Chilcot digested

In my judgement Andrew Rawnsley belongs to a small and distinguished group of British political commentators whose views and articles are always worth an airing and invariably seem to add light (and shade), as well as common sense, to the sum of human understanding.

Here’s a link to his latest offering – I think technically published in Sunday’s edition of The Observer, though it appears today upon the website of stablemate The Guardian – on the subject of the Chilcot Report.

The only comment I would add upon it relates to the fifth item in his list of things to be learned (under the heading ‘Was the [Iraq] war illegal?’).

In it Rawnsley states: ‘The report fails to offer a verdict on whether the war was unlawful on the grounds that the committee is not qualified to judge.”

Based upon my understanding – albeit gained only from what I have read and/or seen in media coverage – this is not strictly correct. I was under the impression that (on the day of its publication) a succession of reporters stated that the Chilcot Report declined to pronounce upon whether or not the 2003 Iraq War was illegal specifically because the issue ‘was beyond the remit it had been given’.

See Rawnsley’s piece here – THE GUARDIAN