Lawyers among the leading contenders as tweeters attempted to condense 2.6 million words into 140 characters
Imagine having to reduce the whole of Harry Potter (1 million words), the Bible (800,000 words) and War and Peace (600,000 words) into a sane and comprehensible 140 characters conveying the gist of all you had read. Tough tweeting.
But that was the challenge the nation’s top tweeters took upon themselves as they got themselves into the zone for the publication of the Chilcot report (actually 200,000 words longer than the combined works mentioned above).
One of the first out of the blocks was the indomitable and never knowingly out-tweeted David Allen Green:
Everyone on Twitter now has *one hour* to become experts on war crimes law.
Please form your view now, before Chilcot reports, to save time.— David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) July 6, 2016
Sound advice. And more was to follow.
Your two choices are:
(a) "Chilcot endorses my view that [x] is a war criminal", or
(b) "Whitewash!"No third choice will be available
— David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) July 5, 2016
And concluding with:
A report you will not read and which is not intended to deal with war crimes must now become the basis of your strong opinion on war crimes.
— David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) July 5, 2016
A trio of definitive tweets from the D.A.G setting out his stall early doors and re-establishing his claim to being Tweeter-in-Chief.
Forty-five minutes before kick-off there was, in a rush to the obvious, a huge spike in forty-five minute gags as the nation’s comedians demonstrated the depth of their knowledge of public affairs.
And cometh the hour, cometh the Chilcot (one ‘l’ and one ‘t’ please) who, staying in character to the very end, was suitably late.
Within seconds the verdicts were in. Bloomberg’s political correspondent Robert Hutton tweeting:
Chilcot in one tweet: Very bad for Blair, govt, spies, military. Definitely more "damning verdict" than "whitewash".
— Robert Hutton (@RobDotHutton) July 6, 2016
Good shout…. it soon became very clear that
1) This was no whitewash.
2) Blair like many a fifty-something was going to regret having ever said ‘whatever’.
As the tweets rolled in and all over Blair and his chums it was back to the studio for a quick update from top legal affairs pundit David Allen Green:
Those criticised in the #Chilcot report are going to be spending a lot of time with defence lawyers.
Sounds like basis for a lot of claims.— David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) July 6, 2016
Other lawyers were quick to judgment:
Basically the Iraq War was a massive gamble by Bush and Blair to remodel the Middle East, which failed spectacularly.
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) July 6, 2016
We've stared at our navel and, rightly, we don't like it. Nor did we like it much at the time.
It's a good report but narrow. #Chilcot— Simon Myerson QC (@SCynic1) July 6, 2016
In summary #Chilcot's 2.5 million words can be summarised as follows "not Bliar but Blincompetent"
— Mark Lewis (@MLewisLawyer) July 6, 2016
And finally, thanks to BuzzFeed’s Jim Waterson, who helpfully tweeted a picture showing the true scale of the task that had been undertaken:
This is what the entire Chilcot report looks like, FYI. https://t.co/15Ilf8ILSp pic.twitter.com/RapIseDIbe
— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) July 6, 2016
Read the Chilcot report in full here. Or maybe not.