Questions for Jack Straw at Iraq Inquiry - Davey : Kipling on Iraq

8.32.00am GMT Mon 8th Feb 2010

Edward Davey MP

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide -/Never while the bars of sunset hold./But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,/Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?

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Commenting ahead of Jack Straw's appearance today at the Iraq Inquiry, Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary, Edward Davey has set out the key questions that must be answered.

Commenting, Edward Davey said:

Rudyard Kipling

"Jack Straw has systematically hidden the truth about the advice he received from Foreign Officer Legal Advisers and the Attorney General over the legality of the Iraq war. He's tried to hoodwink the Cabinet, Parliament and then the British people in his cover up.

"How can any judge or lawyer, let alone the British people, have confidence in the Minister in charge of our legal system when he has apparently shown such reckless disregard for the legal advice he's been given, the Ministerial Code he's supposed to keep to and the demands of the Freedom of Information Act he piloted through Parliament.

"Unless he can provide the Chilcot Inquiry with some plausible explanation for these actions, he can surely no longer remain as the Secretary of State for Justice.

"John Chilcot and his colleagues therefore must be fair today to the Secretary of State for Justice - they must allow Jack Straw this final chance to clear his name."

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And here's the rest of Rudyard Kipling's poem 'Mesopotamia' of 1917. Mesopotamia has become Iraq and 1917 has become 2010.

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They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,

The eager and wholehearted whom we gave:

But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,

Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

.

They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain

In sight of help denied from day to day:

But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,

Are they too strong and wise to put away?

.

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?

When the storm is ended shall we find

How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power

By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

.

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,

Even while they make a show of fear,

Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,

To confirm and re-establish each career?

.

Their lives cannot repay us - their death could not undo -

The shame that they have laid upon our race.

But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,

Shall we leave it unabated in its place?