Blair was reacting to an inquiry report that said Britain had decided to invade Iraq before exhausting peaceful options, used intelligence presented with a “certainty that was not justified,” and undermined the authority of the United Nations.
“We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted,” said John Chilcot, the lead author of the 2.6-million-word report, which presented the results of an inquiry that took seven years to complete.
“Military action at that time was not a last resort,” Chilcot said.
“The judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction — WMD — were presented with a certainty that
was not justified.”
Blair admitted there were “mistakes in planning and process” in Britain’s role in the invasion but said: “I would take the same decision [again].”
He decided to invade Iraq “because I believed it was the right thing to do, based on the [available] information.”
Blair’s cabinet agreed to invade Iraq, if Saddam Hussein did not accept a final US ultimatum to leave within 48 hours, in March 2003. Parliament backed the decision the following day.
“The decision was, however, shaped by key choices made by Mr Blair’s government over the previous 18 months,” Chilcot said.
In a July 2002 note on Iraq, Blair told US president George W Bush “I will be with you, whatever.”
On Wednesday, Blair said the note to Bush was designed to “make it clear I was going to be with the Americans” but was not an open agreement for Washington to go ahead with the invasion, as some critics have claimed.
By December 2002, Bush had decided that UN weapons inspections “would not achieve the desired result” and the US would take military action in early 2003, the Chilcot report said.
Blair accepted a US timetable for military action by mid-March 2003, and Bush agreed to help him by seeking a further UN Security Council resolution on Iraq, the report said.
But it became clear it would not be possible to persuade a majority to support a second resolution before the US took military action.
“In the absence of a majority in support of military action, we consider that the UK was, in fact, undermining the Security Council’s authority,” Chilcot said. Blair rejected that conclusion. “The US was going to war, with us or without us,” he told reporters during two-hour defence of his conduct.
“The reality is that we — Britain — had continuously tried to act with the authority of the UN,” Blair said.
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