Sounds to me like pre-emptive “the Chilcot enquiry is unlikely to come to the conclusion – that is true regardless of the evidence – that Blair is a war criminal and should go to the Hague?” or conclude that “there was a conspiracy to go to war with Iraq among UK decision-makers regardless of evidence”?

Why not have a “Blair is a war-criminal” enquiry whose task is to come up with reasons why this is the case? Because it is apparent that every enquiry that does not prove this to be the case must be flawed in some way.

Whatever the outcome of Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the whys are wherefores of the occupation of Iraq, the entire exercise can only ever be about as useful as an investigation into world war two might have proved, if staged circa 1951.

Actually, I think that, in principle, an investigation into the “whys and wherefores” of a war after the conclusion of said war could have a profound effect.

Let us imagine *cough* a situation in which a leader works with his inner circle to take his nation to war by way of deceit. Holding that leader to account after the fact and imposing a serious legally sanctioned punishment would act as a powerful disincentive for any leader to attempt something similar in the future. Which is precisely what we all want, right? Or at least it is what rational, morally well-adjusted people would generally want.

I wonder what the response would be if after careful deliberation, and an honest assessment of the facts, the inquiry praised the government for it’s handling of all the issues surrounding the war?

I ask this question simply to point out the absurdity of holding an inquiry in public when both you and I are already certain that the government misled the country when making the case for war. We will not be satisfied unless a ‘guilty’ verdict is handed down next year, anything less would be seen as an establishment stitch up.

The government will never hold their hands up, even when confronted with irrefutable evidence. It is up to us to vote them out.

‘Sounds to me like pre-emptive “the Chilcot enquiry is unlikely to come to the conclusion – that is true regardless of the evidence – that Blair is a war criminal and should go to the Hague?” or conclude that “there was a conspiracy to go to war with Iraq among UK decision-makers regardless of evidence”?

I’m open minded. It’s possible that Blair’s government mislead the public deliberately or that they genuinely believed Saddam posed a threat; in which case an enquiry is necessary to determine if New Labour are evil murderous bastards or incompetant murderous bastards.

It’s also a reminder to those fantasists who thought Blair should run the EU over the ‘no-marks’ Europe preferred that their short memories aren’t shared by the rest of the world.

Well,

We have it in our hands to vote out some of the evil bastards that took us into this. And replace them with other evil bastards that took us into this. It’s a bit Hobsons’ innit?

“Why not have a “Blair is a war-criminal” enquiry whose task is to come up with reasons why this is the case? Because it is apparent that every enquiry that does not prove this to be the case must be flawed in some way.”

I believe it was called ‘Nuremberg’ and established that aggression is the supreme international crime.

The thing is, see, that when hundreds of thousands, possibly over a million people are dead and millions are displaced (2.2m according to the UN) the issue ceases to be “why is Blair a war criminal” and becomes “why isn’t Blair a war criminal”.

If it fails to outline exactly what intelligence was available, does not come to a position on whether that intelligence was systematically distorted, neglects to detail the extent and nature of the pressure applied by Washington on London, and does not specify in full the legal advice proffered to Blair, it will lack any credibility.

Well, seeing as pretty much all of that has already been covered by the Butler Inquiry, not to mention the Hutton Inquiry and the several parliamentary inquiries – the real question is: Why don’t you learn to read?

I don’t understand this desperate need to find a “smoking gun” that “proves” Blair was “a liar”. You believe this and will always believe it. You’ve been stoking your own sense of self-righteous rage for 6 years now.

It won’t change the fact that Iraq is now a liberated nation where the once oppressed majority (Shia Arab) rightly has access to the levers of power through the democratic process.

Nor the fact that the overwhelming cause of slaughter and carnage in post-war Iraq has come from the attempts of the remnants of the ruling elite, allied with chaos driven foreign Jihadis to incite a civil war with the Shia majority through a campaign of unimaginable ruthless bombings of women and children

I guess it comes down to which side you supported…

@8: “I don’t understand this desperate need to find a ‘smoking gun’ that ‘proves’ Blair was ‘a liar’.”

It’s “to encourage the others” because integrity matters, especially in government and what is said in Parliament.

The invasion of Iraq began on 20 March 2003. From the G8 summit in June that year, it was reported that:

“Tony Blair has rejected calls for an official inquiry into the government’s claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Speaking at the G8 summit in Evian, Mr Blair said he stood ’100%’ by the evidence shown to the public about Iraq’s alleged weapons programmes.

“‘Frankly, the idea that we doctored intelligence reports in order to invent some notion about a 45-minute capability for delivering weapons of mass destruction is completely and totally false,’ he said.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2955036.stm

Curiously, no WMD were found in Iraq. This is not really surprising. In Britain’s Ministry of Defence, a branch of the Defence Intelligence Service was tasked to monitor and assess incoming intelligence on WMD. At the time of the Iraq invasion, Dr Brian Jones was head of this branch. This report in The London Times on 4 February 2004 relates to the doubts Dr Jones had about the claims made in the government’s dossier on Iraq’s WMD published on 24 September 2002:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1011171.ece

This letter of 8 July 2003 from Dr Jones to the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence was sumitted to the Hutton inquiry:
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/mod/mod_4_0011.pdf

The letter includes this passage:

“Your records will show that as [blanked out] and probably the most senior and experienced intelligence community official working on ‘WMD,’ I was so concerned about the manner in which intelligence assessment for which I had some responsibility were being presented in the dossier of 24 September 2002, that I was moved to write formally to your predecessor, Tony Crag, recording and explaining my reservations.”

Andrew Gilligan, the BBC’s defence correspondent, and Greg Dyke, BBC Director General, were obliged to resign because of broadcast doubts over Blair’s claims regarding Iraq’s WMD.

This is only one of many downstream consequences to flow from Blair misleading Parliament in that special debate on 24 September 2002 about Iraq’s WMD to legitimise an invasion:

“Some sharp comments by a former British ambassador to Washington during the Iraq inquiry have again cast doubt on the strength of the so-called ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States.

“This raises the possibility that the Iraq war will be seen as a moment after which that relationship took a real downturn.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8382384.stm

Mr. Tony Blair took the UK to war, with Iraq, not for the reasons that were so publicized prior to March 2003. He deliberately hid his real intention of Iraqi regime change, from the British people, simply because he and George Bush, were conspiring behind the scenes, to stage such a murderous adventure, inspite of all public calls for constraint. In so doing, I do contend, Mr. Blair had conspired with Mr. Bush, to “Disturb the Peace”, a crime which is indictable under the Nuremberg Tribunal’s charter of 1945-1946. The said charter provided indictments for Conspiracy to Wage Agressive Wars, “crimes against humanity” and “Crimes of war”, all of which Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush should answer charges thereunder. The trial of Saddam Hussain was a farce… Perhaps, Mr. Blair’s will be insrtructive and fair..