Glen Rangwala is a University Lecturer and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University in England. Trained in political theory and international law, he completed a doctorate on political and legal rhetoric in the Arab Middle East. His academic work focuses on Palestinian politics from 1967 to 1977, and the rhetorical relations between the West Bank resident population and the leadership of the Palestinian resistance movement in exile. He has co-written a monograph, Iraq in Fragments (Cornell University Press, 2006), on the fragmentation of the Iraqi polity following the invasion of 2003. He has also published on international humanitarian law, comparative human rights law, Iraq and nuclear weapons. He is a member of the Labour Party and an editor of Labour Briefing.
He is involved with Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq (dissolved and replaced by Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq in October 2003) and Arab Media Watch. In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war Rangwala wrote articles in newspapers and appeared on British TV, especially in the context of the "dodgy dossier" prepared by Tony Blair's government. Rangwala had discovered that this dossier was mostly plagiarised from a postgraduate student's thesis and articles in Jane's Intelligence Review (with minor falsifications) and traced back the people who had edited the dossier . He submitted written evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs when it investigated the British government's information policy leading to the Iraq war . He has since published a number of articles on the Iraq war, especially in The Independent .
Together with Dan Plesch, he contributed an article to A Case to Answer, a report commissioned by MP Adam Price on which impeachment procedures against Tony Blair are based. The report assembles evidence that Blair misled the British Parliament and people over reasons for the 2003 war on Iraq mainly from the PM's own statements and evidence disclosed by the Hutton Inquiry and the Butler Report.
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Sir Thomas Dalyell, 11th Baronet,, , known as Tam Dalyell, was a Scottish Labour Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons from 1962 to 2005. He represented West Lothian from 1962 to 1983, then Linlithgow from 1983 to 2005. He formulated what came to be known as the "West Lothian question", on whether non-English MPs should be able to vote upon English-only matters after political devolution. He was also known for his anti-war, anti-imperialist views, opposing the Falklands War, the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War.
Geoffrey William Hoon is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire from 1992 to 2010. He is a former Defence Secretary, Transport Secretary, Leader of the House of Commons and Government Chief Whip.
Robert Finlayson "Robin" Cook was a British Labour politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 until his death in 2005 and served in the Cabinet as Foreign Secretary from 1997 until 2001 when he was replaced by Jack Straw. He then served as Leader of the House of Commons from 2001 until 2003.
Iraq – Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation was a 2003 briefing document for the British prime minister Tony Blair's Labour Party government. It was issued to journalists on 3 February 2003 by Alastair Campbell, Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy, and concerned Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Along with the earlier September Dossier, these documents were ultimately used by the British government to justify its involvement in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, also known as the September Dossier, was a document published by the British government on 24 September 2002. Parliament was recalled on the same day to discuss the contents of the document. The paper was part of an ongoing investigation by the government into weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, which ultimately led to the invasion of Iraq six months later. It contained a number of allegations according to which Iraq also possessed WMD, including chemical weapons and biological weapons. The dossier even alleged that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons programme. Without exception, all of the allegations included within the September Dossier have been since proven to be false, as shown by the Iraq Survey Group.
Peter Henry Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith is a British barrister and a former Attorney General for England and Wales and for Northern Ireland. On 22 June 2007, Goldsmith announced his resignation which took effect on 27 June 2007, the same day that Prime Minister Tony Blair, stepped down. Goldsmith was the longest serving Labour Attorney General. He is currently a Partner and head of European litigation practice at US law firm Debevoise & Plimpton and Vice Chairperson of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre.
Sir Richard Billing Dearlove is a retired British intelligence officer who was head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), a role known informally as "C", from 1999 until 6 May 2004. He was head of MI6 during the invasion of Iraq. He was criticised by the Iraq Inquiry for providing unverified intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
In November 2004, a cross-party group of British members of parliament tabled a motion in the House of Commons to impeach the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time, Tony Blair for "high crimes and misdemeanours". The motion was never debated.
Francis Anthony Boyle is a human rights lawyer and professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He has served as counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina and has supported the rights of Palestinians and indigenous peoples.
The Downing Street memo, sometimes described by critics of the Iraq War as the smoking gun memo, is the note of a 23 July 2002 secret meeting of senior British government, defence and intelligence figures discussing the build-up to the war, which included direct reference to classified United States policy of the time. The name refers to 10 Downing Street, the residence of the British prime minister.
On 18 September 2004 the British Daily Telegraph ran two articles titled "Secret papers show Blair was warned of Iraq chaos" and 'Failure is not an option, but it doesn't mean they will avoid it' by reporter Michael Smith, revealing the contents of six leaked British government documents – labelled "secret" or "confidential" – concerning the lead-up to the war in Iraq.
The sanctions against Iraq were a comprehensive financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Iraq. They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, stayed largely in force until May 22, 2003, and persisted in part, including reparations to Kuwait. The original stated purposes of the sanctions were to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, to pay reparations, and to disclose and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In December 2021, Iraq's central bank announced that it had paid off its entire debt of $52 billion in war reparations to Kuwait.
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He served as Leader of the Opposition from 1994 to 1997, and had various shadow cabinet posts from 1987 to 1994. Blair was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007. He is the second longest serving prime minister in modern history after Margaret Thatcher, and is the longest serving Labour politician to have held the office.
The rationale for the Iraq War, both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent hostilities, was controversial. The George W. Bush administration began actively pressing for military intervention in Iraq in late 2001. The primary rationalization for the Iraq War was articulated by a joint resolution of the United States Congress known as the Iraq Resolution. The US claimed the intent was to "disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people".
British Parliamentary approval for the invasion of Iraq was given by the elected members of the House of Commons to Tony Blair's government on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in a series of two votes, on 18 March 2003.
Tony Blair's term as the prime minister of the United Kingdom began on 2 May 1997 when he accepted an invitation of Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, succeeding John Major of the Conservative Party, and ended on 27 June 2007 upon his resignation. While serving as prime minister, Blair also served as the first lord of the treasury, minister for the civil service and leader of the Labour Party. He and Gordon Brown both extensively used the New Labour branding while in office, which was presented as the brand of a newly reformed party that had altered Clause IV and endorsed market economics. Blair is the second longest serving prime minister in modern history after Margaret Thatcher, and is the longest serving Labour politician to have held the office.
The Iraq Inquiry was a British public inquiry into the nation's role in the Iraq War. The inquiry was announced in 2009 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and published in 2016 with a public statement by Chilcot.
The Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, widely known as the Butler Review after its chairman Robin Butler, Baron Butler of Brockwell, was announced on 3 February 2004 by the British Government and published on 14 July 2004. It examined the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction which played a key part in the Government's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. A similar Iraq Intelligence Commission was set up in the United States. Despite the apparent certainty of both governments prior to the war that Iraq possessed such weapons, no such illegal weapons or programs were found by the Iraq Survey Group.
Avraham "Avi" Shlaim is an Israeli-British historian, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and fellow of the British Academy. He is one of Israel's New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel.
