UKBP via Reuters TV Tony Blair at Iraq inquiry – the key pointsWhat the former prime minister told the Chilcot panel in brief
What the former prime minister told the Chilcot panel in brief
• Tony Blair told the inquiry he believed Saddam Hussein was a "monster" before 9/11 but accepted that he would have to make the best of the situation.
At his first meeting with George Bush, in February 2001, Blair discussed Iraq. But it was in the context of trying to get a better sanctions regime. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, this view changed dramatically.
"I would fairly describe our policy up to September 11 as doing our best ... but with a different calculus of risk assessment ... The crucial thing after September 11 was that the calculus of risk changed."
• He said "nothing was decided" when he had a one-to-one dinner with Bush in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. It it is important for leaders to establish a "close and strong relationship", he said.
"As I recall that discussion it was less to do with specifics ... the principle part of my conversation was really to try and say in the end we have got to deal with the various different dimensions of this whole issue."
• He said he was quite open about his determination to deal with Saddam and had made this point publicly in the press conference he held with Bush. "What I was saying – I was not saying this privately, incidentally; I was saying it in public – was: 'We are going to be with you in confronting and dealing with this threat' ... The position was not a covert position; it was an open position. We would be with them in dealing with this threat and how we did that was an open question, and even at that stage I was raising the issue of going to the UN."
• He said that telling Bush that he would support him in his drive to deal with Iraq did not set conditions because the US-UK relationship was "an alliance, not a contract".
• Blair said that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he firmly believed that he could not run the risk that Saddam would reconstitute his banned weapons programmes. "The decision I took – and frankly would take again – was if there was any possibility that he could develop weapons of mass destruction [WMD] we should stop him. That was my view then and that is my view now."
• He suggested that there was no real difference between wanting regime change and wanting Iraq to disarm: regime change was US policy because Iraq was in breach of its UN obligations. "It's more a different way of expressing the same proposition."
• On the "beyond doubt" line written he wrote in the foreword of the September 2002 dossier to describe the strength of evidence of weapons of mass destruction, he said: "What I actually said in the foreword was that I believed it beyond doubt ... and I did believe it."
He said if anyone read the summary of the document produced by the joint intelligence committee as a result of the evidence presented to them at the time, he could not see how they could produce a different interpretation.
"All the intelligence we received was to the same effect. There were people perfectly justifiably and sensibly also saying that you cannot sit around and wait ... you have got to take action clearly and definitively."
• He accepted that the September 2002 dossier should have made clear that the now-notorious claim that Iraq had WMD that could be launched in 45 minutes referred to battlefield weapons and not long-range missiles. "It would have been better to have corrected it in the light of the significance it later took on," he said.
• He said that Bush's view was that a second UN resolution was not necessary, but that he was prepared to work for one. Blair had drafted a resolution with Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector. He rejected suggestions that his attempt to get a second resolution was to try to curtail the inspections process because of the needs of the military planning.
•Blair said America would have offered Britain a way out if he had decided against going to war.
"I think the Americans would have done that. I think President Bush at one point said, before the debate: 'Look, if it's too difficult for Britain, we understand.' I took the view very strongly then – and do now – that it was right for us to be with America, since we believed in this too."
• Blair describes the run-up to the war as a "tough situation" due to the international divide.
• Blair accepted he felt "considerable relief" when the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, said there was no need for a second resolution. He said Britain could not have taken part in the military action if Goldsmith had not finally come to a definitive view – a week before the invasion – that it was legal.
"If Peter [Goldsmith] had said: 'This would not be justified lawfully,' we would have been unable to take action. A lot hung on that decision. Therefore it was important that it was done by the attorney general and done in a way which we were satisfied was right and correct."
• Blair said he thought he could have got the nine votes necessary for a security council vote in favour of a second resolution if it had not been for the French and the Russians making it clear that they were vehemently opposed.
• On his recent interview with Fern Britton, he admitted he made a mistake when he said that he would have wanted to get rid of Saddam even if he had known Iraq had no WMD.
"I did not use the word 'regime change' in that interview and I did not mean to change the basis for the justification for war," he said. It was in no sense a change in the position, which was the breach of UN resolutions on WMD, he went on. "That was the cause. It was so and it remains."
• Blair said he did not want to make the planning "visible" until he had to. But in October Geoff Hoon – then the defence secretary – said they had to start planning at this level. At that point it happened.
• Blair says he did not refuse a request "for money or equipment" from the Ministry of Defence at any time when he was prime minister. He says the army regarded themselves as "ready". And they performed as "ready".
If anyone at any stage had said it was not safe to go ahead because of lack of military preparation, "I would have taken that very, very seriously indeed".
• Blair insisted there was an immense amount of post-war planning, which centred on the possibility of a humanitarian catastrophe. "The real problem was that our focus was on the issues that in the end did not cause us difficulty." Everyone assumed there would be a functioning Iraqi civil service, but when the British went into Basra, they found a "completely broken system".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jan/29/tony-blair-iraq-inquiry-key-points
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2010/jan/29/tony-blair-iraq-inquiry-evidence
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