As it was, many in this latter group of MPs were the same ones who'd voted for the Iraq War, and one suspects herein for many of the same reasons. In this case history didn't just repeat itself -- it tripped over itself on its way 'back to the future', a recurring refrain in the foreign policy narratives of both countries. Insofar as O'Neill is concerned, Chilcot is in fact an example of the "worst kind of whitewash", of the political, moral and historical kind. He adds the following to underscore this point:
'In giving the chattering classes what they so desperately craved -- hard evidence that Blair is wicked and his warmongering was a disaster and they are right to hate him now -- Chilcot and the circus around it wrenches the Iraq War from its historical context and turns it into the psycho-dramatic folly of a hubristic has-been. In doing so, it washes away the context in which [it] could take place.'
Alexander Mercouris, in an article published in the wake of the Report's release, dismisses Chilcot as "an irrelevance"; yet in doing so he nails some lucid observations about the Report and the fallout from it. The central tenet of his article is hard to resist, and is one that few appear thus far to be discussing -- that being the 'special relationship' between Washington and the Mother Country. Again, this is principally what drove the decision -- like that in Britain, essentially bipartisan -- for Canberra to do same.
That Blair himself could not resist said "clamor" is axiomatic, although there was much more to it than that. Even if Chilcot doesn't quite spell out to what degree "much more" might be defined, for many observers there is probably little need to. The damage as they say is done, a mordant reality that will be most apparent for the families of those British soldiers who died for what was always for them a fraudulent, and ultimately lost, cause. As former British ambassador, broadcaster and human rights activist Craig Murray noted, Blair's attempt to justify the invasion as an effort to prevent a 9/11 on British soil is patently "dishonest". 'Blair knew full well [that] Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11 -- that was his friends and financiers the Saudi elite.'
Of course Blair is not on his 'Pat Malone' here as leaders of a number of Western nations began falling over each other in the scramble to climb onto the neocon wagon train, one which we all know now was heavily freighted with all manner of transparently fraudulent intelligence.
As we will see soon, we have a similar dilemma Down Under, despite there not being a Chilcot-type inquiry here, nor even as much brouhaha about our own involvement in Iraq. Along with the de rigeuer obligation of Washington's satraps to ingratiate themselves with whatever White House administration is calling the shots, our own PM at the time John Howard and his U.K. counterpart were so enamored of the Bush/Cheney neocon arguments they either couldn't, or more likely didn't want to, see the wood for the trees in the way.
Cue then mucho back peddling 'down the mountain' in both cases when those much touted WMDs failed to materialize and the invasion and occupation -- the latter even more ill-planned and poorly managed than the former was ill-conceived -- morphed from debacle to disaster to never-ending quagmire and beyond. We could say the rest is history, except that it's decidedly not.
It needs be noted Mercouris' earlier comments about how the 'intel' was fashioned to shore up Blair's decision to enter the fray (and from there ultimately to sell the war to the British public), although not especially revelatory, are nonetheless of particular relevance. On such matters as going to war, there can never be too many reminders of the egregious and cavalier manner our political leaders and their MSM cheer squads distort and contort their bespoke narratives for less than noble, honest, public spirited designs.
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