\n Former British prime minister Tony Blair took his country into a badly planned, woefully executed and legally questionable war in Iraq in 2003, according to the findings of a long-delayed inquiry into Britain's role in the conflict.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Chilcot report found the decision to join the US-led invasion was taken before all other options had been exhausted and on the basis of false intelligence.\n<\/p>\n
\n Blair faced particular criticism after pledging to support US president George W. Bush the year before the invasion \"whatever\" happened and failing to ensure \"there was a flexible, realistic and fully resourced plan\".\n<\/p>\n
\n More than 150,000 Iraqis had died by the time most British troops withdrew in 2009, while 179 British soldiers also lost their lives. The country remains plagued by sectarian violence.\n<\/p>\n
\n Responding to the report in a short statement Blair insisted he had acted in Britain's \"best interests\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein, I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Britain's scarring experience in Iraq has made it deeply wary of committing ground troops to international military interventions in countries like Syria and Libya.\n<\/p>\n
\n Unveiling the 2.6 million-word report, which took seven years to complete, inquiry chairman John Chilcot said it was \"an account of an intervention which went badly wrong, with consequences to this day\".\n<\/p>\n
\n More than 100 anti-war protesters gathered outside the conference centre where the report was published, with many shouting: \"Blair lied, thousands died\" and \"war criminal Tony Blair\".\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'I will be with you, whatever' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Although the legality of the invasion was not in his remit, retired civil servant Chilcot said the process of deciding the legal basis for war was \"far from satisfactory\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort,\" Chilcot said.\n<\/p>\n
\n The war was justified on the basis that the Iraq leader had weapons of mass destruction, although no such weapons were never found.\n<\/p>\n
\n The report laid the blame for this failure firmly on the intelligence community, but said the government had \"overstated the firmness of the evidence\" about Iraq's capabilities and intentions.\n<\/p>\n
\n It confirmed long-held suspicions that Blair put Britain on a path to war as early as July 2002, when he wrote a letter to Bush, saying: \"I will be with you, whatever.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Blair was also criticised for failing to challenge Bush on the lack of planning for the aftermath of the invasion and called British plans for managing the occupation post-invasion \"wholly inadequate\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The report also said Blair had \"overestimated his ability to influence US decisions on Iraq\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The inquiry dismissed Blair's assertion that it was not possible to predict the strength of local opposition, the rise of Al-Qaeda and the involvement of Iran, which fuelled the violence, saying these were \"explicitly identified before the invasion\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Relatives of some of the dead soldiers attended the report's publication.\n<\/p>\n
\n Blair apologised last year for the fact the intelligence was wrong, and for mistakes in the planning, but said he did not regret removing Saddam.\n<\/p>\n
\n He is expected to address reporters later Wednesday on the report, but his reputation is already in tatters over a conflict that most now believe was a mistake, and some believe was a war crime.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'People should be accountable' -\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Tony Blair and those who supported the war should be brought to a court of law and be prosecuted,\" said John Loyd, a 70-year-old protester outside the venue where Chilcot spoke.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"If we call us a civilised country then people should be accountable for the results of what they did,\" he added, holding up a sign saying: \"Justice for Iraq. The Hague for Blair\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"They prosecuted an illegal war and the result was the destruction of a country,\" he added.\n<\/p>\n
\n The International Criminal Court in The Hague has said it will consider the report but has no investigation open. The legality of the war is outside its jurisdiction.\n<\/p>\n
\n The war, which at one point saw 46,000 British troops deployed, mostly in southern Iraq around the strategic oil hub of Basra, still looms large over British politics.\n<\/p>\n
\n Jeremy Corbyn, current leader of the party Blair once headed, Britain's Labour party, is hoping to use the Chilcot report to see off a rebellion by his own MPs over what they see as his lacklustre campaigning against Britain leaving the EU.\n<\/p>\n
\n The veteran socialist, who was only picked as leader last year, strongly opposed the war in Iraq, while many of his critics had supported it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former British prime minister Tony Blair took his country into a badly planned, woefully executed and legally questionable war in Iraq in 2003, according to the findings of a long-delayed inquiry into Britain's role in the conflict. The Chilcot report found the decision to join the US-led invasion was taken before all other options had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-28183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n