Tony Blair was not “straight with the nation” about his
decisions in the run up to the Iraq War, the chairman of the inquiry into the war has told the BBC.
Speaking for the first time since publishing his report a year ago, Sir John Chilcot, discussed why he thinks the former PM made those decisions.
He said the evidence Blair gave the inquiry was “emotionally truthful” but he relied on beliefs rather than facts.
A spokesman for Blair said “all these issues” had been dealt with.
In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Sir John also talked about Blair’s state of mind during the inquiry and his relationship with the then US President George W Bush in the build-up to the 2003 conflict.
Sir John also admitted that at the start of the inquiry he had “no idea” how long it would take, but defended its conduct and the seven years it took to complete.
The inquiry concluded that Blair overstated the threat posed by Iraq leader Saddam Hussein and the invasion was not the “last resort” action presented to Parliament, when it backed the action, and the public.
Asked if the former prime minister had been as straight as he could have been with the country and the inquiry, Sir John told the BBC: “Any prime minister taking a country into war has got to be straight with the nation and carry it, so far as possible, with him or her. I don’t believe that was the case in the Iraq instance.”
He went on: “Tony Blair is always and ever an advocate. He makes the most persuasive case he can. Not departing from the truth but persuasion is everything. Advocacy for my position, ‘my Blair position’.”
He said the former Labour leader gave the case for war based on his own assessment of the circumstances, saying Blair made the case “pinning it on my belief, not on the fact, what the assessed intelligence said.”
“You can make an argument around that, both ethical and – well, there is an ethical argument I think.’
Asked
by the BBC whether Blair gave the fullest version of events, Sir John
replied: ‘I think he gave an – what was – I hesitate to say this, rather
but I think it was from his perspective and standpoint, emotionally
truthful and I think that came out also in his press conference after
the launch statement.
“I think he was under very great emotional
pressure during those sessions… he was suffering. He was deeply engaged.
Now in that state of mind and mood you fall back on your instinctive
skill and reaction, I think.”Sir John also talked at length about Blair’s relationship with the US president in the build-up to the war.
“Tony Blair made much of, at various points, the need to exert influence on American policy making,” he said.
“To do that he said in terms at one point, ‘I have to accept their strategic objective, regime change, in order to exert influence.’ For what purpose? To get them to alter their policy? Of course not. So in effect it was a passive strategy. Just go along.”
Commenting on the documentation revealed when the Iraq Inquiry was published, Sir John revealed that his first response on reading a note sent by Blair to Bush in 2002 in which he told him ‘I shall be with you whatever’, was “you mustn’t say that”.
His reaction was: “You’re giving away far too much. You’re making a binding commitment by one sovereign government to another which you can’t fulfil. You’re not in a position to fulfil it. I mean he didn’t even know the legal position at that point.”
Asked if the relationship between Blair and Bush was appropriate, Sir John says the former prime minister was running “coercive diplomacy” that clashed with the settled position of the government.
“I think that the fundamental British strategy was fractured, because our formal policy, right up to the autumn of 2002 was one of containment. That was the concluded decision of cabinet.
“But the prime minister was running one of coercive diplomacy. With the knowledge and support of the foreign secretary, but the foreign secretary hoped that diplomacy would win and not coercion. I think to the prime minister it probably looked the other way round.”
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