Iraq

Thursday

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator Podcast: Marriage for one

An increasing number of women are entering into the institution of marriage with their dream partner: themselves. In her cover piece this week, Ariane Sherine investigates the women who have brought a new literalism to saying, ‘I do’. But is this just a quirky fad? Or are we witnessing a profound social change? Lara Prendergast speaks to Ariane and Spectator editor Fraser Nelson on this week’s Spectator podcast. Ariane tells Lara: ‘There are an increasing number of women who have decided, because they don’t have a man – or maybe some of them don’t want a man – that if they can’t find Mr Right, well, I’m going to embrace

Thursday

Philip Clark

Playing for high stakes

Now that even candidates for President of the United States can rise up from the undead dregs of reality television, it comes as no surprise to read that the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq owes its origins to a conclave of television execs. In 2008, Channel 4 and the independent production company Raw TV took upon themselves to campaign for a youth orchestra in Iraq, focusing their programme around the story of Zuhal Sultan, a 17-year-old Iraqi pianist. Later that same year, the Scottish conductor Paul MacAlindin was savouring a fish-and-chip supper in his favourite Edinburgh pub when his eye caught a headline in the Glasgow Herald about the same

Saturday

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The real hate crime scandal | 6 August 2016

Since the vote for Brexit, the media has fallen over itself to cover the apparently large upswing in the number of ‘hate crimes’ being reported. One of the trends noted is a particularly high occurrence of such incidents in areas that voted ‘Leave’. In his Spectator cover piece, Brendan O’Neill argues that there is an ‘unhinged subjectivity’ to hate crime reporting, which has skewed statistics in favour of self-critical moralisation. So, has there really been a post-Brexit surge in hostility towards minority groups or is our metric for recording these crimes simply off-kilter? Brendan O’Neill joins Kevin O’Sullivan, who was recently cleared after spending 20 months defending himself from a

Thursday

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The real hate crime scandal

Since the vote for Brexit, the media has fallen over itself to cover the apparently large upswing in the number of ‘hate crimes’ being reported. One of the trends noted is a particularly high occurrence of such incidents in areas that voted ‘Leave’. In his Spectator cover piece, Brendan O’Neill argues that there is an ‘unhinged subjectivity’ to hate crime reporting, which has skewed statistics in favour of self-critical moralisation. So, has there really been a post-Brexit surge in hostility towards minority groups or is our metric for recording these crimes simply off-kilter? Brendan O’Neill joins Kevin O’Sullivan, who was recently cleared after spending 20 months defending himself from a

Saturday

Charles Moore

Syria’s foreign policy lessons are just as important as Iraq’s

Before she was murdered, Jo Cox MP had written most of a report. She worked on it jointly it with the Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat for the Britain in the World project at the think-tank Policy Exchange. Its publication had been intended to coincide with that of the Chilcot report this week. Because of her shocking death, it is now delayed. But the project wants to continue her work, and the report’s bipartisanship. The essential point on which Mrs Cox (who opposed the Iraq war) and Mr Tugendhat (who served in it) agreed is that total non-intervention is not a foreign policy strategy. If Iraq shows the horrors of ill-planned

Thursday

The Spectator

The shame of Iraq

‘If it falls apart, everything falls apart in the region’ — Note from Tony Blair to George W. Bush, 2 June 2003.   Instead of asking why we fought the war, we should ask why we lost The extraordinary length of time that we have had to wait for Sir John Chilcot’s report into the 2003 invasion of Iraq has not made the end result any more satisfying. For some, nothing less than the indictment of Tony Blair on war crime charges would have sufficed. As for Blair himself, and many of those who surrounded him when the decision was made to remove Saddam Hussein from power, they will go

Wednesday

The Spectator

Sir John Chilcot’s full statement introducing the Iraq War inquiry report

We were appointed to consider the UK’s policy on Iraq from 2001 to 2009, and to identify lessons for the future. Our Report will be published on the Inquiry’s website after I finish speaking. In 2003, for the first time since the Second World War, the United Kingdom took part in an invasion and full-scale occupation of a sovereign State. That was a decision of the utmost gravity. Saddam Hussein was undoubtedly a brutal dictator who had attacked Iraq’s neighbours, repressed and killed many of his own people, and was in violation of obligations imposed by the UN Security Council. But the questions for the Inquiry were: whether it was

Steerpike

Was ‘the deadly Mail’ right after all on Iraq, Michael Gove?

Last week the Daily Mail endorsed Theresa May as the next Tory leader. The declaration took many by surprise as not only was it very early in the campaign to come out for a candidate, it had been thought that the paper might opt for Michael Gove — after his wife Sarah Vine suggested Paul Dacre favoured him in a leaked email. So, why did Dacre snub Gove just a day after he announced his leadership ambitions? While some have taken it to be a sign that the Daily Mail editor was unimpressed by the manner in which the Justice Secretary had turned on Boris Johnson, could any ill-feeling run deeper than that? In

The Spectator

The Chilcot report has exposed Blair’s real crime: failure to prepare

‘If it falls apart, everything falls apart in the region’ Note from Tony Blair to George W Bush, 2 June 2003. The extraordinary length of time that we have had to wait for Sir John Chilcot’s report into the 2003 invasion of Iraq has not made the end result any more satisfying. For some, nothing less than the indictment of Tony Blair on charges of war crimes would have sufficed. As for Blair himself, and many of those who surrounded him when the decision was made to remove Saddam from power, they will go on believing until their dying day that not only was the war just, but there was

Isabel Hardman

‘I will be with you, whatever’: What Chilcot tells us about Tony Blair

The Iraq Inquiry report is utterly scathing about Tony Blair. It paints a critical picture of his sofa government, in particular the way in which that government approached planning and preparation for Iraq without Saddam Hussein, and his ‘certainty that was not justified’ in presenting the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to Parliament. The Prime Minister also appeared more concerned about the politics of the military action than its detail, and failed repeatedly to ensure that the relevant ministerial oversight and Whitehall resources were directed to the conflict. And he seemed unable to challenge or disagree with the US when necessary. It includes a series of

Isabel Hardman

Iraq Inquiry: Key points from Sir John Chilcot’s statement

Should the UK have gone to war in Iraq? Did it have the necessary legal basis and intelligence to do so? And did it mess up once involved militarily in the country? Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry finally published its report this morning, and these are the key conclusions that he reached in his statement: While military action against Saddam Hussein ‘might have been necessary at some point’, in March 2003, he posed no imminent threat, the strategy of containment could have been continued for ‘some time’, and the majority of the Security Council supported continuing UN inspections and monitoring’. ‘Military action at that time was not a last resort,’

Isabel Hardman

How the UK messed up Iraq: what the Chilcot Inquiry says about post-conflict planning

The Iraq Inquiry dismisses claims that the aftermath of the invasion could not have been foreseen. It describes the planning and preparations for the country after the fall of Saddam Hussein were ‘wholly inadequate’. In his statement, Sir John said that ‘despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated’. The report details both an awareness of the inadequacy of plans and a marked lack of effort from Whitehall. It says: ‘The scale of the UK effort in post-conflict Iraq never matched the scale of the challenge. Whitehall departments an their ministers failed to put collective weight behind the task.’ The government ‘failed to take account of the magnitude

Fraser Nelson

As Basra slid towards hell, Blair looked the other way

There has always been a faction of the Labour party that wanted Tony Blair in the dock for the Iraq war — no matter how pointless it would be. This was the sole purpose of the Chilcot inquiry. Gordon Brown agreed to it simply to assuage his backbenchers, and the whole exercise was intended to be more a mischievous distraction than an inquisition. But almost by accident, the inquiry has exposed the real scandal of Iraq: the appalling mismanagement of the war and the defeat of the British army, which left the people of Basra to the death squads. The WMD have become weapons of mass distraction. Mr Blair spent

Monday

Tom Goodenough

At last! The Chilcot Report into the Iraq war will be published

At last. We now know that the long-awaited Chilcot Inquiry report into the Iraq war will be published on July 6th. Writing to the Prime Minister, Sir John Chilcot said today: ‘National security checking of the Inquiry’s report has now been completed, without the need for any redactions to appear in the text. I am grateful for the speed with which it was accomplished.’ Given how long the report has taken, it’s probably the first time we’ve heard the word ‘speed’ associated with the Chilcot Inquiry. The wait for its findings has been tremendous: more than seven years or some 2,579 days since Gordon Brown set it up in June

Wednesday

Luke de Pulford

A genocide is underway in Iraq and Syria. Why won’t the government recognise this?

Later today the House of Commons will vote upon a motion expressing belief that a genocide is underway against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria. The motion, proposed by Fiona Bruce MP, is supported by a large number of MPs from all parties. The Government is expected to oppose, as they did when a similar measure was debated in the Lords. At the time of writing, party enforcers are rumoured to be whipping MPs on the payroll to abstain from the vote. This is an old parliamentary tactic intended to undermine the legitimacy and clout of the measure under consideration by reducing the number of

Friday

Charles Moore

The EU has become a victim of Obama’s Middle East policy

A Middle Eastern friend put to me the other day a point so big that I felt silly for not having thought of it. Why are so many people fleeing from Syria and Iraq, and other parts of the region, beyond the huge, obvious reason that they fear for their lives? Because they believe that the Shias have gained the whip hand over the Sunnis. George Bush’s mishandling of Iraq after he conquered it opened the way for Iranian power. Barack Obama’s abandonment of Saudi Arabia, his refusal to restore order in Syria and his nuclear deal with Iran have erected this mistake into a policy. So one of this

Friday

Steerpike

Alastair Campbell is confronted by his namesake: ‘have you got any idea what my life has been like?’

Although Alastair Campbell no longer works in politics, he remains a divisive figure in Westminster thanks to the reputation he earned as Tony Blair’s spin doctor. During this time, Campbell is said to have been instrumental in using spin to win parliamentary approval for Blair’s call to invade Iraq. Still, Campbell appears to think that it’s about time people got over any ill-feelings towards him as a result of this. Speaking at Portland’s Rising Stars party, Campbell gave a speech to the spin doctors of tomorrow. In this, he complained that even though he left Downing Street 12 years ago, he still gets ‘load of sh-t’: ‘I always feel when I’m in

Thursday

Paul Wood

The trouble with the Kurds

On Nawroz, the Persian New Year, last March, Isis sent a holiday greeting to the Kurds. They published several videos of Peshmerga fighters, now prisoners, kneeling, handcuffed and wearing the usual orange jumpsuits. In one video, a prisoner is shot in the back of the head; the rest have their heads sawn off with a knife. In a deliberate twist, no doubt relished by the leadership of the so-called Islamic State, the killers were themselves Kurds. ‘You all know the punishment for anyone who fights the Islamic State,’ says one. ‘It is death.’ The executioners did not wear masks and were quickly identified by Kurdish intelligence. Retribution followed. In an

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer

Anyone who joins Isis should be tried for treason

Fifteen months ago Philip Hammond talked about treason. In an exchange with Conservative backbencher Philip Hollobone in the House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary declared: ‘We have seen people declaring that they have sworn personal allegiance to the so-called Islamic State. That does raise questions about their loyalty and allegiance to this country and about whether, as my honourable friend rightly says, the offence of treason could have been committed.’ Mr Hammond promised to refer the matter to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, but the silence since has been deafening. Meanwhile the number of Britons travelling to Syria to join Isis continues to rise. 800 at the last count, according to a statement

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 21 January 2016

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that Muslim women must learn English, and that those who had entered on spousal visas would be told halfway through their five-year spousal settlement: ‘You can’t guarantee you can stay if you are not improving your language.’ He said that learning English had ‘a connection with combating extremism’. A heterosexual couple went to the High Court to claim the right to enter into a civil partnership. MI5, the security service, was rated as Britain’s most gay-friendly employer, following a survey by the organisation Stonewall. Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, said: ‘Now is not the time to raise interest rates.’