SIR John Chilcot’s 6,000-page report on the Iraq war and occupation delivered a crushing verdict on Tony Blair’s decision to join the US invasion, finding a cascade of mistakes and bad strategy that led to years of devastating mismanagement and strife.Key findings include: Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein; the UK chose invasion before it had exhausted peaceful options; British intelligence produced “flawed information”; the US ignored UK advice on postwar planning; the British military was poorly prepared for war, Blair ignored warnings, kept his Cabinet in the dark and had no plans for occupation.Bush defiantly insisted on invading Iraq which was certainly wrong. “Despite the intelligence failures and other mistakes he has acknowledged previously,” a spokesperson said, “President Bush continues to believe the whole world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.”Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn apologised on behalf of the party. He apologised to Iraqis, British soldiers and to “the millions of British citizens who feel our democracy was traduced and undermined by the way in which the decision to go to war was taken”. Initially the people of Iraq openly welcomed the removal of Saddam. But what is most conspicuously missing in the report is the brutalities committed by the invading soldiers against the people of Iraq. The heartbreaking pictures of savagery by invading soldiers were shown in the media but no immediate action was taken to stop them. Such activities of the soldiers confirmed the notion that invasion was against the Muslims and hatred against Muslims of Iraq was too glaring to be ignored. And this is the sad reality that the war against Iraq was unjustified, yet welcomed by Iraqi people for a democratic change. The real crime was committed by allowing the invading soldiers to freely resort to inhuman brutalities against Iraqi people. British Prime Minister Blair and US President Bush both committed the grave crime against humanity by giving their soldiers completely free hand to indulge in savagery against the people of Iraq. Neither the US nor the UK had any plan about what to do after the removal of Saddam. Because of this lack of vision the tremendous goodwill generated after the war in Iraq due to the removal of Saddam’s regime has degenerated into intermittent conflicts between Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish groups, leading to call for the country to be split into three autonomous areas loosely resembling a confederation.All of this anarchy and bloodshed would not have happened if the attitude of the Allied troops and administrators would have been different after the war. There was no need for disbanding Saddam Hussein’s army. They would have been too willing to cooperate with the changed regime. The Allied leaders showed no consideration for the people of Iraq. They allowed rivals to take revenge on each other, tortured innocents and guilty alike, and so disgusted parts of the local populace that it was very easy for groups like ISIL to spread its wings and preach its message of hatred. In fact the US is responsible for creating ISIL because its major leaders, including al Baghdadi, were interned in Camp Bucca – a point made even by US News sources. Unwittingly it served to bring together all those who hated and demonized the West – the most radical zealots in all of Iraq. Its present sorry state is partly due to the result of that legacy.In our judgment both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair should be condemned for the negligence of not restraining their soldiers, especially US soldiers, from the savagery against innocent Iraqi people out of hatred.
