An Exercise in Dilution.

Chilcot’s report on the Iraq War inquiry was published today and, as far as I can tell, said nothing we didn’t know already; it just watered it down a bit. It said, for example, that Tony Blair ‘overstated’ the case for war. I think most of us would put it a little more strongly than that. And it still leaves certain questions to which we shall never know the answers, such as:

1. How many innocent Iraqi civilians died during the war and in the immediate aftermath? Chilcot says ‘at least 150,000, probably more.’ This is partly due, of course, to the fact that during the war the civilian casualties were counted by the GW Method which sought to minimise the statistics as much as possible. And there was one casualty I didn’t see mentioned – Dr David Kelly, the chief weapons inspector who exposed Blair’s economy with the truth over WMDs in a radio interview, and who later committed suicide (allegedly.)

2. How on earth did Blair manage to avoid impeachment?

3. Who was the senior partner in all this warmongering, Bush (as most American would assume) or Blair (as other Americans apparently believe)? Was Tony the obedient poodle or the Master at Hounds?

4. What was the real reason for the war in Iraq?

And soon it will all be forgotten because there are more important things to worry about. (And Tony says he’s very sorry, by the way, but still insists he did the right thing.)