Sitting with his back to an audience containing bereaved relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq, and facing the world through a live television feed, the former British prime minister began to field questions on the invasion of Iraq.
TV channels had changed scheduling, newspapers had blocked out pages, and the impressionists had dusted off their wigs. The man who had dominated British politics for 10 years was back center stage for a full day of testimony at the official inquiry into the Iraq war on Friday, Jan. 29.
Although he appeared nervous at the start, Mr. Blair soon relaxed into the kind of vintage performance that had seen him emerge from the toughest political scrapes unscratched and earned him the nickname Teflon Tony.
Apologies? None. Regrets? None. Mistakes? A few little ones. An unconciliatory Mr. Blair stoutly stood by his decision to go to war, flatly denying accusations made by prior witnesses at the inquiry that he had signed a ‘deal in blood’ with George Bush to go to war over a year ahead of the invasion.
Seemingly unflustered by the questions, in typical fashion Mr. Blair deftly turned most of them into an opportunity to expound broadly his rationale for the war.
Defending the ‘Dodgy Dossier’
The audience sat in silence until the end of the six-hour cross-examination, when one of the five-strong panel of questioners asked Mr. Blair if he had any regrets. Boos and shouts erupted as Mr. Blair responded: “No.”
He’d do it all again, said Mr. Blair, whose answers throughout the day picked out several refrains: his thoughts had been made openly all along; Saddam was a monster; going to war was the judgment call of a leader; everything had changed after 9/11; Iran was a powerful and unpredicted destabilizing force after the invasion.
He stood by the so-called ‘dodgy dossier’ on weapons of mass destruction (WMD), saying that he genuinely believed “beyond all doubt” that intelligence showed the existence of the WMD – which were never found.
A Matter of Judgment
The Iraq Inquiry, also known as the “Chilcot Inquiry” after its chairman, was convened by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and officially launched on July 30, 2009, to identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict.
The inquiry is the fourth official British inquiry into the controversial Iraq war. It has been criticized for its lack of access to classified documentation and for the lack of legal experience and expertise on the panel.
Mr. Blair emphasized throughout his testimony that many issues were a judgment call and stressed that 9/11 had completely changed the perception of risk from Saddam’s regime.
“This isn’t about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception—it’s a decision. And 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 U.N. resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons programs or is that a risk that it would be irresponsible to take?” said Mr. Blair.
Sometimes it is important not to ask the “March 2003 question” but the “2010 question”, said Mr. Blair, saying that if Saddam had not been toppled at the time the allies would have “lost our nerve” to act. He said that if Saddam was still around with today’s oil prices, the world would be facing a huge problem.
Mr. Blair sought on several occasions to challenge what he saw was a “binary distinction” created by the Inquiry between regime change and disarmament, saying that the two issues were inseparable.
“The truth of the matter is that a regime that is brutal and oppressive—that for example, has used weapons of mass destruction against its own people, as Saddam did, and had killed tens of thousands of people by the use of chemical weapons. Such a regime is a bigger threat if it has weapons of mass destruction than one that is otherwise benign.”
Nothing New
Ahead of his testimony, the political rumor mill had buzzed with news that Mr. Blair may offer some apology, some admissions of fault. Others wondered if perhaps he may expand an apparently open admission in a recent interview that he would have invaded Iraq regardless. But in the end, Mr. Blair revealed nothing new.
He tried to brush aside much-quoted remarks made in an recent interview on Fern Britain, a popular TV host, in which he appeared to say that he favored regime change and would have invaded Iraq with or without the apparent existence of WMD.
He suggested he had made an error of communication in the interview and said he had not shifted his stance that the basis for war was Iraq’s failure to comply with its obligations to disarm.
“I did not use the words regime change in that interview. It was the breach of the U.N. resolutions on WMD, that was the cause. It was then and it remains.”
Changing Legal Advice
Just days before Mr. Blair’s testimony, Foreign Office lawyers had told the inquiry that they had told Mr. Blair all along that an invasion would have been illegal, and that their view had essentially been overridden by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith. The attorney general in turn had told the inquiry he had changed his mind just one week before the invasion began, having initially twice advised Mr. Blair that the war was not legal—advice which had not been passed on to the rest of the Cabinet.
This had raised questions about whether Lord Goldsmith had been pressured by Mr. Blair into changing his view, and also about whether Mr. Blair had deliberately blocked his previous advice from reaching other significant people within the government.
Probed on this issue, Mr. Blair said the attorney general “had to come to a conclusion.”
He said he had not had any discussions with Lord Goldsmith in the week before he gave his statement but he believed the attorney general had concluded the invasion did have a legal standing because weapons inspectors had “indicated that Saddam Hussein had not taken a final opportunity to comply” with U.N. demands.
Mr. Blair, he told the inquiry, would not have backed military action had Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said it could not be justified legally.
Mr. Blair said Mr. Bush decided the U.N. Security Council’s support “wasn’t necessary.” He said it was “correct” to say that he shared that view, although the support from the U.N. would have been “preferable politically.”
As the former prime minister left the inquiry he was booed by some members of the public. Two women shouted at him “you are a liar,” and “you are a murderer.”
