Army Almost Seized Up

General Sir Richard Dannatt, former head of the British army, told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war that Tony Blair's decision to send troops to Helmand at the same time as they were in Iraq almost caused the army to seize up.

He said:

"I think we were getting quite close to a seizing-up moment in 2006."

The politicians let the troops down by placing them in an almost impossible position during this period, the consequences of this negligence are still being felt today.

The Iraq High

Dr Hans Blix, former UN weapons inspector, has told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war that the US and UK didn't feel that they needed "a permission slip" from the security council:

"The US in 2002...I think they were high on military at the time. They said 'we can do it'

They thought they could get away with it so they decided to do it."

The lesson here is don't start wars when "high".

Low Standards

Carne Ross, the UK's Iraq expert at the United Nations from 1997 to 2002, has a poor opinion of the quality of the questioning at the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war.

Ross told the BBC that chairman Sir John Chilcot was running a "narrow" investigation, with the standard of questioning "pretty low".

He went on to say that the Chilcot inquiry was not doing enough to ensure it got a full picture of events.

"The other government witnesses are giving a partial view... I think that the standard of interrogation by the panel is pretty low. The level of questioning is very easygoing.

In particular my greatest concern is that witnesses are not being challenged on the contradictions between what they are saying to the panel and what's in the documents."

These allegations are nothing new, from the very outset journalists have been saying that witnesses have been given a very easy time by Chilcot.