The Chilcot team has completed the first phase of its Inquiry. It has revealed few new facts, but has reminded us of those already known. They confirm what ought to be Chilcot’s blunt conclusion: our leaders took us into a war that was illegal, immoral, unnecessary, and hugely destructive.
Chilcot was not set up to decide whether the Iraq war was lawful—if so one would have expected at least one lawyer among its members. Yet much of the evidence has been about the the way in which the issue of legality was faced by Tony Blair and his colleagues. They saw it as an inconvenience particularly because the US was untroubled by it—but it was cleverly used to divert attention from some very disreputable diplomacy in the run-up to the war. By creating a picture of legal uncertainty, the government disguised its defiance of the majority of international opinion.
In fact, international law is for once quite clear. The assault on Iraq could only be legal if authorised by a resolution of the UN Security Council. The US seemed prepared to flout this
