Years In The Making, Report Finds British Rushed Into Iraq War

Blair argued the report should exonerate him from accusations of lying.

Sir John Chilcot – chairman of the UK’s Iraq War inquiry – concluded Mr Blair had sent ill-prepared troops into battle and had “wholly inadequate” plans for the aftermath.

Launched with the stated goal of wiping out Saddam Hussein’s stores of weapons of mass destruction, the war aimed to enshrine a liberal democracy in the Middle East but instead unleashed sectarian violence and endless political disputes. Where there had been mistakes they were minor ones involving “planning and process”, he said.

“My son didn’t die for this, surely he didn’t”, said Reg Keys, who lost his son in the war, “but I’m afraid he did, he died in vain”.

Mrs Baldwin, MP for West Worcestershire, who at the time of the war outbreak was not an MP, said she felt for the families who had suffered pain and heartache from the decision to go into war.

Sir John is adamant in his 2.6 million-word report there was no need to go to war in 2003 and that Saddam could have been contained.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair should have “abstained” from invading Iraq by “all means”, focusing instead on “justified and legal” military action in Afghanistan, Scotland’s former first minister Alex Salmond told RT.

Blair “certainly misled us into believing that this [the Iraq war] was for a just and right cause”, he also said.

“The decision to go to war in Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power in a coalition of over 40 countries led by the U.S., was the hardest, most momentous, most agonising decision I took in 10 years as British Prime Minister”.

Although the former Australian Prime Minister has defended military action in Iraq, claiming it was the “right decision” at the time. I don’t retreat from it. I don’t believe that, on the basis of the information that was available to me, it was the wrong decision.

But Col Peter Mansoor said Tony Blair’s promise of military support helped to persuade then president George W Bush to attack Iraq. “The only honorable thing to do is to say ‘I made a mistake based on what was presented [at that time]'”.

“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. “I profoundly disagree”, said Blair.

Chilcot’s long-overdue report spans nearly a decade of United Kingdom government policy decisions between 2001 and 2009.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who voted for war in 2003, told MPs it was important to “really learn the lessons for the future” and to improve the workings of government and how it treats legal advice.

In the Commons, the SNP spokesman Pete Wishart demanded to know what action Parliament can take to hold individuals to account for the Iraq war.