Not About Jackson

As the Iraq inquiry prepares to convene just as soon as someone decides what it's actually doing, we talk to the key players...

Brown
I've come to view Iraq in much the same way as I imagine an artist might regard an experimental work that is perhaps not technically successful, and has failed to capture public and critical imaginations, but whose intent is apparent. It is a brave thing to do. And if we were to the measure the worth of an endeavour not by its outcomes, but by its intentions, then it was very clearly right for us to embark upon operations in Iraq.

The point is that we were duty-bound to try. We weren't, admittedly, sure that Iraq possessed WMDs. We were, I confess further, actually quite sure that it didn't. But it might have done. One might even say that - as with Schrödinger's cat - Iraq, before the incursion, both had and didn't have WMDs, and would have continued to remain in this state until we resolved the matter by observation; by opening up the chamber, as it were.

Reasoning thus, we made the perfectly valid assessment that Iraq posed a grave threat to the wider world. Our observation ensured the non-existence of WMDs. I therefore stand by the Iraq project without reservation.


Miliband
My biggest regret about Iraq would have to be the Despair Bomb. It was very much an experimental weapon - one we weren't fully ready to deploy in a live situation, certainly used rashly; a weapon that unleashed, besides unimaginable destruction, a whole raft of troubling questions, many of which we'd failed to consider until after the fact... Questions such as: what happens to an entire nation drained of all hope? Is it ethical to deliberately bring about this state of affairs?

It was our Hiroshima. History will, I think, judge us with a degree of pragmatism. An atrocity, if you will, committed for the greater good. But examined more closely, our decision to resort to such drastic measures may be harder to defend. We effectively solved the problem of Iraq by destroying Iraq. Anyone watching the news that day will forever be haunted by those images of a country literally consuming itself, collapsing in on itself like a dying galaxy, leaving a vast tract of negative space.

That most of Iraq's neighbours were immediately sucked into the void along with it is something that I must live with for the rest of my days. On the other hand, however, is the world a noticeably worse place for the deletion from reality of the Middle East? 9/11. The Crusades. Our invasion of Iraq itself. None of it ever happened. And of this, I think Mars approves.


Campbell
If you let your bitch run around doing and saying whatever, then sooner or later you're going to wake up hanging from the ceiling by your feet with pasties on your tits, watching the cat playing with something in the corner of the room. After a while you'll realise it's a cock and balls. Soon after that you'll recognise it as your own cock and balls. And your bitch is shagging a vicar in the other corner.

A bitch needs to know who's boss. It needs discipline. Wants it. Iraq was a bitch that wanted a slap across the chops. Simple as. We had no choice. We'd be giving Iran a good kick up the cunt if I was still around.


Straw
I felt no real compunction, at the time, in attacking Iraq. I was, in fact, utterly convinced that Iraq was not actually a country, but rather a loose conglomerate of terrorist organisations. It occurs to me now that I may have confused Iraq with Al-Qaida.

And it was a confusing time. We were at war with terrorism itself. Nobody was entirely sure who the enemy really was. And so we closed our eyes and fired wildly in all directions, reasoning that we were almost certain to hit the culprit eventually.


Blair
Iraq: a screaming, hundred mile-per-hour apparition of a past love; an intense, passionate affair, as thrilling in its violence as it was terrifying. She was my glory and my nemesis. She flies, howling, through my dreams, puncturing the membrane upon entry so that the external world seeps in and the internal one out, intermingling as blood and heroin swirl in the dropper, dancing about one another - a dangerous, erotic dance - until finally they embrace and become one, an unholy union.

Memories: her nails would sink deep into my flesh as we made love, whereupon I would immediately climax in a tremendous rolling crescendo, pumping white sicks of rage, each spasm a punch thrown at her womb...

I lose sight of God in these moments. Catch myself longing to return to her scarred, sinewy arms. Reason deserts me, my will tossed like a carcass to my basest instincts, devoured in seconds. Too far gone to recall the material world. Too late to turn back. All behind me crumbles into oblivion. Two bodies alone in an empty universe...

As soon as it is over, reality floods my consciousness once more. I find myself back in my bed, whole body jerking with dry sobs, searing white-hot barbs of shame lashing at my skin. Cherie sits hugging herself by the door, eyeing me, her face weeping fear and disgust.

I am stuck to the sheets... and so there I lay... silent and motionless... for days...