“It is important that the lessons are learned and that such mistakes aren’t repeated – and that weighed heavily on my mind when I voted against air strikes in Syria a year ago”.
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The US State Department said in a statement yesterday that it would not respond to the Chilcot report.
“I will be with you whatever”, Blair wrote to his USA counterpart.
The report did not support claims that Mr Blair agreed a deal “signed in blood” to topple Saddam at a key meeting with Mr Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in 2002.
On Thursday, The Sun newspaper’s front page carried the headline: “Weapon Of Mass Deception” while also referencing a secret memo of support that Tony Blair sent to American President at the time, George W Bush, saying “I’ll be with you whatever”.
He says one important conclusion in the United Kingdom report is that Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee took ownership of information in the dossier that was presented to the public by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“But what is true, is we were giving the USA a very clear commitment that we were going to be alongside them in dealing with this issue”.
Invasion was not “the last resort”, “flawed intelligence” went unchallenged, the severity of the threat Iraq posed presented with “a certainty that was not justified” and perhaps most damningly the planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were “wholly inadequate”.
Mr Blair said he had relied on these reports, but acknowledged: “It would have been far better to have challenged them more clearly”. I don’t believe, based on the information available to me, that it was the wrong decision.
The Sun said readers could use their mock-up dartboard to “aim your own missiles at the cowards and traitors who opted to support Saddam Hussein rather than the fearless troops who laid down their lives for freedom”.
“We are not interested in re-litigating the decisions that lead to the Iraq war in 2003. we are not going to go through it [the report], we are not going to examine it, we are not going to try to make an analysis of it or make judgement of the findings one way or another”, a spokesman said. “I really don’t”, he said.
And if he had been in power during the Arab Spring in 2011, “I believe he would have tried to keep power” in the way that Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, had done.
Mr Peters is now warning the Government its current involvement in Iraq should be reconsidered.
Calling Australia’s decision to invade Iraq “the biggest security and foreign policy blunder in our country’s history”, independent MP and former army officer Andrew Wilkie has called for Howard and members of his Cabinet to face trial for war crimes for taking Australia “to war on a lie”.
“I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you may ever know or can believe”, said Blair, his voice breaking with emotion in a speech in central London.
Shadow health secretary Diane Abbott told Today Mr Blair had “destroyed his own reputation”.
She added: “There’s no question that the Blair-Brown government did some incredible things in schools, hospitals and the rest of it but their reputation has bled to death in the sands of Iraq”.
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“The intelligence assessments made at the time of going to war turned out to be wrong, the aftermath turned out to be more hostile, protracted and bloody than ever we imagined… and a nation whose people we wanted to set free from the evil of Saddam became instead victims of sectarian terrorism”.
