Blair faces the barbie's flames about Baghdad and Bush Jr.

For over two months, the UK media have been glued to proceedings occurring in a meeting room at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, just west of the Houses of Parliament. During this time, five Privy Councillors have questioned, surveyed and grilled everyone involved in Tony Blair's cabinet at the time the UK, US, and other Coalition forces invaded Iraq in 2003, aiming to find if any actions taken were illegal or just plain dumb.

In a little under five hours, the former Prime Minister himself will go before the panel. Naturally, Blair's responses to the panel's questions (including a panelist who said five years ago that Blair & George W. Bush will one day be compared to Churchill & FDR) will make for a highly anticipated session, as audience passes were snatched up in a matter of minutes. Over the days leading up to Blair's appearance, members of his Cabinet and inner circle have provided evidence as to how and when Blair & Company made the decision to join the US in taking military action. (The BBC, which has aired the proceedings on their news channel with a one-minute delay, has a recap of all the proceedings here.)

One member of Blair's cabinet has yet to face questioning, and will do so within the next two months: his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. And since the inception of the inquiry, he's proven to be better at making waffles than even Eggo. Consistently bowing to pressure from opposition parties and even anti-war critics from his own backbenches, Brown first relented on his initial plans to not make public the inquiry's proceedings. Then, aiming to avoid more potential embarrassment before the elections he's dawdled on calling for almost three years, Brown made every effort to postpone his testimony until the next Parliament was seated.

But aside from Brown's trademark dawdling and backpedalling, tomorrow (er, later this morning) will mark the most critical day of the inquiry, as we'll hear from the Sage of Sedgefield, the architect of New Labour, and America's biggest quasi-socialist ally (who would have brown-nosed his way into a White House run by the staunchest of Libertarians) what exactly was going on in the months prior to every TV news network in the Western world showing grainy images of tanks rolling across miles of endless desert, as sketched out infamously by Geraldo Rivera.

Will Blair refute the claims of a member of his foreign corps that a deal was "signed in blood" with the Bush Administration almost six months prior to the invasion?
How will Blair explain warnings issued about there not being enough helicopters to support both operations in Iraq and Afghanistan?
What exactly will Blair say about the weapons dossier he released in September 2002, which has since been found to have contained glaring inaccuracies?

These answers will likely register in the mainstream American press, which has given their audiences no clue as to this inquiry even occurring.