There have been demands for an independent inquiry into the circumstances in which Tony Blair’s Labour government took the UK to war in Iraq alongside the United States ever since the 2003 invasion, when up to a million Britons demonstrated in protest at what was probably the largest demonstration the country had seen.
Blair and his successor Gordon Brown always promised an inquiry but insisted it could not be held until the last British soldier had quit alarm. Well, now the Brits have gone and the investigation Brown has announced looks very much like yet another establishment cover-up, on a par with previous probes into the nature of the intelligence used to justify the US-led assault and into the still mysterious death of a government scientist, who blew the whistle on the manipulation of WMD evidence.
It is extraordinary that the British premier, still fighting for his political life, could have made yet another political misjudgment and insisted the probe be held in secret. Not only has this angered opposition politicians, including the Liberal Democrats who were the only party to oppose the invasion from the outset, but also many Labour MPs, who only backed Blair and accepted his now-discredited assurances about Saddam’s WMD capabilities, with the greatest reluctance.
Brown’s claim that holding the inquiry in private is in the interests of national security was quickly given the lie by former army officers and intelligence officials who protested the issue was a smokescreen. They added that if there really were sensitive intelligence evidence to be heard, the hearing could be closed in order to do so.
Further proof that this is a cover-up comes from the appointment of establishment grandee and retired senior servant Sir John Chilcott as its chairman. Chilcott was also a member of the Butler inquiry, whose findings whitewashed Blair and his inner circle for fixing the intelligence they used to justify the invasion. Instead Butler blamed the British security service MI6 for getting its facts wrong. And then there is the fact that the Chilcott report will not be delivered for a year, by which time Labour will have had to fight another general election. Therefore, even in the highly unlikely event that Chilcott actually lists the lies and evasions the Blair government (of which Gordon Brown was part) employed to take Britain to war alongside his friend George W. Bush, it will be too late for voters to react. The Iraq invasion was a shameful episode in British history and it is now clear that Brown intends to cover it up shamefully as well. The calculation may be that recession-hit Britons will by next year have too many domestic preoccupations to worry about the falsehoods that plunged Iraq into chaos and the Middle East into tension and danger. But the British government owes a responsibility to the wider international community. The continued cover-up over an illegal and bungled invasion further damages Britain’s reputation. It also undermines international legal principles upon which London is normally so keen to insist for others.
