Unveiling his 2.6 million-word report into the UK’s most controversial military engagement since the end of the Second World War, Sir John said: “We have concluded that the United Kingdom chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted”.
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Mr. Blair insisted on Wednesday: “I did not mislead this country”.
“It was a controversial decision … to remove Saddam and to be with America. I believe I made the right decision and the world is better and safer as a result of it”.
A spokesman for some of the families of the 179 British service personnel and civilians killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2009 said their loved ones had died “unnecessarily and without just cause and purpose”.
“And I’m very proud to be a part of a party who, at that time, made a careful assessment and made what clearly now is the right judgement”. “The aftermath turned out to be more hostile, protracted and bloody than ever we imagined”, he said.
The IT and telecommunications spending for Chilcot’s six-volume, 2.6 million word report, which is published today, amounted to £695,300 over the Iraq Inquiry’s seven years of work, which cost £30,854,800 in total. The note goes on to say that “this is the moment to assess bluntly the difficulties”, and outlines a number of ways in which military action could backfire.
He said days before the invasion, Blair had been asked by the government’s top lawyer to confirm Iraq had committed breaches of a United Nations Security Council resolution, which would justify war. But the report itself stopped short of saying the war was illegal.
“The inquiry does not make a finding on the legal basis for military action but finds that the Attorney General had concluded there was such a lawful basis by March 13, 2003”, he explained.
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.
Mr Youd said the British people should “never again” be taken into war “under false pretences”. So, I believed then – and I still believe – that military action was lawful’. “It has been passed over to lawyers”.
Howard is facing a storm of criticism for the decision to put Australian forces in harm’s way on the back of intelligence calculations that have since been roundly debunked. The British Parliament backed the decision the following day.
Furthermore, Chiclot said that Britain’s plans for managing the occupation of Iraq following the 2003 invasion were “wholly inadequate”.
Britain deployed troops before diplomatic options had been exhausted, the report said.
No such weapons were discovered after the war.
“What I can not do and will not do”, Mr. Blair said, 13 years after he first ordered British troops into action in Iraq, “is say we took the wrong decision”. Military action at that time was not a last resort. “They were not challenged as they should have been”.
Colonel Mansoor described the Iraq War as one of the biggest mistakes in American History and praised the British government for launching the inquiry.
It revealed that the former prime minister had told his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush, that he was ‘with you, whatever’ regarding military action in Iraq and deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by dictator Saddam Hussein.
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The report, which is 2.6 million words long, does not make a judgement on whether Blair or individual ministers were in breach of global law.
