Britain's Iraq War Inquiry

Jules Witcover

After four weeks of public testimony on how and why the 2003 invasion of Iraq began, a five-member British inquiry commission took a holiday break

The government-appointed commission of British non-governmental citizens has already made a good start toward determining how their country was drawn into the war by the flawed intelligence and deceptive premises of the George W. Bush administration.

Chaired by Sir John Chilcot, a retired former undersecretary of state in various Whitehall offices, the commission has focused on the British role as the principal American ally in the disingenuously named coalition of the willing that ousted Saddam Hussein with little forethought of the catastrophic aftermath that unfolded.

Witnesses -- all of them secondary players so far -- have given testimony on how then Prime Minister Tony Blair eventually bought into the Bush argument that the Iraqi dictator constituted an intolerable threat to the West, and had to be confronted if United Nations sanctions did not harness him.

Former British government bigwigs, including Blair himself, are to be called after the holidays. But serving leaders, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, aren't scheduled until after next year's general election, to keep the inquiry out of domestic politics.

Although Britain was only a secondary player in the war, its involvement and casualties taken have generated wide disapproval in the United Kingdom and arguably were a major element in Blair's departure from 10 Downing Street. He was widely disparaged as a Bush patsy in the whole misadventure.

President Obama pointedly ruled as he took office that his administration should and would look past how Bush brought the United States to war in Iraq and Britain with it, focusing instead on its challenges ahead. The decision roiled liberal Democrats who argued not only that a similar inquiry was imperative, but also that it would underscore Republican culpability in the mess Obama encountered when he entered the White House.

The new president's stated commitment to govern in a spirit of bipartisanship with the Republican minority in Congress was in keeping with that forward look, but he immediately encountered the opposition party's determined strategy of stonewalling him at every turn.

Meanwhile, the American people are obliged to watch from afar the British inquiry, to discern the facts about how and why the Iraq war occurred, in which their military forces and their taxes at home still bear the brunt of that historic foreign-policy blunder.

Late-night insomniacs have been able to follow parts of the hearings on C-Span television. Chilcot has conducted them with admirable decorum essentially devoid of the customary political point-scoring and showboating of most American congressional hearings.

The last witness before commission before the holiday break, Sir Christopher Meyer, the British ambassador to the United States during the run-up to the invasion, provided interesting perceptions of Blair's encounters with Bush at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, at the time.

While determinedly adhering to the non-political guidelines for testimony, Meyer at one point offered that had former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher been in Blair's shoes, Britain might have obtained more advantageous conditions for going along with Bush's war.

When the British inquiry was launched at the end of last July, it stirred considerable public interest at home. Since then, 38 witnesses have been heard in 23 public sessions, and according to Chilcot more than 40,000 government documents have been turned over to the commission.

Five more weeks are planned for the new year. Chilcot in closing the first phase observed: "We have not been trying to ambush witnesses or score points. ... We are not here to provide public sport or entertainment." What American committee chairman would likely risk such a statement with a straight face, even if such an inquiry were held on Capitol Hill?

We apparently will not find out any time soon. Americans still wondering how the whole fiasco of Bush's war of choice in Iraq was sold to the British, and to the rest of us, will have to keep tuning in on C-SPAN.

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