Brown’s betrayal of Basra is the real issue here

Might Gordon Brown get away with it at the Chilcot Inquiry today? I suspect so. The media seems obsessed with the run-up to war, whereas the real crime was the betrayal of Basra.

Brown made false claims to Parliament about the fall of violence in the city which, as he would have known, was being left in the hands of Shiite death squads. He would have known that, as the Chilcot Inquiry established, we had just a couple of hundred soldiers trying to keep peace in a city of millions.

He misled Britain out of Basra as knowingly and mendaciously as Blair led Britain into Iraq – leaving the people of Basra at the mercy of the militiamen. That is, until the Iraq army (with US support) invaded the city again, and expelled the murderous regime to whom Britain had, under Brown, handed power.