Chilcot Report: The Report of the Iraq Inquiry: Executive Summary - Softcover

Chilcot, Sir John; Freedman, Sir Lawrence; Lyne, Sir Roderic; Gilbert, Sir Martin; Prashar, Baroness Usha Kumari; Iraq Inquiry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 099549780X ISBN 13: 9780995497801

Publisher: Canbury Press, 2016

Synopsis

In 2003, for the first time since the Second World War, the UK invaded a sovereign state: Iraq. In 2016 Sir John Chilcot delivered his long-awaited report on the war; its 2.6 million words fill twelve volumes. This accessible edition of the executive summary allows the reader to make up their own mind about the crucial questions. Did Saddam have chemical weapons? Were they a threat? Was the war legal? And was the planning adequate?

About this title

Review

'The Iraq Inquiry, chaired by Sir John Chilcot and composed of five privy councillors, finally published its report on the morning of 6 July, seven years and 21 days after it was established by Gordon Brown with a remit to look at the run-up to the conflict, the conflict itself and the reconstruction, so that we can learn lessons.

It offers a long and painful account of an episode that may come to be seen as marking the moment when the UK fell off its global perch, trust in government collapsed and the country turned inward and began to disintegrate.


(Philippe Sands, London Review of Books --http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n15/philippe-sands/a-grand-and-disastrous-deceit

'A more productive way to think of the Chilcot report is as a tool to help us set agendas for renewed best efforts in creating more effective and accountable statecraft.

Chilcot has confirmed that... we still do not have intelligent long-range planning by the armed forces in close and active cooperation with other government agencies, nor an adequate and integrated system for the collection and evaluation of intelligence information, nor do we have the highest possible quality and stature of personnel to lead us through these challenging times'.


(Derek B. Miller, The Guardian) --https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/12/chilcot-report-reveals-lessons-forgotten-since-1945

'Although sceptics wondered how much more the very-long-awaited Report of the Iraq Inquiry
by a committee chaired by Sir John Chilcot could tell us when it appeared at last in July, it proves to contain a wealth of evidence and acute criticism, the more weighty for its sober tone and for having the imprimatur of the official government publisher. In all, it is a further and devastating indictment not only of Tony Blair personally but of a whole apparatus of state and government, Cabinet, Parliament, armed forces, and, far from least, intelligence agencies.

Among its conclusions the report says that there was no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein; that the British chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted; that military action was not a last resort...'


Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The New York Review of Books --http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/10/13/tony-blairs-eternal-shame-chilcot-report/

About the Author

Sir John Chilcot, GCB PC (born 22 April 1939) is a British Privy Counsellor and former civil servant.

His appointment as chairman of the Iraq Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath was announced in June 2009.

He was educated at Brighton College and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read English and languages.

A career civil servant until his retirement in 1997, he served as Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office, Deputy Under-Secretary at the Home Office in charge of the Police Department, and a variety of posts in the Home Office, the Civil Service Department and the Cabinet Office, including Private Secretary appointments to Home Secretaries Roy Jenkins, Merlyn Rees, and William Whitelaw, and to the Head of the Civil Service, William Armstrong.

He is now president of Britain's independent policing think tank, The Police Foundation.

His honours include CB (1990), KCB (1994), and GCB (1998). He became a Privy Counsellor in 2004, and was a member of the Butler Review of the use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

He acted as staff counsellor to MI5 and MI6 from 1999 to 2004, dealing with private and personal complaints from members of the intelligence services about their work and conditions.

(Taken from Sir John's Wikipedia entry)

Edition details

• Publisher: Canbury Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 099549780X
• ISBN 13: 9780995497801
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 220