Views
Inquiry only way to unravel truth of 'illegal' war - for The Inverness Courier
LAST Thursday was the 5th anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. Five years after Tony Blair and Gordon Brown joined forces with George Bush’s illegal and unnecessary war, British and American troops are still in Iraq with no clear timetable for withdrawal.
The statistics show the huge waste of life and money that this war has caused. A total of 175 British soldiers have lost their lives. Hundreds more have been injured.
Our troops are doing a fantastic, professional job in the most difficult of circumstances and we should all be proud of them. But that cannot obscure the fact that they should never have been sent there in the first place.
Estimates vary, but up to 600,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced into neighbouring countries.
The financial cost of the war in Iraq has also been huge: around £7billion of British taxpayers’ money has been used to support this disastrous venture. That is money that could have been used for other purposes.
And yet, despite this huge budget, the government has still contrived to send our service personnel to war with inadequate equipment and support. Stories about soldiers having to take turns to wear body armour, or buying superior kit from their American counterparts, show a government failing to honour its obligations to our armed forces in full.
Yet one question still remains: why did we do it?
Labour and Conservative MPs united to vote for the war in the House of Commons, opposed by the Liberal Democrats in Charles Kennedy’s finest hour as party leader. We now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction and it seems clear that Tony Blair had agreed to support George Bush long before Parliament was asked.
We desperately need a full, independent, open public inquiry to investigate the war, how the decision was made, and to ensure that lessons are learned.
Only then will the people who took the decision be forced to take full responsibility. That may be why Gordon Brown is delaying allowing an inquiry to go forward. Of course, we cannot turn the clock back. But we can – and we must – ensure the same mistakes cannot happen again.
REAL IMPACT OF GLOBAL ECONOMY
The current global economic problems may fill our news bulletins with reports from New York or London, but the real impact is felt closer to home.
Rising energy bills, rising food prices and increases in debt and housing costs are putting household budgets under real pressure.
To deep disappointment, Alastair Darling’s first budget totally failed to recognise or act on the impact of economic problems on ordinary families.
Instead, the government went ahead with an income tax rise for 5million people with incomes of £18,500 or less, doubling the 10p lower rate of tax.
The other tax rises will all hit people on low incomes harder.
It was striking that Darling seemed more interested in maintaining tax loopholes for the super rich than in relieving the pressure on low and middle income households.
Locally, the tax rise on whisky will have an effect on a very important industry in the Highlands.
Fuel duty will rise again, but the government still fails to recognise the disproportionate impact those costs have in remote and rural areas.
I will be pushing again for a reduced rate of duty for such areas when the Finance Bill is debated.
In the long term, we need to move to a system of road user pricing instead of fuel duty, so that costs can vary according to the amount of congestion and the availability of public transport alternatives.
Until then, people in the Highlands will continue to pay a higher price because of the high price of fuel, long distances, and lack of adequate public transport.
In America, the government and the Federal Reserve have been quick to act to protect their economy against the worst effects of the credit crunch.
The government and the Bank of England have been dithering, instead of taking radical action. Ministers have been warned over the last five years that they should be doing more to tackle irresponsible lending.
The fact that they did not is a major cause of today’s problems and it is time for ministers to take their share of responsibility to put matters right.
Posted on: 25/03/2008
