bliars

Blair, September 2002 dossier:

"What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and that he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme."

In fact: Sir William Ehrman [a senior official within the Foreign Office] stated intelligence was "limited" in April 2000, "patchy" in May 2001, "sporadic and patchy" in March 2002, and that officials knew "very little" in August. Intelligence remained "limited" in September1.

Blair, September 2002 dossier:

"His military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them. I am quite clear that Saddam will go to extreme lengths, indeed has already done so, to hide these weapons and avoid giving them up."

Tim Dowse, who was head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office: "Speaking personally, when I saw the 45 minutes report, I did not give it particular significance because it didn't seem out of line with what we generally assessed to be Iraq's intentions and capabilities with regard to chemical weapons... I don't think we ever said that it was for use in a ballistic missile."

Blair, March 2003, House of Commons:

"Iraq continues to deny it has any WMD, though no serious intelligence service anywhere in the world believes them."

Sir William Ehrman: "We did, I think on March 10, get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn't yet ordered their assembly. There was also a suggestion that Iraq might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents."

Blair, December 2003, interview:

"The Iraq Survey Group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories, workings by scientists, plans to develop long range ballistic missiles."

Tim Dowse: "I did not advise him to use those words." He added that nothing of "significance" had been found in Iraq since the invasion.

From the Iraq Inquiry, put together by the Independent

What is incredible is not just to hear these lies again - and they have all been in the public domain for years - but rather to see the desperate scramble by those who have been party to the lies attempting to get their side of the story out, to cover their moral backsides (such as they are) and to disclaim any responsibility for what happened. Ambassadors, top foreign office officials, Cabinet ministers, and the media.

The media feign shock horror, as if this is the first that they have heard about dodgy intelligence, overblown claims of 45 minutes; the first that they have heard about Blair's pact with Bush at his Texas ranch. But none of it is new, and the media have known it for years. The mere fact that anyone is surprised by reading any of the information coming out is testament to the fact that the media themselves failed miserably to put these facts out in the right way at the right time.

Of course the media cannot tell us that the facts and lies are old: that would not only fail to be a story, it would also suggest that those journalists who knew the facts and lies before, and did their best to tell another story, might themselves be culpable. Culpable in peddling lies, at best, and in serving as the Government's war propaganda machine, at worst.

The mandarins too all knew that lies were being told, and their testimony speaks about their policy 6 - 7 years ago: their individual morally backsliding policy. Little of what they say is new either: all that appears to have been revealed by the Inquiry so far is these officials' attitude at the time to what were obviously lies. Or perhaps, their retrospective view of what their attitude should have been, if the public were to lay the blame on Blair alone, rather than those who carried out his policies.

Sir Peter Ricketts "We quite clearly distanced ourselves from talk of regime change... that was not something we thought there would be any legal base for."

Sir William Patey "We were aware of those drumbeats from Washington [about regime change]. Our policy was to stay away from that end of the spectrum."

So they distanced themselves: they shut their eyes to the drumbeats and the talk of regime change. And went on doing their jobs. 'We're only shuffling paper. We don't agree with what's written on it. Someone has to shuffle the paper'.

That might be fine, if the question had not been one of war. But paper shuffling war plans when you know them to be wrong, illegal, illegitimate is something that takes guts, if you have a moral backside. Or something that requires no moral backside. Sir Christopher Meyer, one of the most cynical to have testified so far, lolled about in his seat looking self-assured and privately educated:

"Suddenly, because of the unforgiving nature of the military timetable, we found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun."

Sir Christopher Meyer to the Iraq Inquiry

Ah the poor wee mite! How difficult it must have been to scrabble for a smoking gun when you knew full well that it wasn't there. How difficult to pretend to believe that we would find it - to create the illusion that that fake smoking gun was threatening us so badly that we needed to let loose our own (real) smoking guns on real human beings.

Lord Goldsmith was also a poor mite, and allegedly the victim of a vicious bullying campaign: he is said to have lost three stone, and last week complained to the Inquiry that he was "more or less pinned to the wall" by two fearsome peers. Literally pinned, I wonder? That would indeed be bad. And if not literally, then what on earth was to stop him from walking away. Instead of which, he put his moral backside down, shat on his legal expertise and signed a document declaring a`war he believed to be illegal to be legal. Allegedly.

Some of those paper shufflers did in fact threaten to resign - Lord Goldsmith among them, and Sir Christopher Meyer, and even Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who bullied the anti-war nations almost into submission at the UN. Noble beings. Things were so bad, apparently, so obviously unsatisfactory, or wrong, or we know not so what, that Lords and Sirs and Cabinet Ministers all threatened to resign.

But did they in fact resign? Of course they did not. That would have meant losing nice high profile jobs, and salaries, and future peerages and honours. They threatened to resign, and then stayed quiet about their disquiet, and in most cases, they continued to do the warmongers' bidding, scrabbling for smoking guns, selling the war at the UN, proclaiming it legal after all, and sweetening up George Bush and Cheney and the others that they feign now to despise.

No doubt they will argue - as all do who stay in post 'against their principles' - that they could do more in the job than out. But what if they all these individuals, who now claim to have been uneasy about the policy, what if they had got out, had not just threatened, but had actually resigned? Sir William Ehrman knew that the intelligence was patchy, but said nothing; Tim Dowse 'did not advise' Blair to lie, but said nothing when he heard him lie; Goldsmith thought the war illegal, but signed a document proclaiming it legal; and Greenstock thought the war illegitimate - presumably that means he had some moral scruples that the cause was not justified. But he too sat on his scruples, continued to fight for the cause, and even now, when over a million people are likely to have lost their lives as a result, cannot bring himself to judge his own contribution in anything but a positive light.

Can any of us imagine that Blair would have got away with his drive to war, if all these lordly mandarins had made clear their concerns then, when things were far from certain? What more did they really achieve by staying in their posts, other than helping Blair and Bush to sell their war - legitimising it - to the media, to other governments, and to the House of Commons (even if not to the population as a whole)?

Surely shuffling papers which make a war of aggression possible, diplomatically easing objections to a war of aggression, and supporting lies which you know to be lies, each of which makes war more likely, not less likely - surely all of that is nothing but complicity in waging that war of aggression. If we were talking about a bank robbery there would be little doubt. Nor would there be if we were talking about our enemies waging war on us.

The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility:

(a) Crimes against Peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a Common Plan or Conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing...

Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter

Of course, if Greenstock is right (and few international lawyers believe he is) that the war was lawful, if not legitimate, then they can get away with it, while still managing to cover those non-existent moral backsides.

• 1. Carne Ross also said that: "I'd read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there's no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too." (quoted in the Guardian in 2005