While we in the US talk of private e-mail servers the United Kingdom issues blistering report condemning the decision to invade Iraq.

Damn you look fine in the flight jacket. I just wish I knew how to quit you.

Courtesy of The Guardian: 

Sir John Chilcot has delivered a devastating critique of Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003, with his long-awaited report concluding that Britain chose to join the US invasion before “peaceful options for disarmament” had been exhausted. 

The head of the Iraq war inquiry said the UK’s decision to attack and occupy a sovereign state for the first time since the second world war was a decision of “utmost gravity”. He described Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, as “undoubtedly a brutal dictator” who had repressed his own people and attacked his neighbours. 

But Chilcot – whom Gordon Brown asked seven years ago to head an inquiry into the conflict – was withering about Blair’s choice to join the US invasion. Chilcot said: “We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.”

 The conclusions of the report were as follows: 

• There was no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein. 
• The strategy of containment could have been adopted and continued for some time. 
• The judgments about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction – WMDs – were presented with a certainty that was not justified. 
• Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam were wholly inadequate. 
• The government failed to achieve its stated objectives.

The report did not weigh in on the legality of the invasion itself, though it makes it abundantly clear that the evidence did not support the decision.

The report also revealed the private correspondence between Blair and Bush, with one memo written even before Bush had sold the idea of an invasion to Congress saying:“I will be with you [Bush] whatever.”

What was it Dakota Meyer said again about the Obama Administration being corrupt and its supporters overlooking "obvious crimes?"

In this country Congress has NEVER launched a serious investigation into the legality of the Iraq War decision, and as long as the Republicans remain in charge it never will.

Instead they will likely launch yet another investigation going after Hillary Clinton. (Oh look they are already starting.)

However if anybody wants to really learn of the criminal and deceptive behaviors utilized by the Bush Administration to get us into this tragic and costly conflict perhaps the best source for that would be Rachel Maddow's brilliant documentary "Hubris."