So far, I’ve tried to avoid reading anything about the Iraq inquiry, essentially because it’s a massive sham, a distraction, and will not lead to any kind of change, or any kind of justice for the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the Iraq war.

But because I follow people like Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Channel 4 News, and occasionally check in with the mainstream media, I haven’t been able to completely seal myself off from everything.

As has been written by smarter people, the whole thing is essentially a farce. The inquiry’s own “Terms of Reference” say:

We will therefore be considering the UK’s involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned. Those lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country.

The explicitly stated goal of the commission isn’t to get any kind of justice for the victims, nor hold anyone to account for the UK’s role in the “supreme international crime“, in the words of the American chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, Robert H. Jackson:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

The inquiry’s goal is to aid future UK governments by looking at the “lessons” of Iraq. But as the ever-perceptive editors of Media Lens note, “the use of military and economic force to control and exploit the world is non-negotiable” for the interests that control the major political parties.

We are free to vote for the Labour party to attack ‘threatening’, but in fact defenceless, Third World countries, or we can vote for the Conservative party to do the same. We can buy the Guardian that respectfully hypes the ‘threat’ as defined by ‘official sources’, or we can buy The Times that does the same.

When public scepticism erupts in response to resultant extremes of criminality and violence that even the media are powerless to deny, the illusion must be bolstered. Then Tweedledum-Tweedledee will choose from their own to rig an “inquiry”, while their media allies present the process as something other than a farce. [Source]

Obviously, this is something that is not even considered by the mainstream media. For Britain’s most ahem “left-wing” broadsheet, the Guardian, the Iraq war was the result of “monstrous blunder“. In an editorial the day after the announcement of the inquiry, the paper wrote:

No, the real reason an inquiry is needed is to draw together what we already know, and in its light to try to grasp how such a monstrous blunder could have been made. What went wrong with the structures, the culture and – yes – the individuals in Whitehall, such that the country could be led into a bloody conflict on a false prospectus?

What’s wrong (not “went wrong” — fundamentally wrong) is plain to see. The UK has been involved (not “led into”) in numerous “bloody conflicts”, but normally there is little need for hand-wringing over the “blunder” of war, because it’s not usually considered a “blunder”. Normally it goes well. For us.

Blair’s bullshit

So, let’s get to the point at hand: today Tony Blair is testifying before the inquiry. The Guardian is reporting that he believed “beyond doubt” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.¹

I was hoping to write something at least somewhat-interesting on what he said today, but I physically can’t. Go ahead, read for yourself. For anyone familiar with even some of the facts, the mendacity on display is utterly mind-bending.

For example, take what Blair says on the pre-invasion sanctions, imposed during the 1990s:

Blair told the inquiry that prior to 9/11 the British and American policy of containing Saddam’s regime with “smart” sanctions had been worth trying, although there were holes in the way they were working.

This is an interesting position to take. I wouldn’t exactly refer to the unnecessary deaths of over half a million under-fives. Here’s what UNICEF said in 1999:

[I]f the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998. As a partial explanation, she pointed to a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues which states: “Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war.”

The rest of what he says is of the same character, and the mendacity will by typical for anyone familiar with what those in power say, and what the facts really are.

What is particularly striking is how Iran is singled out. No points for guessing why.