But too often, trials of former tyrants degenerate into scenes like the hanging of Saddam Hussein in December 2006. The scene, captured on illegally shot cell phone video, is best described as a revenge-driven lynching.

It’s chaotic and grotesque, with a crowd shouting ‘Muqtada! Muqtada!” – because Hussein is being strung up by his blood enemies, the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr.

Michael Scharf of the Case Western Reserve University School of Law was a member of the international team of experts that provided special training and assistance in the Saddam Hussein trial. That scene was not what Scharf envisioned when he set out to help the tribunal, and it tops a distinct list of lessons learned, advice he’d pass on to those trying Hosni Mubarak.

“Avoid the death penalty,” he said. “That way you can get international assistance and support for the trial. I wouldn’t televise this trial; because once you televise it you’re opening it up to all sorts of problems. I would make sure the defense has all the rights you need for a trial to be fair and there cannot be seen to be any interference from the government – because in the end, that was the downfall of the Saddam Hussein trial.”

So far, the Mubarak trial is two for two on that list of “don’ts”: The death penalty is on the table, and it’s already being televised.

“The problem is, once you televise you open a Pandora’s Box,” said Scharf. “The defendant has a place to make all sorts of arguments, not necessarily legal ones.”

The irony is the public trial can give tyrants a bully pulpit. Saddam Hussein used his perch as his own lawyer to give speeches when he was supposed to be cross-examining witnesses.

In a notorious speech from March of 2006, he exhorts the country to unite, purify their hearts and fight the foreign occupiers. The speech was broadcast across the whole country, and many believe it helped fuel the insurgency.

“What we saw during that trial was the civil war simmer, and explode,” Scharf said.

But even with all the problems of the Saddam trial, Scharf believes trying former dictators is essential for a country emerging from tyranny.

“If a trial can be a vehicle … where the victims feel like they have a cathartic moment, if they feel the moment is credible, it can be something that moves the country forward.”

John Laughland, the director of studies at the institute for Democracy and Cooperation in Paris, suggests such claims are “complete rubbish.” His latest book is a history of political trials from Charles I to Saddam Hussein.

“This whole tendency is the polar opposite of the much more traditional notion, that it is the amnesties, the forgetting, that heal societies.”

Laughland believes these sorts of trials don’t provide justice and only appeal to the worst in people. “It’s not by digging up grievances from the past that societies will achieve peace,” he said.

Scharf concedes that most of these trials have been divisive. But digging up crimes from the past doesn’t always lead to national conflict.

In 1980, South Korea’s defacto leader, Gen. Chun Doo-hwan brutally suppressed an uprising in Gwangju province. Estimates of civilian casualties ranged from the hundreds to the thousands.

Chun voluntarily handed over power to a democratically elected government in 1988. And it wasn’t long before the country he led turned against him.

“There was a government sanctioned official investigation starting in the mid-1990s,” said Sung-yoon Lee, an expert on the history of the Korean peninsula at Tufts University. “There was a trial a few years later in 1996. Chun Doo-hwan was found guilty of various crimes – insurrection, conspiracy, killing of civilians – and he was actually sentenced to death.”

In a bizarrely poetic twist, Chun was pardoned at the behest of incoming president Kim Dae-Jung – who had himself escaped a death sentence under Gen. Chun in the 1980s for his role in stirring up unrest in Gwangju.

It’s not hard to find Koreans who still hate Chun, especially among survivors of the Gwangju massacre. But Lee said, “today South Koreans do not revile him – in fact I forsee a more revisionist appraisal coming for Chun Doo-Hwan in coming decades for his role in growing the economy. If you eliminate his bribery and his role in the Gwangju massacre – two major offenses, of course – then his presidency really comes across as a success.”

Chun Doo-Hwan still has a loyal following, no doubt because of that success – during his tenure, the standard of living for South Koreans rose dramatically.

If Hosni Mubarak had done more to raise the quality of life for the average Egyptian, today’s proceedings in Cairo might not be happening at all.

Arun Rath is a reporter for PBS FRONTLINE

From the outset, though, the five-member panel was hamstrung. Cabinet officials refused to release details of key correspondence and phone calls between Blair and then President George W. Bush in the run-up to the invasion.

The panel had to ask Blair for his version. The former prime minister testified that he promised President Bush that he could count on Britain. “We’re going to be with you in tackling this, but here are the difficulties,” Blair said he told Bush. “I was having to persuade him to take a view radically different from any of the people in his administration. So what I was saying to him was, I am going to be with you in handling it this way, I’m not going to push you down this path and then back out when it gets too hot politically, because it is going to get hot politically, for me — very, very much so.”

The problem was the reluctance of other nations to go to war without explicit authorization from the United Nations Security Council. President Bush apparently saw no need for the new resolution that other leaders were demanding.

Blair was assuring Bush of his solidarity, even though he didn’t have the solid backing of his own cabinet ministers, a fact he kept hidden in the months before the invasion. “If I had through that period in January and February, gone out and said anything that indicated there was a breach in the British position, that there was a chink of light that had opened up, it would have been a political catastrophe for us,” Blair testified.

Blair defended his actions for four hours today, then he took a moment to try to make amends for an oversight during his last appearance before the Iraq inquiry.

A year ago, he said he had no regrets. Today, with the relatives of fallen soldiers sitting right behind him, Blair tried again. “I want to make it clear that, of course, I regret deeply and profoundly the loss of life,” he said, his voice catching with emotion, “whether from our own armed forces, those of other nations, the civilians who helped people in Iraq or the Iraqis themselves.”

But Blair was interrupted by members of the audience who shouted, “Too late! Too late!” Two women turned their backs on Blair, and then walked out.

Outside the hearing, Sarah Chapman, who lost her brother, said Blair’s statement sounded insincere. “It wasn’t an act of contrition, it wasn’t heartfelt,” she said. “He didn’t turn to look at us.”

The invasion of Iraq and all the controversy it caused will always be a troublesome part of Tony Blair’s legacy. That may be why he took pains today try to refocus the debate on Iran, suggesting it was time for world leaders to consider another confrontation against another regime.

• FAQ British Iraq war inquiry
• Blair denies covert deal with Bush on Iraq
• Britain’s inquiry into the Iraq war

(photo: Tim McLaughlin)

• The New Yorker: The toppling

From the archives: In September 2007 Lisa Mullins talked with former Marine Tim McLaughlin whose American flag was draped over Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad the day the Iraqi capital fell to American troops.

BBC documentary 'Secret Iraq'

A new BBC documentary tells the story of Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Marco Werman speaks with producer, Sam Collyns, about the part of the program focusing on Iraq’s “Awakening” movement. That’s when Sunni Arabs turned against their former al-Qaeda allies and sided with the US-led Coalition. Download MP3

• Video on the BBC documentary

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Sam Collyns is producer of Secret Iraq, a new BBC documentary on the story of Iraq after the invasion of 2003. In one fascinating section, it tells the story of the Awakening Movement in Iraq, where Sunni Arabs turned against their former al-Qaeda allies and joined forces with the Americans. Sam, first of all, remind us briefly just how important the Awakening Movement was in turning the war around.

SAM COLLYNS:  I think it’s often overlooked. The surge is the thing that people hold on to and know all about and it played an important role. The extra American troops made a big difference. But the really critical factor in my view having been out in Iraq was the fact that some of the people that had been fighting against the Americans decided to team up with them and take on al-Qaeda. And because these people were so well connected, they were able to be extraordinarily effective very quickly.

WERMAN:  And the reason the Sunnis awoke, shall we say, in part was because the US military, as you explain, had a point of not protecting the Iraqi population up until the time of the Awakening. You spoke with General Jack Keane, the vice-chair for the US Army Defense Staff for your documentary. Did he tell you why that was the policy?

COLLYNS: I think they were trying to find an exit strategy so the efforts on the part of the Americans really from the invasion onwards was to try and hand over power to the Iraqi security forces. He Iraqi army had been disbanded after the invasion so you we’re starting from scratch. And it wasn’t until late 2006 that Jack Keane, who was by then a retired general, persuaded the president that really they did need to adopt the new policy which involved not just extra troops, but those troops being deployed to do very different things on the ground, crucially to be protecting the Iraqi population which is certainly not what the Iraqis had felt they were doing up until that point.

WERMAN: And while Keane is urging for a new policy, meanwhile in Iraq the main man in the Awakening was an Iraqi Sunni named Sheikh Jabbar. He has some rather blunt comments for you about what led him to the Awakening.

COLLYNS: Sheikh Abdul-Jabbar and others like him were at the sharp end. They saw first hand what al-Qaeda was doing. I mean initially al-Qaeda, with support from Bin Laden and others overseas, initially they had joined forces with the Sunni nationalists in Iraq and they’d made one cause. But what became clear by 2006 was that when al-Qaeda declared an independent state of [SOUNDS LIKE] Anbar and started introducing their own law, it was a brutal, brutal time and Jabbar and his friends decided they would not put up with this anymore. It’s to the credit of the American soldiers that some on the ground there had the wit about them to respond appropriately. And actually one of the most, I think, intriguing sequences in our series is an exchange between the American colonel on the ground describing meeting this guy Jabbar and clearly suspicion on both sides, but in the end they came together and the two forces working together were very effective.

WERMAN: Yeah, I mean that must have been an incredibly awkward moment, that meeting, because on one hand Jabbar tells you, before we were ready to kill Americans, we were killing Americans, but now suddenly these al-Qaeda in Iraq guys are killing Iraqis.

COLLYNS: And tough on both sides. I mean tough on the American soldiers telling their men on the ground that now they were going to fight alongside people, these insurgents, who until a week or two or month or two earlier were trying to kill them. So it took a great leap of faith I think on both sides, but that was what was so effective. Having said that, it’s not the end of the story. And the people, Jabbar and his like, having given up the fight against the Americans, two or three years on are now looking around them and thinking well, have they really got out of this all that they want and if circumstances don’t improve, might they not actually go back and find where those guns are stored away and get them out again.

WERMAN: Back to when the offensive against al-Qaeda in Iraq began by the Sunnis in the Awakening, I mean the Americans offered them guns, but also hard cash. How important was the money?

COLLYNS: I asked everyone we met how important was the money imagining that it probably played a pretty crucial role, and I think without exception all the Iraqis I spoke to said that it really had not been the prime motivating factor for them. In other words, it really had been the egregious behavior of al-Qaeda and the damage it was wreaking on the local population.

WERMAN:  Now we know what happened to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and basically al-Qaeda left Iraq for all intents and purposes. How initially though did al-Qaeda respond to Sheikh Jabbar’s revolt?

COLLYNS: They saw it as the threat that it was and Jabbar himself, and others like him, paid a high price. I mean Jabbar’s own brother, thought he’d had a brother killed a year or so earlier, but when he started this movement another of his brothers was kidnapped and Jabbar went through this process, this harrowing ordeal, you can’t imagine anything much worse, where he was told that if he released other al-Qaeda prisoners that he was holding and if he desisted from fighting than his brother would be released. And Jabbar stuck to his line and said he would not bargain with al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda killed his brother. So people paid a tough old price. I asked him, I said you must regret the death of a brother. Is that a price worth paying? And he didn’t pause for a moment. He said absolutely and he’d do it again. And he felt that the threat posed by al-Qaeda to society broadly was so great, that he was prepared even to pay that sacrifice.

WERMAN: Sam, it occurs to me that the Awakening is something of an unplanned success story in Iraq and having spent a fair amount of time in Iraq looking into the evolution of the Awakening, post-US invasion, and what it did for the country, you must have some thoughts about how an Awakening might be fostered in Afghanistan right now.

COLLYNS: Well, I’m very conscious coming back from Iraq. If you hear the language people use, American soldiers, British soldiers, use, those that are in Afghanistan now, they clearly have learnt lessons. They talk about protecting the population, they talk about finding allies from within. So there’s no question those same lessons are being learned and the people applying them are people that have gone through that Iraqi experience and clearly been colored by it. So I think there’s no doubt that the influence of Iraq on Afghanistan is direct. Not to say that it’s easy or in any shape or form is improving. I mean it’s a long, long way to go still. But those same political and military battles are being fought now.

WERMAN: Sam Collyns, producer of the new BBC documentary Secret Iraq. Thank you very much.

COLLYNS: You’re welcome.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

That’s the million dollar question right. I think as a commander and having seen the human sacrifice, you know I love my guys and I think that’s the ultimate question you know is what I saw my friends endure, the kind of horrific things that I saw, the people who were caught in between, you know, I don’t know. I think that’s why it still bothers me so much. I think that loss is often the most powerful emotion because it’s something that you always have to deal with. Time never completely closes that wound, because there’s nothing to go back to. I hope, I hope that the legacy we leave behind, that we’ve been a force for good, you know and I tell my guys all the time, what you guys did, hunting high value targets, taking down some of these car bomb networks, with what we had control over, we did good.

Strategically, that’s not my question. I’m obviously very invested in it but not of my own doing or that of my guys. I think a large reason why Americans support soldiers nowadays days is because they recognize we’re public servants. We swore to the constitution and we go where we’re ordered to go and then carry ourselves with the morality our country expects of us so that we acquit ourselves with honor. I can say we did that. Can I say it was worth it? You know, no, I certainly have, I certainly have strong feelings. We’ll see, and ultimately it’s up to time to tell whether or not the impact that we had in Iraq was in the national interest of the United States and was worth the sacrifice of the men and women and some of the Iraqis that were caught in the middle that helped us. But I can’t answer that question.

• BBC coverage
• The struggle for Iraq

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  U.S. and Iraqi officials have been warning of insurgent attacks as Parliamentary elections draw closer.  Those warnings were vindicated today.  Suicide bombers killed more than 30 people in the city of Baquba.  The timing is worrisome.  The elections are scheduled for Sunday.  The balloting will decide who will govern Iraq as U.S. forces withdraw.  The vote will also help determine whether Iraq can overcome the sectarian tensions that continue to divide the nation.  This is a campaign song for one of the candidates.  The first singer asks will you vote?  The response is yes I will vote and I will defy terrorism despite the swords that have fought me.  Yes, some Iraqi’s are enthusiastic about the upcoming election, but reporter Sahar Issa with McClatchy Newspapers in Baghdad says other Iraqis are skeptical.

SAHAR ISSA:  They find it very funny, actually.  They laugh that there are elections and that they would go to elect, to repeat what they believe has been a very unproductive four years.

WERMAN: So you’re saying people are kind of chuckling about this.  Are they making jokes about this election?

issa: You can’t imagine the jokes.

WERMAN: Tell me one.

ISSA: Like, for instance, the posters that are being posted.  There are very many secular women on the slate this election and many of them are very beautiful.  They have make up on and tinted hair and others that are in the traditional cover, the hijab.  And I spoke to one gentleman who said if winning the elections depends upon how long people stare at posters, I am sure this young lady will win.  And she was, certainly, very beautiful.

WERMAN: Do you think the humor is healthy or is it a sign of cynicism?

ISSA: It is a good thing when it is lighthearted, but at the base of it, yes there is cynicism.  People have simply lost their belief.  They are disenchanted.  The feel that they have gone through one period and after electing and being enthusiastic about the people they are electing and what happen, they are so let down.  And so yes, there is cynicism behind it.

WERMAN: Hundreds of candidates were banned just before the elections because of their links to the Bathists.  How do you feel about all those alleged Bathists being told you can’t run?

ISSA: To be fair, a lot of the candidates whose names were banned were people who are newcomers to the political scene.  And therefore they were investigated and according to the constitution and to the accountability and justice law, they were banned.  But, not all of them were new.  There are faces who have been on the Iraqi political scene for years and they are well know, they are liked by some, they are hated by others.  Nevertheless, they have been there.  They have made names for themselves and they have a following.  And these people suddenly, after so many years, to be thrown out at the time when their followers will be left adrift, this is the thing that points to, how do you say, unclean intentions on the part of the people who banned them weeks before the elections.  It’s unbelievable.

WERMAN: You know, in a country where democracy is trying to flourish, we’ve heard a lot about the ways candidates are attempting to appeal to voters.  Handing out goods and things, everything from sneakers to gold watches to chicken dinners.  Have you seen a lot of evidence of this stuff?

ISSA: And blankets and rice and cooking oil to the degree Marco that the spokesman for the Iraqi government comes out with a statement on their website that warns against this.  He says the Merjariya, which is the highest religious authority for the Shiite have banned this practice.  So be careful lest you be one of the people who go for eternal hell because you are doing something that is prohibited.

WERMAN: Is this kind of a season of door prizes in the lead up to the election or do Iraqis, if they receive these gifts, feel an obligation to vote for the candidate that gave the that thing.

ISSA: I will tell you what happened in the last elections.  The Iraqi people took the presents and voted for someone else.

WERMAN: They voted for who they wanted to vote for.

ISSA: Yes, in the first place.  This is what happened.  And this time they are laughing at it, those of the people who are being offered these prizes.  If they need them, they will take them.  If they don’t need them, they will not take them.  But I doubt if it will sway their vote one way or the other.

WERMAN: What does democracy then mean in Baghdad today?  If you were to walk up to the average person on the street and say there are 100,000 troops here in Iraq, but what in your mind does democracy mean?

ISSA: Marco, democracy is a new concept for Iraqis.  We are the culture and the society that has the father figure.  The father figure in the family, the father figure in the tribe, even the father figure in the state and people are quite happy, unfortunately, because this is the way the society is built, the tribal society.  They are quite happy to do what their elders tell them to do.  Now you throw at them a concept that is totally alien and foreign to them.  What is democracy for the Iraqis?  They don’t believe in democracy inside their families.  They don’t know what democracy truly means.  It is not part of their culture.  I think because democracy is a context that should be built from the base upwards, it will take quite a while for Iraqis to really understand and this is Iraqis on the streets, I’m not speaking about college professors, I’m not speaking about politicians or doctors or engineers, I’m speaking about the man on the street, the farmer, the mechanic, the man who works at the petrol station, the man who makes sandwiches in the vendor.  They don’t know really what democracy is.  They are happy to be able to speak out loud now.  They are happy to have the freedom of speech that for a long time they didn’t have.

WERMAN: Are they happy to go to the polls this weekend and vote?

ISSA: They are happy to be able to.  Yes.  Yes they are happy to be able to.  Yes I believe so.

WERMAN: Sahar it’s clear despite the three bombings in Baquba today that violence in Iraq has dissipated, but tell us to what extent the people are still fearful.

ISSA: The people are tentative.  Although, how do you say, the barriers have come down somewhat.  People are going out; life in Baghdad has come back.  But people, how do you say, if a tire blows, you see faces go pale.  If a balloon blows, faces go pale.  If something breaks, some glass or like a plate or something, people instantly almost have a heart attack.  It will take time Marco.  It will take time to erase.  It’s difficult to erase, but at least to lessen the effects of the violence that Iraq has gone through.

WERMAN: Sahar Issa with McClatchy Newspapers in Baghdad, very good to speak with you again.  Thank you.

ISSA: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• Marco Werman speaks with former Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi
• Timeline: Tony Blair on Iraqi WMD
• Tony Blair’s closest aide defends choices on Iraq

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  Tony Blair remains unrepentant nearly seven years after ordering British troops to join the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  The former Prime Minister testified for six hours today at an inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq war.  Blair stated that knowing what he knows today he would still have gone to war to remove Saddam Hussein.  That decision is still deeply unpopular in Britain as some outside the courtroom made clear today.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports from London.

LAURA LYNCH: Protesters gathered in the pre-dawn gloom with their verdict.  Tony Blair they shouted is a war criminal.  Among them was American Jennifer Bromlick.  She focused her anger on both Blair and George W. Bush.

JENNIFER BROMLICK: They should do something like this with Bush.  I mean, Bush is ultimately answerable for this, for the Iraq war.

LAURA LYNCH: Blair never saw the demonstration.  He arrived early going in through a side door.  Two hours later he took his seat.  Behind him were relatives of British soldiers who had died in Iraq.  Well rehearsed in defending an unpopular war, Blair’s hands trembled slightly as he readied himself for this round.  Within minutes he was on familiar ground repeating his view that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were reason enough to take a hard look at Saddam Hussein.

TONY BLAIR: That completely changed our assessment of where the risks for security lay.  Just so that we make this absolutely clear, this was not an American position.  This was my position and the British position.  Very, very clearly.

LAURA LYNCH: It’s no surprise Blair wanted to be so clear.  He’s long been accused of doing the bidding of George W. Bush in Iraq.  Today Blair was asked time and again about the former U.S. President, how he reacted to Blair’s promises, what he expected from Britain.  Blair denied any secret deals, but he did tell Bush that he would stand with him.

TONY BLAIR: I think what he took from that was exactly what he should have taken which is that if it came to military action because there was no way of dealing with this diplomatically, we would be with him.  That was absolutely clear because as I had set out publicly, not privately, we had to confront this issue.  It could be confronted by sanctions, framework that’s effective.  For the reasons I’ve given we didn’t have one.  It could be confronted by U.N. inspections framework, we’ll come to that.  Or, alternatively, it would have to be confronted by force.  I was going earlier, but I won’t do it, but I’m very happy to make available.

LAURA LYNCH: The questioning wore on about whether Blair exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam and about whether he had a strong legal case to go to war without explicit U.N. support.  Blair stood firm.  He made the right decision, he said, for the right reasons.

TONY BLAIR: As I sometimes say to people, this isn’t about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception, it’s a decision.  The decision I had to take was given Saddam’s history, given his use of chemical weapons; given the over one million people whose deaths he caused, given ten years of breaking U.N. resolutions, could we take the risk?

LAURA LYNCH: Blair tried to deflect several questions by focusing on the Iraq of today.  Iraqi’s he said, are better off now than they were in 2003.  That prompted inquiry commissioner Lawrence Friedman to recite what he called tragic statistics, Iraqi’s who have died in recent years.

LAWRENCE FRIEDMAN: 1,042 in January 2005; 1,433 in January 2006; 2,807 in January 2007; these are monthly figures.  These are the documented deaths.  They are not the, goodness knows how many undocumented – - the deaths from the deterioration in services, poverty, poor health and so on.  The striking is they are getting worse each year.

LAURA LYNCH: In the final minutes Blair said he was sorry for the deep divisions the Iraq war caused in Britain, but that seemed to be about as far as he would go with apologies to the evident frustration of those sitting just feet away.

TONY BLAIR: I’ve no regrets.  Responsibility, but not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein.  I think he was a monster.  I believed he threatened not just the region, but the world.  His defense complete, Blair left quickly.  His bodyguards close behind.  The families, too, made their way outside.  Many like Reg Keys, upset by what they had just seen and heard.

REG KEYS:  He had an opportunity there to apply some soothing balm to some of the open wounds of grief that are in that room.  I saw a couple of mothers in there break down at the end in tears because the man, all he had to say was to assuage the grief was I do regret the loss of life, but he’s quite remorseless, no regret at all.

LAURA LYNCH: No one really expected Blair to back down, to admit mistakes or reconsider.  Today he said he would do it all again in the name of making Britain safer.  But in the same week British officials raised the country’s threat level to severe, many still believe Blair sent his troops into an illegal war with questionable results.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• Timeline: Tony Blair on Iraqi WMD
• Tony Blair’s closest aide defends choices on Iraq

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Britain’s investigation into it’s involvement in the war in Iraq is heating up.  In two days former British Prime Minister Tony Blair faces a public grilling at the Iraq inquiry.  And today, there was new evidence suggesting Washington played a key role in convincing Blair’s government that the Iraq invasion was legal.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

LAURA LYNCH: It’s the question that goes to the heart of the inquiry; was the 2003 invasion of Iraq illegal?  A Dutch inquiry concluded two weeks that it was.  But it’s still a matter of intense debate here in Britain.  Yesterday the Foreign Office’s two top lawyers at the time of the invasion were unequivocal in their testimony.  They said the invasion wasn’t legal without explicit UN support.  Elizabeth Wilmshurst told the inquiry her Minister, Jack Straw, simply swept aside that advice.

ELIZABETH WILMHURST: Well, it’s rather uncomfortable when the Secretary of State of the Department doesn’t agree with the legal advice given to him or her.  So in that sense it was a challenge.

MALE VOICE 1:  Was it unusual in your experience?

ELIZABETH WILMHURST: Yes.

MALE VOICE 2:  Did it make a difference that Jack Straw is himself a qualified lawyer?

ELIZABETH WILMHURST: He is not an international lawyer.

LAURA LYNCH: The uncomfortable laughter was a nod to the tensions simmering throughout government in the months before the war.  Tensions that lead to sharp disagreements among ministers.  Today Tony Blair’s Attorney General took his turn on the stand.  Lord Peter Goldsmith said he, too, got a cool reception when he tried to warn Blair the summer before the invasion not to rush into anything with George W. Bush.

LORD PETER GOLDSMITH: I knew that the Prime Minister was going to see President Bush.  I knew that one of the topics of conversation, at least, was going to be the Iraq issue because that was obviously very much on the international agenda at that stage.  And I didn’t want there to be any doubt that in my view the Prime Minister could not have the view that he could agree with President Bush somehow, well let’s go without going back to the United Nations.  I wasn’t asked for it.  I don’t, frankly, think it was terribly welcome.

LAURA LYNCH: Goldsmith didn’t waiver in his view until February of 2003, just weeks before the troops rolled into Iraq.  For the first time today, Goldsmith admitted it was a trip to the United States that changed his mind.  He visited the White House, met with attorneys and Condoleeza Rice among others.  Goldsmith came back and gave Blair the go ahead.

LORD PETER GOLDSMITH: I was of the view that a reasonable case could be made.  I’m sorry, there was a reasonable case that a second resolution was not necessary and that that was on past precedence, sufficient to constitute a green light.

LAURA LYNCH: Watching all this today was Clare Short.  She was in Blair’s cabinet at the time, but resigned over the decision to invade.  She finds Goldsmith’s conversion on the road back from the White House troubling.

CLARE SHORT: And to say he was influenced by the Americans, we know that the Bush administration had no respect of any kind for the UN or for international law, didn’t think there was any need to go to the Security Council, did so because Britain couldn’t do it without that.  So to say that American opinion influenced him is really not impressive.

LAURA LYNCH: Short herself will testify at the inquiry in the coming weeks, but not before the former Prime Minister himself on Friday.  Tony Blair’s appearance is almost certain to generate protest outside and inside the hearing room.  Relatives of soldiers who died in Iraq will be sitting just feet away from Blair as he testifies.  For many of them, Blair was far too ready to follow Washington’s lead into a war they still believe wasn’t justified.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• The struggle for Iraq
• Profile of Chemical Ali

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  Baghdad had been relatively quiet in the past six weeks.  Then today, a series of car bombs shattered any sense of calm that residents of the Iraqi capital may have been feeling.  The first explosion happened near the Sheraton Hotel.  Two further blasts followed shortly afterwards near the Green Zone.  At least 36 people were killed and more than 70 people were wounded.  The attacks came as Iraq is preparing for General Elections in March.  The BBC’s Jim Muir is in Baghdad.  Jim, what happened today?

JIM MUIR:  Well this was obviously a coordinated triple suicide car bomb attack, or campaign almost, you would call it.  The first went off near the Sheraton Hotel which is close to where we are.  We had our building shaken, some windows blown out and dust thrown around and so on.  That was a suicide car bomb just by the Sheraton.  We believe 11 people were killed in that blast.  Then a short while afterwards another similar car bomb explosion near the Babylon Hotel which is a mile or two away.  And then another one at the Hamara Hotel which is where a lot of western journalists are based.  Heavy damage there, both to the hotel and adjacent buildings were a lot of journalists are stationed.

WERMAN: And how unusual is a well coordinated, three well coordinated strikes?

MUIR: Well they do seem to come in clusters.  That’s maybe why they take so much planning, because of the logistics involved.  The ones in August, October and December, involved double suicide truck bombings, almost simultaneously, but striking at Ministries and getting through the security to get at Ministries obviously took a lot of planning too.   So yes, there’s a lot of planning goes into these and obviously there are people out there who still have the logistics and the planning and the capability to carry out these attacks.  The government is accusing both remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Bathist Regime and Islamic Radicals are kind of getting together in a cooperative venture for these attacks.

WERMAN: Now, Iraqi’s go to the polls in March to vote for a new Parliament.  Iraqi’s are taking the lead role now on security this time around as opposed to international forces.  But I guess these bombings make one wonder if the country is secure enough.  Do you think the violence could actually derail March elections?

MUIR: I doubt very much if it would because the elections are nation-wide and the violence, as I say, is happening in this kind of concentrated way every two months.  I don’t think they have a big enough capability, the insurgents, to mount a kind of huge multiple campaign of a sustained nature that could actually derail the elections.  Certainly there will be more attempt as the day approaches.  There’s no question about that.

WERMAN: Jim, also today, one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious henchmen, Ali Hassan Almajid, better knows as Chemical Ali, was executed.  Remind us briefly who he was and how Iraqi’s reacted to reminders of the Saddam era today and news like this of Chemical Ali’s execution.

MUIR: Well Chemical Ali, Ali Hassan Almajid, was the cousin of Saddam Hussein and he was the man that Saddam chose to spearhead his brutal campaigns of repression, both against the Kerds in the North and the Shiites in the South.  He lead what’s called the Anfal campaign against the Kerds in 1988, in which an estimated 180,000 Kerds died in what human rights watch and now they have called a genocide.  He got his first death sentence for that.  There were all together four death sentences.  The second and third were for crimes against the Shiites in the South, repressing their uprising there in 1991.  And again, another rebellion from the Shiites in 1999.  Then finally, of course, just eight days ago he received that fourth death sentence for Halabja, the town where he ordered his forces, the Air Force, to drop chemical bombs on the Kerds there killing something like 5,000 of them.  That, for the Kerds, was the big symbolic event which stood out as the kind of symbol of everything that was evil about the Saddam Hussein regime and the traumas it inflicted on them.  So they wanted to see him hang for that and that is exactly what’s happened.

WERMAN: The BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad.  Greatly appreciate your time Jim.

MUIR: Most welcome Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• ‘The Poet of Baghdad’ – BBC video about Nabeel Yasin’s life
• BBC: the struggle for Iraq

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP: By the time the US invaded Iraq the so-called poet of Baghdad had been in exile for more than 20 years. Nabeel Yasin had upset Saddam Hussein’s regime so much that the words enemy of the state were stamped in his passport. He fled Iraq in 1980. He recently returned with political ambitions. Yasin is running for prime minister in the March elections. Today in Baghdad Yasin recalled how he first fell out of favor with Saddam Hussein’s regime.

NABEEL YASIN: The problem start in early ‘70s when I read my poem, The Poet Satirizes King. So they thought that the poem satirized Saddam Hussein himself.

SHARP: Was it your intent to satirize Saddam Hussein?

YASIN: My poetry satirized the dictatorship in Iraq and everywhere.

SHARP: And where did you go when you left Iraq 30 years ago?

YASIN: Actually it wasn’t easy for my son Yamam and for my wife Nada. My son was three years and it was awful for us to stay for example in Syria, two weeks in Lebanon, three months in France, three weeks … . So our home was luggage and after two years I was able to stay for a couple of years in Hungary.

SHARP: You are very popular as a poet in Iraq and people read your poetry and smuggled your poetry back in even when you were far away. I wonder if that translates now. You know is this a serious run for political office or are you making a point?

YASIN: I’m working in the political field as an amateur but I’m a professional poet. So I try to mix between my dream and my realistic idea.

SHARP: How different is it to be a poet among the people compared to being a politician among the people?

YASIN: To be a poet I think it’s very, very good to be very close to the people. The politics unfortunately is different than the poetry. Many, many politicians they don’t like to meet people. Just to get their votes. So this is the problem in Iraq now.

SHARP: So why really are you trying to be prime minister? Why run for office if you what you really want to do is be a poet?

YASIN: Iraq needs to be again part of the international society. Iraq now belongs to 200 years ago. Even the Iraqis watching the television, using the internet, but [INDISCERNIBLE] the situation still belongs to 200 years ago. So I think if I’m just one citizen in Iraq I couldn’t do anything. But if we have position as educated people so we can help the people to realize the real democracy in Iraq, I mean real democracy, which gives the people the hope and take care for their demands.

SHARP: You’ve been back in the country a little while now. Did you recognize it when you returned? Was it strange to you or still familiar?

YASIN: I went with friend from the house to get something from a small shop. I told my friend … . I said listen I’m walking in the same street which I walked 30 years ago but I have not the same feeling. I’m still feeling I’m stranger. And everything around me still strange.

SHARP: Do you remember it as a better place 30 years ago?

YASIN: Exactly, exactly. For me it was a paradise. Everything was normal. In my, inside my feeling, even they chasing me from the secret police even the situation was very dangerous, even I faced death several times, but inside me the situation was normal. But now I lost Baghdad twice. One when I left it and another one when I came back to live in Baghdad.

SHARP: Nabeel Yasin have you been writing poetry since you returned to Iraq and do you have something you could recite for us?

YASIN: If you like I can read something from Mesopotamia poem.

SHARP: Yes please.

YASIN: This poem is speaking about women in Iraq.

[READING POEM IN ARABIC]

SHARP: It’s so beautiful in Arabic and I don’t speak Arabic but I’d love to hear a little bit more about what you were saying.

YASIN: I’m saying does this woman who will take care for the flowers maybe she will waiting for somebody bringing something from Damascus or from Shiraz or some water from Mecca but in the end she was alone. She still remember how many people she had lost and say my God is there anyone to lose?

SHARP: Nabeel Yasin is one of Iraq’s most beloved poets and a candidate for prime minister. Thanks again.

YASIN: Thank you very much.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• Laura Lynch on day 2 of the inquiry
• FAQ Britain’s Iraq inquiry
• US investigation of Iraq war

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  This is the World.  I’m Marco Werman.  Americans still have questions about the decision to go to war in Iraq.  Some wonder what intelligence the Bush Administration had on the regime in Baghdad and whether it was entirely truthful in what it told the public about that information.  Still, there have been no high level government investigations of the process.  There have been in Britain though, including one that started this week.  Today’s star witness was Christopher Meyer, Britain’s Ambassador to the United States at the time.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports from London.

LAURA LYNCH:  In often colorful language, Meyer revisited the dramatic days between September 11, 2001 and the March, 2003 invasion of Iraq.  He told the inquiry former Prime Minister Tony Blair set the tone.  Within hours of the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, he vowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States.  Working the diplomatic circuit in the U.S. capitol, Meyer noticed an immediate impact.

CHRISTOPHER MEYER:  To be Ambassador to the United States of America was, make no bones about it, a heady and exhilarating experience because wherever you went, people would rise to their feet and give you a storming round of applause.  So you had to be careful not to be swept away by this stuff.

LYNCH:  Meyer was as close to the center of power in Washington as any foreign diplomat could be.  On the evening of September 11, he says he spoke to George W. Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleeza Rice.  Until that day, Iraq was low on the list of priorities for the White House.  But he says Rice’s comments showed the attacks had moved it and Saddam Hussein all the way up to the top.

MEYER:  And she said well there’s no doubt this has been an Al Quaida operation but at the end of the conversation, as we’re just looking to see whether there could possibly be any connection to Saddam Hussein.  And that was the very first time, on the day itself, that I heard the name of the Iraqi leader mentioned in the context of 9/11.

LYNCH:  Other British officials testified yesterday they weren’t convinced of any link but Bush and Blair were developing a close working relationship and Meyer says that he began to sense a change after Blair visited Bush at his ranch in Texas in April of 2002.

MEYER:  The two men were alone in the ranch until dinner on Saturday night where all the advisors, including myself, turned up.  So I’m not entirely clear, to this day, I know what the cabinet often says for what were the results of the meeting but to this day, I’m not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford Ranch.

LYNCH:  The next day the former ambassador noticed that Blair spoke about regime change for the first time, in a key foreign policy speech that touched on terrorism and the situation in Iraq.

TONY BLAIR:  If necessary, the action should be military and again if necessary and justified, it should involve regime change.

LYNCH:  From then on, Meyer says the UK/US alliance was tighter and the march to war seemed inevitable.  In fact, he told the inquiry that the military timetable meant there wasn’t enough time to do a proper hunt for evidence of any stockpile of chemical or biological weapons.

MEYER:  We found ourselves scrambling for the smoking gun, which is another way of saying it’s not like Saddam now has to prove he’s innocent.   We’ve now bloody well got to try and prove he’s guilty.

LYNCH:  Meyer’s ringside seat in Washington gave him what he believes was a pretty good view of the in-fighting in the Bush Administration.  But over time, the drum beats of war grew ever louder and he criticizes his own government, saying Britain didn’t push the White House nearly enough to draw up post-invasion plans.  He says it was like a black hole.  Meyer recalled sitting with then-Vice President, Dick Cheney, on the day the British Parliament was debating whether to support the invasion.  Meyer says he tried to explain to Cheney the political difficulties Blair was facing.

MEYER:  And his reaction was quite dismissive.  Well, you know, once you get by your political problem and we get to Baghdad, then we’ll be greeted with cheers and flowers or whatever by the population and all this will be history.

LYNCH:  Blair himself isn’t saying anything about the revelations that have come out at the inquiry in the first three days.  But one of his closest allies in the cabinet back then, Lord Charles Falconer, is defending Blair.  He says there’s no chance he made a pact with Bush to remove Saddam as early as the spring of 2002.

LORD CHARLES FALCONER:  No, I didn’t and that’s right.  And I think the evidence that Christopher Meyer gave this morning made it clear that one of the things that the British government and Tony Blair had been influential in doing was ensuring that America did go down the United Nations route and indeed as a result of today’s persuasion, on the fourteenth of September, 2002, President Bush made a very impressive speech to the UN, making it clear that he was looking to the UN to deal with the issue.  So I think far from it being fixed in advance, it was clear the matter was to be decided by the UN.

LYNCH:  Tony Blair paid a heavy price back home for his support of both Bush and the war.  In three days of hearings, Blair’s decisions back then have come under fresh scrutiny, guaranteeing he’ll have much to answer to when he testifies early next year.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

John Chilcot

The man in charge of the official British inquiry examining events surrounding the Iraq war has said his committee will not produce a report that is a “whitewash.” John Chilcot, a retired career civil servant, has promised to produce a “full and insightful” account. Evidence from senior government figures will start on Tuesday and politicians, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair will be expected to testify in due time. Laura Lynch reports.

• BBC coverage
• FAQ British Iraq inquiry

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Britain is revisiting one of the most divisive issues in its recent history. An independent panel will begin public hearings tomorrow into the country’s role in the war in Iraq. It’s the third time a government appointed panel has investigated circumstances surrounding the war and supporters say this inquiry will be the definitive one. But as The World’s Laura Lynch reports others are already saying these hearings won’t do much to shed light on Britain’s decision to go to war.

LAURA LYNCH: From the day Sir John Chilcot took on the role as chair of the Iraq inquiry he’s heard the accusation – it will be nothing more than a whitewash.

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: It won’t be but the judgment is to whether people think it is and will lie on how it’s read when it comes out.

LYNCH: Britain’s decision to go to war in Iraq was and still is controversial. Then prime minister, Tony Blair, pushed ahead with the plan to send 45,000 troops despite widespread opposition and some claims that the war was illegal.

TONY BLAIR: This is not the time to falter. This is the time for this house – not just this government or indeed this prime minister – but for this house to give a lead. To show that we will stand up for what we know to be right. To show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk.

LYNCH: Blair himself is expected to testify at the inquiry early next year. Other senior politicians, bureaucrats, military leaders, and intelligence officers will also be on the witness list. Sir John Chilcot insists the five-person panel, all appointed by the government, is ready to take on anyone including members of the government itself.

CHILCOT: What you can’t do is make up a committee like this of people who have no experience of the workings of government from the inside. There is one other point worth making. When you set up an independent inquiry of this sort you set the members of it free to do what they will and our determination is to do not merely a thorough job but one that is frank and will bear public scrutiny.

LYNCH: Already though his inquiry is facing criticism. Carne Ross is a former British diplomat and an expert on Iraq who resigned after testifying at a previous inquiry. Ross reels off a list of problems with the current inquiry starting with the names on the witness lists.

CARNE ROSS: They’re all the most senior people. These people were deeply implicated in having carried out the execution of the war. Why would they reveal an account at odds with the government’s own narrative of what has happened. How will the panel get to that deeper truth of what took place here? What is the mechanism of accountability if dishonesty is uncovered or even God forbid illegality by certain members of the government?

LYNCH: That’s also a concern for many of those who lost relatives in the Iraq war. Elsie Manning’s daughter staff sergeant Sharon Elliott died in a bomb attack in 2006.

ELSIE MANNING: You know it’s alright having these inquiries and for someone to sit at the other side of a desk and listen and write everything down but where does that leave us? Where does that leave the families? Where does it leave the soldiers who are serving now?

LYNCH: Manning and others want Tony Blair and his cabinet to answer for their decision to send British soldiers they believe was illegal. But they also worry that even if this inquiry confirms their belief it can only say that without punishing anyone for what happened in the past. For The World I’m Laura Lynch in London.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.