The Iraq inquiry we need

John Rentoul is right that many of those who agitated for a sixth inquiry into the Iraq war will not be satisfied until an inquiry returns the verdict that they want, namely that the lying bastards lied to take us to war. Any inquiry that does not come to this conclusion is taken as proof that the lying bastards are still lying to us.

But if not much is to be gained by going over the pre-war intelligence once more—and Gordon Brown only conceded this inquiry as part of his attempt to square a certain faction of the party to his continuing leadership, there is something to be gained by finding out who advised and who decided that British forces should essentially hand Basra over to Shi’ite militias. This decision was wrong militarily, as the Charge of the Knights showed. It also made a mockery of our talk of liberating the Iraqi people.