Gordon Brown’s triumph, Chilcot’s failure

Gordon Brown gave a performance today to the Iraq Inquiry of surprising conviction - yet he still left huge questions unanswered. Like Tony Blair he believed that going to war to overthrow Saddam Hussein was the right action at the right time. Curiously, unlike Tony Blair, the maestro of sincerity politics, Brown didn't bother with nice legal arguments and pretexts about weapons of mass destruction.
 
Brown described Saddam Hussein as "a serial violator" of international law, flouting no less than 14 UN resolutions.  His Iraq was the prime example of an "aggressor state", which along with non-state terrorist groups, and the growing list of failed states, are the big threat to international order and the law. Britain, America and Europe must do more to uphold this new order, the big challenge since the end of the Cold War which has been reinforced by the effects of the 9/11 attacks.
 
Accordingly Brown said that he had ensured the armed forces "always got what they requested" when they were about to commit to action. True, there had been delays and mistakes, such as keeping the notoriously flimsy Snatch Land Rovers on operations long after they had been proved inadequate, and to the cost of 38 lives in Iraq and Afghanistan to date.
 
Any falling-short in equipment was largely down to the Ministry of Defence and the heads of the armed forces, culpable for antiquated methods of procurement.

This is where some clear blue reality began to creep in between the words given to the inquiry, and the brutal facts on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
Though pressed, albeit pretty gently, Brown failed to explain why it was imperative to attack Iraq in March 2003 and not later as the French and the majority of  European allies argued. He also failed to answer why he and Tony Blair decided to press ahead with the war when the armed forces quite evidently weren't fully prepared, the country was sceptical, and parliament and the Blair cabinet consulted peremptorily only at the last minute.
 
His blizzard of statistics hid a universal truth about defence budgeting and expenditure. Defence suffers from much higher inflation than almost any other form of procurement - and currently it runs at around seven per cent on equipment: this means his defence settlements were not as generous as he portrayed to the Chilcot committee. He also failed to acknowledge the sheer wear and destruction on the Army's core equipment by the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
Nor did he recognise that the Army has been asked to carry out missions in both countries very different from those expected at the outset in 2001 and 2003. In neither case were campaigns of a total of 15 years to date expected or planned for. There were failures of intelligence, strategic and tactical skill on the ground - and imagination on the part of the politicians.

Instead we heard how the British achieved a notable success in Basra, despite having to retreat under fire from the city centre two-and-a-half years ago.
 
The final note of self-deception, marinated with a hint of smugness, was sounded by the Inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, when he asked the prime minister to agree with him that things were so much better now in Iraq than before 2003. It's an assumption which has to be tested, and with better skills of inquest and analysis than this inquiry has showed of late.
 
The fact is the biggest weakness in Brown's appearance at the Iraq Inquiry was in the committee itself. The matters of war, truth and peace raised by the Iraq adventure require far greater forensic skills than the four men and one woman of the panel have displayed so far.

They need a soldier with a real grasp of tactical and operational reality on the ground, a lawyer who knows how to cross-examine, and a journalist who knows how to follow up with accurate supplementary questions. That's just for a start. Their manifest shortfall to date will ensure this is far from the last we will hear on the debacle in Iraq. ·