Iraq War
First Wednesday: Chilcot and the Legacy of Iraq
Seven years after the announcement of the Iraq Inquiry by then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the long-awaited Chilcot Inquiry report into the UK’s involvement in Iraq from 2001 until 2009 is finally due to be published on Wednesday 6 July. We will be joined by a panel of experts to hear their initial reactions to the report – and without the power to assign criminal culpability, we will consider its potential impact in bringing those accountable to justice and in assuring that a foreign policy disaster of this scale is not repeated.
The Grey Line: Portraits of doubt and courage
By Jim Treadway Jo Metson Scott spent the past five years photographing American and British soldiers who spoke out against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Using their letters and portraits, her book The Grey Line explores the soldiers’ reasons for doing so, and the fates that have awaited them. Metson Scott introduced The Grey Line […]
Ten year anniversary of the Iraq War: Have lessons been learned?
Despite hundreds of thousands of people having taken to the streets of London and elsewhere to voice their opposition to military action in Iraq, on 19 March 2003, air strikes on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad began. What followed was a US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s government, and marked the start of years of violent conflict. Ten years on, in a debate chaired by Channel 4 News’ Jon Snow, we will ask: have lessons been learned?
Graham Greene: A Finger on the Pulse of the 20th Century
By Jim Treadway "He was there!" Director Thomas O’Connor said of English author and journalist Graham Greene (1904-1991), the subject of his documentary Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene, which was viewed by a full house at the Frontline Club on 1 October. "There, you know, for 70 years, from one place to another, […]
We Went To War: A Healing Portrait of Veteran Loneliness
By Jim Treadway In 1970, English documentarian Michael Grigsby released I Was a Soldier, which explored life after war for three young men returning from Vietnam to their homes in the heartland of Texas. Grigsby went back to Texas last year, rekindling his friendships with these men and their families, and telling their updated story in We […]
Report: Whistleblowers make the world a safer place debate (II)
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange makes his case at Kensington Town Hall. Photo by Sophia Spring. You can view the full event here. This is part II of our report on the special debate, “whistleblowers make the world a safer place,” organised by the Frontline Club in collaboration with New Statesman magazine. Part I can be […]
Report: Whistleblowers make the world a safer place debate
Download this episode View in iTunes Watch the event here. Sir David Richmond makes his case against whistleblowing at Kensington Town Hall. Photo by Sophia Spring. More than 850 people crammed in to Kensington Town Hall on Saturday evening for our special debate in collaboration with New Statesman magazine, “this house believes whistleblowers make the […]
What WikiLeaks has told us
Since 2006, the whistleblowers’ website WikiLeaks has published a mass of information we would otherwise not have known. The leaks have exposed dubious procedures at Guantanamo Bay and detailed meticulously the Iraq War’s unprecedented civilian death-toll. They have highlighted the dumping of toxic waste in Africa as well as revealed America’s clandestine military actions in […]