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The [Iraq Inquiry], also known as the [Chilcot Report]
The Ender
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7 years worth of investigation into the UK's involvement in Operation Unilateral Invasion of Iraq: What Could Possibly Go Wrong Afterall Saddam is a Bad Guy! LOL! came to a conclusion yesterday. The report is quite the read, even if it mostly just touches on / confirms much of what is already known about the planning (or, more specifically, the lack of planning) re: Iraq and just how reactionary / ideologically motivated the effort was.
Primarily, the report litigates the following points:
- That the UK government presented information that it knew was dubious at best as evidence to support it's argument that Saddam possessed a threatening arsenal of non-conventional weapons / was aggressively building up an active combat force.
- That diplomatic channels for resolving contentious issues surrounding Iraq's arsenal & the monitoring thereof had not been reasonably tapped.
- That the legal basis for executing the invasion was, at best, very tenuous (and at worst, it was simply illegal & thereby a war crime).
- That the UK assumed it would largely be in charge of the operation (Hahahahaha what? Honestly this is the part of the report I found most interesting), and since they represented (in their opinion) the brains of the strategy, Bush administration bombast / incompetence could be managed away.
- Planning & preparation on the UK end was in no way superior to the American effort, and in many ways was far less adequate, often making assumptions that did not map onto reality (Turkish interest in cooperation, for example, was assumed to be much stronger than it really was; violent insurgents were assumed to be far more tolerable & manageable than they really were; the desire in Iraq for regime change / democratic culture was assumed to be far greater than it actually was; etc).
- Logistics was hot garbage. Troops did not receive supplies they needed, armored vehicles were not correctly distributed, IED / guerrilla ambush tactics were not acknowledged as a serious threat to be countered, etc.
- None of the goals laid out by the UK were achieved. Not even the goals associated with regime change.
- Tony Blair is a useless idiot who smells like poop, probably because he's mostly made out of poop.
(...Okay fine it doesn't actually say that last one. But it will make you think it).
If you didn't already know that Tony Blair just flat-out lied when he said that Iraq could ready & fire a nuclear-tipped SCUD at the UK in 45 minutes, hey, this report should seal the deal for you (though in fairness Mr. Chilcot does constantly reiterate that what office actually issued the fabrications / twisted intelligence reports is an unknown mess, and that Labor themselves were basically sorting through a pile of rotten garbage that M16 eventually slopped onto the table for them).
The cautionary conclusion of the inquiry is that sufficiently good intelligence that explicitly informed government officials of the likely outcome of an invasion (destabilization, civil war, sectarian violence, etc) was available in abundance, but was sidelined in favor of much more speculative reporting that confirmed ideological bias and - unfortunately - public demand.
Primarily, the report litigates the following points:
- That the UK government presented information that it knew was dubious at best as evidence to support it's argument that Saddam possessed a threatening arsenal of non-conventional weapons / was aggressively building up an active combat force.
- That diplomatic channels for resolving contentious issues surrounding Iraq's arsenal & the monitoring thereof had not been reasonably tapped.
- That the legal basis for executing the invasion was, at best, very tenuous (and at worst, it was simply illegal & thereby a war crime).
- That the UK assumed it would largely be in charge of the operation (Hahahahaha what? Honestly this is the part of the report I found most interesting), and since they represented (in their opinion) the brains of the strategy, Bush administration bombast / incompetence could be managed away.
- Planning & preparation on the UK end was in no way superior to the American effort, and in many ways was far less adequate, often making assumptions that did not map onto reality (Turkish interest in cooperation, for example, was assumed to be much stronger than it really was; violent insurgents were assumed to be far more tolerable & manageable than they really were; the desire in Iraq for regime change / democratic culture was assumed to be far greater than it actually was; etc).
- Logistics was hot garbage. Troops did not receive supplies they needed, armored vehicles were not correctly distributed, IED / guerrilla ambush tactics were not acknowledged as a serious threat to be countered, etc.
- None of the goals laid out by the UK were achieved. Not even the goals associated with regime change.
- Tony Blair is a useless idiot who smells like poop, probably because he's mostly made out of poop.
(...Okay fine it doesn't actually say that last one. But it will make you think it).
If you didn't already know that Tony Blair just flat-out lied when he said that Iraq could ready & fire a nuclear-tipped SCUD at the UK in 45 minutes, hey, this report should seal the deal for you (though in fairness Mr. Chilcot does constantly reiterate that what office actually issued the fabrications / twisted intelligence reports is an unknown mess, and that Labor themselves were basically sorting through a pile of rotten garbage that M16 eventually slopped onto the table for them).
The cautionary conclusion of the inquiry is that sufficiently good intelligence that explicitly informed government officials of the likely outcome of an invasion (destabilization, civil war, sectarian violence, etc) was available in abundance, but was sidelined in favor of much more speculative reporting that confirmed ideological bias and - unfortunately - public demand.
With Love and Courage
The Ender on
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That is part of the bad intelligence that Labor was sorting through, yes.
It's important to understand that we don't know who believed what / how much deliberate deception there was vs how much intelligence was simply mishandled by people who didn't understand how to interpret what they were reading. A lot of responsibility ends-up landing on the shoulders of the Joint Intelligence Committee, because they were supposed to be educating the elected officials on the documents & did a piss poor job at best.
EDIT: For example, that particular report dealing with The Rock scenario might actually be totally reasonable within the appropriate context. A lot of somewhat outlandish or even film-inspired training exercises are used by military & intelligence agencies, because they are both entertaining & can encourage creative thinking about certain real world problems.
But if you present that evidence without the appropriate context & nuance to a politician with an ideological agenda, who doesn't regularly read these kind of documents and doesn't know how to interpret them, suddenly you have a recipe for hyperbolic nonsense like, 'Iraq can totes shoot SCUDs at us 45 minutes from now with no warning!'
Also, correction as per @Snicketysnick 's point of order.
Labour were the Government at the time. I'm not saying that the Conservatives didn't have a hand in going to war and certainly don't get a pass on the front, but they were not in charge at the time.