Sincere apologies to Allan Eaglesham

[Peter Presland]

At the level of actual UK executive responsibility for major events, Craig Murray's latest post is worth reading. It has some lessons for what happened on the thread in question.

Briefly, as Ambassador to Uzbekistan in the run up to the Iraq war he had been trying in vain to get the UK government to recognise and take action on concrete evidence of The Karimov regime systematically using torture to provide the UK/US with the 'evidence' they wanted to hear. He was devastated when he did not receive the support he expected from his friend Sir Michael Wood who was the senior FCO legal advisor on the illegality of what was going on.

In light of Woods evidence to the Chilcott Inquiry, it is clear why: viz he was totally preoccupied and under sustained attack for trying to persuade Blair et al that their proposed attack on Iraq would be illegal in the absence of a further UN resolution.

Headed 'God I didn't know':

I hope that those who saw Sir Michael Wood's evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry today, and who have also read Murder in Samarkand, feel that I painted an accurate pen-portrait of my once friend.
I felt that Michael had stabbed me in the back by refusing to back me in saying unequivocally that intelligence from torture was illegal.
I did not know that, exactly at that time, he was engaged in a heroic struggle to try to stop the war in Iraq on legal grounds, and that he had drawn the full fury of Blair and Straw. He could not afford to open a second front on extraordinary rendition.
I have been struggling ever since to come to terms with what I saw as his going along with torture. I misjudged him.
But the way that the evil people like Blair and Straw manage to split decent people like Michael and me, is the lesson to avoid in future. Why is it that people like Michael, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Bill Patey and I never managed to get together? (Bill Patey was the head of the FCO geographical department which included Iraq, and he, like very many others in the system, never believed the "Evidence" on Iraqi WMD.)
I am feeling so sad because different ways of trying to resist took us down different paths, and perhaps I am sad because I was harsher on some than they deserved.
But I am most sad because hundreds of thousands died so Blair and Straw could earn their lucrative standing in the USA. I feel nothing but despair.

IOW their are few enough striving to hold these evil b*****s to account as it is without those who are constantly falling out with each other.