The errors, exaggerations and lies that led to the invasion offer essential teachings for our own time, in conflict and beyond
I have spent the last week in the land of the second resolution, Hans Blix and 45 minutes. For much of the past seven days, I’ve been right back there, immersed in the realm of regime change, weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, and the dodgy dossier – along with the rest of the vocabulary that, in the lead- up to the invasion of Iraq, whose 20th anniversary falls on Monday, became the dominant lexicon of British and global politics.
I have gone back to the inquiries – Hutton, Butler and Chilcot – and dug out long forgotten newspaper columns and Commons speeches. I’ve listened to an outstanding new radio documentary series, and spoken to figures in the fatefully intertwined worlds of politics and intelligence, trading memories of the episode that remains the most lethal UK foreign policy disaster since Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938.
