Signaller Darren Kewley saw children playing in the dusty streets of Basra with no shoes on their feet, scavenging through rubbish and living a life of poverty in the golden shadow of Saddam Hussein’s palace. As part of the 7th Armoured Brigade he invaded Iraq, what he had seen and the viciousness of the Republican Guard confirmed to him that the war in Iraq was moral‘and we really could change things for the better’.

After a gruelling two months training in the Kuwaiti desert, Mr Kewley, 25, who now works in IT and communications, explained in an interview in Liverpool after Alastair Campbell gave evidence at the Iraq Inquiry on 12 January, that he was struck by ‘fear, shock, awe, horror, excitement and a lot of boredom’ during the Iraq invasion in March 2003, but by his return to Iraq in 2004 he had changed from a naive 18 year-old soldier to a critic of British and American politics suspicious of the aim of war in Iraq and troubled by the effect on the Middle East.

‘At first I didn't give a great deal of thought to the moral or political debate, I found the chance to do my job, albeit under-equipped, in an operational environment exciting,’ said Mr Kewley, ‘a lot of the senior officers had served in the first Gulf War and there was numerous stories of terrible things that had happened first time round, so the entire principles for going to war seemed pretty black and white to me.’

As his tour of duty continued, Mr Kewley began to question British and American motives when looting began in the city and law and order was non-existent following the disbanding of the Iraqi police forceafter the invasion.

 ‘America seemed to have a different viewpoint to the British personnel,’ added Mr Kewley, ‘this was clear with the way they treated the Iraqi civilians – generally with suspicion – and the way they brashly went around with American flags flying from every vehicle. Our Commanders pushed us to take the ‘hearts and minds’ approach and we were forbidden from flying British flags because we wanted to be seen as liberators not invaders.’

It became clear in the following months that there was no post-war plan for Iraq and the British command had been ‘sidelined by the Americans’.

Mr Kewley thinks the Iraq war has severely damaged the credibility of Western democratic values and Alastair Campbell’s claim at the Iraq Inquiry that Britain should be proud of ‘changing Iraq from what it was to what it is becoming’ was absurd and ‘frankly a little bit deluded’.

In his confident address to the inquiry committee members, Mr Campbell said that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair ‘genuinely believed’ that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction [WMD] and the threat from Iraq had not been misrepresented but reasons for the conflict could have been ‘clearer’. The September 2002 dossier that claimed the WMD could attack Britain in 45 minutes has been controversial and their threat is being reiterated at the Inquiry to reinforce Britain’s reasons for joining the US in the invasion.

Mr Campbell said he felt privileged to have been ‘there and very very proud of the part that I was able to play’ and he supported Mr Blair’s decision to invade Iraq, support Mr Campbell revealed was promised in a letter from Mr Blair to former US President George W. Bush in 2002 stating if diplomatic negotiations failed ‘it is to be done militarily, Britain will be there’.

Mr Campbell denied that Mr Blair had agreed with US led regime change in Iraq at Mr Bush’s Crawford Ranch in April 2002. However, Sir David Manning, the former foreign policy advisor, told the inquiry that Mr Blair was ‘absolutely prepared to say he was willing to contemplate regime change’.

Mr Blair was asked in an interview in December 2009 if he would still have invaded Iraq if there were no WMD. He said: ‘I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]’. However, Justice Secretary Jack Straw contradicted Mr Blair’srevelation on 21 January at the inquiry saying that the US backed regime change in Iraq since 1998 but ‘It was not our policy in 2002 or 2003, there would havebeen no legal basis for it ever being our policy’. Mr Blair will appear at the Iraq Inquiry on 29 January.

Sir John Chilcott, chair of the inquiry, has said: ‘We will be considering the UK’s involvement in Iraq, including the ways decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened.’ Though in December 2009, Sir Chilcott cut broadcasting of the former ambassador to the UN Sir Jeremy Greenstock’s testimony at the Iraq Inquiry because of its sensitive nature suggesting, claimed the Guardian, ‘evidence isbeing suppressed to avoid political or diplomatic embarrassment rather than genuine issues of national security’.

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York, President Bush sought a forcible state response to terrorism brandishing Iraq as part of the ‘axis of evil’ in January 2002. The UN hoped diplomatic resolutions would diffuse the crisis and despite the US administrations best efforts no link between the terrorist attacks and Saddam Hussein could be made– making a forcible state response illegal under International Law – British and US coalition forces invaded based on one legal point: Iraq’s failure to implement some UN Security Council resolutions drafted by the UK, US, Spain and Northern Ireland incurring disdain from the UN and citizens around the world.

In her bestselling book, TheShock Doctrine, Naomi Klein gives an in depth account of the recent history of US governments and its foreign policy of using military force, US backed dictatorships and ‘disaster capitalism’ to shock the targeted country into accepting regime change through economic strangulation and brutal military force to restructure a country based on US policies.

‘In Iraq,’ Klein writes, ‘first came the war, designed,according to the authors of the Shock and Awe military doctrine, to “control the adversary’s will, perceptions and understanding and literally make an adversary impotent to react”. Next came….mass privatization, complete free trade, a 15 percent flat tax….and when Iraqi’s resisted they were rounded upand taken to jail where bodies and minds were met with more shocks, these ones distinctly less metaphorical.’

In 2004, Darren Kewley returned to Iraq with the 4th Armoured Brigade after being trained in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, similar to the training given to troops in Northern Ireland, with the Welsh Guards. He was trained in Iraqi customs and Arabic and his command was still pushing the ‘hearts and minds’ approach. ‘It was the political command which I questioned most,’ said Mr Kewley.

‘It seemed like the locals were no way as friendly and welcoming as last time but I could not blame them: there was still no power, no security and no real infrastructure in Basra,’ he said.

‘Other problems came with the Militia in Basra who were enforcing their own form of Sharia law in the city, attacking businesses that were seen as immoral and generally taking the law into their own hands. I worked closely with the Iraqi Police Force over this period. Some of the tactics they were using were also no better to that of Saddam's Police force.’

Mr Kewley said his service in Iraq and seeing the result of the political decisions made in London and Washington has had a huge effect on his life:

‘It became apparent that we were all pawns in Bush and Blair's adventure in Iraq -an adventure which, in my opinion, has damaged not only Iraq but millions of lives, the entire Middle East and Britain's moral basis for the war against terror. It has created more extremism in the UK and abroad and has galvanised extremists we are fighting in Afghanistan. My fear is because of Iraq a positive outcome in Afghanistan may be very far away.’