Truth about Iraq that Chilcot has yet to tell
BACK in July 2009, civil servant Sir John Chilcot was hired at £790 per day to investigate the Iraq War and identify lessons that could be learned from it. His inquiry was expected to take 12 months.
More than six years on, after spending well over £10million of taxpayers’ money, he has yet to publish his report – which is now likely to be delayed, like so much other vital public business, until after the EU referendum.
Today, our serialisation of an important book, based on exclusive behind-thescenes interviews with many of those involved, uncovers the scandalous truth about the run-up to the invasion, which Sir John has shockingly failed to deliver. Its author, the distinguished investigative reporter Tom Bower, painstakingly charts how Tony Blair embarked on a campaign of deception and concealment to lead Britain into a catastrophic war on the basis of a lie.
He tells how the former prime minister was so intent on joining America’s invasion of Iraq that he froze out defence chiefs, the cabinet secretary and most of his ministers, including even the foreign and defence secretaries.
Meanwhile, Mr Blair fed MPs and the country a diet of monstrous lies, concocted with the help of supine intelligence chiefs and his viscerally dishonest spinmeister-in-chief, Alastair Campbell.
Horrifyingly, the book shows that he recklessly endangered our troops by refusing to reveal his invasion decision even to the defence chief in charge of supplying them with body armour. When warned this was ‘ crazy’, he sneered: ‘Well, that’s how it is.’
Later, he was to explain – with grotesque unintended irony – that he couldn’t act as ‘ honest broker’ in United Nations peace talks if it was clear he planned to go to war!
As their inquests found, some soldiers – including Sergeant Steven Roberts, shot after being told to hand his armour to a comrade – were to die for lack of this kit.
Above all, Bower’s book raises profound questions about the failings of a British constitution that allowed one man, described by many as ‘ deluded’ and suffering from a ‘ messiah complex’, to wield unfettered power over war and peace from his Downing Street sofa. Indeed, every supposed check and balance on the prime minister’s executive authority proved utterly ineffective in restraining Blair’s ambitions.
Parliament and its committees, the ‘independent’ Civil Service – even the Attorney General, charged with giving impartial legal advice – bent to the bidding of arguably the most amoral politician ever to hold the keys to No 10.
True, a handful of individuals emerge with credit – notably Admiral Lord Boyce, Chief of the Defence Staff, who repeatedly raised concerns over the wisdom and legality of entering the war. For his pains, he was sacked (though in a Blairite touch, he was asked to stay on until after the invasion for the sake of appearances). Otherwise, the book exposes an unedifying parade of villains: Sir Richard Dearlove, the MI6 head who got far too close to Blair; the mendacious Mr Campbell; Sir John Scarlett, the intelligence chief who signed off false claims about weapons of mass destruction; Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general who changed his advice that the invasion would be illegal…
At the centre of this web, of course, was Mr Blair himself, stage-managing a war whose consequences can be measured in oceans of blood, a Middle East in turmoil and the rise of Islamic State.
What is so profoundly disturbing is that since Iraq, we have blundered into Libya – leaving it a paradise for terrorists – and now Syria too. Indeed, no constitutional lessons appear to have been learned. And still we wait for Chilcot...