An open inquiry into Iraq war?

The Prime Minister will announce an inquiry into the Iraq war this afternoon.

Given the nature of the military and intelligence material that’ll be under scrutiny Whitehall is expecting this to follow the precedent of the Franks Inquiry into the Falklands and be held in private.

If there’s a way of injecting a “public” element into the whole process with some open hearings I’m sure it’ll happen – No. 10 is all too aware of the public relations deficit of announcing “closed” inquiries.

But Whitehall is also scorched by the experience of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, fully held in public, which opened in 2000 and is yet to report.

“Not,” a Whitehall source said, “the best way to get to the truth very quickly.”

No word yet as to who is chairing the inquiry but one member could be the historian and official biographer of Churchill, Prof Martin Gilbert.

Critics of the war may leap on that name because he authored an article in 2004 suggesting that President Bush and Tony Blair might “join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill.”

He was also, though, later on the record criticising how allied forces had become bogged down in the Iraq conflict.