Iraq - the musical

G'day sport

When I was just a mini-Rich, I remember being the victim of a vicious and unwarranted practical joke that makes my lunch curdle in my stomach just thinking about it. My sister snuck up on me and startled me oh so very bad. I fell backwards onto some pots of paint and knocked the bloody lot right over causing at least twenty minutes worth of trouble. I never claimed revenge for this heinous deed and have been forever haunted by the sight of white gloss. For me, walking into a B&Q starts one of those misty eyed, haunting flashbacks that a murderer on Hollyoaks might see when they look at a hammer. In fact most of my life is like a weak episode of Hollyoaks, only without the hot women, terrible acting or level of intellectual content.

Before you, my loyal supporters, form a posse of fat armed men, armed with pitchfork and shotgun to go round to her house to exact revenge (or give her a dig in the ribs), I must tell you that the experience, the shame, the tidying up; it all taught me a valuable lesson. Keeping your rage and spite inside you is the right thing to do. You need to keep it and hold onto it, until a brain hemorrhage offers its sweet relief. Sure, it makes you more bitter and twisted in the long run and that is important to take forward into adult life - there is no justice, there is no goodness, there is only humiliation, now get over it and get a job, slacker.

Unfortunately, this is a lesson that Clare Short clearly didn't learn at a young age, so this week she attempted to extract the a measure of revenge for the great big practical joke that appears to have been played on the whole country by TB, Hoon the Loon, the Demon Headmaster (Jack Straw) and the entire United States of America (gawd love 'em). Stupid woman.

It feels like the Iraq enquiry has been trundling on for longer than the war itself but this was the first time that one of the real nay-sayers had a chance to unleash their fury, and unleash she did. Shame really that the whole thing has a feeling of 'after the lord mayors show' about it. It's all very well telling us now that the legal basis for the war was not only shoddy but subject to the ever changing moods of Lord Goldenballs, but it's all really a moot point. We went, we killed, we found nothing, we never wanted it at all.

Most of the inquiry by Lord Chilcot and his band of Lords (I like to use 'a compliance' of Inquiry members as the collective noun for them) has been spent setting the ground rules for discussion rather than asking the tough questions. The question of the legality of the entire thing was one that couldn't be asked properly for months: "Was it legal?" "The attorney general said it was, therefore it was" said those sitting at the Nuremberg trials... sorry, I meant those being questioned by the inquiry. Well that's helpful. Thanks.

When we finally got to the greatest show on Earth (the appearance of T to the muthafuckin B) every question was asked in a way that was almost... well... sad. Each question had to be proceeded with acceptance of terms, citations of previous testimony and understanding of evidence, so that it played out like the dull bit in the middle of a courtroom drama before the hotshot young lawyer got his chance to wipe his joker grin off his angular grinning visage. Sadly, the hotshot must have missed the bus, or we wouldn't have got "Just to clarify what you said" and various summaries of previous answers substituting for incisive questioning and "you can't handle the truth"

The Artist Formerly Known As Prime Minister got so easily into his stride that he started really enjoying himself and waving his hands about like a rapper trying to catch an invisible fly. At one point he became so confident that he tried to justify the entire war in a soundbite, saying Iraq had the means and desire to restart WMD production if the inspectors left or the terms of the sanctions changed. Fair enough, right? Who wouldn't want to get on board the United States of Britain and Northern Ireland's maim bus? If you thought Iraq could build lots of big old hurt things, you'd want to stop them. in fact, lets go back there with a bit of wood and a chainsaw, root out anyone else who fancies a bit. Lets....

Wait there just a darn tootin' minute.....

So he's saying that if things change, Iraq will build WMD's? So, he wasn't building them at the time?

Ohhhh.

So the sanctions were working?

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.

So we didn't do good?

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Poo.

Oh well. Come on. Cheer up, it's all over now. Lord Goldsmith was a good 'un too. I liked his style of high quality flip-flopping. "It's legal, it's not, it's legal, it's not". Nice to see the lives of hundreds and thousands of people decided by pulling the petals from a daisy. Don't get enough key decisions made like that. I mean, I decided whether or not to kill those hookers in my basement like that, but that's another story.

So, poor old Clare had to step up and cut through all the legal jargon and definitions of terms to point out how she saw events: "We were in a bit of a lunatic asylum" seemed to sum up how it felt as a member of the general public at the time as well as how it felt inside the cabinet. I liked her zeal: "Blame the French, concoct the legal authority and off we go..". The problem for Clare Short's credibility lies in how she comes across, a bit like a mad aunt at a wedding, railing against the happy couple and mumbling that "It'll never work" whilst at the same time eating plenty of the buffet and drinking the free wine and six months later, smugly tutting when the divorce comes through.

It's true that she didn't resign immediately and it's also true that she remains a politician and, therefore, quite likely to have fashioned a power base constructed on her caricatured opposition to the war without totally showing the courage to match her apparent conviction. Controversy creates profile and for a politician, profile is important to create the illusion of power. Still, she got an ovation from the crowd and perhaps she has laid to rest the rage and anger that she harboured for the Blair administration by getting it off her chest and on the record.

It still doesn't change anything though; the human cost, the poverty, the civil unrest and the political vacuum created by regime change all remain in Iraq. Having destroyed its past and its present, this war threatens the future of a country, an entire region of the world. Suddenly, this huge practical joke that was played on us doesn't seem so funny.

For me, how ever much I secretly rage, the image of that spilt paint still lingers. It simply wont come off the walls.

Byebyeblackbirds xx