GP Taylor: It will be years before we see the blood on Blair's hands

ON July 17, 2003, Dr David Kelly was found dead on Harrowdown Hill. I remember hearing the news and thought how sad that this man had been pushed to take his own life because he briefed a member of the press.

The pressure on him must have been immense. After all, Tony Blair was adamant that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Kelly raised doubts about this. As an expert in the field and a weapons inspector, he should know.

Kelly was one of the first casualties of the Iraq War.

Sadly, the suspicious death of Dr Kelly will not be covered by the publication of the long-awaited Chilcot report today. This inquiry, set up in 2009 to report on Britain’s role in the war that millions of people in our country didn’t want, has gone on for longer than the war itself.

The report has more words than the complete works of Harry Potter, Shakespeare and the Bible. I suspect it might even be as fanciful as the shenanigans of the bespectacled wizard himself.

After the last two weeks in British politics, nothing is impossible. One thing I do not expect to read in the report is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

In reality, what government would be so stupid as to allow the British people to see their shady deals, dodgy foreign policy and a desire for power?

Will the Chilcot report show that the war was purely staged for the purpose of regime change and getting our hands on the oil reserves in Iraq? Will it show that the war was good for business as we bombed the hell out of a country, destroyed its infrastructure and then offered to rebuild it at a price?

Iraq was the ultimate playground for the arms companies to live test their weapons against real targets and make billions of dollars in the process. It was a war where the only people who really won were the bankers and multi-nationals.

The one thing the war was not about was the supposed weapons of mass destructions that we were told Saddam Hussein had waiting to fire at the West.

I hope that Chilcot will make clear that those in power knew that Saddam had all his chemical weapons destroyed after the first Gulf War in 1990-91.

This was confirmed in 1995 when an Iraqi official who had defected told CIA and British intelligence as well as UN inspectors that Iraq had destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks. Information that was conveniently ignored as we were given the sexed up version of the New Labour truth.

It is vitally important to restore public trust in British politics that the Chilcot report clearly shows the role of Tony Blair in what ultimately led to the death of 179 British troops and thousands of civilians.

Chilcot needs to answer the question as to whether Parliament was misled about the reason to go to war ahead of the Commons vote in March 2003. Had Tony Blair committed himself in private to George W Bush long before then to help invade Iraq?

Even with mass demonstrations and a one million-strong protest in London in February 2003, it was not enough to dissuade Blair to stop being the lap dog of the USA.

Sadly, like all things in British politics, I expect the Chilcot Inquiry to read like an end of term school report of a naughty child. It will be a slap on the wrist for Tony Blair and, along with all the other players involved, he will get away with it.

I doubt that Blair will be impeached and brought before Parliament as a liar and war criminal and he will continue to tour the world advising despots.

There will be no explanation why it really took so long for the report to be published and no apology or restitution to the grieving families of the dead British troops who so needlessly died.

The truth of what really happened will be impossible to read as it will be covered in many layers of whitewash.

It is obvious that there is no truth in British politics and that successive governments play their games at the expense of human lives. Inquiries are held and their outcome manufactured to meet the needs of the day littered with half truths.

I fear Chilcot will not be a report but a sop, a piece of stale bread dipped in the soup of political intrigue and offered to fill the aching bellies of the world press.

Many questions will still go unanswered and the warmongering conversations between Bush and Blair will be firmly wrapped in red tape, never to be opened until many years after they are dead. Only then will the truth be out and the blood will be clearly visible on their hands.

GP Taylor is a writer and broadcaster and can be followed @GPTaylorauthor.