All Entries Tagged With: "crimes against humanity"

America’s much abused moral authority

As former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo, I know that until the US rights the record on torture, its human rights calls ring hollow

Once upon a time, Americans across the political spectrum were united behind efforts to prevent torture and punish torturers. The United States signed the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) in 1988 when Republican Ronald Reagan was president. A Democrat-controlled Congress ratified it in 1994. The CAT says, “No exceptional circumstance whatsoever … may be invoked as justification of torture,” a principle the US endorsed without reservation. The CAT requires nations to enact domestic laws criminalising torture, and in 1994, a torture statute was added to the US criminal code.

A Republican member of Congress sponsored the War Crimes Act in 1996, which made “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions – like torture – federal crimes. He wanted Americans abused by former adversaries to get the justice they deserved but had been denied. The measure passed a Republican-controlled Congress by unanimous consent and President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, signed it into law.

Americans were solidly against torture when they believed they were beneficiaries of anti-torture laws. But then, the 11 September 2001 attacks occurred – and created an exceptional circumstance used by some as justification to draw new lines between right and wrong.

Full Story Here: America’s much abused moral authority | Morris Davis | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Doctors group says Bush Administration conducted medical experiments on detainees

A new report by the watchdog group Physicians for Human Rights alleges Monday that the Bush Administration experimented on terrorism suspects during their enhanced interrogation program put in force starting in 2002.

The group's review, which examined Bush-era documentation, asserts that the administration violated laws set up in the wake of the Holocaust to prevent medical testing on prisoners of war. (Nazi doctors sometimes experimented on their prisoners.)

The report states that, “Medical personnel were required to monitor all waterboarding practices and collect detailed medical information that was used to design, develop and deploy subsequent waterboarding procedures.” Notes the Associated Press:

Full Story: Doctors group says Bush Administration conducted medical experiments on detainees | Raw Story.

Kissinger Rescinded Warning Against Condor Assassinations

Five days before the assassination in downtown Washington of former Chilean Defence Minister Orlando Letelier, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger rescinded instructions to U.S. ambassadors in Latin America’s Southern Cone to warn the region’s military regimes against carrying out “a series of international murders”, according to documents released by the National Security Archive (NSA) here.

Kissinger “has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter”, reads a declassified Sep. 16, 1976 cable sent by Kissinger’s office from Zambia, where he was travelling at the time, to his assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, Harry Shlaudeman.

The “matter” in question concerned instructions sent under Kissinger’s name to U.S. ambassadors to Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay Aug. 23, 1976, to make a formal demarche to the leaders of their host governments regarding Washington’s “deep concern” about reports it had received of “plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad”.

Full Story: U.S.: Kissinger Rescinded Warning Against Condor Assassinations.

Whistleblowers on US ‘massacre’ fear CIA stalkers

Activists behind a website dedicated to revealing secret documents have complained of harassment by police and intelligence services as they prepare to release a video showing an American attack in which 97 civilians were killed in Afghanistan.

Julian Assange, one of the founders of Wikileaks, has claimed that a restaurant where the group met in Reykjavic, the capital of Iceland, came under surveillance in March and one of the group’s volunteers was detained for 21 hours by police.

Assange, an Australian, says he was followed on a flight from Reykjavik to Copenhagen by two American agents. The group has riled governments by publishing documents leaked by whistleblowers.

Full Story: Whistleblowers on US ‘massacre’ fear CIA stalkers – Times Online.

The Cover-Ups That Exploded

The Pentagon is reeling after two lethal episodes uncovered by diligent journalism show trigger-happy U.S. Army helicopter pilots and U.S. Special Forces slaughtering civilians, then seeking to cover up their crimes.

The World Wide Web was transfixed Monday when Wikileaks put up on YouTube a 38-minute video, along with a 17-minute edited version, taken from a U.S. Army Apache helicopter, one of two firing on a group of Iraqis in Baghdad at a street corner in July 2007. Twelve civilians died, including a Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and a Reuters driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.

At a press conference in Washington, D.C., Wikileaks said it had got the footage from whistle-blowers in the military and had been able to break the encryption code. The Pentagon has confirmed the video is genuine.

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Alexander Cockburn | The Cover-Ups That Exploded.

New Evidence Implicates Henry Kissinger In Assassination Case

As secretary of state, Henry Kissinger canceled a U.S. warning against carrying out international political assassinations that was to have gone to Chile and two neighboring nations just days before a former ambassador was killed by Chilean agents on Washington’s Embassy Row in 1976, a newly released State Department cable shows.

Whether Kissinger played a role in blocking the delivery of the warning against assassination to the governments of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay has long been a topic of controversy.

Discovered in recent weeks by the National Security Archive, a non-profit research organization, the Sept. 16, 1976 cable is among tens of thousands of declassified State Department documents recently made available to the public.

Full Story: New Evidence Implicates Henry Kissinger In Assassination Case.

George W. Bush ‘knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent’

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

Full Story: George W. Bush ‘knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent’ – Times Online.

U.S. investigators winding down inquiry of destroyed CIA tapes

An investigation into the destruction of CIA videotapes that depicted harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects appears to be nearing a close, ending a long inquiry in which authorities encountered a series of roadblocks in building a case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John H. Durham, who is leading the investigation, recently bestowed immunity from prosecution on a CIA lawyer who reviewed the tapes years before they were destroyed to determine whether they diverged from written records about the interrogations, two sources familiar with the case said. That could signal that the case is reaching its final stages. Durham has been spotted at Justice Department headquarters in Washington over the past few weeks, in another signal that his work is intensifying.

The agency lawyer, John McPherson, could appear before a grand jury later this month or in April, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation continues. CIA lawyers have been essential to understanding the episode because they offered advice to agency personnel about handling the tapes, and whether they should have been included when agency records were turned over in other court cases. McPherson is not thought to be under criminal jeopardy but had previously hesitated to testify, the sources said.

Full Story: U.S. investigators winding down inquiry of destroyed CIA tapes – washingtonpost.com.

Senate Torture Probe Uncovers Missing Emails

The Justice Department investigation into whether the authors of the George W. Bush-era “torture memos” were guilty of professional misconduct did not have full access to the emails used by those lawyers and by other key figures in the investigation, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former counsel to the Vice President David Addington.

The missing emails came to light during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday. Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, described the vanishing emails as “suspicious”.

He urged the sole witness before the committee, Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler, to investigate further to determine who deleted the emails and whether they could be recovered.

The email issue recalled the 2006 investigation into the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys during the administration of President George W. Bush, and whether the White House pressured the Justice Department to cover up the details of the firings.

Full Story: U.S.: Senate Torture Probe Uncovers Missing Emails – IPS ipsnews.net.

Report: Bush Lawyer (Yoo) Said President Could Order Civilians to Be ‘Massacred’ crimes

Michael Isikoff -

The chief author of the Bush administration’s “torture memo” told Justice Department investigators that the president’s war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be “massacred,” according to a report released Friday night by the Office of Professional Responsibility.

The views of former Justice lawyer John Yoo were deemed to be so extreme and out of step with legal precedents that they prompted the Justice Department’s internal watchdog office to conclude last year that he committed “intentional professional misconduct” when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects.

The report by OPR concludes that Yoo, now a Berkeley law professor, and his boss at the time, Jay Bybee, now a federal judge, should be referred to their state bar associations for possible disciplinary proceedings. But, as first reported by NEWSWEEK, another senior department lawyer, David Margolis, reviewed the report and last month overruled its findings on the grounds that there was no clear and “unambiguous” standard by which OPR was judging the lawyers. Instead, Margolis, who was the final decision-maker in the inquiry, found that they were guilty of only “poor judgment.”

Full Story Report: Bush Lawyer Said President Could Order Civilians to Be ‘Massacred’ – Declassified Blog – Newsweek.com.

Law Suit against 4 US Presidents & 4 UK Prime Ministers for War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity & Genocide in Iraq

Law Suit in Spanish Court directed against George H. W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Anthony Blair and Gordon Brown

MADRID/CAIRO: Public inquiries on the decision to wage war on Iraq that are silent about the crimes committed, the victims involved, and provide for no sanction, whatever their outcome, are not enough. Illegal acts should entail consequences: the dead and the harmed deserve justice.

On 6 October 2009, working with and on behalf of Iraqi plaintiffs, we filed a case before Spanish law against four US presidents and four UK prime ministers for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Iraq. The case presented spanned 19 years, including not only the wholesale destruction of Iraq witnessed from 2003, but also the sanctions period during which 1.5 million excess Iraqi deaths were recorded.

We brought the case to Spain because its laws of universal jurisdiction are based on principles enshrined in its constitution. All humanity knows the crimes committed in Iraq by those we accused, but no jurisdiction is bringing them to justice. We presented with Iraqi victims a solid case drawing on evidence contained in over 900 documents and that refer to thousands of individual incidents from which a pattern of accumulated harm and intent can be discerned.

Full Story Law Suit against 4 US Presidents & 4 UK Prime Ministers for War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity & Genocide in Iraq.

As Blair blasts Iraq ‘conspiracy’ hunt, British officials eye Bush, aides

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair wants the public to believe that his motives in helping the United States invade Iraq were completely pure.

The reasons for an inquiry into his government’s actions, he argued during a recent interview, stem merely from an “obsession” to uncover a grand “conspiracy” to take the two nations to war.

But it’s not just Blair who should be sweating the British inquiry. UK officials are also considering interviews with Bush administration officials, The Washington Post noted Monday evening.

Full Story As Blair blasts Iraq ‘conspiracy’ hunt, British officials eye Bush, aides | Raw Story.

Why We Can’t Afford to Let Obama Give Bush’s War Criminals a Free Pass

Punishing the guilty for deeds they committed in the past is the only way to show the world that we are truly on a new path.

In a week when one-year report cards on the Obama administration were piling up and not all the grades were good, Americans searching for the real change we heard so much about on Obama’s campaign trail were hit with some news that would send his grades plummeting. Late last Friday, we learned that Obama’s Department of Justice plans to go easy on John Yoo and Jay Bybee — the two assistant attorney generals under Bush who penned the infamous torture memos. For those who have been working long and hard in the accountability movement to make sure no one — not even presidents or their top advisors — is above the law, this was a serious setback.

As part of that movement, I was appalled. Not just because I want to see those who committed crimes in office punished rather than excused. Not just because I want to see the Obama White House restore accountability to government rather than cover up crimes committed by the former administration. And not just because Yoo and Bybee memo’d-up legal opinions stating that torture techniques as egregious and illegal as waterboarding were acceptable. No, there is a deeper question in play here: Why were they really asked to render these opinions in the first place?

Full Story Why We Can’t Afford to Let Obama Give Bush’s War Criminals a Free Pass | Civil Liberties | AlterNet.

Bush and Blair did strike Iraq deal, says Welsh MP

A SENIOR Welsh MP said last night he knew “for certain” Tony Blair and George Bush struck a deal to invade Iraq at their notorious Crawford Ranch meeting in 2002 – a year before war was declared.

Elfyn Llwyd, Plaid Cymru’s parliamentary leader, said he had seen a confidential memo to that effect, although he would not divulge its exact contents.

Critics of the military action in Iraq have long suspected Mr Blair and President Bush came to an agreement at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas in April 2002, a claim Mr Blair denied in evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry last week.

Mr Llwyd said he had offered to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry himself, in private if necessary.

Full Story WalesOnline – News – Wales News – Bush and Blair did strike Iraq deal, says Welsh MP.

“America’s Secret Afghan Prisons”: Investigation Unearths New US Torture Site, Abuse Allegations in Afghanistan

Democracy NOW!

A new investigation by journalist Anand Gopal reveals harrowing details about US secret prisons in Afghanistan, under both the Bush and Obama administrations. Gopal interviewed Afghans who were detained and abused at several disclosed and undisclosed sites at US and Afghan military bases across the country. He also reveals the existence of another secret prison on Bagram Air Base that even the Red Cross does not have access to. It is dubbed the Black Jail and is reportedly run by US Special Forces.

includes rush transcript, Video, Mp3 Download

Full Story “America’s Secret Afghan Prisons”: Investigation Unearths New US Torture Site, Abuse Allegations in Afghanistan.

Justice Official Clears Bush Lawyers in Torture Memo Probe

For weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

Full Story Justice Official Clears Bush Lawyers in Torture Memo Probe – Declassified Blog – Newsweek.com.

ICC Complaint Filed Against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice, Gonzales

David Swanson

INTERNATIONAL ARREST WARRANTS REQUESTED

Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, U.S.A. has filed a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” perpetrated upon about 100 human beings. This term is really their euphemism for the enforced disappearance of persons and their consequent torture. This criminal policy and practice by the Accused constitute Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the I.C.C.

The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. Nevertheless the Accused have ordered and been responsible for the commission of I.C.C. statutory crimes within the respective territories of many I.C.C. member states, including several in Europe. Consequently, the I.C.C. has jurisdiction to prosecute the Accused for their I.C.C. statutory crimes under Rome Statute article 12(2)(a) that affords the I.C.C. jurisdiction to prosecute for I.C.C. statutory crimes committed in I.C.C. member states.

The Complaint requests (1) that the I.C.C. Prosecutor open an investigation of the Accused on his own accord under Rome Statute article 15(1); and (2) that the I.C.C. Prosecutor also formally “submit to the Pre-Trial Chamber a request for authorization of an investigation” of the Accused under Rome Statute article 15(3).

Full Story ICC Complaint Filed Against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice, Gonzales – Democratic Underground.

Shooting Handcuffed Children

David Swanson --

The occupied government of Afghanistan and the United Nations have both concluded that U.S.-led troops recently dragged eight sleeping children out of their beds, handcuffed some of them, and shot them all dead. While this apparently constitutes an everyday act of kindness, far less intriguing than the vicious singeing of his pubic hairs by Captain Underpants, it is at least a variation on the ordinary American technique of murdering men, women, and children by the dozens with unmanned drones.

Also this week in Afghanistan, eight CIA assassins (see if you can find a more appropriate name for them) were murdered by a suicide bombing that one of them apparently executed against the other seven. The Taliban in Pakistan claims credit and describes the mass-murder as revenge for the CIA’s drone killings. And we thought unmanned drones were War Perfected because none of the right people would have to risk their lives. Oops. Perhaps Detroit-bound passengers risked theirs unwittingly.

The CIA has declared its intention to seek revenge for the suicide strike. Who knows what the assassination of sleeping students was revenge for. Perhaps the next lunatic to try blowing up something in the United States will be seeking revenge for whatever Obama does to avenge the victims (television viewers?) of the Crotch Crusader. Certainly there will be numerous more acts of violence driven by longings for revenge against the drone pilots and the shooters of students.

Full Story Shooting Handcuffed Children | Corrente.

What Must Obama do about the Lie of the Century?

Len Hart –

Obama should get off his butt and insist upon war crimes trials of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condo Rice. That Iraq had WMD was a bald faced lie to justify the seizure of Middle East oil fields! Ergo –every Iraqi death following is one count in a WAR CRIMES INDICTMENT on the scale of those charged to Adolph Hitler and high mucky mucks in the murderous Third Reich.

TITLE 18 >(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

– PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441, War crimes

I say let the trials begin with George W. Bush who believed himself above the law and that the US Constitution was just a ‘goddamned piece of paper’!

The government official who wrote the first draft of the “dodgy dossier” that helped propel Britain into war in Iraq today admits, “We were wrong.”

Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: What Must Obama do about the Lie of the Century?.

Blair Iraq war admission sparks fresh outrage, Calls For War Crimes Prosecution

Tony Blair’s admission that Britain would have backed the Iraq war even if he knew it did not have weapons of mass destruction sparked outrage Sunday and calls for his prosecution for war crimes.

The former British prime minister, who backed the US-led invasion in 2003, told the BBC he would “still have thought it right to remove” Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein because of the threat he posed to the region.

Lawyers representing the deposed Iraqi leadership said they would seek to prosecute Blair following his remarks, while one newspaper commentator said it was a “game-changing admission” for the ongoing official inquiry into the war.

Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix added: “The war was sold on the WMD, and now you feel, or hear that it was only a question of deployment of arguments, as he said, it sounds a bit like a fig leaf that was held up.”

Full Story Blair Iraq war admission sparks fresh outrage – Yahoo! News.

Monsanto Squeezes Out Seed Business Competition, AP Investigation Finds

Monsanto’s patented genes in 95% of soy, 80% of corn in US

Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.’s business practices reveal how the world’s biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

With Monsanto’s patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts.

Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family’s dinner table. That’s because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto’s patented genes.

Full Story Monsanto Squeezes Out Seed Business Competition, AP Investigation Finds.

Seton Hall law school study finds potential cover-up in alleged 2006 Gitmo suicides.

In June 2006, three terror suspect detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay died in custody. Initially, military officials ruled that their deaths were the result of suicide and described them as a “good PR move to draw attention,” a “tactic to further the jihadi cause,” and “acts of war.” Harper’s Scott Horton reports that a new study prepared by Seton Hall law school faculty and students has found “serious and unresolved contradictions” within the military’s subsequent (and heavily redacted) report on the detainee deaths:

[The report] challenges the Pentagon’s claims. It notes serious and unresolved contradictions within a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) report — which was publicly released only in fragmentary form, two years after the fact — and declares the military’s internal investigation an obvious cover-up. The only question is: of what? [...]

The study also notes that there has never been any explanation of how the three bodies could have hung in the cells, undiscovered, for at least two hours, when the cells were supposed to be under constant supervision by roving guards and video cameras.

Full Story Think Progress » Seton Hall law school study finds potential cover-up in alleged 2006 Gitmo suicides..

Iraq Inquiry: Sir Christopher Meyer Confirms That Iraq War Was Illegal

No matter how it ends up being spun, Sir Christopher Meyer’s testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry today demonstrated, without a shadow of a doubt, how “regime change” in Iraq was agreed between George W. Bush and Tony Blair in April 2002, and how the rush to war by the US meant that furious attempts to justify the plan were doomed to fail, “because there was no smoking gun.”

Meyer, who was Britain’s ambassador to the US between 1997 and 2003, was speaking about British and American policy towards Iraq between the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of March 2003. He explained how, before 9/11, the general feeling in the Bush administration was that Iraq was “running out of steam,” and that it was a low priority, but that, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Iraq rose to the top of the US agenda.

As Meyer explained, “On 9/11 itself in the course of the day I had a telephone conversation with (then national security adviser) Condoleezza Rice and I said, ‘Who do you think did it?’ She said, ‘There’s no doubt it was an al-Qaeda operation.’ At the end of the conversation she said, ‘We’re just looking at the possibility that there could be any link to Saddam Hussein.’ That little reference to him, by the following weekend, turned into a big debate between Bush and his advisers.”

Meyer also focused on the neo-cons within the Bush administration who relied on faulty intelligence to bolster their claims that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, stating that US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz “was quite convinced that there was a strong connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. There was a constant reference to the fact that Mohammed Atta (one of the 9/11 hijackers) had met Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague. That wasn’t true, but you couldn’t dig it out of the bloodstream of certain members of the US administration. There was another idea that there was an al-Qaeda camp on the Iraqi border where Saddam would allow them to do things. That wasn’t true either.”

Full Story Iraq Inquiry: Sir Christopher Meyer Confirms That Iraq War Was Illegal | Andy Worthington.

Iraq inquiry: deal might have been ‘signed in blood’ by Blair and Bush in 2002 – Telegraph

Tony Blair and George Bush might have “signed in blood” their agreement to topple Saddam Hussein a year before the Iraq war, according to Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s former ambassador to Washington.

Sir Christopher Meyer told the Iraq Inquiry that the two men spent an afternoon meeting in private at the former president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, which appeared to lead to a shift in the then Prime Minister’s stance on Iraq.

Sir Christopher said: “I took no part in any of the discussions and there was a large chunk of that time when no adviser was there.

The two men were alone in the ranch so I’m not entirely clear to this day what degree of convergence (on Iraq policy) was signed in blood, if you like, at the Crawford ranch.

Full Story Iraq inquiry: deal might have been ‘signed in blood’ by Blair and Bush in 2002 – Telegraph.