The Chilcot Report will at last be released in the summer of 2016. After years of delay and up to £10million of taxpayers money, the inquiry into whether there was wrongdoing by Tony Blair and the British government in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 will be made public.
When the inquiry was announced in 2009 by then PM Gordon Brown, it was initially said that it would take place behind closed doors. So the shady, closed doors agreement to invade Iraq would have been investigated behind closed doors, in a shady way. Thankfully this decision was reversed due to media pressure. Will the report really be a progressive step forward though? With allegations about ministers burning important files about the legality of the Iraq war, the Chilcot inquiry can’t expose the truth. Vital files have been classified by Cameron’s government, files which probably could be helpful in the Chilcot enquiry. According to the Independent, Washington have intervened to delay the publishing’s of the report. The end product we see in 2016 will not be the full picture. It will not be a transparent view of the steps taken by Tony Blair and his government, of his highly classified conversations with the then American President George Bush.
Apparently the report will be critical of Tony Blair. It would be hard not to criticise a man who effectively committed genocide by invading Iraq and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It’s almost unbelievable how long it has taken Lord Chilcot to work out that this is a bad thing. The constant delays are disrespectful to the all the dead, the families of British soldiers killed and to the millions of Iraqis displaced and affected by this terrible conflict.
The UNs examples of war crimes include “intentionally killing civilians”. I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I don’t think the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians can be considered unintentional. The disappearance of over 90,000 children isn’t an accident. Tony Blair shouldn’t be commenting about the Iraq war to the British media, he should be giving statements at The Hague. It is not radical or controversial to suggest Tony Blair should be held on trial at the International Criminal Court for war crimes, as establishment voices will say and echo, but merely a much needed step in the right direction. If Tony Blair was from a poorer country, then he would have surely been tried by now.
Sir John Chilcot, a member of the British establishment alongside Blair, cannot effectively and fairly conduct an inquiry into the Iraq war. The Chilcot report may well be released in 2016, but don’t expect it to be anything more than a political dummy, to try and keep dissenting voices quiet. An independent, international investigation into Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq is needed, a thorough report which answers to no-one and absorbs all the evidence. The Chilcot inquiry is not nearly good enough.
Lawrence Cwerner
[Image: AFP]