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Unasked questions on the Chilcot Report

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8 July 2016 12:00 am - 0     - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

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Following the release of the long-awaited and much-delayed Chilcot Report into Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq, the then Prime Minister and the man responsible for committing Britain to war, Tony Blair, has expressed “more regret, sorrow and apology than you can ever know or can believe”. Strangely though Blair in the same breath says that he stood by his actions and would make the same decision again.   


If apology is all that it takes to close the case, then those who are calling for prosecution such as Paul Flynn, leader of the Shadow Commons, would find it tough to salvage sincerity from Blair’s apology. Prosecution however is something that has to go beyond extracting apology considering the fact that Blair misled Parliament and initiated action that resulted in death and injury of British troops (from the point of view of the British voter) with more than 150,000 Iraqis dead, a clearly conservative figure. The destruction caused to Iraq and the chaos engendered by this adventure will also have to be factored in. Flynn in fact says that the entire Parliament is on trial because it voted in favour of military action on the eve of the 2003 invasion. This means that the present British Prime Minister David Cameron is also on trial.  


Cameron has point-blank refused to acknowledge that the intervention was wrong and a mistake. Instead he says, “I think people should read the report and come to their own conclusions. Clearly the aftermath of this conflict was profoundly disastrous in so many ways. I don’t move away from that.” That’s an easy and irresponsible response. If it is a legitimate statement that makes for closure then it encourages all manner of war crimes simply because perpetrators and accessories after the fact can get away by expressing “regret that is not regrettable” (as Blair has) or simply limit comment to the status of the outcome (as Cameron has). One cannot but recall Cameron’s scathing, condescending and sanctimonious attacks on Sri Lanka based on highly tendentious claims marked by exaggeration, footnoting of context and pernicious political objectives. The invasion of Iraq was not a hostage rescue operation and the struggle was not against the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization.  

 
The Chilcot Inquiry was announced in 2009, six years after the decision to invade Iraq and covered the run-up, the action and the aftermath. The UN, David Cameron and others quite in contrast demanded that investigation of alleged wrongdoing in Sri Lanka be limited to the final stages of the conflict. Secondly, similar investigations commissioned by Sri Lanka were rubbished. What’s worse is that the current Government has inexplicably refused to submit relevant findings to the ongoing dialogue with the international community on this subject. These are pertinent issues that warrant reflection and debate.   


Despite all the media attention that Sir John Chilcot’s report has received there are certain questions that the mainstream media is avoiding.   


What does the Chilcot Report imply for the United States of America, for Britain after all was mere adjunct to what was essentially a Washington-led exercise? What do these findings say about the United Nations, its potency and its scandalous selectivity when it comes to the energy expended in calling for investigations into war crimes? Why was there no call from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for an independent investigation if not for anything but the utter sloth on the part of the British judicial system, not to mention the non-existence of weapons of mass destruction whose neutralization was the justification for the invasion?   
Most importantly, if it was all a lie, what WAS the truth? Why is the mainstream media of Britain not asking Blair what made him commit Britain to invading Iraq if all the reasons trotted out were not only false but were known to be false?   


In this context, as of now, there’s not much to celebrate about the Chilcot Report. Much of it was known anyway. What’s interesting perhaps is that the way it is being received is as pernicious as reasons trotted out that produced outcomes warranting the investigation in the first place. In short, more of typical Western half-speak in a damage-control exercise which fools no one but neither will see any of the guilty being hauled to the Haig.  


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