Iraq war points to a not-so-bright future

Demonstrators protest before the release of the John Chilcot report into the Iraq war, at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in London, Britain July 6, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The British government recently published a 2.6-million-word investigation report on its military involvement in the Iraq war. Were it not for Brexit, the Nice attack, Turkey's coup and the South China Sea arbitration farce, the report would have made bigger headlines.

The report, which took seven years and reportedly cost ￡10 million to prepare, concludes that former prime minister Tony Blair pushed the British military into Iraq without exhausting peaceful means or preparing for the aftermath of the war. More importantly, it says the Blair government's decision was based on false intelligence that overstated the threat posed by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. But it stops short of saying who manipulated the intelligence and why Britain's political establishment couldn't verify the information. And sadly, the report will not be able to prevent Britain from going into another Iraq-type war.

Blair and then US president George W. Bush didn't care about the consequences of waging a war on Iraq or ending it; they were only interested in overthrowing Saddam because they disliked him.

The anarchy that rules Somalia and large parts of Afghanistan and Yemen should give an idea about what Iraq could turn into. The chaos and mayhem that followed the "Arab Spring" in Libya, Egypt and Syria also show Western leaders don't care about the fate of the people in other countries.