The Iraq Inquiry.. Brown: It wasn't me

By TOM NEWTON DUNN, Political Editor
Published: 06 Mar 2010

GORDON Brown yesterday repeatedly denied ANY blame for the Iraq war and the failings that cost British lives.

The Prime Minister's steadfast refusal to take any responsibility in his evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry provoked fury from the military and grieving families last night.

Prompting the most outrage was Mr Brown's suggestion that Army commanders - NOT him - were at fault over needless deaths in poorly protected Snatch Land Rovers. Lord Guthrie, former Chief of the Defence Staff, told The Sun later: "It is astonishing and offensive to suggest that if officers had had a choice, they would have chosen the Snatch Land Rover."

Mr Brown said he was involved in top-level talks before the Iraq invasion in 2003 - when he was Chancellor - but wanted diplomacy to prevail. When it came to the crunch, he was NOT part of the decision making.

And mistakes in the woeful preparations for nation building of a destroyed Iraq after the war were NOT his either, he said.

He only expressed "regret" that he could not persuade the Americans to do more.

Rubbishing then US President George Bush's post-war reconstruction plans, Mr Brown said: "I never subscribed to the neoconservative position that somehow, at the barrel of a gun, overnight, liberty or democracy could be conjured up."

But he insisted he wrote a blank cheque for Mr Blair to take Britain to war.
Mr Brown's four hours of evidence was the first time he had faced a public grilling over his role on Iraq and its aftermath.

He was heckled by anti-war protesters on his arrival at the hearing, at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster.

After expressing his regret at the loss of 179 British military lives in Iraq, he told the panel of five that the Armed Forces had been given everything they wanted for the conflict.

He admitted for the first time he put the Ministry of Defence under a cash squeeze in the autumn of 2003 - six months after the mission.

But he said: "Every request that military commanders made to us for equipment was answered. No request was ever turned down."

Mr Brown was asked to respond to a series of questions tabled by families of soldiers - up to 37 - killed in the Snatch fleet. He said:

I have to stress, it's not for me to make the military decisions on the ground about the use of particular vehicles.

It's not for me to make the decision, that's for the military themselves.

But what I can say is that when we were asked to provide the money and resources for additional equipment, we made that money available.

That flew in the faces of senior military figures who had already given evidence to the inquiry.
In January, General Lord Walker told the inquiry that all five of Britain's military chiefs threatened to resign in protest at the cuts, brought in just months after Iraq was liberated in 2003.

Former Army head General Sir Richard Dannatt said last night: "Gordon Brown bears responsibility, claiming credit for increasing funding when actually there was a reduction in value."

Susan Smith, mother of one dead soldier, said: "It's very low of Gordon Brown to blame commanders. He was trying to shift the blame."

Her son, Pte Phillip Hewett, 21, was killed with two comrades when a bomb hit a Snatch in Iraq in July 2005.

Mrs Smith added: "Commanders had no options, they couldn't use anything else."

Tory Shadow Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox said: "There have been consistent allegations that, as Chancellor, Gordon Brown was so unsympathetic to the Armed Forces that he denied them what they needed."

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2881055/Gordon-Brown-ducks-blame-at-Iraq-Inquiry.html#ixzz0hmql0ChD

Posted by: Michelle Nielsen