Journalist at RFI (ex-DW, BBC, CBC, F24...), writer (on art, music, culture...), I work in radio, podcasting, online, on films.
As a writer, I also contributed to the New Arab, Art UK, Byline Times, the i Paper...
Born in Paris, I was based in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi (covering East Africa), Bangui, and in Bristol, UK. I also reported from Italy, Germany, Haiti, Tunisia, Liberia, Senegal, India, Mexico, Iraq, South Africa...
This blog is to share my work, news and cultural discoveries.
Statement of the Prosecutor correcting assertions contained in article published by The Telegraph
On Saturday, 2 July 2016, the British daily, The Telegraph, published an article erroneously asserting that my Office has “already ruled out putting Tony Blair on trial for war crimes.”
The article is being widely disseminated, aggravating the spread of inaccurate information concerning the ongoing preliminary examination carried out by my Office with respect to the Situation in Iraq. As such, I am compelled to correct the public record by providing the following clarification.
First, I reiterate that all the activities of my Office, including all our preliminary examination work, are conducted with fullindependence and impartiality. These principles are non-negotiable in my Office.
Second, it must be emphasised that my Office has not taken a position with respect to the Chilcot Report; the contents of which are yet to be released and are unknown to us at this stage.
Third, my Office is currently conducting a preliminary examination with respect to the Situation in Iraq, not an investigation. Apreliminary examination is aimed at determining whether there is a reasonable basis to open an investigation on the basis of all reliable information that we have independently assessed in accordance with the Rome Statute legal criteria. The Office will consider the Chilcot Report as part of its due diligence of assessing all relevant material that could provide further context to the allegations of war crimes by British troops in Iraq. Additional details of this work are available in our latest preliminary examination report.
Fourth, while the International Criminal Court (“ICC” or the “Court”) currently has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, as explained to The Telegraph, its jurisdiction over the crime of aggressionhas not yet been activated. Therefore, the specific question of the legality of the decision to resort to the use of force in Iraq in 2003 – or elsewhere – does not fall within the legal mandate of the Court, and hence, is not within the scope of its preliminary examination.
An important distinction must be borne in mind between war crimes, which fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC, and the crime of aggression, which, at the present stage, does not. These are two very distinct crimes with their own legal elements of criminality. Suggesting, therefore, that the ICC has ruled out investigating the former British Prime Minister for war crimes but may prosecute soldiers is a misrepresentation of the facts, drawn from unfamiliarity with the Court’s jurisdictional parameters. These parameters also require the Court to exercise jurisdiction only when a state is unable or unwilling to genuinely investigate and prosecute the perpetrators.
Once a decision is made to open an investigation in any given situation, my Office may investigate and prosecute any individual suspected of committing crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction, namely war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide. We do this work without fear or favour and irrespective of the official capacity of the perpetrator(s). In accordance with the scope of my Office’s policy, in fact, as a general rule, my Office will prosecute those most responsible for the commission of these serious crimes. The warrants of arrest issued to date by the Court have been line with this policy and principled approach.
In short, the assertions about the ICC and my Office’s work contained in the said article published by The Telegraph are inaccurate.
Déclaration du Procureur pour fin de corriger les affirmations contenues dans l'article publié par The Telegraph
Le samedi 2 juillet 2016, le quotidien Britannique, « The Telegraph », a publié un article affirmant de façon inexacte que mon Bureau à « déjà exclu de poursuivre en justice Tony Blair pour crimes de guerre ».
Cet article est largement diffusé, aggravant la dissémination d’informations imprécises concernant l’examen préliminaire en cours effectué par mon Bureau relatif à la Situation en Iraq. A cet égard, je suis contrainte de rétablir les faits en apportant les clarifications suivantes.
Premièrement, je réaffirme une fois de plus que toutes les activités de mon Bureau, y compris tous nos examens préliminaire, sont conduites en toute indépendance et impartialité. Ces principes ne sont pas négociables dans mon bureau.
Deuxièmement, il doit être souligné que mon Bureau n’a pas pris de position au sujet du « Rapport Chilcot », dont le contenu n’a pas encore été publié et nous reste inconnu à ce stade.
Troisièmement, mon Bureau n’a jamais prétendu qu’il examinera le Rapport dans le but de trouver des preuves potentielles de crimes de guerre commis par les troupes britanniques en Iraq. Il doit être précisé que mon Bureau conduit actuellement un examen préliminaire et non une enquête dans la Situation en Iraq. Un examen préliminaire vise à déterminer s’il existe une base raisonnable pour ouvrir une enquête sur la base de toutes informations fiables que nous avons évaluées d’une manière indépendante et conformément aux critères juridiques du Statut de Rome. Le Bureau examinera le Rapport Chilcot dans le cadre de son évaluation diligente de tout matériel susceptible d’éclairer le contexte des crimes de guerre présumés commis par les troupes Britannique en Iraq. Des détails supplémentaires à ce sujet sont disponibles dans notre dernier rapport sur les examens préliminaires.
Quatrièmement, même si la Cour pénale internationale (« CPI » ou la « Cour ») exerce sa compétence sur les crimes de guerre, les crimes contre l’humanité et le génocide, comme l’avait été expliqué au « The Telegraph », sa compétence concernant le crime d’agressionn'est pas encore activée. Par conséquent, la question spécifique portant sur la légalité de la décision de recourir à la force en Iraq en 2003 – ou ailleurs – ne relève pas du mandat juridique de la Cour, ni de s’inscrit dans le cadre de son examen préliminaire.
Il faut tenir compte d’une distinction importante entre les crimes de guerre, qui tombent sous la compétence de la Cour et le crime d’agression, qui n’en relève pas à ce jour. Ces deux crimes sont considérablement différents tenant compte de leurs propres éléments juridiques pénaux. De ce fait, suggérer que la CPI a exclu d’enquêter sur la responsabilité de l’ancien Premier Ministre Britannique dans la commission de crimes de guerre mais pourrait poursuivre des soldats est une déformation des faits, résultat d’une méconnaissance des paramètres juridiques de la Cour. Ces dits paramètres exigent aussi que la Cour n’exerce sa compétence que lorsqu’un Etat manque de la volonté ou de la capacité d’enquêter et poursuivre les auteurs des crimes.
Une fois prise la décision d’ouvrir une enquête dans une situation donnée, mon Bureau est en mesure de poursuivre toute personne soupçonnée d’avoir commis des crimes relevant de la compétence de la Cour, à savoir les crimes de guerre, les crimes contre l’humanité ou le génocide. Nous accomplissons ce travail sans crainte ni faveur et quelle que soit le statut officiel de ou des auteur(s). Conformément à la politique de mon Bureau, en règle générale, mon Bureau poursuit les principaux responsables des crimes les plus graves. Les mandats d’arrêt délivrés par la Cour à ce jour ont été conformes à cette politique et ces principes.
En conclusion, les assertions concernant la CPI et le travail de mon Bureau contenues dans ledit article publié par « The Telegraph » sont inexactes.
The French press is still a bit slow fo follow up... So I keep on in English. Below the article from Le Monde in French summarizing what has been said this morning.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Tony Blairsaid he takes "full responsibility" for mistakes made over the Iraq War after the Chilcot report finds invasion was "not a last resort".
Read on the BBC's website:
Blair on delaying action
Mr Blair addresses the suggestion in the report that military action might have been necessary later.
He argues that if the coalition had withdrawn the threat of action in 2003 it would have found it almost impossible to regroup its forces, and Saddam Hussein would have been in a strengthened position.
"Even if you disagreed with removing Sadaam in 2003, you should be thankful we are not dealing with him now," he says.
Mr Blair adds: "None of this excuses the mistakes we made, none of this excuses the failures."
Un rapport officiel dresse un bilan désastreux de l’intervention britannique en Irak en 2003
Le Monde.fr avec AFP |
Comme il le promettait, le rapport Chilcot est sévère envers l’ex-premier ministre travailliste Tony Blair, qui avait décidé d’engager le Royaume-Uni dans la guerre en Irak en 2003. Et sa conclusion est sans appel : le Royaume-Uni a envahi l’Irak sans avoir épuisé les options pacifiques et sans préparation adéquate quant aux conséquences, a déclaré, mercredi 6 juillet John Chilcot, le président de la commission mise en place il y a sept ans pour enquêter sur cette guerre.
« Nous avons conclu que le Royaume-Uni avait décidé de se joindre à l’invasion de l’Irak avant que toutes les alternatives pacifiques pour obtenir le désarmement [du pays] ne soient épuisées », a déclaré M. Chilcot, estimant que « l’action militaire n’était pas inévitable à l’époque » et que Tony Blair s’était engagé à suivre le président américain George Bush « quoi qu’il arrive », sans questionner sa politique.
Il a dénoncé le fait que Londres se soit appuyé sur des informations des services de renseignements qui n’avaient pas été suffisamment vérifiées. « En mars 2003, il n’y avait pas de menace imminente de Saddam Hussein. La stratégie de confinement pouvait continuer pour un certain temps », a-t-il dit, soulignant que le Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies soutenait la poursuite des inspections et de la surveillance.
Manque de préparation
M. Chilcot a poursuivi :
« Le gouvernement a échoué à prendre en compte l’ampleur de la tâche nécessaire pour stabiliser, administrer et reconstruire l’Irak et les responsabilités qui allaient incomber au Royaume-Uni. »
Les efforts déployés par Londres « n’ont jamais été à la hauteur du défi » présenté, a-t-il ajouté. Quant aux ressources militaires engagées, elles ont été faibles et inadaptées. « Nous avons trouvé que le ministère de la défense s’était montré lent à répondre à la menace présentée par les engins explosifs improvisés et que les retards enregistrés pour fournir les engins de patrouille blindés adéquats n’auraient pas dû être tolérés », a-t-il dit.
Cent soixante-dix-neuf soldats britanniques ont été tués dans le conflit, pendant les six ans d’engagement britannique jusqu’à 2009. Mercredi matin, des manifestants ont accueilli Tony Blair devant son domicile. « Blair a menti, des milliers de personnes sont mortes ! », « Tony Blair, criminel de guerre ! », ont-ils crié. Ce dernier a réagi dans un communiqué, disant avoir agi « de bonne foi » et « dans l’intérêt du pays ».
Commandé en 2009, le rapport long de 2,6 millions de mots est lui-même devenu un sujet de controverse au fil des ans et des reports, poussant même les familles des soldats tués en Irak à fixer un ultimatum aux autorités, sous réserve de poursuites judiciaires.
La commission Chilcot, du nom de son président, John Chilcot, aurait initialement dû rendre ses conclusions dans un délai d’un an. Mais les travaux ont finalement duré plus longtemps que la guerre elle-même. S’ils ont survécu à la mort de l’un des cinq membres de la commission, ces travaux ont coûté 10 millions de livres (environ 11 millions d’euros).
Chilcot is now talking about the planning for after the war.
He says the risks to British troops were not properly identified, or flagged up to ministers.
Cabinet did not discuss the military options or their implications, he says.
He says the government thought the post-conflict administration would be UN-led. But the US did not agree, and so instead the UK decided to get the US to accept UN authorisation of a coalition-led administration.
Blair told the inquiry the problems encountered after the invasion could not have been known in advance.
Chilcot says the inquiry does not accept Blair’s claim that it was impossible to predict the post-invasion problems. Those problems were anticipated, he says.
11h 28
Chilcot is now talking about the government’s failure to achieve the objectives it set in Iraq.
The armed forces fought a successful campaign. Saddam Hussein fell in less than a month.
He says the armed forces deserve great respect.
The invasion and subsequent instablity resulted in the death of at least 150,000 Iraqis, and probably many more. Most of them were civilians.
The people of Iraq have suffered greatly.
Chilcot says the coalition made a declaration before the invasion promising a better future for the people of Iraq.
He says the inquiry considered the post-conflict period in great detail.
The UK did not exhaust all peaceful options before joining the invasion of Iraq, the chairman of the official inquiry into the war has said.
Sir John Chilcot said military action at the time "was not a last resort".
He also said judgements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction "were presented with a certainty that was not justified" and post-war planning was "wholly inadequate".
Sir John was speaking ahead of publication of his report at 11:35 BST.
His 12-volume report on the Iraq War comes more than seven years after the inquiry began.
Sir John said he hoped future military action on such a scale would only be possible with more careful analysis and political judgement.
Sir John Chilcot told the BBC his report would criticise individuals and institutions.
He said he hoped it would help answer some questions for families of the 179 Britons who died between 2003 and 2009.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to face fresh calls to apologise from political opponents of the war and the relatives of those who were killed during the six years UK troops were based in Iraq.
The report, described as "an absolutely massive task" by Sir John, has been handed to Prime Minister David Cameron and will be available online on the Iraq Inquiry website once Sir John has finished making a statement setting out its findings.
What was the Iraq War?
The US, which led the intervention in March 2003, lost 4,487 service personnel in the war. Figures about Iraqi deaths vary from 90,000 to more than 600,000.
Ahead of the publication of the Chilcot report on Wednesday, Veterans For Peace UK have released the following statement on the 2003 Iraq War and its consequences.
Whatever the Chilcot Report says, this country and its armed forces executed a war of aggression on the people of Iraq in 2003.
In a joint enterprise with the USA, we prosecuted an occupation of Iraq that defied the Geneva conventions.
Under the Nuremberg principles, those ultimately responsible should face trial.
Whilst Tony Blair is the obvious villain and in our opinion should face a criminal investigation, it is the UK as a whole that needs to change.
Since Iraq, our forces have attacked Helmand, Libya, Iraq and Syria. We are playing a key role in the Saudi Arabian attack on the Yemen.
Our aggressive military action has led to:
Huge numbers of dead and injured.
The destruction of vital infrastructure.
Environmental damage.
A significant rise in terrorism globally.
A huge refugee crisis.
We need to accept that war is not the solution to the problems the world faces in the 21st Century.
Live coverage as Sir John Chilcot unveils his report into the Iraq war. Plus all the day’s other political news as Tory leadership runners go down to three
Chilcot says he hopes his report will ensure Britain never goes to war again without proper consideration
Sir John Chilcot has been giving interviews ahead of the publication of his report. Here are the key points he has been making.
Chilcot said he hoped his report would ensure that Britain does not go to war in the future without a very thorough assessment of the potential disadvantages. He implied this did not happen in 2003. He said:
The main expectation that I have is that it will not be possible in future to engage in a military or indeed a diplomatic endeavour on such a scale and of such gravity without really careful challenge analysis and assessment and collective political judgment being applied to it.
There are many lessons in the report but that probably is the central one for the future.
He explained why it had taken his inquiry seven years to report.
It’s turned out to be on an unprecedented scale. There is no doubt that it’s taken a lot longer than the government which set us up expected, or indeed what we expected at the start, but to get to the bottom of what happened over a nine-year period with all the legal, military, diplomatic, and intelligence aspects of it has proved very great. Apart from the oral witness hearings which we’ve held, we had to scrutinise and analyse something like over 150,000 government documents. That’s a huge task and takes a great deal of time if you’re going to get to the bottom of all of that. I think getting agreement on the material that we could publish from that government archive has taken time in itself, but if we are going to give – as we believe we have – a really reliable account, we’ve had to get agreement from government to publish some things which are quite without precedent; cabinet discussions, discussions with other heads of state and government.
He said many individuals and institutions would be criticised in the report, but on the basis of evidence and rigorous analysis.
I made very clear right at the start of the inquiry that if we came across decisions or behaviour which deserved criticism then we wouldn’t shy away from making it. And indeed, there have been more than a few instances where we are bound to do that. But we shall do it on a base of a rigorous analysis of the evidence that supports that finding. We are not a court – not a judge or jury at work – but we’ve tried to apply the highest possible standards of rigorous analysis to the evidence where we make a criticism.
--
Read Stop The War Coalition's editorial:
If Chilcot fails to nail Blair's lies, it's final proof our democracy is broken
BY PETER OBORNE |
Peter Oborne: Iraq has turned into one of the greatest disasters in modern history
On March 20, 2003, prime minister Tony Blair ordered British Forces into action against Iraq after telling us Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to Britain and the world.
Thirteen years later, we know the full consequences of Mr Blair’s decision: 179 brave British servicemen and women were killed, and hundreds more were maimed or suffered psychological trauma.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis died as the fall of Saddam led to a vicious sectarian war between the country’s Shia majority and Sunni minority.
President Barack Obama has pointed out that the destruction of Saddam has led to the rise of Islamic State, the most vicious and terrifying terror group the world has known.
So Iraq has turned into one of the greatest disasters in modern history. It is a far bigger error than Sir Anthony Eden’s infamous decision to attempt to reclaim the Suez Canal from Egypt in 1956.
In retrospect, it can be seen as the worst mistake in British foreign policy since Neville Chamberlain struck his notorious deal with Hitler in Munich in 1938.
Indeed, the way in which Tony Blair’s government took us to war in so dishonest a fashion surely marks 2003 as the point when the British people’s already shaky faith in the political class began to crumble into dust.
Now, we need desperately to learn the lessons. And yet for 13 years, the British establishment has covered up the truth about Iraq.
There have been four botched inquiries (including the infamous judicial report chaired by Lord Hutton into the still mysterious death of David Kelly, the government scientist who was found dead in July 2003 after being exposed as the source of claims by the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan that New Labour had ‘sexed up’ the threat from Saddam Hussein).
The fifth inquiry, Sir John Chilcot’s report, was announced by the then prime minister Gordon Brown in June 2009.
It was meant to reach a definitive judgment on the war — and was supposed to last for little more than a year. Then it ran into the sands of bureaucratic inertia and obstruction.
Tomorrow, this monumental investigation, which is said to run to 2.6 million words — almost five times longer than Tolstoy’s War And Peace — will finally see the light of day. Yet there are already reasons to doubt whether Sir John is capable of reaching the fair-minded verdict that will enable the nation — and above all the families of the heroes who died serving their country — to put the Iraq tragedy behind us.
According to advance leaks, Sir John will apportion the blame very widely with several dozen ministers, officials and military figures coming in for criticism.
These same reports also suggest a great deal of the report will concentrate on mistakes made during the occupation of Iraq rather than the decision to go to war in the first place.
If these leaks are true, they suggest that Sir John’s report, like the whitewashed reports that have already been published, will lack focus.
There are in truth only a handful of crucial points it should address. Did Tony Blair lie in order to make the case for war? Was the war legal?
Did the war — as Tony Blair promised it would — make Britain a safer place?
Crucially, the vast bulk of the evidence presented to Chilcot is available for all to see.
This means that any careful and well-informed observer can reach his or her own conclusions.
The Iraq war expert Dr David Morrison and I have spent months poring through the evidence to show the conclusions that Sir John Chilcot must surely make if he is true to the evidence put before him.
Let’s start with the question of whether Tony Blair deceived the British people in order to make the case for war.
Mr Blair has consistently asserted that he did not lie and that he acted in good faith.
For example, the former prime minister told the American TV channel CNN that he apologised ‘for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong’.
Here, Mr Blair was placing the blame on the British intelligence services for producing erroneous information which he, as prime minister, innocently passed on to the British public.
This account of events does not, however, stand up to scrutiny. It is very easy to prove Mr Blair did not simply reiterate what he was told by the intelligence services.
The fact is he exaggerated and misrepresented the intelligence that he received from the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Evidence available to Sir John Chilcot shows Joint Intelligence Committee assessments sent to the prime minister about the threat posed by Iraqi weapons programmes were cautious.
They stated that ‘intelligence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes is sporadic and patchy’.
By contrast, Tony Blair claimed ‘we know that he [Saddam Hussein] had stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons, we know that he is trying to acquire nuclear capability, we know that he is trying to develop ballistic capability of a greater range’.
In truth, evidence presented to the Chilcot inquiry shows that the then prime minister repeatedly exaggerated and made false claims about the threat posed by Saddam as the war approached.
He did so in the notorious dossier on the threat posed by Saddam, published on September 24, 2002.
Incredibly, he lied to Parliament in his famous speech on March 18, 2003, on the very eve of war.
In this address, Mr Blair systematically distorted the work of the United Nations weapons inspectors, who at the start of March had published a document on the state of knowledge of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
Tony Blair and his foreign secretary, Jack Straw, used this document shamelessly, giving the impression that it contained new and damning evidence that Iraq possessed proscribed weapons.
In reality, it contained little or nothing new.
Crucially, it did not claim that Iraq possessed dangerous weapons or weapons-related materials, merely that certain material was unaccounted for.
Mr Blair cited a claim by Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, that Saddam had an extensive biological weapons programme.
Shockingly, Mr Blair did not divulge to Parliament that Kamel also said that all Iraq’s weapons had been destroyed.
To sum up, Tony Blair deliberately deceived the British people and Parliament in order to substantiate his decision to go to war.
We will not know until tomorrow whether Sir John Chilcot will conclude that Blair lied. But what we can say for certain is that a mountain of evidence exists that the British prime minister did exactly that.
The second crucial judgment facing Chilcot is whether the war was illegal — though some already have grave doubts that he will answer this point definitively.
Yet here again the evidence before him is unambiguous.
It is a fundamental principle of international law that states are prohibited from using force except in self-defence or unless its use is formally authorised by the UN Security Council.
No country was attacked by Iraq in March 2003, and therefore there were no grounds to go to war with Iraq on the grounds of self-defence.
The Security Council never authorised military action to disarm Iraq of its so-called ‘weapons of mass destruction’.
However, at most four of the 15 members of the UN Security Council were in favour of military action against Iraq in March 2003. Every single member of the British Foreign Office legal department was convinced the war was unlawful.
There is therefore no serious doubt that the attack on Iraq by the United States and the UK in March 2003 was illegal, and therefore a war of aggression.
The evidence that Tony Blair lied to Parliament and the British people in order to make the case for an illegal war is very strong indeed. Very serious and senior police and former officials are convinced this was the case. They include Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector at the time of the Iraq invasion.
When I asked Mr Blix whether he believed that Tony Blair had misrepresented the facts to make the case for an illegal invasion, he said that he did.
Very few people deserve to emerge well from the Iraq Inquiry. However, I believe that one of them should be Eliza Manningham-Buller, the then Director General of MI5, the domestic intelligence service.
Dame Eliza told Chilcot that she warned Tony Blair in advance that the invasion of Iraq would increase the threat to Britain from the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, and radicalise increasing numbers of British Muslims.
When she appeared in front of the Iraq Inquiry, she was asked: ‘To what extent did the conflict in Iraq exacerbate the overall threat that your service and your fellow services were having to deal with from international terrorism?’
She replied: ‘Substantially.’ After the publication of the report, many people will want to know whether Mr Blair can be tried as a war criminal. This question is well worth considering. After World War II, the victors established an international military tribunal at Nuremberg to try leading Nazis.
Article Six of the tribunal’s constitution specified the crimes falling within its jurisdiction. First and foremost was the ‘planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression’.
As a prime mover in the invasion of Iraq, Blair could reasonably be accused of committing such a crime. So, too, could the then U.S. President George W. Bush.
In theory, this means that there’s a case for putting Blair on trial as a war criminal.
But the only body that could conceivably have tried him was the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
At the time of the 2003 Iraq invasion, the UK was a party to the ICC, which had begun operating in July 2002.
It had the power to try even heads of state for genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. But as Lord Goldsmith, the Labour Attorney General, had advised Blair just before the Iraq invasion, the court had ‘no jurisdiction over the crime of aggression’.
Therefore, in leading the UK to war against Iraq, Blair knew he had nothing to worry about from the ICC.
(How bitterly ironic that Downing Street is now having to warn the court in The Hague that Chilcot’s report should not be used as a basis to prosecute British soldiers — never mind the man who sent them to war.)
While we will learn more about the actions of Tony Blair tomorrow, we must not forget how the way he behaved has influenced politicians who have come after him.
The delay in the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry has had deadly consequences, because the British government has continued to make the same mistakes that were made in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.
As Chilcot’s inquiry has dragged on, British forces have been involved in fresh foreign engagements in Libya, in 2011, and Syria more recently, carrying out bombing missions in both countries, as well as being drawn back into Iraq.
The lessons of the Iraq War — as set out in an official inquiry — would have been relevant in all these cases.
By A dark irony, the timing of the Chilcot report now that it’s finally with us could not be more appropriate. It comes against the sombre background of the total collapse of trust in the governing class.
This came to a head in the decision of the British people to defy all the main political party leaders and vote Britain out of Europe two weeks ago.
Faith in politics has never been lower, and this collapse in trust can be dated very precisely to the decision to go to war in 2003.
The British people and Parliament believed the claims made by its most senior politicians and foreign policy advisers.
It followed them blindly to war, with consequences we still have to live with today.
This is why the Chilcot Inquiry matters a great deal. It is the last chance for the British Establishment to show it can learn the lessons of its failures — and hold those who fail to account.
If Sir John Chilcot and his inquiry fail to achieve this, it will be the final proof that our system of government is broken.
