Blair's day to face families of war dead

It is almost seven years since Tony Blair led Britain into war in Iraq.

But when he strides into the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster at 9.30 on Friday morning (10.30pm NZT), through a ring of steel set up by the security services, the passage of time will count for nothing.

Behind the former Prime Minister will sit more than 20 relatives of soldiers killed in the conflict, mothers and fathers who will struggle, perhaps for ever, to come to terms with their loss.

The organisers of the inquiry have been at pains to try to reduce the emotional temperature around Blair's attendance.

"The members of the committee are not judges, and nobody is on trial," says the official inquiry website.

But that is not how it will feel for the families on day 33 of the so-called Chilcot inquiry - the one they have been waiting for with a mixture of hope and dread.

Emotions are still raw and the anger intense. As a result, there is a risk that the session could turn into a disaster.

"We are still after him after all this time," said one of the fathers who will attend, Peter Brierley, whose son, Lance Corporal Shaun Brierley, 28, was killed in March 2003. "He [Blair] should be frightened of the families."

There has been talk among the relatives of protests at the moment Blair arrives. Some relatives have vowed to turn their backs on the former PM as he enters. Others have talked of painting their palms red to signify "blood on the hands" of the "guilty" man.

There has been discussion of throwing shoes at him, imitating the Iraqi reporter who flung his footwear at the US President, George W. Bush, in 2008.

Many relatives have refused to attend. Maureen Shearer, from Nuneaton, mother of 26-year-old Second Lieutenant Richard Shearer, killed in 2005, turned down the offer, fearing the inquiry might be a "cover-up" and that she might lash out and slap Blair if she got near him.

Rather than enter the ballot for seats, she sent a response saying she blamed Blair for not correctly equipping soldiers. The Prime Minister, she said, could be held directly responsible for her son's death. "He was to blame a lot as an individual and as the Prime Minister. He did what the US wanted him to do, he took us in. He lied."

That, in a nutshell, is the case for the prosecution, the charge-sheet against Blair drawn up by critics of the war. The main questions they want put to him all turn on whether he and his Government misled the public, Parliament and the armed forces about the case and reasons for war. Seven years and four inquiries on, they want answers at last.

Did Blair exaggerate the strength of intelligence on offer about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? Did he mislead Parliament about the threat that Saddam represented to secure the crucial backing of MPs for his mission?

Had Blair agreed in April 2002 - almost a year before a vote in Parliament - to back a US-led invasion, irrespective of whether WMD were found, therefore making that vote a sham? Was the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, pushed by the British and US Governments into changing his legal advice, from an initial view that war would be illegal without a second UN resolution to a reluctant acceptance that it would, in fact, be legal after all?

And were British troops sent into Iraq with inadequate equipment because ministers did not want to order it for fear of alerting opponents of the conflict about war preparations?

Sir John Chilcot's inquiry has already been criticised for going soft on witnesses, including Blair's former head of communications, Alastair Campbell. MPs fear that the government machine is defending a system of government that was collectively responsible.

The Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay, a member of the House of Commons foreign affairs select committee, voted for war and has, ever since, felt he was misled into doing so. Like many Labour MPs, he says Chilcot is the last chance to bring Blair to account. This inquiry, he points out, has a far wider remit than previous investigations into Iraq by Lords Hutton and Butler, and the foreign affairs committee, and therefore has a heavy responsibility.

The crucial point, he and other Labour MPs say, is to pin Blair down on why intelligence reports that were equivocal about Saddam's weapons programmes were then used as the basis for statements to Parliament and official dossiers that were intendedto leave no doubt at all that therewas a grave, immediate and growing threat.

"No inquiry so far has ever insisted on asking [about] the genesis of information that was presented to us as facts - namely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," Mackinlay said. "We need to be told. They can't hide behind national security this time. They have to ask him how, where, and from whom did this information come? If they fail to press him on this, the whole thing will be a failure. There will be a serious flaw in our democratic system."

Another Labour MP, John Baron, has written to the committee saying it will "go down in history as an executive patsy" unless it asks the "searching questions", including the genesis of the claim that Saddam had WMD that could be fired at 45 minutes' notice. "It has a duty to do so to ensure we never make such an appalling mistake again."

Reassuringly for those seeking answers, the committee has in recent sessions with Campbell, Jonathan Powell, Blair's former chief of staff, and former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw seemed to be closing in on the key questions to which they demand answers.

One of the panel members, Sir Roderic Lyne, has criticised the way Blair presented the Government's September 2002 dossier on the case for war to Parliament. Lyne has told the inquiry he found it hard to understand why Blair could have told Parliament that the evidence for WMD was firm and that the threat from Iraq was "growing" when evidence was so elusive.

The committee clearly has concerns about the sharp difference between assessments made in 2002 by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which includes heads of the security services, about the evidence for WMD and what Blair told Parliament.

The question now for critics of war is whether Chilcot and his team will ask Blair whether he now accepts that Parliament was, intentionally or unintentionally, misled.

FIVE CRUCIAL QUESTIONS FOR BLAIR

1. Did you mislead the public and Parliament about Saddam Hussein's weapons programme?

The 2004 report into intelligence by Lord Butler found there had been patchy evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002. Yet Blair authorised the September 2002 dossier, saying: "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." Blair also said Saddam could well have been ready within a few years to produce a nuclear weapon, yet no intelligence has been produced to support the claim.

2. Did you give President George W. Bush a guarantee Britain would follow the United States to war?

Sir Christopher Meyer, the UK's former ambassador to Washington, has suggested Blair may have "signed in blood" a deal to go to war during a visit to Bush's Texas ranch. The inquiry has also heard about letters from Blair to Bush which suggest the UK would stick by the US. Sir David Manning, former foreign policy adviser, wrote a note of a meeting between the pair in January 2003 in which Bush said military action would happen even without a second UN resolution. The note said Blair was "solidly with the President". Blair has insisted nothing was set in stone until Parliament voted for war in March 2003.

3. Did you pressure the attorney-general to change his mind about the legality of war after his initial judgment that it would be illegal without a second UN resolution?

There is a widespread belief that Lord Goldsmith changed his advice after pressure from Blair's inner circle in the run-up to the invasion. It was the view of the Foreign Office's legal team that a second resolution was necessary to make an invasion legal. Goldsmith appears before the inquiry on Thursday. Sources have indicated he may have also come under pressure from the US State Department.

4. Did you believe regime change would have been justified?

The Government's line has always been that the reason for invasion was because Saddam possessed WMD and had refused to allow in UN weapons inspectors. The justification for war was disarmament. But there have been suggestions during the inquiry that Blair also believed regime change provided grounds. In a recent BBC interview, Blair said he "would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam]" even if he had known Iraq had no WMD.

5. Did you insist that orders for equipment such as body armour be delayed in the run-up to war because you did not want to alert opponents to the imminent invasion?

Lord Boyce, former chief of defence staff, has said he was told by former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon to delay requests for equipment because there was a fear news of such orders could provoke more opposition to war. A military inquiry into the death of Sergeant Steven Roberts, the first combat soldier to die in Iraq, found he would have survived had he been wearing enhanced body armour.

- OBSERVER