Tony Blair at the Iraq inquiry: the analysis
As the dust settles on Tony Blair’s “no regrets” statement, just how will his evidence at the Iraq inquiry be remembered in the history books? Channel 4 News looks at his answers.
It had been billed as judgement day. Tony Blair, the Chilcot inquisitors and six long hours in the spotlight for the former prime minister.
Twenty-four-hours on, the headlines are unanimous. He insisted he had no regrets over removing Saddam Hussein. He mounted a robust defence of the Iraq invasion. He was not sorry.
In his long-awaited appearance at the inquiry, Mr Blair also denied he had taken the country to war on the basis of a “lie” over weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Post-911
Tony Blair told the Chilcot inquiry the UK’s “calculus of risk changed” in regard to Saddam Hussein after the 911 terror attacks in New York and Washington.
Mr Blair said: “After 11 September, our view, the American view, changed and changed dramatically.”
He said 3,000 people had died in the al-Qaida attacks and “if those people, inspired by religious fanaticism, could have killed 30,000 people, they would have”.
Details and video here: Iraq policy changed after 2001
Secret deal?
Blair faced questions over whether a deal to invade Iraq was secretly agreed at Crawford in Texas, a year before the invasion.
Mr Blair told the inquiry: “What I was saying [to President Bush] was: we are going to be with you. The position was not a covert position, it was an open position.”
Sir Christopher Meyer told Channel 4 News: “I have had Alastair Campbell, Jonathan Powell, and now Tony Blair basically criticising me or dismissing me for something I didn’t really say.
“I had always found it very striking how Blair had talked about the ‘blood debt’ that Britain owed to the US, that’s why I used that phrase – but I never said that a deal had been done.”
Read more: Blair – no secret deal with Bush
Regime change
Mr Blair sought to play down his comments in a BBC interview with Fern Britton in which he said he would have thought it right to remove Saddam even if he had known that he did not have WMD.
“Even with all my experience in dealing with interviews, it still indicates that I have got something to learn about it,” he said.
“I didn’t use the words ‘regime change’ in that interview and I didn’t mean in any sense to change the basis.”
Mansfield analysis
Watching Tony Blair in the hotseat was one of Britain’s most famous barristers, Michael Mansfield QC.
He told Channel 4 News: “I’m not sure how many people have picked this up…Blair has changed his stance.”
Mansfield believes the former prime minister used a different argument for going to war in front of the Chilcot inquiry.
“What Blair now says is: ‘Saddam had an intention to possibly reconstitute his weapons programme. This was about preventing a risk, a possibility. This was a pre-emptive exercise'”.
Full Mansfield analysis here: Blair changed stance on Iraq
WMD
Mr Blair defended his assertion in the government’s controversial Iraq dossier that the intelligence had established “beyond doubt” that Saddam had WMD.
“What I said in the foreword was that I believed it was beyond doubt. I did believe it and I did believe it was beyond doubt,” he said.
He accepted it had been a mistake not to make clear that some WMD could be launched within 45 minutes referred to battlefield weapons and not long-range missiles.
He said: “I would have been better to have corrected it in the light of the significance it later took on.”
Video and transcript here: ‘I believed Saddam had WMD’
Resolution 1441
Tony Blair said UN resolution 1441 gave the US and Britain the legal authority they needed to invade.
Mr Blair said that in the months leading up to the war, the attorney general Lord Goldsmith and lawyers at the Foreign Office had advised that 1441, which called on Saddam Hussein to disarm, was not enough to justify military action and a second resolution was needed.
He said: “What I took from the advice was that we needed another UN resolution.”
The ‘2010 question’
Mr Blair suggested the world could now be faced with the threat of a nuclear-armed Iraq if he and President George Bush had not taken action to confront the Iraqi dictator.
He said: “Sometimes what is important is not to ask the March 2003 question, but to ask the 2010 question.”
“I have little doubt myself… that today we would be facing a situation where Iraq was competing with Iran, competing both on nuclear weapons capability and competing more importantly perhaps than anything else, in respect of support of terrorist groups.”
Iran drumbeat
“You get the strong impression listening to Tony Blair that if he was still in charge there would be a loud drumbeat of military pressure against Iran right now,” wrote Gary Gibbon on Friday.
At several points, Mr Blair appeared to use the inquiry as a platform to call for much tougher action against Iran.
Many commentators also noted the frequent references to Iran in Mr Blair’s testimony. It was all the more unusual because the former PM has worked hard to stay away from political controversy since leaving Number 10.
Read more here: Blair uses Chilcot to raise Iran issue.
Lindsey Hilsum argues that the invasion of Iraq vastly, and predictably, strengthened Iran.
She blogged: “The previous policy of containment involved balancing the historical enemies, the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein and the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran.
“Now Iran wields huge influence in Iraq, providing resources to Britain and America’s enemies, and manipulating the government.”
Read Lindsey Hilsum’s analysis here: foresight a bigger problem than hindsight.
Lack of planning
It is widley acknowledged the reconstruction effort in Iraq did not turn out as planned.
But Blair told the inquiry “we did an immense amount of post-war planning” but the problem was that “our focus was on the issues that in the end were not the issues that caused us the difficulties”.
But this contrasts with testimony given earlier by Major General Tim Cross, the UK’s senior military liaison with the reconstruction effort in Washington.
‘No regrets’
Mr Blair said Saddam Hussein was a “monster”.
He said: “I believe he threatened not just the region but the world. And in the circumstances that we faced then, but I think even if you look back now, it was better to deal with this threat, to remove him from office.”
One member of the audience shouted out: “What, no regrets? Come on.” Then as he left, another audience member heckled: “You are a liar,” while another added, “And a murderer”.
But demonstrators outside the QEII centre were outnumbered by reporters, as political editor Gary Gibbon blogged here: more media than protesters.
Still the hardest word
Within the last half hour of testimony, Mr Blair’s voice began to falter but the word “sorry” still did not come easy.
In summing up his role in 2003, he said: “I had to take this decision as prime minister.
“It was a huge responsibility and there is not a single day that passes by that I don’t reflect and think about that responsibility… and so I should.
“But 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 where the threat was worse.
“In the end it was divisive and I am sorry about that and I did my level best to bring people back together again but if I am asked whether I believe we are safer more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better, with Saddam and his two sons out of office and out of power, I believe indeed we are.”
More analysis on Blair’s day in the spotlight from Cathy Newman here: Tony Blair v Iraq inquiry