Another absurd theatrical performance this week in Westminster, mother of parliaments and nerve center of Britain’s democracy export industry. All three leaders of the major political parties,  David, Nick and Ed, were passionately exercised by the further delay of a report into Britain’s role in the 2003 Iraq War. Ed was particularly funky. But of course they are all conspirators in yet another illegal ongoing war- this time in Syria – and cynicism is in order.

Publication of the report is now only expected after the general election in May. Meanwhile the Chilcot Inquiry expensively trundles into its sixth year with £10 million spent so far. The only real question is why.

The truth is quite plain. Britain joined the US in delivering ‘shock and awe’ to a nation already bled by years of sanctions which left  500,000 Iraqi children dead. The war was illegal and primed by sensational lies.

As many as 1,5 million Iraqis are estimated to have perished in the invasion and its aftermath. The civilian population was deliberately targeted; the Iraqi National  Museum, in Baghdad, shamelessly looted. The liberal use of depleted uranium raised the bar for barbarity.

The prize was booty (Iraq’s oil),  hegemony (control of the Middle East in cahoots with Israel) and war profits (corporations made billions and paid politicians -like Tony Blair – handsomely). The slaughter also paved the way for the deployment of  the West’s task force of jihadis (Al Qaida and associated brands) across the wider region.

The Chilcot Inquiry cannot assign criminal responsibility for the supreme crime of aggressive war against Iraq, repeated in Libya and now prosecuted against Syria. It is unlikely to condemn the fake war on terrorism – revived as a clash of civilisations – and the stripping away of civil rights to preserve democracy. It will not stop Britain’s complicity in  provocations against Iran and Russia that could easily end in nuclear war and make any further inquiry unnecessary.

It’s worth noting that the secretary of the Inquiry,  Margaret Aldred was the deputy head of the Cabinet Office’s foreign and defence policy secretariat which drew up plans for regime change in Iraq in the first place. She ought to know why Britain went to war against Saddam Hussein, a former ally.

America is a serial aggressor systematically killing hope. It cannot tolerate the existence of secular Muslim countries, or any nation with the faintest socialist persuasion. ‘Normalisation’ of US relations with Cuba is just  another ploy for trying to bring  that island of dreams to heel, an admission that 55 years of embargo and intimidation have failed.

More to the point runaway governments across the globe – a transnational elite beyond the control of  voters – represent the interests of a corporate fiefdom at war with people everywhere. They get away with murder, spectacularly and in plain sight. State terrorism is their art form. There is not an area of life that is not corrupted. and reduced to the extraction of wealth.

The idea of civilisation and progress is dead in Britain. Citizens subsidise state propaganda. Neo-feudalism is now an established tag for a society, increasingly divided by fear and new configurations of tribe and class. The majority are destined for 21st century serfdom. And this will be the pattern everywhere. Tony Blair has already  been rehabilitated. Those who called him a war criminal must bite their tongues. The Chilton Inquiry  merely provides an opportunity for diversion and plausible deniability.