Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
7 years! Longer than the First World War between the start of this inquiry and its reporting and a full 13 years after the onset of the conflict. Audience members shout “liar” and “murderer” as he leaves. Families of British soldiers killed in the Iraq War demanded in August that Chilcot set a deadline for publication of the report.
However, due to the sheer size of the document – at more than two million words – as well as checks by security agencies and coordination with European human rights rules, it won’t be until June or July 2016 until it is released to the public.
Although the probe looked at the entire period of British operations in Iraq, much of the focus has been on the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Relatives of those killed in Iraq have voiced disappointment after it was revealed the Chilcot inquiry will not be published before next summer.
Blair had previously denied that the delay was linked to a process in which individual witnesses such as himself are given the chance to respond to criticism of them in the report.
He replied, “I just got this down from upstairs [the secretary of defence’s office] today… that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”.
Figures are likely to include the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove, chairman of the joint intelligence committee Sir John Scarlett, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and Clare Short, former worldwide Development Secretary.
However, Labour sources say he will now wait to apologise until the report has been published.
The last public hearing was held in 2011 and at that point Chilcot said the final report could be published that autumn.
Jeremy Corbyn has long rejected the format of the Inquiry. Cabinet Office minister Lord Bridges of Headley warns that such a move would “undermine the fundamental independence” of the long-delayed inquiry. He apologised “for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong” on Iraq’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and for “some of the mistakes in planning and certainly our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime”.
I am pleased to say that I am now in a position to write setting out a timetable for the completion of the Iraq Inquiry’s report into the UK’s involvement in Iraq between 2001 and 2009. He responded by August.
Families of military personnel killed in Iraq have threatened to go to take their case to court, saying the delays are prolonging their suffering.
The Stop the War coalition, which organized a million-strong march against the war in 2003, blasted what they called the “never-ending farce of the Chilcot report“.
Both Bush and Blair stressed that the Iraqi dictator had used poison gas against his own citizens in the Kurdish region in 1988, but neither mentioned that this had happened against a background of Saddam’s unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, which Washington and London actively supported.
