As our minds were with the victims of the terrorist attack in Nice on quatorze juillet, we couldn’t help thinking about the devastating conclusions of the so-called Chilcot report. The report (see www.iraqinquiry.org.uk) criticized Blair and his entourage for “overstating” (English for lying) the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s president at the time, and for the inadequate plans after the invasion of Iraq took place in 2003 by the joint forces of the U.S. and Britain (the “Coalition”). The report, published on July 6th, did not get much attention outside Britain and, in any case, was overshadowed by Brexit.
A committee chaired by Sir John Chilcot, a Privy Counsellor (= an advisor to the Sovereign), said what we knew already before the war started. There was no evidence whatsoever of the existence of weapons of mass destruction (not the derivatives that Warren Buffett spoke about in 2002, but poison gas weapons and nuclear bombs) and diplomatic options for disarmament were not exhausted. Instead, Tony Blair, prime minister of Britain at the time, chose to hold the House of Commons in contempt by making misleading statements and withholding important information. He ignored warnings from his own Ministry of Defence that the produced intelligence was not reliable and cherry-picked facts allowing him to go to war. Blair already had decided to stand “shoulder to shoulder”, with his buddy George W., irrespective the outcome of intelligence (as exemplified by a note to Bush that started with the words “I will be with you, whatever…”). When the decision was pushed through parliament, Robin Cook, a senior Labour politician, resigned from government, apparently reading Mr. Blair’s evidence in a different (correct, as it proved to be) light. What Chilcot doesn’t say is that the war was illegal (the UN Security Council did not approve a resolution to go to war, whereas UN weapons inspectors, headed by Hans Blix, wanted more time as they did not find any evidence of nuclear activities). This question was not in the realm of the inquiry as Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, apparently found it necessary to protect Blair and other government officials, possibly including himself, from prosecution.
No weapons of mass destruction? Fiddlesticks…
Access to Iraqi oil seems to have been a major motive behind the war (remember, this was before the “shale” era). Public oil companies were dismantled and multinationals took over: BP and Shell got amply rewarded by Britain’s decision to join the U.S. into this disastrous war. This makes Blair’s decision even more questionable (unethical, in our view). Apart from carving up oil resources between the allied powers, not much planning was done to deal with the aftermath of the invasion. Again, Tony Blair decided to ignore military advice about the significance of the post‐conflict phase as the “strategically decisive” phase of the engagement in Iraq. The Coalition forces were completely unprepared for the post-conflict phase in terms of dealing with lawlessness, religious strife and associated security issues and implementation of a new government structure, whereas troop requirements were vastly underestimated. Dismantling of the army without installing an adequate alternative was a mistake as was replacing (Sunni) Baathists by corrupt Shias in government positions. By alienating the Sunni community, the seeds were sown for an insurgency, eventually resulting in the rise of Islamic State. Reconstruction of Iraq was severely hampered by insecurity; increasingly, the Coalition forces were not seen as liberators but as occupiers. As Chilcot states, “a circular analysis began to develop, in which progress on reconstruction required security to be improved, and improved security required the consent generated by reconstruction activity”. Reinforcement of troops was imminently required but did not happen. As Sir Jeremy Greenstock (Britain’s Special Representative for Iraq at the time) wrote on 1 January 2004, “This theatre remains a security crisis”. Despite all this, withdrawal of British troops took centerstage and conditions of withdrawal were watered down over time. In Chilcot’s words: “Between 2003 and 2009, the UK’s most consistent strategic objective in relation to Iraq was to reduce the level of its deployed forces”. In 2009, British troops were sent packing.
The Iraqi people pay a very high price for the lies and incompetence of Messrs. Bush and Blair. According to Iraq Body Count, a NGO, civilian deaths from violence since the war amount to 160,000 to 180,000 people. This year, each month on average 1,100 people die from violence. On quatorze julliet alone, 10 people were killed of which 8 in Baghdad by an explosive device.
The raw numbers detailing Iraq’s carnage…
Mr. Blair, now a well-paid J.P. Morgan advisor to support the bank’s clients on geopolitics (Holy cow! Only an investment bank would hire a dishonest, incompetent and unethical guy to advise its clients), refused to say sorry as he “always acted in good faith”. We strongly believe he should be prosecuted (obviously, the same goes for George W. Bush) and be sentenced to community service for 6 years (the length of Britain’s involvement in the Iraqi war), possibly by working in a military hospital or asylum seeker centre.