Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Marco Werman speaks with Jonathan Freedland, editorialist with the Guardian newspaper in London, about the implications of the Chilcot inquiry.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: There has not been a similar inquiry in the United States about the lead up to the Iraq war. There are a couple of reasons for that. Columnist Jonathan Freedland writes for The Guardian newspaper in London. He says for one thing the British always doubted what they were told about why they should go to war.

JONATHAN FREEDLAND: Politicians and press were asking fierce questions and being deeply skeptical interrogating the evidence for war before the invasion. And it was noted here that the position was very different and that for example the mainstream press was rather more credulous in the United States than it was here. So I think it’s understood that there was, if you like, the kind of lag between what happens here and happens there on that point. But the second reason I think is that in some ways it’s understood or perceived here that the election of Barack Obama who of course was against the war, calling it a dumb war, was in some ways a catharsis for Americans that has not happened here. And the very administration which took us into that war is still in place. And so therefore there has not been the catharsis that perhaps Americans got in November of last year.

WERMAN: Now given all that context this inquiry seems like a very British undertaking. Could you imagine a similar inquiry taking place in the US and if not why not?

FREEDLAND: Well in fairness to the United States I think it’s not too outlandish to imagine an inquiry. I mean the 9/11 commission won admirers around the world through all its thoroughness, its rigor, and for the fact that it took important testimony in public. Indeed it was in some ways the 9/11 precedent which many people here cited when arguing and insisting that at least some of the proceedings of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war should at least be in public. Initially it was going to be all in private and people got up and said well look if the Americans can have their 9/11 inquiry, at least partially in public, than why can we not have the same thing? So no I don’t think it seems absurd to imagine Americans doing something similar.

WERMAN: Well how closely do you think the US government is going to be watching the undertakings of this inquiry of this commission?

FREEDLAND: Well I think they’d have watched it closer if it had been the Bush Administration still in place because Blair did not act, except in lockstep, with the Bush Administration and what may embarrass Tony Blair surely will embarrass George W. Bush and Dick Cheney too. Now that is easier to bear for Obama and Biden because they weren’t the administration. But nevertheless it will embarrass lots and lots of people in Washington because this is a war that kind of everybody in the Washington political establishment is implicated. Many, many people including for example just off the top of my head the current secretary of state and thee current vice president both voted for it. Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden were for it. So were most democrats in congress. It’s very hard for those people to escape from any kind of damning inquiry without themselves feeling implicated. So I think a few of them will be watching and they’ll hope that the distance of the Atlantic Ocean will mean that it doesn’t really rub off on them.

WERMAN: Now some have said, in the UK, that if the responsibility for the Iraq war, if the commission finds that it goes to the highest echelons of power there in Great Britain, i.e. 10 Downing Street, that could lead to war crimes charges. How likely is that?

FREEDLAND: I think that’s pretty unlikely for a few reasons. I mean the first is that Sir John Chilcot is the former career official civil servant as we describe it here who’s in charge has reminded people, even very recently, this is not about finding a verdict guilty or innocent on any individual. Second thing is the precedent. These civil service [INDISCERNIBLE] tend not to point a very clear finger. There have been a couple of other more narrow inquiries and they absolutely avoided apportioning blame. These civil servants career officials it’s absolutely bread into the marrow of their bones not to point crude and clear fingers of anybody. That’s just not their training. But lastly I think there’s nobody really in the political establishment who wants that for the simple reason that okay it’s Blair today but they would worry and fear that it’d be them tomorrow. That’s the kind of precedent they don’t want.

WERMAN: Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian newspaper in London. Thank you very much for your time.

FREEDLAND: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.