Leave it to an American magazine to provide the best broad-brush wrap-up so far of the Chilcot inquiry.
There are so many things wrong with the Chilcot Inquiry–the British government’s official investigation of “the UK’s involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken”–that it’s hard to know where to begin: none of the witnesses are under oath, Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s promise that “no British document” would be withheld has been repeatedly broken, all the questioners are far too deferential and (though much of the controversy has centered on whether the invasion of Iraq was a violation of international law) none of them are lawyers. After watching Tony Blair bob and weave his way through more than six hours of mostly feeble cross-examination in January, the chronically independent Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews complained of “a tribunal without teeth providing trial without tribulation.”
Comments D.D. Guttenplan in the Nation, before going on to note that-
-one invaluable lesson of the Chilcot Inquiry is the terrible cost to any country–not just in terms of its soldiers’ lives but in terms of its leaders’ sanity–that defines the national interest as standing shoulder to shoulder with Washington. Self-respect won’t allow Blair to admit the truth: he took Britain into Iraq because without American patronage and protection it would be just another country that used to have an empire, like Italy or Spain–or Turkey.
On that note, Blair’s self-righteous bullshit and now Campbell’s teary moment on the BBC make me fucking sick. Somebody punch one of these bastards please.
“”I’ve been through a lot on this…I’m a bit upset”
I bet the people of Fallujah are more than a bit upset too…
*Apologies for the thin postings. It’s going to be this way for a while until me life gets sorted out a touch here in the non-blogosphere…












