Gerald Warner: Sick-bags at the ready as Iraq Inquiry joins list of charades

Published on Saturday 28 November 2009 19:12

NEVER let them tell you that nostalgia is not what it was. If you want an evocative trip down Memory Lane, just tune into the Iraq Inquiry. Last week's early proceedings featured such golden oldies as Sir Christopher Meyer and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former British ambassadors respectively to the United States and the United Nations. By the time the inquiry finishes it will have been attended by more mandarins than the coronation of the Hsuan Tung emperor.

There was general agreement among civil service Kremlinologists that Meyer was attempting to hang Tony Blair out to dry. Attention focused on his revelations (if somebody excluded from the serious deliberations can be said to be in a position to reveal anything) that when Blair met George Bush at his Texas ranch the two leaders enjoyed total privacy. "I took no part in any of the discussions and there was a large chunk of that time when no adviser was there. I know what the Cabinet Office says were the results of the meeting, but to this day I am not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch."

"Signed in blood" is a mandarin joke; the blood that resulted from that meeting was shed elsewhere and not by Blair and Bush (or, at least, not in the intransitive usage of the verb). The following day Blair made a speech in which, for the first time, he used the phrase "regime change": evidently Dubya had told "Yo, Blair" to get himself some cojones and start taking out towel-heads, or risk exclusion from the frat house. That, however, scarcely qualifies as a revelation.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock brought to the proceedings the rigorous semantic discipline that has made the Foreign Office a byword for paralysis and impotence since Sir Edward Grey observed that the lights were going out all over Europe, apparently oblivious to his own hand on one of the switches. Greenstock believed that the Iraq War was legal, but not legitimate. Uh-huh. Time for a spot of lunch. But not before Sir Jeremy had discoursed on the drafting of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 in a style that made listening hacks long for the simple vocabulary and narrative of a 16th-century scholastic philosopher expounding the Hypostatic Union.

The notion that moral legitimacy could be conferred on any enterprise by the endorsement of a criminal organisation such as the United Nations testifies to the ethical illiteracy and hypocrisy of 21st-century politics. One member of the Security Council alone, Red China, has committed 65 million murders. What kind of moral authority does such a record confer? As if any of it mattered. The Iraq Inquiry, like all similar exercises, is, as our transatlantic cousins would phrase it, a crock.

Get your head round this concept: the Iraq Inquiry is a fearless, in-depth, no-holds-barred inquisition that has been granted exemption from the Freedom of Information Act by Gordon Brown. Yes, sir. Nobody does inquiries like the Brits. No hint of mob rule here. Five Privy Counsellors and true will hear the urbane testimony of their peers. This calling to account of the Blair regime is in the classic mould of Hutton, the Butler whitewash (regarded by mandarins as a paradigm of its kind) and every historical charade that has left the guilty free to return to their mansions and make money.

The only beneficiaries will be historians, who will find nuggets from the evidence with which to ornament books that would have been thinner without this emerging anecdotage. Otherwise, what is the purpose of the inquiry?

Sir John Chilcot, the chairman, stated its remit on 30 July as "considering the United Kingdom's involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish as accurately and reliably as possible what happened, and to identify the lessons that can be learned". Would it recommend criminal prosecutions, if appropriate? The inquiry website has the answer: "The inquiry is not a court of law. The members of the committee are not judges, and nobody is on trial. But if the committee finds that mistakes were made, that there were issues that could have been dealt with better, it will say so."

Scary, or what? Everybody knows that egregious mistakes were made and that almost every issue could have been dealt with better. What about deliberate, cynical warmongering? In that context, the inquiry at present is Hamlet without the Prince. The much-awaited gig is the appearance of the Great Charlatan himself, to defend his legacy. "Hey – look – I mean – come on – I'm a pretty straight sort of WMD fabricator…" Serves you right; as soon as you read the name 'Blair' you should have had a sick-bag handy.