Defiant Tony Blair insists world is a safer place without Saddam as he’s blasted for leading country to war

By Colonel Tim Collins

I expected the Chilcot report to have been a whitewash. It was no such thing. All of the major errors that I expected and more were laid bare. Now we must, as a nation digest this and make sure that we never repeat these mistakes.
The man who stands to face the worst criticism is of course Tony Blair.
Whilst no one is pretending that the decision to embark on the war was his alone he was clearly too eager and willing to follow the lead of George Bush and Chilcot found that all peaceful options were not exhausted before the decision to go to war.
Further Blair stands accused of wishful thinking both in terms of the difficulties and dangers of the aftermath.
I personally believe that Blair was drunk on his own hype and expected the sort of outcome that the intervention in Kosovo and Sierra Leone delivered.
With a distorted self-esteem, he was an man who thought he could do no wrong. What he forgot was he did not do it; it was the men and women of our armed forces that delivered those successes. One hundred and seventy nine UK service men paid with their lives for his blunder.
Worse still Chilcot finds that our Army was humiliated. He stops short of saying that we were defeated saying
“The UK military role in Iraq ended a very long way from success.”
It is like saying that Roy Hodgson’s Euro 2016 campaign ended a very long way from success. That is a hard statement for the families of the fallen to swallow. It gets worse. Chilcot states that
“By 2007 militia dominance in Basra, which UK military commanders were unable to challenge, led to the UK exchanging detainee releases for an end to the targeting of its forces.
It was humiliating that the UK reached a position in which an agreement with a militia group which had been actively targeting UK forces was considered the best option available.
Lets be clear however. The Army was capable of smashing these creatures.
They were not allowed to. As a commander who was accused of war crimes for standing up to murderous militias in Iraq I know they were no match for us.
But I suspect the way I was handled put the fear of God into other commanders and constant political interference made sure no one dared to face down the mob.
I watched this from Iraq’s Anbar Province where my company was raising and mentoring the Iraqi Police Special Branch alongside the US Marine Corps.
It was the other way round there. In Anbar the insurgents were begging for mercy and volunteering in droves to provide information.
Along with handing the strategic initiative to the Iranians and undermining our operations in Afghanistan I don’t think there were many rocks left uncovered.
Tony Blair will take no comfort from any of this.
He should not. This is not the end of it. Not by far.

Sir John Chilcot has left open the possibility of charges to follow after publishing his Iraq Inquiry.

The report stopped short of calling the former PM a war criminal but he could still be dragged to court over his decision to take the UK to war in Iraq.

The families could now pursue a civil action against Blair and his team, after the committee found the legal basis for military action “far from satisfactory”.

Chilcot said Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, should have explained the legal basis for military action in March 2003 as cabinet discussed the plans.

Instead he began answering a parliamentary question at the time before the discussion moved on.

A 170-page section of the report is devoted to a detailed analysis of the legal advice given by Goldsmith, but Chilcot concluded that cabinet was not misled by the attorney general on 17 March.

But it does slam ministers for not asking questions.

The report reads: “Given the gravity of the situation, cabinet should have been made aware of the legal uncertainties.”

The International Criminal Court’s current prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, says she is looking into whether “British officials were responsible for war crimes involving systematic detainee abuse in Iraq from 2003 until 2008”.

Her findings could lead to a fresh investigation and she has previously refused to rule out putting Blair on trial.

TONY Blair presided over a catalogue of disastrous blunders and failings that left Britain’s invasion of Iraq almost a complete failure, the Chilcot report has devastatingly ruled.

The inquiry’s most damning findings are:

* Tony Blair rushed into war prematurely, committing with George Bush to oust Saddam as early as December 2001,

* The whole war's legality is cast into fresh doubt again, with the thinking behind Attorney General Lord Goldsmith's final green light for it "not clear" and "far from satisfactory",

* There were major intelligence failings by senior spies, headed up by Joint Intelligence Committee boss and later MI6 chief Sir John Scarlett, who should have told Blair their information on WMD was not concrete or "beyond doubt",

* A catastrophic failure to plan properly for both the war and keeping the peace after it, leading swiftly to pandemonium on southern Iraq's streets as well as serious equipment shortfalls for British troops - 179 of who were killed,

* Blair discarded repeated and major warnings inside government about how the invasion could hike the terrorist threat and about "the magnitude" of the task in rebuilding Iraq after Saddam's toppling.

FORMER No10 spin doctor Alastair Campbell issued a dizzying defence of Tony Blair’s role in the Iraq War today despite the damning verdict of the Chilcot Report.

Sir John Chilcot said the invasion of Iraq was not the “last resort” and British forces were committed to the area “before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted”.

But Mr Campbell, Mr Blair's spin chief between 1997 and 2003, today said the former PM had “agonised” over the monumental decision to go to war.

“I was one of the few people who saw the process of his making the decision close up, virtually round the clock, around the world,” he wrote in a blog post.

“Far from seeing someone hellbent on war, I saw someone doing all he could to avoid it. Far from seeing someone undermine the UN, I saw him trying his hardest to make it work. Far from seeing someone cavalier about the consequences of war, I saw someone who agonised about them, and I know he still does, as do all who were there, part of his team.”

Mr Campbell boasted this was the fourth inquiry to clear him of accusations made by the BBC that he “sexed up” a dossier that Saddam Hussein could arm WMDs within 45 minutes.

In an extraordinary attack on the state broadcaster he also blamed the BBC’s reporting for driving weapons expert David Kelly to kill himself.

Mr Kelly had raised concerns with the media that the 45-minute claims were untrue.

Mr Campbell resigned during the Hutton Inquiry into Mr Kelly's death in 2003.

Saying the BBC should have heeded complaints from Downing Street about the report, Mr Campbell wrote: “The BBC should have properly investigated our complaint rather than dismissed it out of hand because it came from Downing Street.

“Had they done so, David Kelly would almost certainly be alive today, and no attempt by the media to say it was ‘six of one, half a dozen of the other’ will ever move me from that view, or fully erase the anger I feel at their dishonesty. Sorry, but I feel I have to say that.”