I was intending to write off Sir John Chilcot as an incompetent, old fool but then it occurred to me that the opposite is true, he is actually exceedingly good at doing what he does, that is, pleasing his masters. His apprenticeship took place through increasingly high places in the civil service where, no doubt, he learned his crafty arts. He sat upon, in all senses of the phrase, the Butler Review into British Intelligence prior to Iraq II. Needless to say, it has never been published in full and whilst the findings criticised the Intelligence Services one of its main operators, John Scarlett, was exonerated and not only promoted to head MI6 but given a knighthood as well. That's the price of failure in the British establishment!
So, from there as a mere committee man, Sir John Chilcot, was ready, willing and able to accept promotion himself to the chair of the next big enquiry into the whole farrago that was our part in Iraq II. That was six - SIX! - years ago and still the bloody thing has not been published and now we have been told not to expect anything until the end of the year. What a comfort that will be for the widows and fatherless children of our servicemen who died in that conflict and who are entitled to some clarification on what passed for thinking in Tony Blair's government at the time.
At this point, I feel impelled to utter a long, loud, personal mea culpa because at the time I was in favour of the war. My main reason was that I believed what our, by which I mean British and American, intelligence services were saying. Not that they were offering definitive proof, intelligence rarely works like that, but they had strong indications that Sadaam Hussein, a man who had not hesitated to use chemical and gas weapons against the Kurds, was pursuing a WMD programme. In addition, I was very happy to see America move in and take over Iraq and, having established their own satrap on the 'throne' in true-blue, British Empire-style, to use the country as a base from which very direct pressure could be exerted on troublesome neighbours. Alas for my poor judgment, the intel was rubbish and the Americans proved that when it comes to empires they're only good at breaking up other people's - ours, to be exact! When it comes to building their own and running it they haven't a clue! My final humiliation was that our army leadership proved utterly useless at urban warfare. So not my finest hour!
Returning, reluctantly, to the snail-like, or perhaps slug-like is a better analogy, Sir John Chilcot, he is doing better than his previous masters could ever have hoped. He has strung this ludicrous exercise out far longer than anyone imagined. 'Dim Dave' must be spitting blood because he was rubbing his hands at the thought of several tons of ordure splattering the Labour party just before the election. Now it will miss by several months, in fact one wonders if, at this rate, anyone involved in the fiasco will still be alive when it is finally published.
