When should an Iraq inquiry take place?

Jack Straw sounded absurd this morning on the Today programme. His argument that an inquiry needed to wait on the completion of our mission in Basra was unconvincing.

And he finished with the headache inducing contention that there was a difference between the moment our troops had completed their task and the moment they came home. Which left me wondering why troops that had completed their task would still be there. For the sunshine?

Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats sounded more reasonable, and was making a political point that was fair enough (that the Tories had supported the war). But when I thought about it later I decided that he, not Straw, had been making that morning's most ludicrous point.

Davey was demanding an apology from supporters of the war and intends to press that point as an amendment to the motion calling for a war inquiry.

In other words he wants an apology first, followed by an inquiry into whether an apology is necessary.

Next he'll be having a three line whip in order to abstain.

Comments

[Ralph Dreifus]

An inquiry regarding the Irag war should have begun the day that Dick Cheney dismissed and then overturned the Civilian US Army officiall who refused to sign a no bid contract awarding Halliburton the sole source contract to support the Iraq War.

There actually needs to be Nuremberg type trial in this country to bring all of the major playrers in this war to trial for perjury, fraud and misappropriation of government funds. Those funds belong to each person in this country, not to George W. Bush or Dick Cheney.

[Scary]

How is 'demanding an apology' reasonable, as the LibDem MP is doing?

'Demanding' is assuming superiority over the other person. That is, that he thinks he is somehow better or in a position to oblige another.

I may not be a fan of Straw but I certainly didn't appoint Davey as his lord and master. Did you?

[Richard Young]

Straw was weak and confused, but Humphrys gets worse and worse. Hectoring a flubber like Straw just helps him flub even more and the listeners get further and further away from any reason for bothering.

What's an inquiry going to prove, in any case? If there was a reasonable chance that we might find out who decided to spin the weak WMD intelligence into a causus belli, then fair enough - we might get some prosecutions out of it. But Straw managed to focus this morning on the UN resolutions, so clearly the defenders of the war have their (confused, meaningless but perfectly defensible) fig-leaf position and none of the main players will tell an inquiry anything useful. The security services and the diplomats have either already learned their lessons or never will - so who cares what some expensive, prolonged navel-gazing exercise concludes?