Protesters Fill Baton Rouge Streets After Latest Police Shooting
ANDERSON: Well, back to the Chilcot Report. Now, 13 years on, hundreds of thousands of people killed and it's taken seven years to get to this day to hear the official word on what happened when Iraq was invaded in 2003. Even with an independent report, people are still asking how did we get to this? Well, here is my report on the lead up to the war.</s>ANDERSON: 2001, the then American President George Bush begins plans to remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but he doesn't want to do it alone. April, 2002: enter British Prime Minister Tony Blair.</s>TONY BLAIR, FRM. BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: It has always been our policy that Iraq would be a better place without Saddam Hussein.</s>ANDERSON: September 2002, Bush demands that the UN get tough on Iraq as Britain releases a dosier detailing Iraq's alleged development of weapons of mass destruction.</s>BLAIR: He has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes.</s>ANDERSON: British intelligence later withdrew that central claim. Meanwhile, protests against the war gather pace. They don't work. October, 2002, American lawmakers authorize bombing Iraq. January, 2003, inspectors look for WMDs. For months in, there is no sign.</s>UNIDENITIFIED MALE: We haven't found any smoking guns.</s>ANDERSON: February, 2003, but Washington insists that they are there.</s>COLIN POWELL, FRM. U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Iraq be declared 8,500 liters of anthrax. UNSCAM (ph) estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters.</s>ANDERSON: France, Germany and Russia call for more inspections. Millions fill the streets calling for peace. Despite strong opposition in his own party, Blair wants to go to war. The British parliament agrees.</s>BLAIR: 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.</s>ANDERSON: March 20, 2003, the war starts. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, 179 British service members were killed before the UK withdrew from Iraq in 2009.</s>ANDERSON: Right, let's open up a debate for you, shall we. Chief columnist for The National Faisal al-Yafai was against the war. And in our Istanbul bureau, I'm joined by Ali Khedry. He served as senior adviser to three heads of U.S. central command from 2003 to 2010 and believed in the war. And let me start with you, Ali. It must be painful and quite frankly embarrassing for you today to hear the conclusions of this British inquiry into the decisions taken by what was a junior partner in this U.S./UK alliance. Chilcot said, and I quote, policy on Iraq was based -- or was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments, and he said the UK, at least, went to war with Iraq before peaceful options had been exhausted. This is damning stuff. How do you feel today as you hear this?</s>ALI KHEDRY, FRM. ADVISER U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: I'm actually quite grateful for the Chilcot report, and I agree completely with its conclusions. If I may correct you, Becky, I was actually against the war. But once the decision was made I volunteered to serve my country and ended up being the longest serving American official in Iraq. I have to say, though, as you might ask the ambassadors and generals that I worked for, I was quite vocal in my criticism of our policy throughout my time in government and actually resigned in protest because of our continued failed policies and have since been vocal in television and in print media on what I continue to believe continues to be a failed strategy.</s>ANDERSON: Faisal, Ali says he is grateful for this report. I wonder how the rest of the Middle East might respond to its findings today?</s>FAISAL AL YAFAI, THE NATIONAL NEWSPAPER: Yeah, it was seven years and 2.5 million words and it all comes down to an unnecessary war. This is the takeaway, I think, both for the British and for the Iraqis and for the region. This was not a war that needed to happen. It did not need to happen in spring of 2003. They could have contained Saddam. The death, the destruction, the mayhem that was unleashed by that decision was all completely unnecessary. That is a shocking finding. But it is one that if you look across the Middle East, and particularly if look at iraq, nobody needed to tell the Iraqis this. This is something they deal with every single day. The idea was that they would go in, the U.S. and the UK, they would go in, topple Saddam and they would replace this dictatorship with freedom. And what have they given the Iraqis? Neither freedom nor stability.</s>ANDERSON: Ali, I wanted to read you a quote from the Arab League chief at the time, Amara Moussa (ph). He warned a strike against Iraq would, quote, open the gates of hell. Many members of the Arab League opposed the war at the time. You suggest you yourself did. But you did work in the administration afterwards in what was the post-invasion exercise. That has been criticized as well by this British inquiry today saying there just wasn't enough work done in planning. And Amera Moussa (ph) couldn't have been more right, could he? What more could have been or should have been done? What were you telling people in your administration, the U.S. administration post-2003 about what should happen next? Because we didn't hear a lot of plans.</s>KHEDRY: Well, Becky, I believe the Arab League was actually unanimous in its member states recommendations to the United States government, to the United Kingdom not invade Iraq. And I believe, in fact, that some of the diplomatic cables that have been released publicly that all of them warned them against the very things that did occur -- Iranian intervention, regional conflict, the rise of Islamism. And for all of its many, many faults Saddam was, in fact, secular and in fact had no link to al Qaeda where obviously the situation has deteriorated dramatically since. I cannot comment on what happened both in our government and the UK government in the lead up to the war because I was not in government at the time. I was at the Gates Foundation. But I arrived in Baghdad in June 2003. And very quickly I learned, frankly, that there clearly was no plan. They were very few Arabic speakers in the building. The country was in chaos. Baghdad had been looted. There was no government. And then all of that was compounded by Ambassador Bremmer's decision to both dispand the Iraqi army and then create the de-Ba'athification commission, which -- and then he put in Ahmed Chalabi in charge who used it as a political weapon agaionst his enemies. It was a mistake after mistake after mistake. And I remember telling Ambassador Bremmer in the fall of 2003 that this seemed to be a quagmire that could end up being on the scale of Vietnam. Regrettably that is exactly what has happened. You have had, as you said, 180 British soldiers killed, some 3,600 wounded, some 4,500 American soldiers killed, 35,000 wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, millions displaced, and obviously the conflict has now turned into a regional ethno-sectarian proxy war, which has dramatic implications on the European Union and on global security and stability. It is a fiasco and a Pandora's box, which never should have been opened.</s>ANDERSON: Right and to that point, Ali, sorry, Faisal, nobody understood, did they, what sort of Pandora's box they were opening. And quite frankly, nobody cared.</s>YAFAI: Well, nobody cared. And I don't think actually that it is sufficient to say that nobody knew. There were warnings, significant warnings from people who said that yes, Saddam was a terrible leader. Yes, he was holding down the Iraqis in the worst, most brutal way. But there were forces that if they were unleashed would threaten the entire region. Those very force were subsequently released. This Pandora's Box, whatever metaphor you want. And by failing to prepare, the U.S. and the UK prepared to fail. And the consequences of that can be seen today on the streets of Baghdad.</s>ANDERSON: Just after the report was published, Ali, the former Prime Minister Tony Blair who led Britain into the war in Iraq put out a statement saying this -- let's bring this up -- let me get my producers to bring this up for, quote, "I believe that it was better to remove Saddam Hussein, and I do not believe that the cause of the terrorism we see today whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world is anything to do with what I effected. If that wasn't the cause, Ali, what was?</s>KHEDRY: Well, these are very, very complicated issues with many variables at play. Hundreds of variables in the equation. Look, generally speaking I disagree with the former prime minister. I think, as I said, that Iraq -- what happened is the Iraq War destroyed the balance of power that existed in the Middle East, the balance of power that existed between Iran and Turkey and the Arab states. And when we took out Saddam's regime, that balance of power has never been restored and the violence and the jihadism and the intervention of the Iranian revolutionary guards and many other forces is the region struggling to reach to an equilibrium. But if I may, Becky, for a moment I think everybody has known for a long time that the Iraq War was a mistake. If i may focus on what is happening today and what is happening in the future, the thing that has concerned me and as we have discussed on your previous shows is the fact that it seems that London and Washington frankly haven't learned any of the lessons made during the Iraq War and in fact to this day the United States air force and some 5,000 American troops along with many diplomats and intelligence officers are risking their lives in pursuit of a failed strategy. We continue to pour billions of dollars and thousands lives into a government in Baghdad, which is deeply sectarian, which is illegitimate in the eyes of a majority of its population, which is deeply sectarian and very corrupt. And in the meantime, in neighboring Syria, the Assad regime with the support of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Lebanese Hezbollah and Russia continues to massacre its population. So, until we restore self-determination in Syria and Iraq and let them rule themselves rather than be subjected to their genocidal governments, this problem will only compound and global jihadism will only continue to grow.</s>ANDERSON: I think -- right, Ali, I think a lot of our viewers would say you would say that, wouldn't you. But you might have thought about that as a member of the administration, or certainly the administration you were working for might have thought of that 13 years ago and provided a post-invasion plan and infrastructure. Your response to what Ali is saying.</s>YAFAI: Look, I do think that the focus has to be on what is happening today in Iraq. Of course that's the case. You can't draw a straight line from the invasion of 2003 to what is happened today. But by god there is a background to it, there is a context to it, and by not preparing for it, by not providing a plan, not providing body armor, of course, it was always going to be the case that people would suffer. Now look, when you talk about these 2.6 million words, there are hundreds of witnesses -- there was not one of those witnesses to the Chilcot inquiry who was -- who talked about the situation in Iraq. This is not a far away war a long time ago to Iraqis, it is a war that is happening today on the streets.</s>ANDERSON: Faisal is with me in the studio, Ali is with us out of Turkey. To both of you, I thank you very much indeed. And let me just read you something, viewers, that the charity War Child put on Twitter today just as this report was released. And we noticed this as a team. And I just want to give you a quote. It says "one in five Iraqi children at risk of death, sexual violence, abduction, and recruitment into armed groups." Just a fact. Make of it what you will. What are your thoughts about the damning findings in that report and Britain's role in the Iraq War? You can learn a lot more about what it said and give us your thoughts by using the Facebook page. You know where that is. Facebook.com/cnnconnect. Lots of good stuff. The team works really hard on that. And we really, really appreciate your feedback. So, do get in touch. Let's get you some of the other news that we are following for you this hour. And Oscar Pistorius has been handed a six year prison sentence for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. It's far less than the minimum 15 years the prosecution had requested.\ The athlete described by the judge as a fallen hero and will serve at least half that sentence before he is eligible for parole. Turning to the United States, another police shooting is sparking protests and calls for justice. On Tuesday, a man was shot and killed after a confrontation with police in the state of Louisiana. Polo Sandoval has the details.</s>POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hundreds of protesters taking to the streets in Baton Rouge after this graphic video circulated on social media of a deadly encounter between police and a man at a convenience store. According to police, two officers responded to an anonymous call just after midnight on Tuesday. The caller said a man selling CDs outside of this store threatened him with a gun. The officers attempted to subdue 34- year-old Alton Sterling.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the ground. Get on the ground.</s>SANDOVAL: The store owner says that one officer used a TASER, but Sterling remained on his feet. Sterling is then tackled by an officer over the hood of a car as officers wrestled to restrain Sterling. Someone yells.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's got a gun.</s>SANDOVAL: Sterling was then shot several times at pointblank range.</s>ADBUL MULLAHI, STORE OWNER: I was actually two or three feet away.</s>SANDOVAL: The store owner says while Sterling lay on the parking lot, he saw officers pull a gun from his pocket. Sterling's family now demanding answers.</s>MAIGNON CHAMBERS, ALTON STERLING'S SISTER: I really want to know more about what happened, about the whole situation. Because my brother didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve it at all.</s>SANDOVAL: CNN affiliate WAFB reports that the officers in question were wearing body cameras, but they apparently fell off during the altercation. Baton Rouge police have placed the officers on administrative leave.</s>CPL. L'JEAN MCKNEELY, SPOKESMAN, BATON ROUGE POLICE DEPARTMENT: This is an ongoing investigation. We're going to review the video, we're going to review the audio. We have witnesses, non-biased witnesses here. We are going to bring them down to our station and interview them.</s>SANDOVAL: The coroner ruling that Sterling died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and back.</s>MULLAHI: God bless his soul. It could have been handled differently, much differently, on both sides it could have been handled differently.</s>ANDERSON: And that was Polo Sandoval reporting. Within the last hour, the mother of Alton Sterling's son spoke to the media saying the proof of Sterling's innocence is in that video.</s>QUINYETTA MCMILLAN, MOTHER OF STERLING'S SON: As this video has been shared across the world you will see with your own eyes how he was handled unjustly and killed without regard for the lives that he helped raise. As a mother, I have now been forced to raise a son who is going to remember what happened to his father that I can't take away from him.</s>ANDERSON: Local media report this is the third fatal officer-involved shooting this year in east Baton Rouge Parish. Live from Abu Dhabi this is Connect the World. I'm Becky Anderson for you. Just ahead, all he wanted was to dance, make it to the United States one day. But terror in Baghdad ended his life and his dreams. We'll have Adel's story coming up.