The Sunlight Centre for Open Politics welcomes the news that where possible the Iraq inquiry will be held in public.

The panel of the inquiry will consist of Sir John Chilcot, Sir Roderick Lyne, Sir Martin Gilbert, Sir Lawrence Freedman and Baroness Prashar.

The composition of the panel with Sir John Chilcot as the chairman a former civil servant and Sir Roderick Lyne a former civil servant with diplomatic experience who has also worked in the private sector but has little knowledge of the Middle East seem to be the steadying influence on the panel.  Baroness Prashar a cross bencher from the House of Lords has extensive legal experience so she will be able to question the legitimacy of the Iraq conflict which seemed obvious to the public and many in parliament in 2003.  These three appointments seem to be of sound mind.

The final two members of the panel Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freedman are both highly respected historians.  However I am not sure they are right for this particular inquiry. 

Sir Lawrence Freedman was a key foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair and a key architect of the Blair doctrine.  Sir Martin Gilbert although he has no connections to anyone who could possibly be called to the inquiry, I believe his historical research methods for such an inquiry are particularly flawed.  Sir Martin has a strong reliance on primary rather than secondary evidence.  Although this is not a bad thing in the case of this inquiry, primary evidence such as intelligence reports such as the 45 minute report produced by Alistair Campbell cannot be accepted especially when clearly they have proved to be pure fiction.  Perhaps more revisionist historians could have been chosen who can look at the larger picture beyond the initial conflict.

Published on July 30th, 2009 by chris