Chilcot panel has few new insights into Iraq war
The long-awaited Chilcot commission report on the 2003 Iraq war is out, and, perhaps not surprisingly, it offers little that we didn't already know. Sure, there are some interesting tidbits of information in the 12 volume, 2.6 million-word report, like how the British intelligence agency used suspicious information from a source that it knew had been inspired by a popular Hollywood film. And also a detailed reading obviously offers some nuances on important factors like the scope and quality of cooperation between the UK and the US, and how the leaders of those two nations, Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W Bush respectively, worked with each other. But in its main conclusions, the report reiterates facts and observations that are already widely known and accepted.
The commission notes that there wasn't enough credible intelligence to support the assumption that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or that he was going to use them against the West; that the Western coalition took the military route even though all diplomatic options had not been exhausted; that even this military campaign, though successful in the limited aim of 'liberating' Iraq from Saddam Hussein, was shabbily planned; and, finally, that the post-war effort at rebuilding the Iraqi political system was a complete mess. On the specific questions of whether the war was illegal under international law and if Blair could be tried as a war criminal — the two hotly debated issues in recent times — the report leaves a blank for the first and veers towards a ‘no' for the second. No surprise then that Blair's response to the report has been to highlight the fact that the commission had found no proof of him or his Government willfully deceiving Parliament and the public particularly on the WMD issue. Sure, Blair has also taken full responsibility for the outcomes of the war, which effectively opened a Pandora's box in Iraq and let out anarchy and mindless bloodletting, but he has also painstakingly underlined that his decision was taken in good faith and on the basis of information he had at the moment. Essentially then, he has framed the issue as a leadership challenge rather than callous, if not criminal, approach to policy-making.
That said, hindsight is always 20/20, and the Chilcot report has little relevance on the ground, especially in Iraq where the people are suffering its aftermath. America's air-dropped democracy in that country is a farce; the Government is inept and corrupt; poverty and unemployment have skyrocketed; terror groups control large parts of the country. The recent bomb blast in Baghdad that killed more than 200 people is just one example of the mess that is Iraq today. No wonder then that many would like Saddam Hussein, who at least kept a lid on sectarianism and terrorism, to come back from the dead, but let's not forget that he wasn't exactly a saint either.