Key findings include: Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, the United Kingdom chose to invade before it had exhausted peaceful options, British intelligence produced “flawed information”, the U.S. ignored United Kingdom advice on postwar planning, the British military was poorly prepared for war, Blair ignored warnings, kept his cabinet in the dark and had no plans in place for the occupation of the country after the invasion.
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The former premier has made a series of media appearances since the Chilcot Report’s publication on Wednesday in an attempt to explain the decision which has come to define his time in office.
He said the report proved the Iraq War had been an “act of military aggression launched on a false pretext”, something he said which has “long been regarded as illegal by the overwhelming weight of worldwide opinion”. The UK failed to appreciate the complexity of governing Iraq, and did not devote enough forces to the task of securing the country in the wake of the invasion, he added.
The report makes clear there are a number of possible grounds for legal action against Blair by the families of the 179 people killed in the Iraq war.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Blair insisted that although mistakes had been made, the decision to join the US-led invasion had been the right one.
The Chilcot report, however, suggests the legal base for the move was “far from satisfactory” and attributes the PM’s decisions to stubbornness.
“I believed that the decision to go into Iraq was justified at the time and I don’t resile from that because I thought it was the right decision”, he told a press conference in Sydney.
“The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuit of its interests, regional instability, and al-Qaeda activity in Iraq, were each explicitly identified before the invasion”, it said.
If Hussein had been in power during the Arab Spring in 2011, Blair said, “I believe he would have tried to keep power” in the way that Syria’s President Assad has done.
Until the Iraq war, Blair was a widely popular figure in Britain, and was the first prime minister from the Labour Party to win office three times.
“I don’t think it will do any good just having a go at Tony Blair, no matter how easy that would be politically”.
Mr Blair said: “You can do all the planning but in the end it’s the fighting that’s going to be tough”.
Anti-war activists and the relatives of some dead British troops had hoped that the report could lay the initial groundwork for Blair’s prosecution for war crimes.
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Yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn apologised on behalf of the Labour Party for the war after the Chilcot Inquiry published its damning verdict.
