The long-awaited report, delivered by Sir John Chilcot, found then-British prime minister Tony Blair and his government led the country into a war based on flawed intelligence in 2003.
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The former civil servant said Blair had made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein “before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted” and was highly critical of the intelligence and legal advice given before the war, along with what he called “wholly inadequate” planning for the post-conflict situation.
He said he felt “deeply and sincerely. the grief and suffering of those who lost ones they loved in Iraq”.
It has been revealed that months before the US-UK allied invasion, in July 2002, Blair wrote to then-US President George Bush promising him that the UK would be there with him ” whatever”.
Roger Bacon, whose son Matthew died in the Iraqi city of Basra in 2005, said he was “amazed” while listening to Blair’s statement that was a response to Chilcot report released earlier on Wednesday.
Instead, Salmond said, Tony Blair should have supported “international and justified legal action in Afghanistan”.
“If I was back in the same place with the same information, I would take the same decision, obviously, that’s the decision that I believe was right”.
“It is now clear that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments”.
The Times quotes Sir John Chilcot’s report, which said that Britain fought an “unnecessary, disastrous and potentially illegal war” in Iraq because of Tony Blair’s “misguided and personal commitment to George W Bush”.
He said the objective of the note was to make sure the Americans went down the United Nations route, “which they did”.
He also said it would be “far better” if he had challenged intelligence on Iraq’s weapons in the run-up to war.
“I mean, hindsight is always a wonderful thing, and in hindsight, some of the information that was presented at the time was proven to be incorrect, but you don’t know that – what you do know is is that all you can do is make the decisions based on the information you’ve got”.
“Taking the country to war should always be a last resort”, he said, adding however that “we should not conclude that intervention is always wrong“.
“Mr Blair told the inquiry that the difficulties encountered in Iraq after the invasion could not have been known in advance”. Chilcot described Saddam as “undoubtedly a brutal dictator” who had repressed and murdered many of his own people and attacked his neighbours.
Yesterday Mr Blair continued to face calls for him to be charged with war crimes a day after the revelations.
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But the world isn’t safer in Baghdad, as last weekend’s devastating bombing again showed, and it’s not better for the families of the British soldiers who died in Iraq.
