Sir John Chilcot’s report into the Iraq war has enhanced the reputations of some of those involved but raised tough questions for others.
Reputations enhanced
Sir John Chilcot
Until the publication of his report on Wednesday, Chilcot was a synonym for interminable delay. The document – 2.6m words across 12 volumes – took seven years to write. In the end it amounted to the most comprehensively damning verdict on any British prime minister of modern times. Claims that Chilcot would whitewash Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq were unfounded. A retired civil servant, he emerges from this trickiest of assignments with his reputation greatly enhanced.
Charles Kennedy
Charles Kennedy’s name scarcely featured in the extensive reporting of the Iraq inquiry. The then Liberal Democrat leader steadfastly opposed the war and – as Menzies Campbell points out in a letter to the Guardian – led every Lib Dem MP who voted on Iraq in the Commons to oppose the government. He was the only party leader to do so. It was an act of courage, made harder by vociferous opposition from pro-war MPs and newspapers, plus accusations of appeasement.
Eliza Manningham-Buller
Before the US-led attack, the head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, was clear about its potentially dire consequences. She predicted it would lead to an increase in domestic terrorism, adding that she did not consider Saddam Hussein to be a threat to the UK. Her views, fed into the UK’s joint intelligence committee, were ignored. Manningham-Buller told Chilcot the Iraq disaster and its radicalising effect on some young Muslims contributed to the 7/7 London bombings.
Elizabeth Wilmshurst
Wilmshurst was the deputy legal officer in the ForeignOffice in the run-up to invasion. She took the view that for the UK to join a US attack on Iraq a second UN resolution was needed authorising military force. Without one the invasion would be illegitimate. This advice was given to the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw. But he dismissed it, with the government relying on a counter-view given by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, that it was not needed. Wilmshurst quit in protest. This was a brave step, vindicated by Chilcot.
Hans Blix
The UN’s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix came under huge pressure to confirm the US-UK case for war: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Blix believed this to be the case in 2002. But his inspectors did not find anything, and Blix told the international community as much. He acknowledged the Iraqi regime had repeatedly obstructed his work. This was not sufficient to justify a preemptive invasion, he said. He made clear the war was illegal, and his dislike of the Pentagon.
Robin Cook and Jeremy Corbyn
Cook’s resignation on the eve of a March 2003 parliamentary vote authorising war was one of the most courageous political acts of the modern era. A former foreign secretary and leader of the house, Cook was a brilliant orator with a gift for forensic analysis and moral far-sightedness. He knew the Iraq war was wrong and said so, even though it meant the end of his political career. His death in 2005 robbed British political life of a star.
Jeremy Corbyn, then a backbench rebel, was a vehement opponent of war, a fact that would help propel him to the Labour leadership 12 years later.
Katharine Gun
Gun was working as an analyst at GCHQ when she came across an email from the US National Security Agency. It asked for British help in bugging the UN security council, at a time – early 2003 – when the US and UK were desperate for votes from the six non-permanent member states. Gun leaked the email to the Observer. She was arrested under the official secrets act but was not prosecuted. It was a brave act of whistleblowing from deep inside the government intelligence machine.
Tough questions asked
Tony Blair
Ahead of the Chilcot report there was speculation that blame would be spread across the then Labour government and Whitehall. In the end it fell almost exclusively on Tony Blair.
Blair’s stream-of-consciousness letters to the war’s other architect, the then US president, George W Bush – one read “with you, whatever” – reveal that he signed up to toppling Saddam in early 2002. Yes, he pushed Bush down the UN route and sought to build a coalition. But the diplomacy followed the military decision.
George W Bush
Bush plays a side role in the Chilcot report. This is because of its UK remit, to look at the decision to go to war, and the lessons that might be learned. It was Bush’s plan to invade Iraq, a long-held fantasy of his neocon advisers who included Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. In the aftermath of 9/11 it was made real. Bush is a less toxic figure than Blair 13 years on, at least at home. In a statement on Wednesday he was unapologetic, acknowledging mistakes but insisting removing Saddam had improved the world.
Sir Richard Dearlove and Sir John Scarlett
Chilcot described the intelligence saying Saddam had biological and chemical weapons as “flawed”. This was an understatement: it was utterly wrong. Blair said on Wednesday he had believed it. The duo who provided the intelligence were Sir Richard Dearlove, then the head of MI6, and Sir John Scarlett, who was the chair of the UK’s joint intelligence committee. The claim was published in the September 2002 “dodgy dossier”, souped up with a personal foreword by Blair. Dearlove had failed to evaluate his sources properly and/or relied on informants not actually vetted by MI6. It was the worst mistake made by the UK intelligence community in the post-1945 era.
Lord Goldsmith
It was Goldsmith who told Blair in February 2003 that going to war in Iraq without a second UN resolution would be legal. But for the previous year, as military forces were covertly assembled, he had thought the opposite: that there was no proper legal basis for conflict. He changed his mind after a trip to Washington. Goldsmith’s decision or “better view” gave the government legal cover for what in the end was a non-UN approved war of choice. Goldsmith says he still believes his decision was right.
Sir Jeremy Heywood
The UK’s cabinet secretary was once described as the most powerful man you’ve never heard of. Heywood has had the job since 2012. He tried to block publication of 29 private notes sent by Blair to Bush as well as records of cabinet meetings. In the end, Chilcot prevailed. The documents are the most revealing aspect of the report, giving an unprecedented insight into Blair’s mental processes. It was Heywood, meanwhile, who in summer 2013 insisted the Guardian destroy its computers in an underground car park following the Edward Snowden revelations.
In a statement, the Cabinet Office insisted Heywood “led a process which saw an unparalleled level of transparency and gave Sir John full access to Government papers.” It added: “This has meant an unprecedented public declassification of Joint Intelligence Committee papers, key Cabinet minutes, records of meetings and conversations between the UK Prime Minister and the American President, and 31 personal memos from [Blair to Bush]...”
- A statement from the Cabinet Office was added to this article on Saturday July 9.