Blair insists he would invade Iraq again
Protests as Tony Blair gives evidence to the Iraq inquiry
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By Michael Younger. |  |
Friday, 29, Jan 2010 06:39
By Matthew Champion.
Tony Blair has given a robust defence of his conviction to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power, going as far to say that Iran seemed as big a threat to world peace as the Iraqi dictator seemed in 2003.
Making his long-awaited appearance at the Iraq inquiry in central London the former prime minister said it was his "judgment" that Saddam "had to go" due to the threat he posed to the outside world.
Asked by Sir John Chilcot at the end a marathon six-hour evidence if he had any regrets over the decision to take the country to war, Mr Blair said no.
He stood by his conviction that the world was a safer place today with Saddam removed from power.
"I genuinely believe that if we had left Saddam in power, even with what we know now, we would still have had to have dealt with him, possibly in circumstances when the threat was worse... I think we live in a completely new security environment today. I thought that then, I think that now.
"In the end it was divisive and I'm sorry about that. I tried my level best to bring people back together again. But when I'm asked if I believe we're safer and we're more secure... I believe indeed that we are and I think in time to come if Iraq becomes as I hope and believe it will the country its people want to see, we can look back... with an immense sense of pride and achievement in what they did."
Pushed again if he had any regrets, Mr Blair declared: "Responsibility, but not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein," prompting an angry outburst from one member of the public watching the proceedings.
"It was better to deal with this threat and I do genuinely believe the world is safer as a result," the former prime minister added.
Mr Blair said the September 11th 2001 attacks brought about a complete change of attitude towards Saddam and his weapons programmes, which he admitted British intelligence had over-estimated.
But action taken to remove Saddam from power and prevent him from returning to his weapons programmes, defunct at the time of the war, was still justified, Mr Blair told Sir John Chilcot's inquiry.
The former prime minister, who stepped down from office in 2007 after ten years in office, said he, and eventually his Cabinet and parliament, believed that the world could not afford to "run the risk" of a nuclear-armed Saddam.
Mr Blair said policy up until 9/11 had one of containment and "hoping for the best", but afterwards the "calculus of risk" changed.
"Sometimes what is important is not to ask the March 2003 question, but to ask the 2010 question," he said.
"Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons who were going to follow him in charge of Iraq - he had used chemical weapons, caused the death of over a million people.
"What we now know is that he retained absolutely the intent and the intellectual know-how to restart a nuclear and a chemical weapons program when the inspectors were out and the sanctions changed, which they were going to do.
"Now, I think that it is at least arguable that he was a threat, that had we taken that decision to leave him there, with an oil price not $25 but $100 a barrel, he would have had the intent, he would have had the financial means, and we would have lost our nerve."
But he denied ever making a secret "covert" deal with George Bush at the infamous meeting at the US president's Crawford ranch in April 2002, saying that Britain initially strove for a non-military solution, preferably through the United Nations.
Correspondence between the two leaders was not declassified however.
During the last week the inquiry has heard from senior government legal officials in the build-up to the invasion, with most lawyers barring the government's chief legal adviser - attorney general Lord Goldsmith - describing the conflict as illegal without a second UN security council resolution.
Lord Goldsmith's final advice to Mr Blair was delivered in March, saying that resolution 1441 was vague enough to allow military intervention if Saddam did not comply with UN weapons inspections.
Mr Blair insisted that if Lord Goldsmith's advice had been that a war would be illegal, the UK would have not joined the US invasion, and denied exerting any pressure on the attorney general.
The former prime minister did however express regret over the way in which intelligence was presented to parliament and the media, although he denied modifying any sections. Like former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who appeared before the inquiry earlier this month, he said the government had never intended the 45-minute claim included in the September 2002 dossier to feature so prominently in subsequent reports.
He also rowed back on a BBC interview given to Fern Britton late last year when he said he would have gone to war in Iraq even if Saddam did not have WMD.
Discussing the perceived calamitous after-war planning, he rejected suggestions the military had been under-resourced, claiming it was up to the armed forces to declare whether they were ready for military action, and they had done.
He defended reconstruction planning as well, insisting there had been no humanitarian disaster in Iraq and that the coalition had attempted to defuse Sunni/Shia-Muslim tensions. But he admitted the intervention of al-Qaida and Iran in Iraq had come as a surprise.
Mr Blair's day-long appearance before the panel came as protestors kept up a demonstration outside the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in central London.
He earlier managed to escape the hostile reception awaiting him outside by arriving at around 07:30 GMT before anti-war groups had gathered for planned protests.
Mr Blair could yet be called to give evidence again by the inquiry, which will hear from Gordon Brown within the next six to eight weeks, before publishing its findings next year.