AT LAST! IRAQ WAR REPORT PUBLISHED IN JULY
SIR John Chilcot’s long-delayed report into the Iraq War will finally be published on July 6, it was announced last night.
Security officials have finished checking the 2.6 million-word document following the former civil servant’s inquiry into the blunders surrounding the 2003 invasion and its bloody aftermath.
Relatives of the 179 British soldiers killed and those injured in the war have waited more than five years for the massive inquiry to be completed.
Sir John, the inquiry’s chairman, confirmed the publication date in a letter to Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday.
He wrote: “National security checking of the Inquiry’s report has now been completed, without the need for any redactions to appear in the text. I am grateful for the speed with which it was accomplished.”
He added: “This will allow suitable time for the Inquiry to prepare the 2.6 million-word report for publication, including final proof reading, formatting, printing and the steps required for electronic publication.”
It is expected to be published in full without sensitive passages being blanked out for national security reasons as was previously feared.
Mr Cameron responded to Sir John’s letter by saying: “It is indeed good news that the national security checking process has been completed within two weeks and without the need for any redactions. “I am also grateful to you for notifying me of your planned date for publication of 6 July. My officials stand ready to assist yours on the arrangements for publication.” Jack Straw, who was former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s foreign secretary in the run-up to the war and gave evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, said he was “very pleased” a date had been set for publication. He added the report was a “massive task” and he hoped it would be as “comprehensive” as possible. Anger has been growing for years at the lengthy delays of the report’s publication. Sir John’s inquiry was set up by ex- Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009 to examine the course of events from 2001 through to the 2003 invasion and up to the withdrawal of British combat troops in 2009.
More than 150 witnesses were quizzed by the inquiry and 150,000 Government documents were scrutinised by officials preparing the final report.
Mr Cameron told Sir John last November he was “disappointed” about the time it was taking to release the findings and urged him to “expedite” the final stages. Its publication comes 1,981 days after the inquiry ended.
Tory MP David Davis described the decision to delay the report until after the EU referendum as a “disgrace”. He added: “By delaying publication until July, the Government is failing to uphold its responsibilities to those brave soldiers who died in the Iraq War, and to their families who have waited for more than six years for answers.”
THE Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War, which was officially launched in July 2009, will finally publish its findings on July 6 this year. It comes as some relief to learn that the report will at long last be released.
However, it remains scandalous that it has taken so long to investigate a war that was eight years in its build-up, execution and aftermath.
The cost to the taxpayer of this entire exercise has run into the millions. More importantly, the families of the 179 British service personnel who died should not have been made to wait so long for the truth.
Furthermore, opportunities to learn from the mistakes that were made have been lost. Our involvement in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and again in Iraq would surely have benefited from the inquiry’s findings being revealed earlier.