What a surprise - the British Parliament votes against a motion to hold an inquiry into the Iraq War.
And why?
Margaret Beckett (Foreign Secretary) 'warned that agreeing to ... inquiry now would send the wrong signal "at the wrong time" to Iraq. She urged MPs to remember that "our words... will be heard a very long way away. They can be heard by our troops who are already in great danger in Iraq".
Our troops are in great danger because of the actions of the Blair Government...that is why we need an inquiry.
I want to ask our Prime Minister whether he would have taken the decision to go to 'war' in Iraq if his own sons and daughters were in the armed forces and would have been sent out there? Our young men and women are targets in Iraq because we are fighting an American war.
The longer we delay holding an inquiry into the lessons to be learn't from this the longer we continue to make the mistakes - mistakes which are costing the lives of our brave soldiers who shouldn't have been put in this position in the first place.
I strongly believe in defen ding this country, with force if need be. But we didn't go into Iraq for defensive reasons - Iraq was no threat to us, even if Saddam possessed WMD, he was not a threat to our country. If we wanted to be rid of Saddam, we should have done it through secret services and undermining his position by supporting opposition groups in Iraq, after all, that is how Osama Bin Laden was supported by the West in Afganistan against the Russians 25 years ago!
I despair that whilst we claim to be promoting democracy in other parts of the world, our own democratic processes and institutions fail the majority of the British people. A true democratic process would have voted for an inquiry yesterday - but due to party political loyalties, the stifling of debate under the guise of 'sending the wrong message to our troops' and ministers afraid to be held accountable for their decisions, we still have unanswered questions on the actions of our Government who are responsible (together with the USA) for the mess in Iraq now.
