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“Transparency? What a joke,” goes today’s Daily Mail headline, above a photo of a British soldier on fire aboard his tank in Basra, Iraq. PM Gordon Brown’s announcement that a government inquiry into the 2003 Gulf War “Britain's worst foreign policy disaster in 50 years” will take place in secret has the conservative newspaper in a rage. As no evidence will be heard in public, “no witnesses will be able (…) to challenge the testimony of politicians, spin doctors or officials (…) who lied to the country in the run-up to the war.”
The final report, the Daily Mail adds, will be edited so as to exclude “sensitive information”. In other words, “a whitewash”. The inquiry’s reports is due after the last possible date for a general election – “ensuring its disclosures won't influence our votes.” The Iraq War ends as it began, “under a blanket of secrecy and deceit”. “Mr Brown should be ashamed of himself,” the Mail concludes.
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