Fallujah, a play about the American siege and assault of the Iraqi city in 2004, is currently running at the Old Truman Brewery, on Brick Lane, London. Fallujah represents an unforgettable part of Blair’s legacy, an action in which British forces played a key role. According to the producers:

“The siege of Fallujah constitutes one of the most extensive human rights violations of recent times. Breaching over 70 articles of the Geneva conventions, US forces bombed schools and hospitals, sniped at civilians (including children) holding white flags, cut off water and medical supplies, and instigated a chemical weapons assault, deploying napalm and white phosphorus, both of which are banned by the UN.”

“This play presents testimony from those at the heart of the siege: Iraqi civilians, clerics, US military and politicians, journalists, medics, aid workers, and the British Army. None of this testimony has been heard before. Every word of this play is verbatim.”

Reviewed by Philip Fisher in The British Theatre Guide

For those that were lucky enough to see it, Fallujah will almost inevitably bring to mind the sensation of last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Gregory Burke’s Black Watch.

To varying degrees, the style, subject matter and sentiments are similar but this play is a Verbatim drama, entirely created from the words of those at the sharp end of the conflict that still rages in Iraq, three years on from the start of these proceedings.

Academic and theatre practitioner Dr Jonathan Holmes has got together a team of influential friends to put on this indictment of the American conduct in that benighted country.

The ICA have become involved in a project that takes place in a large, decommissioned brewery in Brick Lane, now almost like a Bangladeshi enclave in the City of London, just around the corner from Petticoat Lane Market.

There, designers Lucy and Jorge Orta have created an installation that fills the large space and eerily features empty anti-gas suits, old shoes and boots, as well as screens large and small on which much of the drama is presented or repeated. This is as well, since if there is ever a capacity audience of around 650, few will see the actors in the flesh for any great length of time. Even a promenading crowd of 100 or so only got good views for perhaps half of the time.

However, the text – and the testimony that it provides – is almost all on this occasion. That is not to detract from some great acting and real fireworks as the creative team attempts to recreate the experience of being in the midst of a war zone. These explosive scenes run to a rhythmic beat that might seem distasteful in a depiction of what some might call genocide.

The 90 minute play has been set to music by Nitin Sawnhey. This can sometimes add depth to the drama but at other times seems gratuitous when the subject of the evening is mass slaughter.

The dramatis personae represent a wide cross-section of those involved, led by Chipo Chung’s vacuous Condoleezza Rice, a woman who has made an art form out of saying nothing, at length. She sets the scene, without irony, by saying that “The President of the United States understands Islam to be a faith of peace, a faith that protects innocents, and the policy of the United States is to do the same”.

The play then becomes a collage of interviews and re-enactments that builds a picture of life (and death) in a city the size of Edinburgh, around 500,000 inhabitants, that was practically razed to the ground, judging by the filmed sequences shown at the end of the performance.

The characters come from all areas of the conflict, with a couple of useful peripheral insertions to offer perspective. There are soldiers of all colours and priests, journalists and ordinary citizens. They come from many nations, America, Britain and Iraq to the fore.

The lynchpins are two White women portrayed by major names, who are obviously committed to this anti-war cause.

Harriet Walter plays Sasha, an American investigative journalist (actually a combination of several interviewees) who has a knack of embarrassing those whom she interviews. This results from a combination of bravery, determination and the knack of asking the right question.

Even braver is Jo (Wilding), a clown at home in the UK, but risking her life to act as an auxiliary nurse on the front line. The scene in which she and a local woman are picked up by militia men and seem destined to die, shows actress Imogen Stubbs at her very best, as fear literally makes her shake.

There is also a Frenchwoman, played by movie star Irene Jacob, seen on film telling the story of her kidnap and eventual release after a terrifying time in captivity.

The remainder of the ensemble are almost equally good, playing numerous parts with unquestioning commitment.

It could be argued that this story of the destruction of a city is partial with a bias against the United States. Whether that is so or not, the slaughter of innocents must always be regarded as a crime against humanity and it is to be hoped that Jonathan Holmes’ play, that is also available in book form with texts of interviews, might just accelerate the end of a not-war that continues to claim lives on a daily basis.

Via Blairwatch

Al Jazeera continues to seek clarification on the Daily Mirror report of a leaked memo that alleged “President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station Al Jazeera” and reiterates its call to see a copy of the relevant section of the memo.

Civil servant, David Keogh and MP researcher Leo O’Connor were jailed today for leaking the secret four-page memo. Press and public were banned from the trial which has been heavily criticized by MPs and civil rights groups.

The memo is purported to have recorded discussions regarding the events in Falluja between Tony Blair and George Bush in the Oval office in 2004. Former defence minister, Peter Kilfoyle, stated that ‘There remain unanswered questions about the discussions about the attack on Falluja and subsequent deaths of many hundreds of civilians’.

Another approach to get at the truth is described in todays Independent

What did Tony Blair tell George Bush when they discussed Iraq?

Robert Verkaik, Law Editor, considers how the Freedom of Information Act might provide the answer

A civil servant and an MP’s researcher were yesterday sentenced by an Old Bailey judge for being involved in the disclosure of the contents of a top-secret Iraq memo which recorded conversations between Tony Blair and George Bush during a 2004 meeting in Washington. The same memo has been the subject of an 18-month inquiry under the Freedom of Information Act.

A request made to the Government for the memo’s formal disclosure under the right-to-know legislation is now with the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, who has the power to order release of the four-page document. Such a move would be extremely embarrassing for the Government and undermine the decision to prosecute the two men under the Official Secrets Act of 1989.

The trial judge has already imposed a court order preventing any further reference to the contents of the memo on the grounds that such publication would be a threat to national security. In such circumstances it seems very unlikely that Mr Thomas would be able to find an argument in favour of disclosure.

But a careful reading of the Downing Street response letter to the Liverpool academic who first made the request in December 2005 shows that national security is not one of the exemptions that its FOI team relied on to deny access to the document. Instead the Government said that the information would damage international relations between Britain and America. It reads: “The effective conduct of international relations depends on maintaining trust and confidence between governments.”

This is not the same as national security, which government lawyers in the Old Bailey trial had argued would be damaged if the memo was published. They even said that disclosure could threaten the lives of British troops serving in Iraq.

The precise detail of the information being sought is now covered by the terms of the Old Bailey gagging order. But it is clear from the correspondence between the Cabinet Office and the FOI requestor that both sides knew what was at stake.

Part of the argument raised by the academic in favour of disclosure is that the possible content of the memo has already been alluded to in the media and therefore the information is already in the public domain. The content of the memo has been confirmed by a respected source, a Member of Parliament, Peter Kilfolye.

The requestor also reminds the Cabinet Office of guidance from the Department for Constitutional Affairs (now the Ministry of Justice) on the application of the exemption for possible harm to international relations:

Individual requests for information must be considered on their merits but you should take account of what is already in the public domain when assessing prejudice to international relations. The fact that similar or related information is already in the public domain may reduce or negate any potential prejudice.

The Liverpool academic made the same request for disclosure of the memo to the US State Department under the American Freedom of Information Act. It was seven months before he got an answer. And when he did, it was even more disappointing than the one he received from the British government. It read simply: “No records responsive to your request were located.”

A quite astonishing result given that a civil servant was jailed for six months yesterday because a jury found that he had leaked this memo to a researcher working for an anti-war MP. If the memo didn’t exist, then he must be innocent.

By Rupert Cornwell in The Independent

The row over how President Bush went to war in Iraq has re-erupted with a charge by George Tenet, the former director of the CIA, that a coterie of top officials pushed America into the conflict with no real debate as to whether Saddam Hussein actually posed an imminent threat to the US.

Mr Tenet’s angry indictment of his colleagues is the first of its kind from a top ranking member of Mr Bush’s once-vaunted national security team, and was instantly rebutted by the White House.

For the full article go here

‘The Indictment Of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair For The Crime Of Aggression Against Iraq – A Hearing’ is currently playing at the Tricylce Theatre, London. Nicholas de Jongh, reviews the production in This is london.

Blair put on trial over Iraq

There could be few bolder political fantasies today than imagining Tony Blair being investigated by the International Criminal Court to see whether he could be indicted for aggression against Iraq. It could not happen.

Yet such a dream, cherished by hundreds of thousands, now springs to startling stage-life thanks to those remarkable makers of contemporary political theatre, director Nicolas Kent and Richard Norton-Taylor, security editor of The Guardian. The Prime Minister himself is not one of the characters in this production, which considers how and with what legitimacy Tony Blair took Britain into the Iraq war. Even so, he looms over the action like a ghost noisily walking a haunted house.

In the courtroom process, Mr Blair’s reputation – that long-lost prize of his – takes a familiar sort of battering as he is accused of manipulating intelligence and misrepresenting the Attorney General’s advice on the legality of the war to Cabinet, Parliament and Britain. The apparent discrepancy between the Attorney General’s advice to the Prime Minister on 7 and 17 March comes to seem the crux of the matter.

William Hoyland’s wonderfully patrician Sir Murray Stuart-Smith, former commissioner for the intelligence services, registers critical bemusement. Diane Fletcher, who deftly catches the tone of former International Development Secretary Clare Short, gives an illuminating impression of what it was like to be in Cabinet on 17 March. Her worried queries about lack of discussion were met with Cabinet cries of “Oh, Clare, be quiet.”

Despite the sensational nature of Called To Account, it lacks the smack of conflict that made earlier Norton-Taylor/Kent dramatisations of official inquiries, such as The Colour Of Justice and Bloody Sunday, so enthralling. It was Kent’s conceit on this occasion to imagine Mr Blair investigated by the International Court, with well-known barristers Philippe Sands and Julian Knowles speaking for the prosecution and defence respectively.

The testimony of real subjects from Parliament and the civil, diplomatic and security services, together with the odd journalist and diplomat, was recorded in London this January and Norton-Taylor then edited their evidence for Called To Account. The legal tone is neither one-sided nor shrill, but always cool, clear and shocking in Kent’s restrained production. A few fresh facts emerge, but nothing momentous.

The two lawyers never clash or clamour. They handle each of the witnesses with respectable kid gloves. So the atmosphere is more akin to a lecture hall than a courtroom. For all its clarity, Called To Account could sometimes do with infusions of that absent theatrical commodity – passionate emotion. For these witnesses are, with the exception of Fletcher’s illuminating Clare Short, trained to keep the human touch under wraps.

Thomas Wheatley, who often plays these Kent/Norton-Taylor dramatisations, makes an authoritative Sands. The focus of his questions relate to Mr Blair’s real purpose in warring against Iraq: was it regime change or the elimination of those notorious weapons of mass destruction, details of which he may have, well, dramatised?

The prosecution lacks concrete evidence to make its case. What emerges, shockingly, is a sense of a messianic Blair riding in easy triumph over sheep- and Ostrich-like Cabinet ministers, towards a war that may make us a terrorist target for decades.

See also: Blair on Trial Tonight

Today, the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq again called for access to Iraqi government files on civilian casualty figures. The Iraqi goverment withdrew access after the UN reported in January that 34,452 civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded in 2006. These figures were much higher than claimed by Iraqi government officials.

via LFCM

See the petition at Avaaz.org

“For the first time since its rise as a superpower the United States is facing a serious threat to its hegemony across the globe.”

Aijaz Ahma, writing in Monthly Review, provides a insightful analysis of the current state of the American imperial project.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has, in the last few days, made public hundreds of files on civilians killed or injured by Coalition Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ACLU received the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request it filed in June 2006.

They have created an online database that can be searched to find details of particular incidents and a complete log of the claims can also be browsed.

via LFCM

Yesterday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published a report on the dire and deteriorating humanitarian situation in Iraq.

Geneva (ICRC) ‘ In a report issued today in Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expresses alarm about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Iraq and calls for urgent action to better protect civilians against the continuing violence.

The report entitled Civilians without protection ‘ The ever-worsening crisis in Iraq deplores the daily acts of violence such as shootings, bombings, abductions, murders and military operations that directly target Iraqi civilians in clear violation of international humanitarian law and other applicable legal standards. While it argues that the current crisis directly or indirectly affects all Iraqis, the report focuses on the problems of vulnerable groups such as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis forced to flee their homes and the families that host them.

The report documents the alarming state of Iraqi health-care facilities suffering critical shortages of staff and supplies. Many doctors, nurses and patients no longer dare to go to hospitals and clinics because they are targeted or threatened. The report also underlines that much of Iraq’s vital water, sewage and electricity infrastructure is in a critical condition owing to lack of maintenance and because security constraints have impeded repair work.

“The suffering that Iraqi men, women and children are enduring today is unbearable and unacceptable. Their lives and dignity are continuously under threat,” said the ICRC’s director of operations, Pierre Kr’henb’hl. “The ICRC calls on all those who can influence the situation on the ground to act now to ensure that the lives of ordinary people are spared and protected. This is an obligation under international humanitarian law for both States and non-State actors.”

Their report can be downloaded from here