The Chilcot Inquiry

Written by Colin Breed on Sat 19th Dec 2009

With so much activity in the political world the Chilcot Inquiry into the events leading up to the war in Iraq has been rather sidelined with only minimal coverage on television and in the press. Last Sunday in a religious programme Tony Blair was interviewed and made the startling confession that even had he known that Saddam Hussein did not possess Weapons of Mass Destruction he would still have thought it right to remove him and that Iraq and the Middle East region is better off without him. Whilst I am sure we would agree with the latter, the fact that he would have ordered our armed forces into Iraq, and worry about finding some justification later, is quite astonishing.

It seems to confirm that he had given his word to President Bush many months previously and was unable to backtrack. I have always felt Tony Blair considered maintenance of the so called "special relationship" with the USA as the most important foreign policy objective, especially as he considered entering into a probable illegal war, with insufficient planning and questionable equipment and resources, to be an expedient course for the UK.

It will be interesting to see what he says to the inquiry some time next year. Perhaps two voices that would have been crucial to the inquiry proceedings are not able to give evidence because they are no longer with us. Sadly, neither the former Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, nor the former weapons expert, Dr David Kelly, will be able to give evidence. I suspect both would have been very candid, determined to provide accurate and important accounts of their roles and their meetings with officials. The resignation speech of Robin Cook will be long remembered as probably the best speech not only by a Member resigning his Ministerial Office, but of an honourable man placed in an impossible position and retaining his integrity and determination in the face of no doubt enormous political pressure.

The tragic death of Dr Kelly in the most suspicious of circumstances remains a mystery to this day. Several important questions have not been asked, let alone answered, and his contribution to this whole sordid affair would have been most revealing. Whether this contributed to his untimely death perhaps we shall never know.

The Inquiry is certainly diminished without skilled interrogation of witnesses and there is already an air of resignation that the establishment will once more successfully ensure the public will never be exposed to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.