Is Tony Blair holding up the Iraq inquiry report over its tough criticism of him?

There is a growing consensus that Tony Blair is the witness primarily responsible for the delay in publishing the Chilcot report.

Cartoon by Steve Bell.

The scandal surrounding the war in Iraq, unleashed by the US in 2003 with the support of its UK ally, has never gone away. In the UK it has been compounded by an inordinate delay in the publication of the findings of the official inquiry into the war.

Chaired by retired civil servant, Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry was set up in 2009 by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Its overriding aim upon inception was to answer, once and for all, the lingering questions over Britain’s involvement in what undoubtedly qualifies as one of the most disastrous wars in which the country has ever been involved.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose name will forever be inextricably linked to this war and its aftermath, took the decision to follow his US counterpart, George W Bush, to Baghdad on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be false, claiming that Saddam had WMD and posed a clear and present danger to his neighbors and the stability of the region.

Indeed, many believe that the intelligence used to justify the war was not only false it was fabricated, concocted to conceal the war’s real objective – namely regime change and seizing control of Iraq’s massive oil reserves.

Despite not being given the legal powers to either compel witnesses to appear in front of the inquiry or recommend legal prosecutions in instances where the inquiry adjudged the evidence justified them, Chilcot questioned dozens of people over the two years in which it sat from 2009-2011. Everyone from Tony Blair to the most junior civil servant during his government was questioned during the inquiries deliberations, along with senior military personnel and assorted functionaries.

Considering that this phase of the inquiry ended four years ago, the lack of a final report has brought the entire process – at a cost to the British taxpayer of millions of pounds and counting – into disrepute. Worse, it has completely destroyed any confidence the process may once have enjoyed from the British public over the determination and ability of Sir John Chilcot and his team to uncover the truth.

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