Chilcot: 2.6 million Words of Foreplay Followed by Coitus Interruptus
Is Tony Blair a bumbling fool or a scheming knave? The answer is the latter for the vast majority of the UK who felt that the intelligence had been deliberately ‘sexed up’ in order to take Britain into war with Iraq. All that the majority of us really wanted from Chilcot was confirmation that Tony Blair had indeed intentionally exaggerated the scant intelligence of Saddam Hussein’s putative weapons of mass destruction. In the end we didn’t get it, despite the obvious and deserving criticism of various aspects of the Iraq war in the report.
Chilcot asserted that policy on the Iraq invasion was made on the basis of unchallenged and flawed intelligence assessments. The word “flawed” is more related to natural imperfection rather than deliberate damage. So a judgment using the word carries the assumption that Tony Blair didn’t realise the intelligence was imperfect, and therefore that he was a fool rather than a knave. In reality – paraphrasing a well-known scientific saying – Tony Blair used the intelligence as a drunk would use a street light, for support rather than illumination. This is all but confirmed by his letter to then US President Bush eight months before the Iraq invasion, offering his unqualified support for war with the words: “I will be with you, whatever.”
With advice from the security services of both the US and the UK, Tony Blair was probably in the best position to realise the shortcomings of any intelligence. However, if he still wanted to use it to go to war with Iraq, then he certainly wouldn’t have wanted to challenge it. But did Chilcot ever consider why the intelligence wasn’t challenged?
Perhaps Chilcot could say that it wasn’t within his brief to make judgments about Tony Blair’s motives, yet he has done. He’s assumed that Blair acted “in good faith”. Not only does it allow Blair himself off the hook, but also the Parliamentary sheep, including David Cameron, who voted to go to war with Iraq. In fact Tony Blair’s ”good faith” was virtually the first thing that David Cameron mentioned in his Parliamentary speech following the Chilcot report’s release. Otherwise it might suggest that those MPs voting for war might themselves have been aware of the intelligence deceit, but thought it was a good idea to go to war with Iraq anyway. If any “good faith” was shown by Tony Blair it was only to President George W Bush and the president’s intent to invade Iraq as a bizarre response to 9/11.
This is the third investigation into aspects of the Iraq War. The first was the discredited Hutton Inquiry, established by Tony Blair to investigate the suspicious death of weapons inspector David Kelly. It exonerated Tony Blair of any wrongdoing despite the fact that the inquiry found evidence that the wording of the dossier as the basis for war had been altered. The strongest possible case for war was presented within the limitations of available intelligence. There was also evidence that Tony Blair’s Director of Communications, Alistair Campbell, had suggested some of the alterations. The second investigation was the Butler Review of the Intelligence of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which conveniently excluded the role of politicians. John Chilcot was a member of the Hutton inquiry review committee.
Chilcot took the leading role in the latest inquiry. Despite the wealth of criticism he meted out, Chilcot managed the difficult task of any Inquiry head in representing members of the establishment as well-meaning and honest, but occasionally fallible. As expected Chilcot pulled out of questioning Tony Blair’s honesty, despite the evidence. I await the conclusions of the 4th Iraq Inquiry with not exactly eager anticipation.
