[WATCH] Blair accepts full responsibility for Iraq war ‘without exception or excuse’

Former British prime minister Tony Blair said he takes full responsibility for the Iraq war, “without exception or excuse”, and that he felt “more sorrow and regret and apology for this than you can ever believe”.

Blair was addressing a press conference following the publication of the findings of the Iraq Inquiry, chaired by Sir John Chilcot, and set up in 2009 to look at the decision-making that led to the invasion of Iraq by a coalition led by the United Kingdom and United States.

The Chilcot report covers the background to the decision to go to war, whether troops were properly prepared, how the conflict was conducted and what planning there was for its aftermath, a period in which there was intense sectarian violence.

“The decision to go to war in Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power in a coalition of over 40 countries led by the USA, was the hardest, most momentous, most agonising decision I took in ten years as British prime minister,” said Blair.

“For that decision, today I accept full responsibility, without exception and without excuse.

“I recognise the division felt by many in our country over the war and in particular I feel deeply and sincerely – in a way that no words can properly convey – the grief and suffering of those who lost ones they loved in Iraq, whether the members of our armed forces, the armed forces of other nations, or Iraqis.”

Blair acknowledged that the intelligence assessments made at the time of going to war turned out to be wrong.

“The aftermath turned out to be more hostile, protracted and bloody than ever we imagined; the coalition planned for one set of ground facts and encountered another, and a nation whose people we wanted to set free and secure from the evil of Saddam, became instead victim to sectarian terrorism.

Blair appeared twice in front of the Chilcot inquiry to give evidence on decisions he took leading up to the Iraq war

“For all of this I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you may ever know or can believe,” he said.

Blair said he did not regret getting rid of Saddam Hussein and that he could not accept claims that soldiers had died in vain.

“Those soldiers died in the struggle against terror,” he said. “They died in the defining struggle of our time.”

But he stressed that the report had concluded that he had never lied to parliament or to the public and that the decisions he had taken, were in fact taken in good faith.

Blair said the fear of the US administration in 2003, which he shared, was that terrorist groups would obtain weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

“Hussein’s regime was the place to start, not because he was the only person to have these weapons, but because his record suggested he would be willing to use them,” he said.

And the final Iraq Survey Group report found that Hussein did indeed intend to go back to developing WMD programmes, he noted.

Blair said he had persuaded US president George W. Bush to go down the UN route, which they had backed up by the threat of military action.

Referring to Chilcot’s claim that he had undermined the authority of the UN, Blair said it was the UN’s failure to uphold security council resolution 1441 that undermined its authority.

By the time they got to March 2003, he faced a binary choice.

“Delaying was no longer an option,” he said.

"The intelligence was wrong. I express more sorrow, regret & apology than you may ever know"https://t.co/lOjx5zJlK8 https://t.co/maUvVdp94G

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) July 6, 2016

Saying he accepted responsibility for his decision to go to war, Blair asked people “with humility” to accept that he took the decision he did because he thought it was right and because he thought the cost of inaction would be greater.

With regards to his attitude to America – which was also criticised by Chilcot – he said the attack on 9/11 was like no other and had been perceived as an attack on freedom.

He said Britain’s strong relationship with America led to America seeking an international coalition to fight al-Qaeda.

Blair said that there should be two pillars to Britain’s foreign policy: a strong relationship with the US, and a strong relationship with Europe.

“People need to consider what I was seeing in the intelligence reports that came to me, for example in March 2002 and September 2002,” he said, stressing that all major intelligence agencies thought Iraq had WMD.

Blair said that the cabinet debated Iraq 26 times before the invasion was given the go-ahead.

But he admitted that he could – and should have – insisted on an options paper being debated by cabinet and that it would have been better to have given the full legal advice to cabinet.

Blair pointed out that this had not been requested by cabinet and that it was not normal to share it with cabinet.

He said that he had been studying the origins of Islamist extremism since stepping down as prime minister.

“This is a global problem,” he said. “The problem is that, in these countries, extremism spreads if there is a power vacuum. That is why in a country like Syria it would be best to negotiate the withdrawal of the regime.”

Blair said it was important to show that the West was not intervening only in Muslim countries, but said that a different type of military approach was necessary.

Western countries have a low tolerance of casualties, making them reluctant to commit ground forces.

“But the Western troops are the best there are and that means there might be a case for demanding a different level of commitment,” he said, calling on international rules to be revised.

Blair said that the West had to decide whether it had a strategic interest in fighting Islamist extremism and consider what commitment it should make.

Blair said a strategy was needed to combat extremism and said the West should, in his view, commit to such a strategy.