Blair will avoid 'the reckoning he deserves' – again

The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war won't exonerate Blair, but it won't convict him of anything either.

"Hurrah. It's Colosseum time again," said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. "The all-singing, all-dancing Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war is in town... It even has a star Christian, Tony Blair, who got us into this mess." The cry is for him to die horribly. But, of course, he won't. We know the truth: Blair went to war because he "lacked the guts to stand up to George Bush". We know this from books, papers, leaks and reports. The Hutton and Butler inquiries supplied "mountains of material". But this inquiry "can no more deliver accountability than could its predecessors". As Sir John Chilcot said, his is not a court of law and "no one is on trial".

So he is performing an "exercise in historical research". Parliament which approved the war "will do nothing with the report". Besides, the two previous inquiries have given Blair "all the impunity he needs", said John Kampfner in The Daily Mail. In spite of "compelling public evidence", Hutton's conclusion amounted to a "desultory whitewash".

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