Iraq minutes 'must be released'

[BEagle]

From BBC News:
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a341/nw969/Internet/zxzxz.jpg

Ministers have been ordered to release minutes of the cabinet meetings which discussed the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The Information Tribunal upheld a decision by the Information Commissioner that details of the March 13 and 17 sessions should be disclosed.

The meetings considered the issue of whether the invasion was allowed under international law.

The government failed in its bid to block a Freedom of Information request asking for the release of the minutes.

The Cabinet Office now has 28 days to decide whether to appeal to the High Court against the ruling.

A Downing Street spokesman said they were "considering our response".
Cabinet minutes are not normally released until at least 30 years after the event - but the Tribunal stressed that disclosure of the Iraq material would not necessarily set a precedent.

'Public interest'

The Tribunal said: "The decision to commit the nation's armed forces to the invasion of another country is momentous in its own right, and ... its seriousness is increased by the criticisms that have been made (particularly in the Butler Report) of the general decision-making processes in the Cabinet at the time.

"There has also been criticism of the Attorney General's legal advice and of the particular way in which the March 17 opinion was made available to the Cabinet only at the last moment and the March 7 opinion was not disclosed to it at all."

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said he was "pleased" the Tribunal had upheld the decision he made in February last year that "the public interest in disclosing the official Cabinet minutes in this particular case outweighs the public interest in withholding the information".

He added: "Disclosing the minutes will allow the public to more fully understand this particular decision."

Legal questions

The release of the cabinet minutes would reopen controversy over the then attorney general Lord Goldsmith's legal advice on the war.

On the eve of war, 17 March, Lord Goldsmith's opinion unequivocally saying military action was legal was presented to cabinet, MPs and the military and published.

However, after long-running reports that he had changed his mind as the planned invasion approached, his initial lengthy advice given to Tony Blair on 7 March was leaked and then published in 2005.

This advice raised a number of questions and concerns about the possible legality of military action against Iraq without a second UN resolution and was never shown to the cabinet.

The then prime minister Tony Blair defended his decision not to show the cabinet the full advice, saying that Lord Goldsmith had attended the cabinet in person and was able to answer any legal questions and explain his view.

So, our totalitarian government failed in its bid to block a Freedom of Information request, did it? What a shame.....

Now watch Bliar twist and turn like a.....twisty turny thing!

[minigundiplomat]

Phoney Tony as a PIFWC. I can't wait! Can we throw in El Gordo for financing it too?

[Beatriz Fontana]

Don't get too excited just yet. The decision to release can be appealed through the High Court and The Lords.

Not quite game over.

[safetypee]

“Don't get too excited just yet.” I agree.
Those minutes which I drafted (in a very lowly post) were expected to reflect the intent of what was said not necessarily what was actually discussed. The drafts were always vetted by the lawyers before publication. Oh, but the chief legal advisor was at the meeting!

[taxydual]

Will it make any difference to anything?

Bung a Labour Lord a hundred grand and Bob's your Uncle. Everyone's in the clear.

[CirrusF]

I hope that we don't get fobbed off with an SA style "Truth Commission" style enquiry into the Iraq debacle, which is a possibility already being mooted in the USA. HMG's alleged abuse of a long established and mature, largely representative democratic process to engineer Britain's involvement in the invasion of Iraq should be publicly investigated and any miscreants should be held fully to account if found guilty. Failure to do so will just store up problems for the future.

[Thelma Viaduct]

Maybe they should look at when civvy shipping companies suddenly got a block booking for dates of when the real decision was made.

Sending soldiers to war on the basis of a lie is the lowest of the low. I and I suspect most others didn't sign up to fight wars based on lies, let alone illegal wars. "You signed on the dotted line, do what they say blah blah blah......." Yeah, that's Bull ****. I signed up to serve my country, not fulfil some smarmy cnuts 'legacy' and secure future energy reserves for uncle sam.

Blair and the rest of the cabinet that voted for action should be shot with his apologists, and I mean shot.

I'm kind of a bit gutted that the US&A that kicked off the whole mess has got a great new president that offers some kind of hope for the rest of the world. In this country we've got a bunch of lieing, incompetent, stealth taxing, murdering, thieving bastards that all smell of the same stench that **** exudes.

Guy Fawke's time was a few hundred years too soon.

[pr00ne]

Pious Pilot,

"Guy Fawke's time was a few hundred years too soon."


You want to blow up the Monarch and the entire Royal Family? My you are angry.......

[Two's in]

Not wishing to spoil the party atmosphere, but have you really thought this through?

Option A: Government releases the minutes and reveals the astounding fact that - Politicians Lie!

Option B: Government refuses to disclose the minutes because to do so would reveal the horrifying truth - Politicians Lie!

This is hardly ground breaking, especially when you consider that His Holiness Bliar is already regarded as the second coming after Barack, you don't think he has a well rehearsed escape route for this?

[effortless]

They will reveal nothing. The decision was not taken in cabinet.

[BEagle]

They will reveal nothing. The decision was not taken in cabinet.

So why, in that case, did this totalitarian government try to block a Freedom of Information request if there is nothing to reveal?

[FJJP]

Oh they'll be revealed all right - covered in great swathes of black ink where sensitive parts are censored out.

Don't expect any startling revelations...

[Biggles225]

I agree with FJJP all we'll get will be pages of black lines with an occasional visible conjunction! :ugh:

[Warmtoast]

According to the The Daily Mash here: CABINET MINUTES TO REVEAL PRE-WAR BLOOD SACRIFICE - The Daily Mash (http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/war/cabinet-minutes-to-reveal-pre%11war-blood-sacrifice-200901281540/)

This is what really happened.

CABINET MINUTES TO REVEAL PRE-WAR BLOOD SACRIFICE

MINUTES from Cabinet meetings in the run up to the Iraq war are expected to reveal how key decisions were made during a blood soaked voodoo ritual.

The High Court yesterday ordered the government to publish the historic records and release any animal parts that may have been kept.

One former minister said: "We based our deliberations on a classic central African goat sacrifice with a little bit of extra mogambo thrown in to keep the UN happy.

"The live goat was hoisted above the centre of the table while Patricia Hewitt stripped to the waist, painted a series of concentric circles on her belly and then grabbed a small, curved knife and slit the animal's throat.

"Everyone then had to take a mouthful of the blood and spit it at a picture of Saddam Hussein. Charles Clarke did it twice.

"Then [former attorney general Lord] Goldsmith sliced open the carcass and the entrails fell into the middle of the table.

"He began chanting and rearranging the intestines, spleen, liver and heart until they formed a special pattern which he said constituted the legal basis for a pre-emptive attack.

"The whole time Tony Blair just sat there with his eyes rolled back in his head, making this weird gurgling noise."

According to the source the cabinet then put their clothes back on and the meeting ended, as normal, with the ritual befoulment of international development secretary Douglas Alexander.

[S78]

Jack Straw has used a 'ministerial veto' to block the minutes from being released:mad:





S78

[strake]

"The whole time Tony Blair just sat there with his eyes rolled back in his head, making this weird gurgling noise."


Hmm, so the heart problem started a little earlier than first reported.

[ADVOCATE_56]

From: Rt Hon Peter Goldsmith QC. PC

I have been asked to advise the Prime Minister (“PM”) whether the proposed invasion of Iraq would be illegal within the context of United Kingdom obligations.

The Threat. It is perfectly plain that President Saddam Hussein is an absolute bounder and oik of the first degree. Not only is he not Oxbridge, but he has been known to be perfectly beastly to his own citizens, as for example when he used chemical weapons to suppress an uprising of the Kurdish peoples which coincided with a major offensive in the war with Iraq. However, one is mindful that at the time of the so-called Halabja incident, President Saddam Hussein was in fact “one of us.”

As the PM will recall, he was fighting the beastly Iranians, comprising a rag-bag of wild-eyed mullahs intent on bringing fervent Islamic sentiment to the very shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

One must also remember that President Saddam Hussein’s weapons were largely of western, including but by no means exclusively British, origin. Please see my predecessors’ advices “ Matrix Churchill – The Case for Prosecution” and “ Matrix Churchill - What to Do Now That Cad Clark Has Spilled the Beans.”

It is now believed not least by Mr Scarlett at JIC, that President Saddam Hussein has access to significant quantities of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons; at least one death star; and an unknown quantity of Klingon Battle Cruisers operating in cloak mode. Whilst it must be admitted that the evidence for Iraq’s possession of these last two weapons systems is patchy and derived from a single source there is, and I quote the PM’s own words from his informative and valuable dossier, a serious and current threat of WMDs in the hands of President Saddam Hussein.

[BEagle]

From BBC News:

Straw vetoes Iraq minutes release

Justice Secretary Jack Straw has vetoed the publication of minutes of key Cabinet meetings held in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003.

He said he would use a clause in the Freedom of Information Act to block the release of details of meetings in which the war's legality was discussed.

Releasing the papers would do "serious damage" to Cabinet government, he said, and outweighed public interest needs.

The Information Tribunal ruled last month that they should be published.

'Necessary'

They had rejected a government appeal against the Information Commissioner's ruling that the papers be published because decisions taken in the run-up to 2003 invasion of Iraq were "momentous" and controversial.

The government could have appealed against the Information Tribunal's decision in the High Court, but has decided instead to use the ministerial veto for the first time since the Freedom of Information laws came into force.

Mr Straw told MPs he had not taken the decision - which had to be approved by Cabinet - to block the minutes "lightly".

But he said it was "necessary" in the interest of protecting the confidentiality of ministerial discussions which underpinned Cabinet government and collective responsibility.

"There is a balance to be struck between openness and maintaining aspects of our structure of democratic government," he said.

"The damage that disclosure of the minutes in this instance would do far outweighs any corresponding public interest in their disclosure."

The Conservatives said the decision was "right" since the release of the minutes would make ministers more reluctant to discuss controversial subjects in future, impeding good government.

However, shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said the way the government had handled the issue betrayed its contempt for the FOI legislation it itself introduced.

He also repeated his call for a full-scale public inquiry into the Iraq war, saying the need for this was now "overwhelming".

For the Lib Dems, justice spokesman David Howarth said the decision was "more to do with preventing embarrassment than protecting the system of government".

He said it was in the public's interest to know that the Cabinet, as a decision-making body, had "collapsed" in the run-up to war and been supplanted by a handful of key individuals around the then prime minister Tony Blair.

'Regret'

Labour MP Tony Wright said it was a cause of "great regret" that the veto had been used for the first time and would reinforce the impression among the public that there was something that ministers wanted to hide.

The SNP described the move as a "cover-up" and said an inquiry was needed so that lessons could be learnt from the "worst UK foreign policy decision in living memory".

"The public feels it was lied to about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, and those responsible must not be allowed to hide from an inquiry," said its defence spokesman Angus Robertson.

The release of the cabinet minutes would have reopened controversy over then attorney general Lord Goldsmith's legal advice on the war.

On the eve of war, 17 March, Lord Goldsmith's opinion unequivocally saying military action was legal was presented to cabinet, MPs and the military and published.

But after long-running reports that he had changed his mind as the planned invasion approached, his initial lengthy advice given to Mr Blair on 7 March was leaked and then published in 2005.

This advice raised a number of questions and concerns about the possible legality of military action against Iraq without a second UN resolution and was never shown to the cabinet.

Mr Blair defended his decision not to show the cabinet the full advice, saying Lord Goldsmith had attended the cabinet in person and was able to answer any legal questions and explain his view.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, who backed publication on public interest grounds, said the exercise of a veto over standard FOI procedures must be "exceptional".

"Anything other than exceptional use of the veto would threaten to undermine much of the progress made towards greater openness and transparency in government since the FOI Act came into force," he said, adding that he would issue a report to Parliament about the case shortly.

Freedom of Information campaigners expressed concerns that the use of the veto in this case could set a precedent for less controversial material to be withheld in future.

Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, said ministers should have either accepted the Tribunal decision's or challenged it in the High Court if they believed they had legal grounds to do so.

In its ruling in January supporting publication, the Tribunal said "the decision to commit the nation's armed forces to the invasion of another country is momentous in its own right and ... its seriousness is increased by the criticisms that have been made of the general decision-making processes in the cabinet at the time".

The Tribunal concluded that the release of the minutes now would not set a precedent in future cases.

Cabinet minutes are not normally released until at least 30 years after the event.


:hmm:

[Biggles225]

Hands up anyone who really believed 'they' would allow publication? :ugh:

[tucumseh]

At least the Government admit a meeting actually took place! Under similar circumstances (i.e. being caught lying through their back teeth) it is a common ploy in MoD to deny the meeting took place in the first place. I've seen them claim the existence of minutes doesn't mean the meeting took place. It's what tape recorders are for (or, these days, digital recorders, which have a better chance of defeating jammers :p).

[JimNich]

There was that interview with Mr Clinton a couple of years back which was actually quite enlightening. He was very supportive of our Tony (as you'd expect I s'pose, who's to say Monica never did a spit roast) and maintained that Mr T was actually in a very unenviable position at the time i.e. with a Europe (France) that would never go to war in any circumstance and the Bush administration that openly craved it. Anyway, what was intersting to me was that it was clear by what Bill said that Tony actually wasn't all that eager to go the whole hog either, all things being equal he'd have liked a bit more diplomacy.

Maybe the most embarrassing thing about all this is that it reveals how much our arm was actually twisted by Capitol Hill and its this facet which government wishes to conceal.

Then again, it might just all've been a horrendous balls up.

[Avitor]

No balls up, in my opinion. Blair was hell bent on doing Iraq. He foresaw the personal financial benefits of backing Bush. The medal was a bonus.

There were two sudden and lonely deaths, one of a resigned Minister who vehemently opposed the war and a scientist who denied there were WMD, which was Blair's excuse for attacking Iraq.

No accusations, merely the coincidental join up. Both were critical of Blair and both......are no longer with us.