The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

No Lessons Yet, Thank You

Magnanimous as ever, Britain's main war criminal has not necessarily ruled out another inquiry into the Iraq debacle. Another Hutton report could turn out just the proper pick-me-up for this, our tottering State, so long as it is compiled under circumstances convenient for his reverence. The arrest warrant, it would seem, is not valid until the murderer has signed it.

The Minister for Lesser Breeds, Margaret Beckett, spent much of yesterday "deflecting Opposition demands" for an inquiry; but apparently the deflections resulted from a "slip of the tongue". After fifty-two per cent of the bench-warmers at the House of Commons slipped into agreement with the tongue, the Minister for Justifiable Slaughter, Des Browne, said that the Government might one day condescend to hold a "retrospective inquiry", perhaps as opposed to the inquiry into future events which the Opposition was evidently, albeit unwittingly, demanding.

The Vicar of Downing Street acknowledged that "lessons must be learned"; but that, with only a little over a hundred British troops dead and almost as many signs of burgeoning democracy as there were under Saddam Hussein, "this is not the time" for learning them. The only possible result of learning any lessons now would be to send "a signal that would have dismayed our coalition allies, it would have dismayed the Iraqi government, it would have heartened all those that are fighting us in Iraq". What a jolly good thing we've had the sense to stay the course without learning anything so far. The consequences might have been unfortunate.

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