Yet putting the U.K. aside for the present, the big question for many is why there hasn't been more of a clamor for a 'full Monty' stateside "Chilcot". Although Blair can hardly claim to have been dragged kicking and screaming into the Iraq debacle, the reality is that is was always Bush and Co.'s war from the off. Which is to say, when it comes to keeping the 'populace alarmed and clamorous' etc., the Beltway bedlamites then and now are in a league of their own; for this closet Straussian cohort, 'the merits of warlike enterprise' are rarely in dispute.
As for why the Bush regime decided to go to war in the first place and why Britain and others so willingly joined them, as already noted, in the view of many it was indeed about oil. To be sure, the original nomenclature of the operation to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein was embarrassingly designated Operation Iraqi Liberation, the attending acronym literally 'spelling' it out for all but the most politically myopic or perpetually na????ve.
(Herein one is sorely tempted to ponder a 'fly-on-the-wall' moment in the Situation Room whence this revelation --that the Operation's acronym spelt OIL -- was first brought to the notice of the war's architects gathered as they were plotting their next course of action. The mind boggles as to the look on the faces of those who thought their plan was a good idea at the time, coming to terms with the realization their unfortunately labeled 'crusade' into the cradle of civilization was one of recent history's most revealing illustrations of a Freudian slip!)
In his Consortium News piece, the "Iraq War, an Unaccountable Crime", Eric Margolis was one commentator who didn't just reinforce what many were saying in response to Chilcot's findings. As someone who's been covering Iraq since the mid 70's (by his own declaration he was not a big fan of Saddam Hussein; the dictator's secret police once threatened to hang him as a spy), for him the process leading to the invasion was little more than an epic shell game.
Margolis' focus was rightly on the U.S., and on those who were the principal drivers of this extraordinarily ill-fated, ill-judged adventure. These include in the main Bush himself, along with Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld, a cabal this author has referred to previously as the Shock and Awesome Foursome of the Bespoke Apocalypse. That appellation seems even more apt in light of Chilcot's findings.
Indeed, far from being 'misguided' (as some of the 'half-hearted' apologists for this interminable fiasco have claimed and are still doing so to this day), given that its origins lay in the unilateral and preemptive premises of the pre-9/11 Project for the New American Century doctrine as outlined in its manifesto "Rebuilding America's Defenses", it was quite possibly the most guided -- preordained one might say -- decision ever taken in U.S. foreign and national security policy history. In anyone's lingo, this is a big call to be sure.
-- On the Political Patio (That Other Pachyderm) --
The way Margolis saw it , there were two formidable forces in Washington clamoring for the war -- these were: '[the] ardently pro-Israel neoconservatives who yearned to see an enemy of Israel destroyed', after which there was '[the] cabal of conservative oil men and imperialists around Vice President Dick Cheney who sought to grab Iraq's huge oil reserves at a time they believed oil was running out.'
Put simply , oil is not the only 'pachyderm on the political patio' that defines U.S. policy within and across the Greater Middle East. Margolis was as unequivocal as he was as unsparing in his assessment:
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