It's doubtful a report into government policy-making has ever been as detailed – or as unequivocal – as that compiled by Sir John Chilcot. Comprising 12 volumes and 2.6 million words, the Chilcot report into Britain's involvement in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 (from 2001 until the 2009 withdrawal of British troops from southern Iraq) states clearly that this monstrous misadventure was conceived in doubt and deceit, and that the prosecution of the war on the ground in Iraq was dysfunctional. These findings have been obvious for some time, but the report's depth and detail lends them an authority which no amount of reinterpretation or whitewashing by the principal players or their supporters is likely to shift.
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The report posits that Iraq posed no immediate security threat to Britain, that the coalition of the willing (which included Australia) acted without exhausting all diplomatic options, and that flawed intelligence was used to justify the invasion. While the report does not canvass the illegality or otherwise of the invasion, it does conclude that attempts at bestowing a veneer of legality on the adventure were mere window-dressing. The appalling misjudgments the 'coalition of the willing' made after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime are explored in great but depressing detail.
Blame for the monstrous legacy of the invasion lies with many individuals, including ministers, bureaucrats, military and security personnel, and notable Neocon urgers like Paul Wolfowitz. It's the political leaders of the time, George Bush, Tony Blair, and John Howard, who've shouldered most of the opprobrium, however. Their contrition, such that it is, has always been overlaid by defiance.
Confronted by Chilcot, Mr Blair apologised to the families of British soldiers killed or wounded in Iraq, but stood by his decision, saying it was the "right thing" at the time and that he still believed Iraq was "better off" without Saddam. Mr Howard took a more studied approach, saying that on the "information available" he believed he'd made the right decision. Happily for Mr Bush, US anger about Iraq and the former president's duplicitous role in the invasion appears to have passed.
Messrs Blair and Howard, canny lawyers both, will go to their graves claiming they were the unwitting victims of flawed intelligence – and that Saddam, a mass murderer, had be to be removed for the good of Iraqis and of the Middle East.
But it was the Bush White House which wanted him gone most, and for reasons that had more to do with protecting Israel's interests than in shutting down Saddam's so-called terrorist links or preventing him from manufacturing crude weapons of mass destruction. These were just fig leaves for military intervention. The US sought to legitimise its invasion by concocting false claims and evidence and co-opting allies like Britain and Australia – and Messrs Blair and Howard co-operated enthusiastically in the White House's war-mongering. That's a fact no amount of moralising or legal finagling can hide.
