Brown has finally agreed to testify in front of the Chilcot enquiry over the Iraq war, without waiting for the next general election. This was probably the very least he could do, after Blair's own decision to take the witness box, which he should do this week.

However, that there should have been a question mark over Brown's appearance in the first place, despite his participation in government at the time of the war, puts in a nutshell the real nature of this so-called "independent" enquiry.

Putting Iraq "behind us"?

The fact is that the Chilcot enquiry was never designed to bring the politicians responsible for the invasion of Iraq to account, nor the generals who followed their orders - let alone to make them pay for their war crimes.

The enquiry's composition, for instance, speaks for itself. Its members are supposed to be "independent", but most have held, or are still holding, positions in the high-spheres of the state, close to the army and MoD. Will they disown the ministers under whose brief they served, or the generals with whom they brushed shoulders for so long? Not likely! At best, this enquiry will cover the crimes which were committed during the war and subsequent invasion under a hypocritical mantle, sprinkled with a combination of arrogant lies, sparse excuses and even sparser "regrets".

This was illustrated by the cynical testimony made by Alastair Campbell, Blair's former director of communications, in support of his boss' famous "memo" about Iraq's WMDs - never mind the fact that this memo was publicly exposed at the time as a crude fabrication!

Likewise with Straw's belated claim that, as Foreign secretary, he had been against sending the troops but.. had decided not to do anything about it - despite admitting that defending his opinion and seeking support for it publicly might have stopped Blair in his tracks!

However, the main function of this enquiry is elsewhere. By purporting that the political system can look with "impartiality" into the circumstances of the war it caused, the enquiry tries to put the Iraq war "behind us", as if nothing happened.

Above all, it is trying to whitewash a political system which went to war in order to line the coffers of the big western companies, caused countless casualties among the Iraqi population and catastrophic damage to the country, not to mention the unnecessary deaths of almost 5,000 western soldiers - and all this, against the opposition of the vast majority of the population here!

A criminal system

British troops may have left and US troops may be likely to be reduced over the coming 2 years, the invasion will be felt for decades. Beyond the deaths, wounded, destruction, etc.., high levels of radiation and dioxins left by Western ammunition (the chemical weapons that Britain and the US had, but Saddam Hussein did not!) have caused a sharp increase in the rate of cancer and birth defects around Iraq's main cities. Not only is today's Iraqi population paying an exorbitant price for the invasion, but the future generations will as well!

But it is not just in Iraq that this system's criminal madness remains rife. In this respect, the coincidence of three events here, is highly significant: Blair's appearance at the Chilcot's enquiry and the media frenzy it is causing; the summit on the Afghan war, which is due to open in London this week; and the announcement last week that Britain was under "severe" terrorist threat, not on the basis of any hard intelligence, but merely on the basis of a balance of probabilities!

No-one can forget that the invasion of Iraq, like Afghanistan's, was part of Bush's "war on terror" launched after 9/11 - not to address the causes of terrorism, but to re-assert the all-powerful stranglehold of the rich countries over the world.

Today, they are trying to push Iraq into oblivion, but Afghanistan is now their worst quagmire since the Vietnam war. Bush may be gone, but his "war on terror" remains as a scarecrow that the politicians of this country use to cow public opinion into tolerating their crimes. And behind the scenes, the engine that really drives all this madness - the profit motive - is exemplified by Blair himself, with the £1m/year income he draws from an oil firm bidding for the Iraqi oil that his war handed over to the greed of the oil giants!

The Iraq war and the criminal policies of these politicians will not be "behind us" - not as long as the world system of oppression and exploitation driven by private profit remains in place!