Mistakes piled onto half-truths and outright lies: Iraq undermined liberal intervention

Whether President Barack Obama should have carried through on his threat to intervene in Syria when evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were revealed in 2013, or if Western allies should have been more robust in projecting their interests in building a post-Qadhafi state in Libya, remain live issues today. The fact that neither happened can be traced directly to the catalogue of disasters that began with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003; an ignominious chapter of recent western history which has now been elegantly and intensively recorded in Sir John Chilcot’s Report of the Iraq Inquiry, which covers the UK’s involvement from mid-2001 until its troops formally withdrew in July 2009.