The British Government announced an inquiry into the Iraq War, which will be held in private, is expected to last a year, and would deal with everything that happened before, during, and after the war.
But the question to which the Public wants an answer is not the details of everything that happened before, during, and after the war, but whether this war had a genuine legitimate reason, or not. And there is no need for a year-long enquiry to answer that question.
The decision to start the Iraq War was taken by Tony Blair, in his capacity as the British Prime Minister, and by its very nature a war is an act which requires a reason for its justification. A war without a valid reason is a criminal act. And the burden of proof that a war is justified lies with those who start a war. And this means that failure to produce valid reasons for a war amounts to admission that the war was unjustified and, consequently, is a criminal act.
So, if Tony Blair had taken decision to take military action, he must have known why he had taken this decision, and he should have stated the reasons for his decision before the start of the war.
There never was a formal statement of the reasons for the Iraq War from the British Government. There were, however, many attempts by Tony Blair to justify the war in speeches and "dossiers", which were factually and logically flawed. And, when Tony Blair felt that all his attempts to "find reasons" for the war are not accepted by the Public, he stated that it does not matter why "we" started the war, but once "we" started it, "we" must win it. And this statement amounts to an admission that Tony Blair cannot produce a valid reason for starting the War, but wanted to continue with it so as to present it as "victory", and the question of why the war was started would be "swept under the carpet".
So, the question whether the Iraq war was started without a valid reason has already been answered. It was answered by (1) the failure to produce a valid reason for the past 6 years, (2) the numerous attempts to justify the war by false arguments.
The Iraq War had no valid reason.
So, if the answer to the question of whether the Iraq war had any genuine legitimate reasons is known, then why another expensive waste of public money on a year-long enquiry?
The effect of a war without a valid reason and of the numerous attempts to justify it by false arguments has lead to a massive loss of public trust in the Labour Government. This was obvious still at the time Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair. Failure by the Brown government to deal with this issue honestly, and their attempts to justify the Iraq War by "Britishness" and re-writing of history in the year that followed has further contributed to this loss of public trust in the Labour Government. And now, moving closer to the elections, and with the public trust in the Labour Party still further diminished by the "state of the economy" caused by massive government borrowing, but blamed on the banks, as well as the spin doctors and the expenses scandals, the Labour Party is faced with massive electoral defeat, and many in his own party blame for this state of affairs Gordon Brown himself. And this is why this late attempt to restore the trust in Gordon Brown and his party by announcing an Iraq War Inquiry.
Will it help?
If Gordon Brown would look at the reaction to the proposed inquiry by the British Public in the comments in the mainstream British Press, he will find a massive consensus that the proposed inquiry is a whitewash, and that the trust in him personally has still further diminished.
But what would he have to do to re-gain the Public Trust?
Because a war without a valid reason is a criminal act, and because it is an established fact that the Iraq War was started without a valid reason, the only way to establish trust in the present government would be to put those who started that war before an open public criminal court, which would require the accused to produce a valid legal reason for the war, and if such reason is not produced, then the accused would be found guilty and punished as befits any other war criminal.
It is not the British Public, nor the Rest of the World, who need this trial, they know that the Iraq War had no valid reasons. Even the current President of the USA has stated that the Iraq War was a "war of choice" [not a "war of necessity"]. Nor does anybody care any more what happens to Tony Blair, like George Bush, he has already been punished by becoming a global "joke and proverb", and he will be ashamed of even by his own grand children, just as Stalin's daughter was ashamed of her farther. But for Gordon Brown such open and honest trial was the last hope of not following in the footsteps of Tony Blair. His announcement of a year-long secret inquiry has sealed his fate - the only role left for him in the remaining months of his premiership is increasing the popularity of the Conservative Party. And up to now he has been very successful in this role.
