Chilcot report has been released (inquiry into UK involvement in Iraq war)

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**Herzlos**

It's not looking good so far:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36721645

Spoiler:

**djones520**

There was "little time" to properly prepare three military brigades for deployment in Iraq. The risks were neither "properly identified nor fully exposed" to ministers, resulting in "equipment shortfalls".

Seriously? You guys have trouble putting together 3 brigades?

Hmmm... the UK has substantial oil fields, don't they? What's that, you guys voted for some freedom recently???

**reds8n**

This is the report BTW

Spoiler:

**angelofvengeance**

Yikes. I think they said it was £800+ for the lot.

**notprop**

At over 2million words, it's quite a beast of a document. It would take you 9 days to read according to the BBC.

Blair to respond later today.......

**Graphite**

Hey, at least you'd be able to use the hard copy to give <politician of choice> a really good thump on the head.

**angelofvengeance**

djones520 wrote:
There was "little time" to properly prepare three military brigades for deployment in Iraq. The risks were neither "properly identified nor fully exposed" to ministers, resulting in "equipment shortfalls".

Seriously? You guys have trouble putting together 3 brigades?

Hmmm... the UK has substantial oil fields, don't they? What's that, you guys voted for some freedom recently???

Probably a logistical nightmare for any country to be fair. That's up to 10,000 people you're talking about moving overseas.

Ugh... that loathsome little man, Jeremy Corbyn is giving his opinion in Parliament right now. Maybe he'll stand down now he's had his say on it.

**reds8n**

angelofvengeance wrote:
Yikes. I think they said it was £800+ for the lot.

There's a cheaper version :

Spoiler:

**loki old fart**

Here you go.
pdfs to download
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-report/

**reds8n**

.... I'd suggest not printing that out BTW

**djones520**

angelofvengeance wrote:
djones520 wrote:
There was "little time" to properly prepare three military brigades for deployment in Iraq. The risks were neither "properly identified nor fully exposed" to ministers, resulting in "equipment shortfalls".

Seriously? You guys have trouble putting together 3 brigades?

Hmmm... the UK has substantial oil fields, don't they? What's that, you guys voted for some freedom recently???

Probably a logistical nightmare for any country to be fair. That's up to 10,000 people you're talking about moving overseas.

Ugh... that loathsome little man, Jeremy Corbyn is giving his opinion in Parliament right now. Maybe he'll stand down now he's had his say on it.

gak... we've got entire divisions that can be overseas in 72 hours. #Murica

Sorry to derail. Anyways, hindsight is always 20/20.

**jhe90**

Most don,t have all the pre depoyment ships, fleets and the enormous air lift capacity to move entire companies of men and gear in a single flight.

US has huge strategic mobility.

**angelofvengeance**

jhe90 wrote:
Most don,t have all the pre depoyment ships, fleets and the enormous air lift capacity to move entire companies of men and gear in a single flight.

US has huge strategic mobility.

Much like the UK used to have before WWI/WWII. When we owned 25% of the world, we had the ships and the soldiers to go pretty much where we wished.

**kronk**

reds8n wrote:
This is the report BTW

Spoiler:

Looks like my 7th edition 40k rulebook, codecies, and supplements...

"Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were "wholly inadequate". "

This was probably the biggest feth up, all around. Whether or not we were justified in going in is immaterial next to not having a fething plan!

**Kilkrazy**

There's nothing we didn't already know in that summary. It's amazing that it has taken so long to get an official inquiry done and published.

**jhe90**

kronk wrote:
reds8n wrote:
This is the report BTW

Spoiler:

Looks like my 7th edition 40k rulebook, codecies, and supplements...

"Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were "wholly inadequate". "

This was probably the biggest feth up, all around. Whether or not we were justified in going in is immaterial next to not having a fething plan!

Sun Tzu would have words with them.
they broke quite a few of the wisdom in that book

**kronk**

Kilkrazy wrote:
There's nothing we didn't already know in that summary. It's amazing that it has taken so long to get an official inquiry done and published.

News at 11. Eating McDonald's 3 times a day and not exercising makes you obese.

**welshhoppo**

kronk wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
There's nothing we didn't already know in that summary. It's amazing that it has taken so long to get an official inquiry done and published.

News at 11. Eating McDonald's 3 times a day and not exercising makes you obese.

Prove it.

**whembly**

That's an ass load of a report.

Anyone going to read that? o.O

In related news:

Ahead of the #Chilcot report: 1258 Hillary Clinton emails on #Iraq https://t.co/HNnujrB20o

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 4, 2016

Why just Hillary?

**Kilkrazy**

Not relevant to thread topic.

**Frazzled**

angelofvengeance wrote:
jhe90 wrote:
Most don,t have all the pre depoyment ships, fleets and the enormous air lift capacity to move entire companies of men and gear in a single flight.

US has huge strategic mobility.

Much like the UK used to have before WWI/WWII. When we owned 25% of the world, we had the ships and the soldiers to go pretty much where we wished.

Well if you're getting out of the EU, maybe its time to revisit the "UKU" concept? break out the redcoats and brown besses...

**Silent Puffin?**

djones520 wrote:

gak... we've got entire divisions that can be overseas in 72 hours. #Murica

We just can't move their kit as we didn't, and still don't, have the airlift capacity. We can get guys on the ground fairly quickly provided that they only have their Bergen and a personal weapon......
At the time the British army was still running with predominantly Cold War kit which wasn't very suitable for what would become a gigantic insurgency/civil war.

We also don't have the vast sums of money that the US spends on 'defence' of course.

Frazzled wrote:

Well if you're getting out of the EU, maybe its time to revisit the "UKU" concept? break out the redcoats and brown besses...

We could just about afford smoothbore muskets......

I don't see anything happening after the publication of this report, Blair hasn't even properly apologised for his monumental feth up.

**Kilkrazy**

Didn't the vehicles need to be adapted for desert conditions and so on? This is not really the relevant point, though.

The key point is that the government (i.e. Blair) rushed the country into the war without proper planning and preparation.

Half the country was saying don't do it, there aren't any WMDs, we don't have a mandate from the UN, it's all going to do wrong. It was done anyway, without a plan, and it did all go wrong.

Total abdication of responsible government.

Blair I am sure will come out with some trumped up reasons why he did completely the right thing.

Even Chilcot thinks nothing will happen. He's only made a load of platitudes about learning from the experience. We certainly should do that, but we shouldn't have had to have the experience to learn from, because a lot of us knew already that it was all being done wrong.

**d-usa**

Kilkrazy wrote:
There's nothing we didn't already know in that summary. It's amazing that it has taken so long to get an official inquiry done and published.

They had to plant the trees needed to print all those pages.

**Herzlos**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Didn't the vehicles need to be adapted for desert conditions and so on? This is not really the relevant point, though.

I think even the boots they had weren't suitable for the conditions.

Half the country was saying don't do it, there aren't any WMDs, we don't have a mandate from the UN, it's all going to do wrong. It was done anyway, without a plan, and it did all go wrong.

Total abdication of responsible government.

Sounds like another thread on here.

Blair I am sure will come out with some trumped up reasons why he did completely the right thing.

I'm sure he's managed to convince himself it was all correct and above board. He's even (apparently) claimed that the report vindicates him.

**Kilkrazy**

Herzlos wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Didn't the vehicles need to be adapted for desert conditions and so on? This is not really the relevant point, though.

I think even the boots they had weren't suitable for the conditions.

Half the country was saying don't do it, there aren't any WMDs, we don't have a mandate from the UN, it's all going to do wrong. It was done anyway, without a plan, and it did all go wrong.

Total abdication of responsible government.

Sounds like another thread on here.

Blair I am sure will come out with some trumped up reasons why he did completely the right thing.

I'm sure he's managed to convince himself it was all correct and above board. He's even (apparently) claimed that the report vindicates him.

I thought of that parallel (i.e. with Brexit) but it's off topic so I didn't want to drag it in here.

To be honest there are times I think we should have frozen history just after winning the Falklands War. I think our governments since then have by and large done a fairly crappy job. I"m sure they've done some things right, but they certainly have done quite a number of stupidities.

**Ketara**

The problem with Iraq is that there's essentially a single port in the entire country, meaning that most of our naval/amphibious transport assets can't be utilised for a landing. We've never had the sort of airlift capacity America has.

On top of that, most of the gear our troops had was adapted for the complete opposite climate, which didn't help.

**angelofvengeance**

Ketara wrote:
The problem with Iraq is that there's essentially a single port in the entire country, meaning that most of our naval/amphibious transport assets can't be utilised for a landing. We've never had the sort of airlift capacity America has.

On top of that, most of the gear our troops had was adapted for the complete opposite climate, which didn't help.

Indeed. To my knowledge, we still have a couple of Chinook transport helicopters sat in storage that we still can't do anything with.

**djones520**

Ketara wrote:
The problem with Iraq is that there's essentially a single port in the entire country, meaning that most of our naval/amphibious transport assets can't be utilised for a landing. We've never had the sort of airlift capacity America has.

On top of that, most of the gear our troops had was adapted for the complete opposite climate, which didn't help.

For the initial run up, we weren't exactly using Basra to off load our equipment. We were using port facilities in Kuwait, Qatar, etc...

**Avatar 720**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Even Chilcot thinks nothing will happen.

There is unfortunately nothing about crimes of aggression according to the ICC. They have since made plans to adopt something that deals with less-than-legal wars and invasions, however they stated that if such a thing is introduced it would not be retroactive. They also stated, however, that the British Army would be able to be fully prosecuted for any war crimes committed, even though Blair will not.

According to the letter of the law, Hitl- Blair did nothing wrong.