Ex-DPP: Tony Blair's attitude to Iraq war 'a disgrace' (bbc)

The ex-director of public prosecutions has accused Tony Blair of "sycophancy" towards President Bush. Sir Ken MacDonald called the 2003 Iraq war a "foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions". He said the former prime minister had used "alarming subterfuge" to mislead the British people into the conflict. Mr Blair told the BBC at the weekend that it would have been right to invade even if it had not been thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Blair said the Iraq invasion would have been justified even without WMDs

Referring to Mr Blair's interview with Fern Britton, Sir Ken wrote in The Times: "This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage." He said Washington had "turned his head and he couldn't resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him". 'Narcissist's defence' Sir Ken added: "It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn't want, and on a basis that it's increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible." SEE ALSO There's something of the Jeffrey Archer to Tony Blair George Pitcher, Daily Telegraph

Sir Ken, who works at the same barristers' chambers as Mr Blair's wife Cherie, said: "Since those sorry days we Read more reactions from have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding newspapers and around the web mantra that 'hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right'. "But this is a narcissist's defence and self-belief is no answer to misjudgement: it is certainly no answer to death."

The belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was the key justification for the UK joining the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. No such weapons were found after the invasion and key bits of intelligence put forward by then Joint Intelligence Committee head Sir John Scarlett in the infamous 2002 weapons dossier later discredited. 'Different arguments' Speaking on Fern Meets... on BBC One on Sunday, Mr Blair was asked whether the idea of Saddam having WMDs had "tilted" him in favour of war. He replied that it was "the notion of him as a threat to the region of which the development of WMDs was obviously one" aspect. Asked whether he would have invaded Iraq without the WMDs dossier, he said: "I would still have thought it right to remove him. "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat." Mr Blair is due to give evidence in the New Year to the Chilcot inquiry into the war. Sir Ken said the questioning so far by the panel had been "unchallenging", adding: "If Chilcot fails to reveal the truth without fear in this Middle Eastern story of violence and destruction, the inquiry will be held in deserved and withering contempt."

Iraq war in figures (bbc)

All US troops will be out of Iraq by the end of 2011

The US is withdrawing the last of its troops from Iraq, the final phase in the eight-year operation which has cost billions of dollars and many thousands of lives. The onus of ensuring Iraq's security and rebuilding the devastated country now rests with Iraqi leaders.

Almost every figure related to the war is disputed, with none more keenly debated than the total number of Iraqi deaths. This is a summary of some of the key numbers and the arguments surrounding them.

TROOP LEVELS

US troops led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, in coalition with the UK and other nations. The numbers of US "boots on the ground" have mostly fluctuated between 100-150,000 apart from the period of the "surge" in 2007. This was President George W Bush's drive to improve security in the country, especially in the capital Baghdad, by sending in 30,000 extra troops.
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UK troop levels in Iraq

End of May 2003: 18,000 End of May 2004: 8,600 End of May 2005: 8,500 End of May 2006: 7,200 End of May 2007: 5,500 End of May 2008: 4,100 (in southern Iraq) End of May 2009: 4,100 (in southern Iraq) End of Jan 2010: 150 End of Nov 2011: 44

Source: MoD Barack Obama made withdrawal from Iraq a key pledge in his presidential election campaign of 2008 and troop numbers have steadily fallen since he took office in January 2009. On 19 August 2010, the last US combat brigade left the country, leaving behind 50,000 military personnel involved in the transition process. British forces peaked at 46,000 during the invasion phase and then fell away year on year to 4,100 in May 2009 when the UK formally withdrew from Iraq. The Royal Navy continued to train the Iraqi Navy until May 2011. The UK's presence in Iraq is now only as part of the Nato Training Mission - Iraq. That includes 44 military personnel, including a contingent at the Iraqi Military Academy.

CASUALTIES
The US has lost 4,487 service personnel in Iraq since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom on 19 March 2003, according to the latest figures from the US Department of Defense.

By 31 August 2010, when the last US combat troops left, 4,421 had been killed, of which 3,492 were killed in action. Almost 32,000 had been wounded in action. Since then, in what was called Operation New Dawn, 66 have died, of which 38 were killed in action. Three hundred and five have been wounded in action since 1 September 2010. The UK lost 179 servicemen and women, of which 136 were killed in action.
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Other coalition countries account for 139 deaths according to the icasualties website.

While coalition troop fatalities are reasonably well documented, deaths of Iraqi civilians and combatants are more difficult to track because of a lack of reliable official figures. All counts and estimates of Iraqi deaths are highly disputed. The organisation Iraq Body Count has been collating civilian deaths using cross-checked media reports and other figures such as morgue records.

According to IBC there have been between 97,461 and 106,348 civilian deaths up to July 2010. The most bloody period for civilian deaths was the month of invasion, March 2003, in which IBC says 3,977 ordinary Iraqis lost their lives. A further 3,437 were killed in April of that year. The group says the difference between its higher and lower total figures is caused by discrepancies in reports about how many deaths resulted from an incident and whether they were civilians or combatants. Other reports and surveys have resulted in a wide range of estimates of Iraqi deaths. The UN-backed Iraqi Family Health Survey estimated 151,000 violent deaths in the period March 2003 - June 2006. Meanwhile, The Lancet journal in 2006 published an estimate of 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths related to the war of which 601,027 were caused by violence. Both this and the Family Health Survey include deaths of Iraqi combatants as well as civilians. An unknown number of civilian contractors have also been killed in Iraq. Icasualties publishes what it describes as a partial list with the figure of 467.

COST

The financial scale of the war is another area in which figures vary widely. The respected and non-partisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the US will have spent almost $802bn (512.8bn) on funding the war by the end of fiscal year 2011, with $747.6bn (478bn) already appropriated.

However, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard's Linda Bilmes put the true cost at $3 trillion (1.2tn) once additional impacts on the US budget and economy are taken into account. The UK has funded its part in the conflict from the Treasury Reserve Fund which is extra money on top of the normal Ministry of Defence budget. Whitehall figures released in June 2010 put the cost of British funding of the Iraq conflict at 9.24bn ($14.32bn), the vast majority of which was for the military but which also included 557m ($861m) in aid. A summary of how the war was funded was also presented to the UK's Iraq Inquiry in January 2010.
DISPLACED PEOPLE

Sectarian violence in the conflict began to grow from early 2005. But the destruction of an important Shia shrine in February 2006 saw attacks between Sunni and Shia militias

increase dramatically. This caused many Iraqi families to abandon their homes and move to other areas within the country or to flee abroad. The International Organization for Migration, IOM, which monitors numbers of displaced families, estimates that in the four years 2006-2010, as many as 1.6 million Iraqis [pdf] were internally displaced, representing 5.5% of the population. Of that total, nearly 400,000 people had returned by mid 2010, primarily to Baghdad, Diyala, Ninewa, and Anbar provinces, according to the IOM.

K government 'misled' over Iraq war, tribunal told

IRAQ WAR http://articles.cnn.com/2010-0202/world/uk.iraq.short_1_iraq-war-attorney-general-peter-goldsmithinquiry?_s=PM:WOR
February 02, 2010

Clare Short says Tony Blair "leant" on his legal advisor to secure support for Iraq war.

Britain's top legal official "misled" the government over the case for war in Iraq under pressure from then prime minister Tony Blair, a former Cabinet minister claimed Tuesday. Clare Short, who was Blair's international development secretary until she quit over the Iraq invasion, said Attorney General Peter Goldsmith withheld his own "doubts and changes of opinion" in giving the go-ahead for war.

"I think he misled the Cabinet. He certainly misled me, but people let it through," Short told an inquiry into Britain's role in the March 2003 Iraq invasion.

The inquiry -- Britain's fifth examination of its Iraq involvement -- has already grilled senior figures including Blair, former defense minister Geoff Hoon and Britain's top military commander Jock Stirrup. Short said that Goldsmith, who last week testified before the inquiry that he was initially ambivalent but later adamant over the legality of the war, was wrong to press the case. Goldsmith initially advised Blair in January 2003 that it would be unlawful to invade Iraq without a United Nations Security Council resolution but changed his mind a month later. "I think for the attorney general to come and say there's unequivocal legal authority to go to war was misleading." Short said Goldsmith was "leaned on" by Blair to agree to the war. "Lord Goldsmith said he was excluded from lots of meetings -- that's a form of pressure. "It was suggested to him that he go to the U.S. to get advice about the legal position. "You have got the Bush administration who have very low respect for international law. It seems the most extraordinary place in the world to go to get advice about international law." She added: "I think all that was leaning on -- sending him to America, excluding him and then including him." Her comments came just days after Blair appearance at the inquiry generated protests, with several hundred anti-war campaigners gathering outside the London venue chanting "Blair lied, thousands died" and other slogans. Blair denied claims he had struck a secret deal with U.S. President George W. Bush in 2002 pledging British backing for the invasion and said he believed "beyond doubt" his unfounded pre-war claim that Iraq was capable of launching chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes. Analysts say involvement in the Iraq war remains a "live political issue" in the UK, because the same government -- now led by Gordon Brown -- was still power, whereas the parties of other leaders in the U.S. and Australia have been voted out of office.

"The others have faced critical public scrutiny and been damaged by that," legal expert Glen Rangwala of Cambridge University told CNN. "The British haven't had a change of administration so in many ways it remains a live political issue because it reflects on people who are in government."

Britain spent 18 billion on war in Afghanistan, figures show (the telegraph)

Britain has spent more than 18 billion on the war in Afghanistan and significantly underestimated the cost of the campaign in Libya, it emerged yesterday.
The five-year conflict in Helmand is officially estimated to have cost about 4 billion a year, according to Ministry of Defence figures published in a Commons defence committee report. But the panel of MPs accused the MoD of hiding the true cost of the war by refusing to disclose millions of unseen expenses. The report added that the bombing campaign in Libya is projected at 260 million if it lasts six months significantly higher than forecasts made by George Osborne, the Chancellor, in March. When the first attacks on Col Gaddafis forces commenced four months ago, the Chancellor claimed that the cost to Britain would be in the order of tens of millions of pounds, not hundreds of millions. The news comes at a time when the MoD is cutting 28,000 troops and equipment programmes to resolve a 38billion black hole in its funding.

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James Arbuthnot, the chairman of the defence committee, said he was frustrated that the MoD appears to be unable or unwilling to provide the kind of detailed information we ask for, notably in respect of the total cost of military operations and the detail of savings proposed. Mr Arbuthnot added that this prevented proper parliamentary scrutiny. Despite providing the committee with a memorandum that showed the 4billion costs for the 10,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan, the MoD did not disclose core costs such as wear and tear to equipment and lost training days. The report suggested that these could amount to 400million a year. The figures only covered the cost of operations and failed to accurately reflect the real cost of Britains military commitment in Afghanistan, the committee said. The MPs added: While it is true that personnel would be paid and equipment procured and used (largely for training purposes), even if the Armed Forces were not engaged in operations, their deployment brings with it additional costs in terms of training opportunities cancelled or deferred and equipment wear and tear that will eventually have to be met. The committee criticised a number of other areas where insufficient information was provided, particularly in the breakdown of equipment written-off. This amounted to 4billion, including the Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft and Harrier jump jet. Responding to a report in The Daily Telegraph that showed hundreds of the Armys best officers were applying for redundancy the report also called on the MoD to show how it will ensure that the voluntary redundancy process does not impact on the future leadership capability and effectiveness of the Armed Services. The report also disclosed that the cost of making 11,000 service personnel redundant over the years would amount to an estimated 700 million.