To take the question in the thread title first, yes it is a disgrace that any enquiry should cost such an amount of money. The gist of what happened is already well known. An official admission would have cut short the exercise.

The second question asked is whether the matter should have been left in the cupboard. No, I don't think so. The British tended to see the Northern Ireland troubles as a matter of 'defeating terrorism'. Bloody Sunday was their first disastrous step in a disastrous strategy.

If the enquiry would hurry up and draw the relevant conclusions it might have some influence on the new guff being spoken about defeating terrorism since September 11.