You can download it for free but if you want a hard copy it'll cost you £767.
The purpose of the report was to answer two seemingly straightforward questions:-
- whether it was right and necessary to invade Iraq in March 2003
- whether the UK could - and should - have been better prepared for what followed:-
As we now know, it's taken a good few years and 2.6 million words to answer these two questions and as for the cost, well, that will surely run into millions of pounds.
What were the conclusions of the report? Well you can read them here.
As far as I'm concerned the Iraq war, and its aftermath, is possibly the biggest British cock up of my lifetime. Whatever rivals it may have in terms of incompetence, ineptitude and lack of foresight the loss of life that resulted from it is truly appalling.
There those whose only comment now is "We had to get rid of Saddam". I am, frankly, amazed at the shallowness of such denial and as I write this I remember a comment made on live TV by the former Labour MP, Oona King: "Anyone who is against the war is a supporter of Saddam".
It's almost as if everything about this whole episode beggars belief.
What's going to happen now in the wake of the report's publication? No-one really knows but my money is on sod all.
