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Iraq War Inquiry 'will be thorough'
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The head of the long-awaited Iraq War Inquiry pledged to produce a "full and insightful" account of the decision-making process which took Britain into the conflict.
On the eve of the first public hearings, retired Whitehall mandarin Sir John Chilcot said he and his team would not shrink from making criticisms of individuals or organisations if they were justified.
But at the same time he stressed the inquiry was not a court of law set up to determine issues of guilt and innocence.
Their job, he said, was to "write the narrative in order to learn the lessons for the future".
To that end, he said that the witness hearings which begin tomorrow in Westminster would forego the "adversarial ding-dong" of the courtroom in order to try to get "a naturalness" into the exchanges.
"We are very much looking for the human reaction to the key questions about people's responsibility at any particular time or any particular bit of the Iraq adventure," he said.
"We actually want natural exchanges about what happened and why - how people felt about it - which you can't do in a courtroom atmosphere."
However, the relative informality of the proceedings should not, he cautioned, fool any of the witnesses into believing that they can pull the wool over the inquiry's eyes.
"Because we have so much documentary evidence, a witness who sought to hold something back or misdescribe something would be on a loser because we already have all the factual underpinning," he said.
Among those whose human reactions they will eventually be seeking are Tony Blair and other senior politicians involved in the key decisions - although not until the New Year.
