Iraq inquiry: the problem of witness pairing

Something is rotten in the state of Chilcot, at least as seen from the admittedly partial view of the press room, and I think I worked it out today.

It’s not the fact that the committee was selected by the PM, nor that none of them have much of a legal background to speak of, nor even the technical problems that left the live TV feed looking like an early 90s rave video at one stage. It’s the way the witnesses have been paired.
 
We saw it a couple of times last week and it happened again this morning.

Every time Admiral Boyce sounded like he was about to open fire with both barrels – his sights beadily fixed upon Clare Short and her “particularly uncooperative” DfID, for example – in popped Sir Kevin with a giant pair of corks.

Certainly there had been teething problems between DfID and MoD, he conceded, and it took a while but in the end of course they came on board.
 
Rumsfeld ignored his own generals’ pleas for more boots on the ground, Boyce said, abandoning the shotgun for his trusty service sidearm (“as I understand it,” he tacked on hastily, perhaps sensing a disturbance to his left).

But it would naturally have been very difficult for the UK to dictate troop levels to the Pentagon, Sir Kevin added.
 
So smooth was Sir Kevin, so positive his bridge-building that the army could usefully have deployed him to Cumbria last month to span the River Derwent.

Even while stating that the defence budget had been too small, it was made crystal clear that then then-chancellor (one Gordon Brown) had never withheld the necessary resources for military operations. (“I’m sure that’ll be reported widely,” Lawrence Freedman slipped in.)
 
None of which is to suggest that Sir Kevin’s evidence was anything other than honest, accurate and balanced.

But every now and then during this inquiry you realise how very strongly – personally even – a witness like Boyce feels about how aspects of the war were mishandled, and it’s just a shame they can’t be heard by themselves.