![]() Iraqi Kurds mark 25 years since Halabja gas attack - BBC News (2013) However it's not as clear cut as some would suggest and the Iraq regime was believed to have chemical/biological agents, had previously used chemical weapons against innocent Kurdish villages, and had some years earlier tried to have a super-gun built, which would have served as a WMD. The Iraq War Chilcot inquiry already dealt with most of this and both Blair and Bush were condemned and I agree that Iraq was a pointless war that merely led to wider problems in the region and destabilisation, which in turn led to the rise of the Islamic caliphate and subsequent wars in places such as Syria.Īfghanistan will also go down as another pointless US led war, which led to many western nations to question future participation in such US led operations.Ĭhilcot report: Findings at-a-glance - BBC News (2016) He lead his country to that big mess and his legacy will be haunted by it. With this, Blair was very misguided with powerful forces within and outside his government. And then there are the human costs, about which Blair has expressed much anguish: hundreds of thousands dead and maimed, millions displaced, a succession of barely functional governments - to say nothing of the damage to relations with the UK’s allies around the world. Iran’s influence was much increased that surely wasn’t part of the plan. Al-Qaeda, which wasn’t present before the invasion, became rampant. Even by the terms of reference of those who planned the war, it was surely a catastrophe. The consequences of the Iraq war are well known. Later, a senior civil servant, by now retired, told me that months after the war began, he had been present at a high-level meeting during which a senior member of MI6 suddenly inquired: “Would it be a problem if there turned out to be no WMD?” My informant said: “The silence around the room was palpable.” ![]() Throughout the build-up to the war, our foreign intelligence service, MI6, was telling the government that Saddam did possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD) So far as the British were concerned, Iraq was at heart an intelligence screw-up. Almost alone, he insists to this day that it was the right decision - but one has only to look into his eyes, whenever he is challenged on the subject, to see that he is haunted by it. ![]() Had it not been for the Iraq quagmire, Tony Blair would be seen as one of the outstanding British leaders of the postwar eraīlair, the former British prime minister who more than anyone else was responsible for persuading the British parliament and a majority of the public that British soldiers should take part in the invasion of Iraq, remains in denial.
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