Chilcott and Blair

The establishment in the UK are extremely adept at giving just enough ground to allow some progress - but not too much! In this case, the establishment will have to watch its step. We live in a time, when for very good reasons, the electorate do not trust or respect their leaders. 

The decision to go to war in support of the Bush regime is the worst foreign policy decision in modern history. The suspicion that this was a done deal stitched up between Blair and Bush well before Parliament became involved is credible. For the Chilcott Inquiry to allow a lack of transparency is asking for further trouble. This will not go away. It is something Ed Miliband needs to think long and hard about because any lack of transparency will rebound on him and the current Labour leadership. 

Some will argue what is all the fuss about? Parliament voted for the war therefore shut up and get on with it. Here is what one pundit had to say on the Telegraph ‘comment’ pages:

“it was a crime to mislead the public, press and parliament in order to secure the vote to bring about that war; that it was a crime to wilfully and deliberately lie by insinuating a link between the Islamist perpetrators of 9/11 and an impoverished, defenceless Arab nation led by a secular despot with fewer links to al-Qaida luminaries than had the CIA during the Cold War; that it was a crime to launch a war of aggression against that nation on the false pretence of its being a threat to our national security; and in so doing bring about the death of somewhere between a hundred thousand and a million innocents including British soldiers sent to their death under false pretences (may they rest in peace) and British citizens who lost their lives in London as a direct consequence of that war; and that it was a crime, once the pretext for that war had been proved bogus, to change the narrative into one in which the war had been conducted to depose a very bad man” ‘scaroth’ Telegraph 31/5/14

We also learned today that the United Services Institute conducted research into the after effects of the war and concluded that the Iraq fiasco made the threat of terrorist attack far more likely in the UK. 

Thanks a bunch Blair.

Get some balls Chilcott.