Victory For Families Of Soldiers Sent To Iraq

The families of British soldiers killed in Iraq have won a dramatic legal breakthrough in their attempt to force a full public inquiry into why Britain entered the conflict.

The Court of Appeal has ruled they were entitled to apply for judicial review of the Government's refusal to hold an independent inquiry. The applicants are relatives of four servicemen who died in military action between 2003 and 2005. They say they want the Government "to be held accountable" for a war which "breached international law and was based on a series of lies".

Lawyers for the Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary and the Attorney General had argued it would be an "unwarranted shift of power" for the courts to make pronouncements on the Government's right to go to war.

The family's legal battle looked doomed last December when their application for a judicial review was blocked by Mr Justice Collins in the High Court on the basis that their case was "unarguable". Now the appeal judges have overturned that decision and said it was arguable.

But, instead of following the usual procedure of sending the case back to the High Court for further hearing, the judges said the appeal court would hear the full application, on November 6.
Phil Shiner, the families' solicitor, said later: "This is a stunning victory. "In particular, the Government must finally explain how the 13-page equivocal advice from the Attorney General of March 7 2003 was changed within 10 days to a one-page completely unequivocal advice that an invasion would be legal."

The action was brought by Peter Brierley, the father of Shaun Brierley; Beverley Clarke, the mother of David Clarke; Rose Gentle, the mother of Gordon Gentle, and Susan Smith, the mother of Phillip Hewett.
Source: Sky News

This is excellent news for everyone in the UK. We went to war in Iraq supporting an American agenda. We went to war without any proper debate and the families of our soldiers and Iraqi citizens have suffered heavily.

Saddam Hussein is no angel, but we went to war on the grounds of the WMD. The CIA confirmed in early 2005 that the US had stopped searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Where had they gone? Maybe it never existed in the real world? The US helped create a monster in Iraq; they supplied him with weapons to fight Iran and assisted him with developing chemical weapons (sounds familiar?).

The US promised to reconstruct Iraq with billions in aid, the money they promised never materialised, and the little money they gave have since dried up. Iraq is on the brinks of a “civil war”; our boys are still in this region, thanks to people like MrRumsfeld - we are continuing to pay the price.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.

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source of video and picture: http://www.gwu.edu