British parents of Iraq dead denounce ‘whitewash’

This video from the USA is called Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War.

From British daily The Guardian:

Parents of Iraq dead denounce ‘whitewash’

* Audrey Gillan

*Monday 15 June 2009 19.26 BST

The families of British servicemen who died in Iraq were disappointed and angered to learn that the inquiry into the war will be held in secret.

Reg Keys, whose son Thomas, a military policeman, was killed by an Iraqi mob alongside five of his colleagues in the town of Majar al-Kabir in June 2003, said that the fact the inquiry would be “held behind closed doors” smacked of a whitewash.

“It is an inquiry by mandarins. There are no senior military figures on the panel,” he said. “I am not happy that it is behind closed doors. It will not have any credibility. … I would have liked to have sat in the public inquiry and hear Tony Blair give his evidence.”

Keys said that he was disappointed, though not surprised, that no blame would be apportioned. However, he was pleased that the inquiry would go back to 2001.

He said: “I didn’t think they would go back to 2001 and into the run-up to the war and how intelligence was gathered. I thought they would skirt around that and say ‘that was covered in the Butler report‘.”

Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon was killed when a roadside bomb exploded beside his Snatch Land Rover in Basra in the summer of 2004, said it was “predictable” that the inquiry would not be public.

“I think we all know what it will say. I think it is going to be a whitewash. They tell you what they want you to know and that’s it,” she said. “Families are not going to find out the truth. The families and the country have a right to know why they did go. If there were any mistakes, lessons should be learned. I think those that have lost someone have a right to know.”

Gentle, a founder of the campaign group Military Families Against the War, said that had the inquiry been public she would have attended every day.

“Why are MPs not allowed to go into it either?” she said. “It will be one big whitewash and we all know that. What they say will be no surprise to anyone.”

Skewed and in secret, this Iraq inquiry is a scandal: here.

Senior military and intelligence officers have condemned Gordon Brown‘s decision to hold the Iraq war inquiry in secret, warning that it looks like a cover-up: here.

While Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced yet another inquiry into the Iraq war, what is called for is the convening of a war crimes tribunal against those who launched this unprovoked act of aggression: here.