Yet Another Loss - Robin Cook

Robin Cook died in 2005. "After his 2003 resignation from the Cabinet, Cook remained an active backbench Member of Parliament until his death. After leaving the Government, Cook was a leading analyst of the decision to go to war in Iraq, giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee which was later relevant during the Hutton and Butler inquiries."

"In a column for the Guardian[14] four weeks before his death, Cook caused a stir when he described Al-Qaeda as a product of a western intelligence"

On his epitaph the wikipedea quotes "I may not have succeeded in halting the war, but I did secure the right of parliament to decide on war." It is a reference to Cook's strong opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the words were reportedly chosen by his widow and two sons from his previous marriage, Chris and Peter."

"In early August 2005, Cook and his wife, Gaynor, took a two-week holiday in the Highlands of Scotland. At around 2:20 pm, on 6 August 2005, whilst walking down Ben Stack in Sutherland, Scotland, Cook suddenly suffered a severe heart attack, collapsed and lost consciousness. A helicopter containing paramedics arrived 40 minutes after a 999 call was taken. Cook then was flown to Raigmore Hospital, Inverness. Gaynor did not get in the helicopter, and was left to walk down the mountain. Despite efforts made by the medical team to revive Cook in the helicopter, he was already beyond recovery, and at 4:05pm, minutes after arrival at the hospital, was pronounced dead. Two days later, a post mortem revealed that Cook died of hypertensive heart disease." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Cook

"Cook's diaries contain insights about the mindset of colleagues and the way they responded to events. They show a government for whom the real nature of the threat posed by Iraq was subsidiary to other considerations: for Blair the imperative was sticking close to Washington; for most of his colleagues it was about loyalty to him."

"Cook was almost alone in exploring the case for war on its merits, and his willingness to resign because of it is the best argument against those who insist they were misled by faulty intelligence. On 20 February 2003 Cook received an hour-long private briefing from John Scarlett, in which he quizzed Britain's senior intelligence official on what was really known about WMD. This meeting confirmed his strong belief, expressed in his resignation speech to parliament a month later, that "Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term – namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target". http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/03/unlike-short-cook-not-conned-chilcot

Our world is in urgent need for ethical leadership and especially with government ministers. There are obviously some people in influential positions who do not have vision or they have an agenda that is NOT in the public interest. There is no room for inflated egos, especially lawyers in the job to get wealthy. There is no room for ZENOPHOBICS in leadership either. There is no room for mistakes to be made that come at the cost of ANY human life.

Life is precious! The people who live and even died for truth will not be forgotten. The real truth can never be eradicated no matter how much effort is made to keep it buried.

RIP Robin Cook.

Pauline Maria