was regarding international affairs. Afghanistan was the most obvious and decisive action but underlying it was a distinctive hardening towards other fascistic and authoritarian regimes, most notably Iraq.

Once it became obvious that the build-up of pressure on Iraq would only end in either a full backdown by Saddam or military action, university protest groups began to spring up and the slogan ‘Don’t Attack Iraq’ was born.

The faculty hastily arranged an event on campus with lectures so students could engage with the issues and learn some more background in the process. International relations lecturers and politics professors were lined up to give briefings, and I was invited to speak about my experiences in the Balkans where I had been an aid worker during the conflicts there. read>
Peter Kyle