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The Iraq Inquiry: Statement by Sir John Chilcot [pdf]
- teh_klev 10y agoThe full report is actually here, all 58 sections of it: http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-report/ http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-report/ The link above is just Chilcot's press statement which was read out on air this morning. If you were to print it out the whole report, all twelve volumes, it looks like this: http://imgur.com/zRHDZyE http://imgur.com/zRHDZyE edit: ok, for the avoidance of doubt, there are multiple copies of the same volume in each stack, this was the pile made available to journalists so they could grab a copy of each volume.
- phireal 10y agoThat image is misleading - the report is only 6417 pages which is only 12 books at (on average) 535 pages each. The image shows multiple copies of each volume.
- teh_klev 10y agoFairly certain anyone looking at that image would actually realise this.
- phireal 10y agoPerhaps, but this is likely to be quite a hot topic, so using misleading imagery isn't helping anyone.
- mikeash 10y agoIf I say that I'm twelve feet tall, anyone hearing that would realize that I'm not, but that doesn't make it any less of a lie. (Not saying you're intentionally misleading, but the effect ends up being the same.)
- teh_klev 10y agoA table, with piles of books, organised and labelled by volume, just like in a book shop, really how hard is this? I know this is Hacker News, I know we can be pedants, but jings!....I'm waiting for someone challenge my assumption that there's a table(s) holding them up.
- mikeash 10y agoYou said if you printed out all twelve volumes it would look like that. That's simply not true, it looks like that if you print out many copies. Yes, we can figure out what you mean, but that doesn't make the statement correct or the image not-misleading given the description. I think we generally wouldn't care, except that the context is people who used these sort of silly tactics to deceive people into supporting a terrible war. Even though you're not doing it intentionally and it's not remotely of the same severity, it feels like the very distant sibling of finding some 1980s-era Sarin in a bunker and saying "see, they really did have WMDs!"
- J_Darnley 10y agoAh. It was delayed so much to allow time for printing. It all makes sense now.
- danohu 10y agoI merged the whole thing into a single PDF: http://ohuiginn.net/docs/chilcot/chilcot_report.pdf http://ohuiginn.net/docs/chilcot/chilcot_report.pdf 6417 pages -- enjoy!
- tomlong 10y agoThanks, I wget'd all the PDFs, but this is much better due to how they were named.
- sidcool 10y agoThe tldr itself would be a small book size
- logicallee 10y ago>The tldr itself would be a small book size tl;dr: "From peace options, bad intel, to a bad war."
- MandieD 10y agoThanks for that - know of any reason some civic-minded person couldn't make a plain text web version and post it (other than fear of hosting fees and lack of free time)?
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- sp332 10y ago@iocounu made a poem about it on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/iucounu/status/750456730472091648 https://mobile.twitter.com/iucounu/status/750456730472091648
- michaelt 10y agoOn 28 July, Mr Blair wrote to President Bush with an assurance that he would be with him “whatever” [...] At the end of January, Mr Blair accepted the US timetable for military action by mid-March. [...] As late as 17 March, Mr Blair was being advised by the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, the means to deliver them and the capacity to produce them. Seems to me the lesson here is: If you decide to invade first, then later you invite your intelligence agencies to "get with the program, jump on the team and come on in for the big win" when it's clear what you want them to tell you, they'll tell you that. Trying to shift blame to them after things went badly seems like scapegoating to me. I mean, that's like going to a car dealership and asking the salesman if his cars are reliable. There's no point in even asking, because you already know he'll say yes regardless of the truth.
- krylon 10y agoI do not believe for a second that either Blair or Bush actually believed in those mythical weapons of mass destruction or Iraq's capability or intention to use them. I sometimes wonder if the WMD excuse was made up to convince the public to go along or to cover their butts later on. In Europe, as far as I remember, hardly anyone believed that excuse. Accept for Angela Merkel who travelled to Washington just to tell Bush that she would join the invasion without hesitation if she was chancellor.
- arethuza 10y agoThe truly scary thing about the likes of Blair is that they can choose what they earnestly believe in to suit what is politically expedient.
- lucozade 10y agoMy view prior to the report and from what I've seen so far in the Bush-Blair correspondence is the exact opposite. They and the intelligence services were so convinced about WMD that there was next to no questioning, at high levels, of the flimsy evidence for their continued existence. I believe that they thought they were justified and that finding WMDs would be vindication. It doesn't seem reasonable that such astute political operators would make WMDs the centre of their justification if they didn't think that they existed. The failing was that this blinded them to the possibility that the Iraqi regime was bluffing.
- r721 10y agoThe Guardian - Key points from the Iraq inquiry: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/iraq-inquiry-key-points-from-the-chilcot-report https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/iraq-inquiry...
- CommanderData 10y agoIs there anything to stop the UK government censoring this report? I pose the question after it was delayed for publication by the government last year for after the general election. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EJK8K0ypl4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EJK8K0ypl4 It would take seven years to publish and would not seem conspiratory to suggest the delays have helped reduce public attention / demand for the report. Would it be possible to gag order certain reports or use governmental powers to achieve this?
- grahamel 10y agoNo, it's already been done and part of the reason the report took so long. "But the main reason for the delay was the long tussle between the inquiry and the government over which classified material could be published alongside the report, or referred to in it." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36024725 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36024725
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- nepotism2016 10y agoWaste of money (£10million)! Chaos in the Middle east is great for any country who wants to suck its resources cheaply without having to be hold ransom for it by a dictator. "interest of the country" has cost 160,000 lives in Iraq, none gives a shit because the future of black gold is secured until the next invasion I'm a massive hypocrite, I'm about to fill up my car with the exact same oil and go for a pointless journey.
- edward 10y agoWhy PDF? They should've published it as web pages so we could link to individual sections.
- a3n 10y agoPDF is better for this kind of thing, because average people can easily download and keep the thing. Web pages disappear.
- a3n 10y agoWhere's the OJ-like vow from Blair and Bush to not rest until the "real" WMDs are found?
- pknerd 10y agoAfter killing a President, starting a new war and killing thousands in a decade, the report says, Umm it was all wrong. Earlier Blair had said sorry I wonder whether West could give same options to the likes of Osama, Qaddafi, Aiman AlZaharvi or this luxury only available for non-Muslims only?
- turar 10y agoIt's available to those in power, whether at global level (the US/West), or local level (e.g. local government). Not really a Muslim/non-Muslim thing. And it's not something unique or new. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili...
- pknerd 10y agoSeems the definition of power is as relevant as terrorism.
- leroy_masochist 10y agoWhile I agree with the substance of conclusions in the report, the media's coverage of it -- as well as how it's been publicly discussed by current and former (non-Blair) members of the UK government -- seems to add up to an effort to take a pound of flesh off of Blair in some kind of weirdly tribalistic cathartic exercise for progressives.
- papaf 10y agoI think its understandable that the media, especially the BBC, is a bit bitter. Here is an article from 2004 where the BBC chairman had to resign because of pressure from a government report over the evidence to go to war over Iraq: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3434661.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3434661.stm Here is an excerpt: BBC chairman Gavyn Davies has resigned in the wake of Lord Hutton's criticisms of the corporation's reports. He quit after Lord Hutton said the suggestion in BBC reports that the government "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's weapons with unreliable intelligence was "unfounded". Here is another quote from the story, this time from a BBC journalist: "In the end what it comes down to is a judgement by Lord Hutton - who he believes, whose motives he trusts most and in that, again and again, he comes down on the side of politicians and officials." So, as you say, some of the reporting today is probably a carthartic exercise...