“The point had not been reached where military action was the last resort”. “I believe we made the right decision and the world is better and safer”, he declared.
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Blair said he took responsibility for “mistakes in planning and process” identified by the report, and felt “more sorrow, regret and apology than you may ever know” for the grief of those whose loved ones died.
The inquiry found that former prime minister Blair had taken Britain into a badly planned, woefully executed and legally questionable war in 2003.
Former Iraqi leader and Dictator Saddam Hussein was nearly immediately toppled, yet the aftermath saw tens of thousands of innocent civilians and hundreds of troops, including two Australians, killed. The country remains plagued by violence, seen most recently in Sunday’s auto bomb in Baghdad that killed more than 200 people.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to comment when asked about Chilcot report by the Sputnik news agency.
“The report. will not change anything – all this is empty talk”, said Zainab Hassan, aged 60.
It also said the intelligence services had used flawed information on which to base the main case for war – the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction.
Those who opposed joining the 2003 war in Iraq are now crying victory, after the release of the Chilcot report.
He told David Cameron the three complaints aimed at Mr Blair were that he had misled or lied to Parliament, that intelligence had been doctored and that the war was illegal.
“I relied on the assessments that were given to me, but I think its fair to say – certainly given our experience – it would have been far better to have challenged them more clearly”, he said.
Shortly afterwards current Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – a top figure in the anti-war campaign – directly contradicted his predecessor Blair.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 ago was “unnecessary” and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein represented “no imminent threat” to Britain or other Western powers, according to a long-awaited official report on Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War.
General Tim Cross – the most senior British officer involved in planning the war – said former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would not listen either to the United Nations or the UK about the aftermath of the invasion.
“There is one terrorist that the world needs to be aware of and his name is Tony Blair, the world’s worst terrorist”, said Sarah O’Connor, the sister of Bob O’Connor who died in Iraq in 2005, at a press conference called by some of the dead soldiers’ families. “There were errors in intelligence but there was no lie”, he said, adding that he respected Chilcot’s findings but did not agree with all of them.
“The U.K. chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted”, Chilcot told reporters as he announced the results of his seven-year inquiry.
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The report is named after the inquiry’s chairperson and former civil servant Sir John Chilcot.
