Top officer questions ‘boresome’ Chilcot report

A high-ranking army officer has questioned the purpose of the long-awaited report on UK war in Iraq, calling it a “boresome” inquiry.

“I think the broader issue – and I think it’s a broader issue for us as a nation – is why do we want these boresome inquiries?,” Maj Gen Tim Cross was quoted as saying by the British media on Friday.

“What do we intend from them and why do we give people these incredibly difficult jobs to do?,” he added.

“To get teams of people to look at an issue and to draw out some important issues in relatively quick time and enable those lessons to be applied, of course that’s a good thing. But the size and shape of the inquiries we’re getting into on a continuous basis, I do not believe it is producing those sorts of results,” he said.

‘Deliberately boresome’

Ian Williams, a senior analyst at Foreign Policy in Focus, a US-based policy think tank, believes that the inquiry has been “deliberately boresome" to avoid major questions.

“The Chilcot inquiry has been deliberately boresome. It has neglected to ask the big questions… It has avoided major question which is the culpability of prime minister Blair and his government in introducing false evidence that stampeded Britain and the rest of the world in the war in Iraq,” the New York-based author and journalist told Press TV’s UK Desk on Friday. 

The comments come amid mounting pressure on Sir John Chilcot, head of the official public inquiry in the UK involvement in the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Long-awaited inquiry

The inquiry started back in 2009. Chilcot was supposed to publish the findings of the inquiry within a year.

The last of the hearings of the inquiry were held more than four years ago. 

Chilcot has already declined to set out a timetable for his Iraq inquiry despite a threat of legal action by families of British troops killed in the unpopular US-led war.

'Outrageous delays'

Earlier this month, Lawyers representing 29 families say they would move to the London High Court if the Chilcot inquiry fails to give a publication deadline in two weeks.

"There have been outrageous delays to date and it seems as though those delays would simply be interminable," Matthew Jury, a lawyer representing the families said.

Unpopular war

The US-led invasion of Iraq began in 2003 and lasted for over 8 years. The war, which was initiated under the false pretense of weapons of mass destruction, took the lives of 179 UK personnel and nearly 4,500 US soldiers. The number of Iraqi civilian deaths has been estimated to be over 1 million by some sources.

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