Blair disregarded warnings about consequences of military action

Tony Blair exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq and disregarded warnings about the potential consequences of military action, Sir John Chilcot has said in his long-awaited report.

His inquiry found that the claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction was “grounded in what Mr Blair believed, rather than in the judgments which the joint intelligence committee had actually reached in its assessment of the intelligence”.

The Chilcot report does not pronounce on the legality of the action as that was not within Sir John’s remit. However, Sir John does say the committee has “concluded that the circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action were far from satisfactory”.

He also states that the decision on legality was taken by Blair rather than his Attorney-General at the time, Lord Goldsmith. Lord Goldsmith advised on 13 March 2003 that there was, “on balance, a secure legal basis for military action” and that an essential ingredient of the legal basis was that Blair, himself, should be satisfied that Iraq was in breach of UN Resolution 1441.

Sir John says: “Apart from No 10’s response to the letter of 14 March, sent the following day, in terms that can only be described as perfunctory, no formal record was made of that decision and the precise grounds on which it was made remain unclear.”

He also notes that the “UK Government was claiming to act on behalf of the international community ‘to uphold the authority of the Security Council’, knowing that it did not have a majority in the Security Council in support of its actions. In those circumstances, the UK’s actions undermined the authority of the Security Council.”

Sir John also concluded that the peaceful options for disarmament had not been exhausted before the decision to take military action was taken. He notes that the majority of the Security Council favoured continuing UN inspections. He dismissed the UK’s planning for post-conflict rebuilding of Iraq as “wholly inadequate”.

The Chilcot inquiry, first announced in 2009, examines Britain’s role in Iraq from the run-up to the 2003 conflict, the military action and its aftermath. It covers the period from 2001 to 2009. Seven years in the making, the report has 2.6m words in 12 volumes, and cost £10m to produce.