After a seven-year wait, the inquiry into former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to join the US-led war on Iraq was published.
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Speaking to British troops in Iraq in 2003, Blair said: “When people look back at this time and look back on this conflict, I honestly believe they will see this as one of the defining moments of our century”. Chilcot complained that in Blair’s time the risks of military action were never properly identified or exposed to ministers. “We would like to see all those key players face some form of accountability”.
“Why is he not here looking at us?”
Sir John Chilcot heavily criticised Mr Blair for committing to backing USA president George Bush over Iraq.
Misguided and misinformed: Sir Chilcot criticised Mr Blair for making his decision based on “flawed intelligence”.
Retired civil servant Chilcot said his report was “an account of an intervention which went badly wrong, with consequences to this day”.
A US Senate Intelligence Committee investigation a decade ago found prewar intelligence failings and concluded that politicians had overstated the evidence for weapons of mass destruction and ignored warnings about the violence that could follow an invasion.
The US-led invasion was deeply controversial at the time as it did not have explicit approval from the UN Security Council, while claims that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction proved unfounded.
The head of the Iraq war inquiry said the UK’s decision to attack and occupy a sovereign state for the first time since the second World War was a decision of “utmost gravity”.
“I can regret the mistakes and I can regret many things about it but I genuinely believe, not just that we acted out of good motives, and I did what I did out of good faith, but I sincerely believe that we would be in a worse position if we hadn’t acted that way”, he said.
√ Whitehall and ministers “failed to put their collective weight behind the task” of stabilising British parts of post-war Iraq.
“It fell far short of strategic success”, the report said. On Saturday, 250 people were killed in Baghdad’s worst auto bombing since the USA -led invasion.
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.
Peter Leahy, who was chief of the Australian Army from 2002 to 2008, said Australia had to examine how it decides to go to war in light of the report.
Others said they were grateful to Washington and London for ending his dictatorship. “I hope the lessons will be learned”. I acknowledge the mistakes and accept responsibility for them.
And it said that after the invasion, Britain had only “limited” ability to influence USA decisions.
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The embattled Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, apologised on behalf of his party what he termed a ‘stain on our party and our country’.
