Ill-equipped to handle the obvious (From The Northern Echo)

Ill-equipped to handle the obvious

10:24am Thursday 26th November 2009

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)

I USED to think the Iraq War inquiry was a costly way of confirming what we already know about the disastrous deception – but it’s much worse than that.

After all, who seriously doubts that the invasion was illegal, or that Tony Blair wildly distorted the flimsy evidence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to satisfy the White House chum he had secretly promised to march in behind?

I innocently imagined a five-strong team of the great and good would sift through the evidence before deciding – if there is any justice – that the invasion was illegal and that the evidence was distorted.

However, as the panel got to work this week, I now fear the inquiry is ill-equipped to reach these obvious conclusions staring us all in the face.

First, there is the make-up of the panel. Its chairman – former top civil servant Sir John Chilcot – sat on the 2004 Butler inquiry that failed to get to the heart of the Iraq scandal.

Sir John was criticised for his unquestioning attitude then, yet, bizarrely, gets another chance as the Government once again turns to an establishment “safe pair of hands”.

Worse, alongside him will be two people who have been cheerleaders for Mr Blair, including academic Sir Lawrence Freedman, who co-wrote one of his “save the world”

speeches.

It would be nice to think that Mr Blair will crack under pressure, when he appears in January, before sobbing: “I know I have blood on my hands.”

But, facing no judges or lawyers skilled in cross-examination, the former Prime Minister and “Great Communicator” will simply run rings around the panel.

That leads me on to number three – Sir John’s insistence that his inquiry is not a court of law to establish guilt or innocence, which sits uneasily with the central controversy of the war’s illegality in most eyes.

Is he going to get bogged down in issues of equipment shortages, rather than address the apparent violation of international law and whether war crimes were committed?

On the plus side, there is good reason to believe that secret documents still remain buried in Whitehall that can shed new light on how Mr Blair misled the nation.

That, certainly, is the view of Carne Ross, formerly Britain’s top Iraq specialist at the United Nations, who tried to blow the whistle on Saddam’s lack of WMD in the build-up to war.

And the open hearings could provide great theatre, not least if Lord Goldsmith – the Attorney- General who changed his mind to declare the war legal – makes an appearance.

But, six years on, the inquiry is unlikely to lift the nation’s mood of Iraq-fatigue.

CHRIS Mullin will decide the fate of his misbehaving peers as the temporary chairman of the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee – which should fill them with dread.

Not only did the Sunderland South Labour MP boast squeaky clean expenses, but he has no time for MPs who moan they are badly paid.

He wrote this week: “I remember standing behind a wealthy Tory in the queue for tea, who said to me with great passion ‘What you don’t realise, Chris, is that no Tory can survive on an MP’s salary’.

“Much to my embarrassment, he said this within the hearing of the tea room staff whose incomes are a third of ours...”

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)