As the Chilcot inquiry edges towards its climactic session with Tony Blair, the search for the smoking gun that will establish war guilt beyond dispute seems to move from room to room. It is always close to discovery, never quite found.
So it will probably prove again tomorrow, changing few minds in the process. For some people bringing Blair – the "war criminal" and "Bush's poodle" to account – is the overriding issue of the moment.
George Monbiot, an unlikely Clint Eastwood, has started a bounty hunter's fund with £100 of his own money. In today's Guardian Professor Phillippe Sands QC has rung a French political contact to be reassured that Lord Goldsmith's interpretation of the fateful UN security council resolution 1441 is not France's interpretation, as if it was ever likely to be.
Passions are running deep. But how wide? In the Indy last week, former Europe minister Denis MacShane irritatingly reminded the paper's readers just how wide the consensus was in 2003 that Saddam Hussein's arsenal was a serious threat to peace. Politicians, most of the media and of course the vote of the Commons – despite the Labour revolt which had much to commend it then and still does – pointed the same way.
What we have had since is a substantial exercise in hindsight, all those officials, diplomats politicians too – some of them providing "not me, guv" testimony to Chilcot – distancing themselves from Blair. As Philip Stephens asked in the FT the other day, if Gordon Brown is now being required to explain his role why are not some of those Tory politicians (Ken Clarke a conspicuous exception) being examined by Chilcot too?
Surely they were not hoodwinked by a man they so mistrusted? Why, even amiable Peter Stothard, then editor of the Times who was granted unique access to Blair in the crucial weeks (and ended up Sir Peter) sounded as if he was bailing out on him on Radio 4 this week.
The lynch mob mood which pervades much of the blogosphere is not conducive to calm analysis of the evidence which is – as evidence tends to be – messy and conflicting.
Lord Goldsmith's lengthy testimony yesterday fits into this pattern. Earnest, fastidious and prickly, Tony Blair's attorney general was long known to have thought the legal case for an invasion of Iraq was weak without formal UN sanction – "safer" to have a second resolution.
He was only finally persuaded after a series of meetings in February 2003 by British and US officials who had negotiated UNSCR 1441 – and told him that the ambiguities of the first resolution were inherent. Without them there would have been no resolution 1441.
Washington would concede more time to the weapons inspectors, but not a veto to the security council. That the council should "consider" those "material breaches" of the ceasefire by Iraq is not the same as "decide", Jack Straw explained in his 6 February letter to Goldsmith, crackling with condescending impatience at a slow pupil.
Stiff-necked Goldsmith has been repeatedly presented as a patsy, a crony, a man to be bullied, though it is not the impression he left after yesterday's six-hour session. As with "poodle" Blair, who (with others) persuaded George Bush to take the UN route, the stereotype does not quite fit the facts.
The inquiry has three core issues to address and further clarify if it can:
• The intelligence on WMD; It was clearly faulty, but widely believed at the time by senior officials and politicians on both sides of the Iraq divide, Egypt, Russia, France, as well as the US-UK axis. Blair will presumably say tomorrow that he believed everything he said, including those unguarded phrases, about which Sir Roderick Lyne will harry him.
• The legality of the war; Goldsmith eventually accepted the "revival" argument whereby Iraqi breaches of 1441 revived UNSCR 687 that required Saddam's regime to comply with 1991 ceasefire terms or face what 1441 called serious consequences. The precise meaning was ambiguous; that was the point. As John Denham, who resigned from the Blair government over the war in 2003, said on radio this week – at the end of the day the decision to go to war is political, not legal.
• The competence of the occupation; By general consent it was badly done and based on the false assumption that most Iraqis would welcome their deliverance from a tyranny. So they did, but not for long. The Sunni insurgency was intended to cause inter-communal disorder and it did.
Most of this we knew before Sir John Chilcot's panel first opened its inquiry. Have we learned a lot? Plenty of details. This week I was surprised to hear how Goldsmith's efforts to discuss his final legal opinion in full cabinet were blocked, presumably by Blair.
Why so feeble? And why so feeble cabinet sceptics like Claire Short and Robin Cook? Group think again? The same group think that now persuades so many people that it was all a criminal conspiracy rather than a cock-up with mixed results and some very unpleasant people on both sides of the argument.
Law and due process always matter, in international affairs as well as at home. But they are not always enough any more than peace is always preferable to war on whatever terms are available.
It usually is, though plenty of people alive in Sierra Leone or Kosovo today could not have waited for the UN security council to give the green light. Plenty who are dead in the Congo waited in vain.
I cannot yet share the optimism of William Shawcross (once a scourge of US policy in Vietnam) in this week's Guardian that things are slowly turning out for the best in Iraq; it is too soon to reach such conclusions. But so is the opposing proposition and much that passes for rational thought – as Guardian letter-writers suggest this morning.
Even Blair's harshest critics – Andrew Gilligan and Philippe Sands in Sunday's Telegraph for instance – expect him to survive his grilling tomorrow. Given the prosecutorial tone of much of the coverage, which risks misleading some voters as to the burden of evidence, Chilcot's findings are bound to disappoint. The cry of "whitewash" will again be heard.
The verdict matters because it helps shapes future perception. Margaret Thatcher's careless diplomacy and defence review helped trigger the Argentine seizure of the Falklands in 1982 – amid familiar charges of skulduggery from the usual suspects. The Franks inquiry – Chilcot without the TV cameras – generously acquitted her (cries of "whitewash") because she won.
The most egregious such re-writing of history is the Munich crisis of 1938. Then as now, the Foreign Office's finest minds wanted peace, but didn't get it. Neville Chamberlain took the blame as the Labour opposition helped put its old enemy – Churchill – into power as Hitler's troops poured west.
Michael Foot duly co-authored Guilty Men to pillory the Tories. Except that Labour's long-held commitment to collective security and the ineffectual League of Nations (no US presence) contributed to the Tory failure to rearm in the 1930s. Understandable after the horrors of the first world war, but wrong.
As Denis Healey (then a communist student) recalled on Radio 4's Today this week: "The Labour party was half-pacifist and not prepared to stand up to Hitler", as the communists were (until the Hitler-Stalin pact, when people like Healey drifted away).
Messy, isn't it? Great events usually are. It is surely best to absorb the Chilcot testimony in sombre reflection, learn from mistakes, awful but human on all sides, and try to not to make them next time.
You have characters left
Please read our community standards.
Closing this window without pressing "Post your comment" will result in your words being lost.
Are you sure?
Thank you for your comment. This has been submitted for moderation.
Your comment has been successfully posted.
Sorry, something has gone wrong and this action cannot be completed. Please try again later.