The Channel 4 News Iraq Inquiry blogger sums up another day of evidence.
Watching this morning’s session I was struck by an image. I resolved not to worry – they usually go away quite quickly (I’m not terribly imaginative) – but this one persisted throughout the evidence.
Lt-Gen White-Spunner’s description of Operation Charge of the Knights brought to mind two parents teaching their child to ride a bicycle. (I’ll leave it to you decide which of the US and the UK was Mum and which was Dad, although my suspicion is he’d answer to Pop, not Dad…)
The intention all along had been to reach a time when the coalition could gently remove the stabilisers and watch arm-in-arm as Prime Minister al-Maliki peddled off happily into the distance without them. What perhaps came as a surprise was when rather earlier than expected he roared off towards Basra astride a Kawasaki Ninja 650R. Complete with pannier-mounted sub-machinegun and a mean attitude to boot.
White-Spunner’s evidence evoked a rather sweet Britishness of a kind we’ve heard before at the Inquiry. True, we hadn’t actually planned for anything to happen for another eight weeks as such. Granted, it was a bit of a shame when a tranche of the Iraqi police decided, Sod this for a game of soldiers, and stayed at home or deserted.
And yes, it was pretty bloody chaotic for the first week or so. But at the end of the day we all mucked in, played the game and blow me if it didn’t come together alright on the night. What ho!
Tomorrow’s the last day of the ‘narrative’ session of the Inquiry, wherein the panel have tried to patch together what happened. From Monday we move onto why – the then-PM, his inner ring and the upper echelons who actually formulated the policies these soldiers, diplomats and civil servants then had to enact. Chilcot’s team took a knocking back at the start for being insufficiently inquisitorial (I mentioned in the Tweets but iraqinquirydigest.org spotted a particularly good piece yesterday by top barrister Michael Mansfield QC on this). It’ll be interesting to see if there’s a change of style with with the new witnesses.
Evidence 10h00 onwards from Foreign Office and MoD witnesses.