Why the Chilcot Report will be a whitewash

1) A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
2) Increase French influence in North Africa,
3) Improve his internal political situation in France,
4) Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
5) Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa

This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French.franc (CFA).his quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion.

French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.

Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon….

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.

Of course it is going to fail by your criteria, you are asking things of the report that were never part of its remit, especially with regards to another country's foreign policy.

At best, Blair was so concerned about Labour's image of being "anti-American", a Stalinist term if there ever was one, that he subscribed to whatever Bush wanted. Goes to show where being obsessed with electability can lead one.*

Blair got carried away after Sierra Leone. He mistook the success there with success anywhere if it involved the military, assuming that everything would be similarly 'simple' and that the opposition would just lay down their arms.

I would have thought that our actual reasons for invading Iraq would have at least come up. I suppose the Americans are even more self-interested than us, so it could be argued that we just blindly followed them. But, Chilcot should then be criticising the British Government for not actually realising why the Americans and the Israelis wanted us to invade in the first place.

As Jeremy Corbyn asked in his speech to the Labour Conference in 2003, why was a centre-left British party supporting the ultra-right-wing Project for a New American Century agenda?

At best, Blair was so concerned about Labour's image of being "anti-American", a Stalinist term if there ever was one, that he subscribed to whatever Bush wanted. Goes to show where being obsessed with electability can lead one.*

I felt that the rise of ISIS and some of the other consequences were somewhat unpredictable and therefore not the fault of Blair and co.

Still, now we've seen the summary at least I have to ask if a report claiming the UK planned to go to war before peaceful options had been exhausted, states intelligence was manipulated and overstated, points out massive failings in both logistical planning for the invasion and political post war planning and finally accuses the UK of undermining the United Nations is really a whitewash?

To be honest, I think the rise of a group like ISIS was inevitable. If Saddam wasn't overthrown by America, he would have either been caught up in the Arab spring like Assad or possibly died of old age (he was already 69). Both of which would have opened Iraq up to instability. The 1991 uprising in Iraq showed that there was already much discontent in Iraq, and all that was needed to was the first sign of instability for Islamist influenced groups such as ISIS to take benefit of.

I think the real failure was the failure to maintain stability in Iraq after the removal of Saddam.

Many of the most prominent officials in ISIS were radicalised in the torture chambers of the Occupational Authority, and many homegrown terrorists were radicalised as a result of our aggression against Iraq. We can put forward post hoc rationalizations based on counterfactuals as Anthony Blair is attempting to do, or we can try to ensure that we do as much as possible not to increase risks of terrorism and not to go into unnecessary wars.

And many others would have been radicalised in the torture chambers of Saddam. Either way, it seems inevitable to me that the current state (or fairly similar state) of Iraq would have come about. I can't see how things could have turned out better under Saddam.

I personally, find it disgraceful how Blair finally (publicly) accepts responsibility only now.

Blair got carried away after Sierra Leone. He mistook the success there with success anywhere if it involved the military, assuming that everything would be similarly 'simple' and that the opposition would just lay down their arms.

To be honest, I think the rise of a group like ISIS was inevitable. If Saddam wasn't overthrown by America, he would have either been caught up in the Arab spring like Assad or possibly died of old age (he was already 69). Both of which would have opened Iraq up to instability. The 1991 uprising in Iraq showed that there was already much discontent in Iraq, and all that was needed to was the first sign of instability for Islamist influenced groups such as ISIS to take benefit of.

I think the real failure was the failure to maintain stability in Iraq after the removal of Saddam.

Agree ,I see many parallels with Yugoslavia. Do you ?I see ethnic and religious tensions being covered up by a failing militaristic regime.The only difference is Yugoslavia is what Iraq would be like without military intervention..
I find the whole thing surrounding Tony Blair a tragedy because he did many good things for Africa.