- The Guardian, Friday 29 January 2010
Tony Blair at the Iraq inquiry in London. Photograph: EPA
The threat
The Chilcot inquiry heard that Tony Blair's "mindset" dramatically changed on 11 September 2001. The attacks had a profound influence on his approach to risks and threats, including now from Iran, a country he named on numerous occasions. "The crucial thing after September 11 was the calculus of risk changed," he said in his opening evidence. "I never regarded September 11 as an attack on America, I regarded it as an attack on us."
He made clear, therefore, that it did not matter there was no evidence of any link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida: Britain, and the US, could no longer tolerate the risk posed by countries that had, or wanted to acquire, weapons of mass destruction.
September 11 "completely changed our assessment of where the risks lay", Blair told the inquiry. He added: "The primary consideration for me was to send an absolutely powerful message after September 11 – if you were a regime engaged in WMD, you had to stop." That was particularly the case with "brutal" regimes. "The nature of the regime did make a difference to the nature of the WMD threat," Blair insisted.
He said that was why "today" he believed Iran, a country "linked up with terrorist groups", posed a particularly dangerous threat. He referred to intelligence on Saddam's plans to acquire nuclear weapons. He added: "We face the same problem about Iran today."
The former prime minister persisted with the theme of combined risks and threats when he was asked why he believed the time had come to invade Iraq in March 2003. He replied: "It's a judgment we had to make. After September 11, I wasn't willing to run that risk … it is not about a lie, a deception, a conspiracy. It is a decision. Could we take that risk? … what this is all about is a risk." RNT
Regime change
Blair dismissed the distinction between disarming Iraq and regime change, an issue at the heart of the widespread view that the invasion would be illegal.
His legal advice, including that from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, was that regime change, as a stated objective of military action, would be unlawful.
"There is a danger of making a binary distinction between regime change and WMD," Blair told the inquiry. "The nature of the regime did make a difference to the nature of the threat."
The two issues merged, Blair suggested, as did the two threats of WMD and terrorism. The inquiry has heard that ministers in public insisted that disarmament, not regime change, was the aim first of UN diplomacy; then, if that did not work – and Blair made it clear that neither he nor Bush thought it would – an invasion of Iraq.
Blair suggested there was no difference between toppling Saddam and disarming him because one could not happen without the other. Already, in early 2002, "the option of removing Saddam was there", he said. When he met Bush in Texas in April 2002, he assured him that if UN diplomacy failed "we would be with him". Blair continued: "If the UN route failed then my view was it had to be dealt with."
He brushed aside his statement during a BBC interview that he thought it would have been right to remove Saddam even if he had known he had no WMD. He told the inquiry: "Obviously, all I was saying was you cannot describe the nature of the threat in the same way if we knew then what we know now. It was in no sense a change of position." RNT
Relations with US
More than once Blair referred to a special relationship between Britain and the US and between a British prime minister and a US president.
"This is an alliance we have with the Americans. It's not a contract. It's an alliance I believe in passionately." He recalled how he had managed to persuade President Clinton to take military action against Serbia during the conflict over Kosovo in 1999.
Blair made clear he believed in the importance of getting close to George Bush. After the September 11 attacks on the US "the American mindset changed dramatically and mine did as well," Blair told the inquiry.
He added: "I didn't want America to feel it had no option but to do it [confront Saddam] on its own."
Asked whether he told Bush – at their meeting at the president's ranch at Texas, Crawford, in April 2002 – that he would be with him "no matter what", Blair replied he told his host: "We are going to be with you in confronting this threat."
The one issue he said he had differed with the Bush administration about was its attitude towards the Middle East. Blair said Iraq should be confronted along with the whole issue of peace in the Middle East. "In the US there was a tendency to see things separately," Blair said. RNT
World diplomacy
Blair wanted to get agreement in the UN for military action against Iraq, partly because of concern over the legality of military action but mainly to gather support, internationally and at home, for a military attack, he made clear to the inquiry.
He wanted to go down the UN route to try to get the "international community on the same page". Although he told the inquiry he "genuinely hoped" UN diplomacy would work", he said "the likelihood was that [it] wouldn't work".
There were legal implications behind UN diplomacy. Sir Michael Wood, then the most senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office, and his deputy, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, both insisted that a fresh UN resolution was needed before an invasion could be considered lawful.
"I was well aware," Blair told the inquiry, "of the fact that from March [2002] onwards if we were legally secure on this we had to go down the legal route." Yet at another point in his testimony yesterday, he said only that a fresh UN resolution would "make life easier".
He had persuaded Bush in 2002 to go down the UN route, although he added: "The American view throughout had been this leopard [Saddam] will not change his spots."
Asked why he did not allow the UN inspectors more time – Hans Blix, the chief inspector, had said more time would have been helpful – Blair said the problem was that France and Russia had changed their position. They had made it clear they would not support any UN resolution authorising the use of force.
In November 2002, UN security council resolution 1441 put more pressure on Iraq. Blair believed it was sufficient to give the green light to an invasion. France and others did not agree. Blair at the time blamed President Jacques Chirac for saying at a press conference France would never back a new UN resolution "whatever the circumstances". Blair repeated that view yesterday. However, French officials closely involved in negotiations at the time strongly deny this. Sir Roderic Lyne, an inquiry panel member and former ambassador, said earlier this week that he disagreed with the Blair government's interpretation of Chirac's remarks.
"You have to make a judgment," said Blair. "My judgment was that more time was not going to solve this." RNT
The dossiers
Tony Blair admitted today that Downing Street should have corrected press reports about the central claim in the No 10 arms dossier of September 2002 that suggested Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
"It would have been better to have corrected it in light of the significance it later took on," Blair said of the 45-minute claim, which prompted the Sun to report that British forces in Cyprus could be attacked.
Under questioning from historian Sir Lawrence Freedman, Blair indicated that he did not appreciate what turned out to be one of the most significant elements of the dossier: that the 45-minute claim related to tactical battlefield munitions, not to longer-range strategic weapons.
The dossier stated: "Intelligence indicates that the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so."
Asked by Freedman whether he understood the distinction between battlefield and strategic weapons, Blair said: "I didn't focus on it a lot at the time."
This distinction became highly significant on the eve of the war when Robin Cook resigned from the cabinet on the grounds that the intelligence indicated Saddam posed a tactical, not strategic, threat.
Blair's remarks came as he was asked at the inquiry about his decision to publish details of Britain's intelligence assessment of Saddam's WMD programme.
Blair said the arms dossier only took on significance later when the BBC Today programme reported in May 2003 that Downing Street had deliberately exaggerated the intelligence knowing the claims to be wrong. At the time the dossier was seen as "dull and cautious".
Blair said it would have been better just to have published assessments by the Joint Intelligence Committee, rather than pull together a dossier. "They [the JIC assessments] were absolutely strong enough on their own." He highlighted the JIC data as he defended his claim in the dossier foreword that it was "beyond doubt" that Saddam had a continuing chemical and biological weapons programme. A JIC assessment on 9 March 2002 had said "it was clear" Iraq had a WMD programme. Blair said: "It is hard to come to any other conclusion than that this person has a continuing WMD programme."
Blair also defended his stance in the Commons statement which said Saddam's WMD programme was "growing".
Asked by Sir Roderic Lyne how he had reached this conclusion, Blair said: "First of all there were the September [2002] JIC assessments that talked of continuing production of chemical weapons. Secondly, and this did have an impact on me at the time though this particular piece of intelligence turned out to be wrong, on 12 September before we did the dossier I was specifically briefed about these mobile production facilities for biological weapons. This was an additional and new factor and was very much linked to how Saddam might try to conceal his activities." NW
Legality
Blair tried to brush off questions about the severe doubts expressed by government lawyers, including Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, about the legality of the invasion of Iraq.
Asked why Goldsmith gave his formal legal advice very late and why he then changed his mind, advising that a fresh UN resolution was not needed after all, Blair replied that it was "always a very, very difficult, balanced judgment".
He added, in reference to a visit Goldsmith made to Washington in February 2003, that the attorney did not change his mind "just because of the Americans".
It is likely that Blair will be asked to give further evidence about the legality of the invasion.
The inquiry has heard that Sir Michael Wood, chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office, described UN security council resolution 1441, agreed in November 2002, as absolutely clear – that is, a new one was needed to make military action legal.
Goldsmith said 1441 was far from clear and as late as 7 March 2003, less than two weeks before the invasion, warned Blair that only a "reasonable case" could be made for an attack. Blair told the inquiry today that like Wood he believed UN resolution 1441 was quite clear, but from the opposite point of view.
Blair suggested he had no doubts about resolution 1441. It had given Saddam, who had been found in material breach of previous security council resolutions, a "final opportunity" to comply with them.
He described 1441 as "very deliberately constructed". "It said: 'OK, you [Saddam] have one last chance to co-operate.' And he didn't."
Blair said: "There was a case either way but in the end we got to the point when frankly we had to decide." Lord Boyce, chief of the defence staff, demanded a yes or no answer to whether an invasion would be legal. RNT
The cabinet
Blair mounted a strong defence of the way he ran the cabinet, as he denied running a "sofa government" and insisted that ministers were fully informed and free to challenge his Iraq policy.
Asked by Sir John Chilcot whether he had given ministers "sufficient space" to voice differing views, Blair said: "I really do, yes. Nobody in the cabinet was unaware of what the issue was about … There were members of the cabinet who would challenge and disagree. But most of them agreed. It was the same with parliament.
"I was subject to constant numbers of people who said you should be doing it differently … Whatever differences Clare Short [the then international development secretary] and I may have had, the one thing I would not have accused her of is [being] backward in coming forward."
Blair said that the cabinet discussed Iraq 25 times in the build up to the invasion. "There was a constant interaction. It wasn't just a formal cabinet discussion. Jack Straw [then foreign secretary] would take people through the information we had … I really don't think any of the members of the cabinet felt they weren't involved or felt they couldn't challenge. Indeed Robin Cook did and Robin and I disagreed about it in the end. I was in an almost constant interaction in 2002 and 2003 with members of the cabinet."
The former prime minister addressed the criticism that he ran sofa government, the phrase used to describe the way he would hold meetings in his "den" in Downing Street, often without formal papers or note takers. "I know much has been made these were ad hoc committee meetings … the key thing was to get the key players together so that you could have a proper, frank discussion and take the decisions that were necessary. That is what we did both before the invasion and afterwards."
Baroness Lady Prashar asked Blair about a meeting on 23 July 2002 at which Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the chief of the defence staff, put forward military options. This was attended by just two cabinet ministers, the foreign secretary Jack Straw and the defence secretary Geoff Hoon. Blair said it was right to restrict it to those ministers because it involved diplomatic and military preparations.
The aftermath
The Anglo-American mission in Iraq came close to failure because London and Washington failed to anticipate two factors after the invasion – the involvement of Iran and al-Qaida, and the complete collapse of the Iraqi civil service, Tony Blair said.
The former prime minister, who was told by Sir Lawrence Freedman that there had been a cavalier approach to postwar planning, told the inquiry that the British government made lengthy plans for after the invasion, and had avoided a humanitarian disaster and widespread destruction from the torching of Iraq's oil wells.
But Blair admitted mistakes were made. "The trouble was we didn't plan for two things. One was the absence of the properly functioning civil service infrastructure. The second thing, which was the single most important element of this, is that people did not think that al-Qaida and Iran would play the role they did.
"If you had ended up having an indigenous violence or insurgency and the looting … we could have handled the situation. It was the introduction of the external elements – al-Qaida and Iran – which really caused this mission very nearly to fail. Fortunately in the end it didn't. That is a huge lesson because those are the same forces we are facing in Afghanistan and right round the region."
Blair said that a lesson for the future is the collapse of central government if a "semi-fascist state" is overthrown. "One of the major lessons of this is that where you have these types of states that are, in the case of Iraq, a semi-fascist state which really operated by fear on the population from a small number of people, that assumption [that the civil service will still function after an invasion] is going to be wrong," he said. "If you are going to go into a situation like this, you have got to go in as nation builders. You have got to go in with a configuration of the political and the civilian and military that is right for a failed state."
Sir Roderic Lyne asked him about the US decision to ban Ba'ath party members from serving in the Iraqi army and about its dismantling. Blair admitted he had not been consulted. "I hadn't had the discussion with the White House on this."
In a lengthy discussion on one of the bloodiest months – April 2004, when he came close to resigning – Blair admitted that he feared the Americans were heavy-handed in their assault on Fallujah. "I was very worried that the US were going in too hard and too heavy," he said. But he added: "I am not sure I was right about it."
Sir John Chilcot was critical of the postwar planning. "There appears to have been no real risk analysis, looking at best case, middle case, worst case … what we did know, and I don't want to sound like Donald Rumsfeld, is that we knew we knew very little about the conditions of things inside Saddam's Iraq." NW
Blair's reflections
Tony Blair was barracked in the final moments of his appearance before the Iraq inquiry when he declared that he had no regrets about his decision to join George Bush in overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
Asked by Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry chairman, whether he had any regrets, Blair paused and replied: "Responsibility but not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein."
At this point Blair was briefly heckled, prompting Chilcot to ask for quiet. Blair continued: "I think that he was a monster, I believe he threatened not just the region but the world. In the circumstances we faced then, but even if we look back now, it was better to deal with this threat, to remove him from office. I do genuinely believe the world is safer as a result."
Blair' remarks came after Chilcot said the war had been "very divisive". As his six-hour session drew to a close, the former prime minister said: "I had to take this decision as prime minister.
"It was a huge responsibility then and there is not a single days that passes 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 and possibly in circumstances where it was hard to mobilise any support for dealing with that threat."
Blair strongly defended the invasion of Iraq in 2003 throughout the day. In the morning session he said: "This isn't about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception. It is a decision.
"The decision I had to take was given Saddam's history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over 1 million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking UN resolution, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons programme? Or is that a risk it would be irresponsible to take? It is a judgment in the end."
Blair said: "Sometimes what is important is not to ask the March 2003 question but to ask the 2010 question. Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons in charge of Iraq – people who had used chemical weapons, caused the deaths of over a million people." NW