Britain Seeks Iraq War Truth

The Times, The Times November 25, 2009

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The former British Ambassador to Libya already knows what he thinks of the Iraq war inquiry. He thinks that the panel, which began public hearings yesterday under the chairmanship of Sir John Chilcot, has too many Jews on it. The historians who sit on the panel, Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freedman, are Jewish. Some people — other people, you understand — might think that the panel is not balanced.

Oliver Miles’s contribution to the debate is extraordinary and disgraceful, but it is not uncommon in at least one way. Like Mr Miles, many antiwar critics already know their view of Chilcot’s work. The establishment of the inquiry is, according to them, a defensive response to public anger over official deceit and an establishment cover-up of government malfeasance.

It is a sign of the debased public debate over Iraq that serious commentators can simultaneously proclaim both parts of this ungainly paradox. To adapt the words of Clement Attlee to a loudmouthed Labour critic: a period of silence on their part would be welcome. Sir John and the members of the inquiry panel are eminent in scholarship and public service. They will consider the evidence scrupulously. They should be left to get on with their deliberations without a volley of snide attack and irrelevant innuendo.

The inquiry may not publish its findings till 2011. Its witnesses will not be under oath. On both grounds, critics have charged that the inquiry will protect those with things to hide. That is a nonsense. The inquiry is neither a frightened expedient nor a Machiavellian manoeuvre. It is a disinterested scrutiny of the decisions that led this country to ally with the United States in deposing Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The issues covered will include UK policy towards Iraq in the critical 18 months between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the commitment of British troops in Iraq; transatlantic relations in the same period; and the intelligence surrounding the claims of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). These are momentous questions. The notion that the inquiry is dragging out the process by taking time to report could be held consistently only by those who have already made up their minds. Unfortunately, these include former public servants who should know better. The members of the inquiry have been subject already to malign, ignorant and inflammatory insinuations against their independence.

There was a legitimate case for opposing military action against Saddam and relying on containment. It was not a view taken by Tony Blair, who believed that Saddam’s regime was an incubator of terrorism as well as an emerging regional threat. This newspaper supported the case for military intervention. For all the mistaken intelligence, we consider that Mr Blair was more right than wrong on the issue of Iraq’s WMD. His assessment a decade ago, in a celebrated speech in Chicago, of threats to international stability was prescient in identifying Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam. The inquiry may uncover evidence that would cause us to revise, even reverse, our view. Its judgment should not be prejudged.

The corrosive character of the political debate is that there are few critics of Mr Blair who could honestly say the same. There have already been two parliamentary inquiries into the Iraq war, along with Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the death of David Kelly and Lord Butler of Brockwell’s inquiry into prewar intelligence. It is increasingly obvious that some zealots will hold all such inquiries tainted until and unless they arrive at the “right” answer concerning Mr Blair’s supposed abuse of office. These sentiments have nothing to do with public inquiry. They are a demand for quasi-judicial processes to supplant the decisions of an elected government.

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