The Mail are running with a story asking if an Iraqi WMD has been found.
They have been searching in Iraq for the past nine years, 10 months and 15 days.
Today, the hard work finally paid off as soldiers found one of those elusive ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that Saddam Hussein was supposed to have been hiding.
So is it all round to Tony Blair’s house for celebratory drinks?
The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, announced today that an independent inquiry into the invasion of Iraq will be held in behind closed doors. Following the draw down of combat operations and the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, it has now been deemed acceptable for the inquiry to go ahead. Although many opposition MP’s and commentators had demanded that the inquiry be held sooner, it appears prudent that the inquiry be held following cessation of combat operations as any findings or outcomes will no longer have an effect on troop moral or their legal standing whilst in the field. This does make sense, however, what doesn’t make sense is the Prime Ministers insistence that the inquiry should not apportion blame. Why shouldn’t it apportion blame? The point of an inquiry is to determine the root cause, if it is not how can ‘lessons be learned’, to coin a cliché which appears to be over-used by this Government of late. The lesson in this sense was learned at Suez, some fifty years previously, this being that the justification for ordering large scale combat operations needs an equally justifiable legal and moral aim, not what is perceived as an alternative agenda. It was and still is a widely held public belief that the supposed threat of WMD was merely a cover to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime, faulty dossiers aside.
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