Defiant Tony Blair insists world is a safer place without Saddam as he’s blasted for leading country to war
The amazing claim was made during the former Prime Minister' grovelling speech to face down criticism of him in the Chilcot Report
DESPERATE Tony Blair grovelled to Britain yesterday over the Iraq War — but still insisted he made the correct decision.
The ex-Labour PM poured out his regrets after being slammed in the Chilcot Report but maintained that he was right to oust Saddam Hussein.
He said failing to back the US invasion in 2003 would have meant “the same deadly consequences as we see in the carnage of Syria”.
And he insisted: “The world was, and is, in my judgment a better place without Saddam.”
Mr Blair spoke out in an extraordinary two-hour press conference shortly after the publication of Sir John Chilcot’s report. His voice cracking, he said: “The decisions I made I have carried with me for 13 years and will do so for the rest of my days. There will not be a day of my life where I do not re-live and rethink what happened.”
Overly eager Blair drunk on his own hype
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.
“The aftermath turned out more hostile, protracted and bloody than we ever imagined.
“The Coalition planned for one set of ground facts and encountered another. A nation whose people we wanted to see free and secure from the evil of Saddam became instead victim of sectarian terrorism.
“For all of this I express more sorrow, regret and apology and in greater measure than you can know or may believe.”
He added: “I will never agree that those who died or who were injured made their sacrifice in vain.
“I ask with humility that the British people accept I took this decision because I believed it was the right one.”
Referring to the September 11 attacks on New York in 2001, he added: “I ask people to put themselves in my shoes as Prime Minister.
“You have to consider the possibility of a 9/11 happening here in Britain.” He even called on future Prime Ministers to be “brave enough to take similar tough decisions to take on terrorists and states that threaten us”.
He insisted that the struggle against terrorism is the defining global struggle of the 21st century.
As a police motorcade swept him away from the rare Whitehall appearance, protesters screamed “war criminal” at him.
The verdict of Sir John’s panel of five is far tougher on Mr Blair’s government than many expected.
Can Tony Blair still be prosecuted for war crimes over the Iraq War?
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.
It also pulled no punches to name and shame a long array of other senior establishment figures for shortfalls, including 2003 intelligence boss Sir John Scarlett, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon.
Mr Blair ignored major warnings about how the invasion could hike the terrorist threat to the UK, the report found. He also discarded concerns about “the magnitude” of the task in rebuilding Iraq after Saddam’s toppling, and failed to persuade the US to put together a peace plan comprehensive enough for the war’s aftermath.
The inquiry found troops’ Herculean efforts were doomed to fail as “the scale of the UK effort in post-conflict Iraq never matched the scale of the challenge”.
Instead Iraq descended into bloody anarchy which left at least 150,000 civilians dead, and possibly a far higher number of up to 600,000.
Addressing a packed Commons yesterday, David Cameron called the inquiry’s findings “a difficult day for those who lost loved ones”.
The Tory PM also heaped praise on the war dead “who gave everything for our country”.
A flawed and unnecessary failure with consequences to this day
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.
Issuing a call for a careful response to the report, Mr Cameron insisted: “We cannot turn the clock back, but we can ensure these many lessons are acted on.
“We should not conclude that intervention is always wrong.
“There are times we should have intervened and didn’t.”
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn fulfilled his long-held ambition to apologise on behalf of his party for its role in the war.
He said he was sorry for Mr Blair’s “disastrous decision” to authorise military action in 2003.
He also called on Britain to back moves to give the International Criminal Court “the power to prosecute those responsible for the crime of military aggression”.
Earlier in the Commons, Mr Corbyn insisted MPs were misled by Mr Blair’s government in the war’s run-up. But amid unrest on the Labour backbenches he was heckled by MP Ian Austin, who shouted: “Not true. Shut up, sit down. You’re a disgrace.”
Former President Bush last night backed his old ally.
A spokesman said: “He is deeply grateful for the service and sacrifice of American and Coalition forces in the war on terror.
“And there was no stronger ally than the United Kingdom under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“President Bush believes we must now find the unity and resolve to stay on the offensive and defeat radical extremism wherever it exists.”
Alastair Campbell claims Blair did ‘all he could to avoid war’ despite damning Chilcot verdict
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.”