The Chilcot Inquiry will whitewash all guilt from those who were responsible for the Iraq fiasco.

With the ‘Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war about to begin, it looks very much like after months of taking evidence from government mandarins, senior officers and government ministers, John Chilcot, will end up next year, issuing a report which make’s piffling recommendations for greater scrutiny, more accountability, fact-checking and new planning mechanisms. Whilst whitewashing all guilt from those responsible for this criminal endeavor; Tony Blair, the members of his cabinet, Chief of staff of the UK military, heads of the security services and David Cameron and the Tory opposition will all walk away without a stain on their characters. 


As has always been the way with UK public enquires, the main purpose is not to pinpoint those who are guilty of colluding in criminality, but to spread the guilt around so thin, there is no alternative but a total acquittal and to find the bureaucratic language to justify this lie. In Chilcot the State has found the right man, his suitability for the task was best demonstrated in the lead in to the invasion of Iraq, when he compared George W Bush, and Tony Blair to Roosevelt and Churchill during WW2.

Carne Ross, the former diplomat and the UK's Iraq "expert" on the UN Security Council between 1998-2002, recently wrote a powerful article it which he mapped out the devious purpose of those who appointed Chilcot and the direction he will take when directing the inquiry. First he sets out Mr Chilcot’s unsuitability to chair a public inquiry into the Iraq war and occupation.

“ That Sir John Chilcot served on the Butler inquiry is like trying the same crime twice with the same judge and jury – not a credible standard for truth-seeking. Nor would a truth-seeker allow the inquiry's staff to be headed by the civil servant who was in a senior position in the foreign and defence policy secretariat of the Cabinet Office during Britain's military occupation of Iraq

Meanwhile, many of those giving evidence will have a deep interest in confirming the government's narrative, for they are deeply implicated in having implemented it. One little-discussed disgrace of prewar policy-making is that there was never a proper review of the available options. Witnesses will no doubt claim to Chilcot that there were none and that sanctions "were not working". This is not true: the government's internal assessments up to 2002 confirmed that sanctions had prevented Iraq from rearming with any significant stocks of conventional weapons or WMD.”

Ross goes on to say that few in government truly understand places like Iraq and government Ministers can not hope to understand accurately the intricacy of the country. Let alone the complex UN Security Council resolutions that framed the weapons inspections and sanctions regime. Although he cryptically writes one man did, David Kelly and laments the fact that Kelly will not be available to give evidence to the Chilcot enquiry.

“ Other questions require a profound knowledge of the complex UN Security Council resolutions that framed the weapons inspections and sanctions regime, almost all of which were originally drafted by British officials. One resolution in particular established the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), the weapons inspection body, in 1999. During those negotiations, the UK and US insisted that UNMOVIC required at least six months of inspections before it could reach a view on the degree of Iraqi disarmament and report to the UN Security Council. If this was the allied view in 1999, why did that change in 2003, when inspectors were given just weeks to visit hundreds of sites across a large country, sift thousands of documents and then deliver their judgments? Will the inquiry have the resources or inclination to address these issues? They are central to understanding the policy issues that led to war.

The inquiry will probably focus on the senior officials. But much of the policy-making detail is known best by more junior officials who were immersed in Iraq day in, day out. Will the inquiry have the time to interview these officials thoroughly? Will these officials, many of whom are still in government, be guaranteed protection if they reveal accounts at odds with the official version?

Few are the officials genuinely knowledgeable about the twists, turns and options of long-term Iraq policy. At the MoD, there was one so authoritative on the complex questions of weapons inspections and WMD programmes that at the UK mission in New York we insisted on his presence in our briefings of UN Security Council diplomats. He is sadly no longer around to offer the inquiry his testimony. His name was David Kelly.”

Carne ends by displaying his contempt for the behaviour of David Cameron and the Tory opposition,

“ The opposition's motives are less clear, but still discernible. They, too, supported the war, supposedly because they believed the government's claims about WMD. But they failed to question the government in detail before the invasion and only began to do so when it became clear how disastrously the invasion and occupation had been planned. What the opposition parties want from the inquiry is evidence that they were misled, thus absolving them of blame. What they do not want is confirmation of what clearly was the case: that they – and by implication Parliament – were incapable of scrutinising government and holding officials to account in the gravest of circumstances.”

The full article by Carne Ross can be found here.