Former PM expected to tell inquiry that without military action Saddam would have built WMD using the team of scientists he had assembled for the task
Patrick Wintour, political editor
The Guardian, Friday 29 January 2010
ony Blair is today expected to deliver a robust defence of his decision to take Britain into war with Iraq, arguing that even though Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction he could have been emboldened to build them had the UK and US backed down from the threat of military force.
In the most eagerly awaited session of the Chilcot inquiry so far, Blair will insist that he acted in good faith throughout, but acknowledge that the decision to go to war was hugely controversial.
The former prime minister is expected to tell the inquiry he still believes it was right for Britain to remove Saddam even though thousands of Iraqi civilians have lost their lives. He believes that without military action Saddam would have built WMD using the team of scientists he had assembled for the task.
Blair is due to give six hours of evidence at the inquiry today with 40 relatives of soldiers who died in the conflict present throughout the day – the first government witness to be put in this position. A large demonstration is expected outside the QEII Centre in Westminster, where the inquiry is being held.
As he prepares to give his evidence, friends say Blair:
• Rejects claims that he gave any private undertaking in his private letters to George Bush in the summer of 2002 that he would ensure British forces would join the invasion regardless, a commitment some Chilcot inquiry members have indicated would have undermined his negotiating influence with the US president.
• Privately admits to errors, including in the intelligence and post-war planning, agreeing with his former chief of staff Jonathan Powell that it would have been better in retrospect to publish the Joint Intelligence Committee assessments, rather than specially written dossiers.
• Has said he did not foresee the degree to which Iran would seek to arm the Shia community or the extent to which Iraqi infrastructure was so broken that security would be hard to establish. He has also conceded that the US army went into battle with too few troops.
• Acknowledges that the decision to strip so much of the Iraqi army and civil service of Ba'athist party members went too far and he had no proper knowledge that this would occur. His chief foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, has disclosed to the inquiry that the then US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was not given prior warning of this decision.
Blair has persistently argued in public and with friends that if the west had not confronted Saddam he would have become a threat to the region in that he had the means and intent of using WMD. Backing down in March 2003 would have emboldened him.
The Chilcot inquiry has copies of correspondence between Blair and Bush, but the Cabinet Office has blocked their declassification on the basis that they might undermine future US-UK relations. Blair's friends say the letters would merely show that the two leaders agreed it was right to require Saddam to be disarmed, and if this could not be achieved by diplomacy, then force would be used. "It would be good for Tony if these letters were published. They show him fighting his corner with Bush," said an ally who has seen the bulk of the letters.
"I do not believe any of them show he is saying he will commit British troops unconditionally. He is supportive, but Bush is quite a simple man who won't read beyond the first paragraph if you don't say you are with him. I don't think they can be published. They go the heart of the UK-US relations. They are full of scurrilous remarks about other people, including [Jacques] Chirac."
Although Blair regarded international law over the legality of war with some disdain, his allies believe that the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, has dispelled notions that he was manoeuvred or improperly pressured by Blair's close allies Lady Morgan and Lord Falconer to declare that the war was lawful.
Goldsmith has pointed out that he met Morgan and Falconer at 7pm – 12 hours after he had communicated to his private office his decision that to declare war without a second resolution was lawful.
Blair's allies insist that they left Goldsmith with the space he wanted and that his previous advice never crossed the line of suggesting that a second UN resolution endorsing war was an absolute requirement.
The former prime minister remains confident in his view that Saddam did not comply with the requirement to co-operate with the UN weapons inspectors as stipulated by UN resolution 1441. Some of his allies feel that the head of the UN weapons inspectorate, Hans Blix, made it clear to him at the time that there was not full co-operation from Saddam, but has subsequently moved to a more ambivalent position.
Blix has recently said he personally expressed his scepticism to Blair that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion in March, citing the failure of his inspectors to discover any WMD at any of the sites recommended by US and UK intelligence.
Blair's allies say if asked he will seek to clarify what he meant on a BBC religious affairs programme last December when he said that if Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction, he would have had to deploy different arguments. His friends admit he was not clear, and that he knew war on such a basis was not practical because it would never have won parliamentary support or been declared lawful.
Some of his allies have urged him to be more honest in his assessment of postwar planning, but this would require open criticism of the US administration, something he has been reluctant to do. They do not expect Blair to criticise Bush in public, maintaining that the two men respect one another, but some have urged him to comment on the dysfunctional nature of the US administration, including the poor relations between the state department under Colin Powell and the defence department led by Donald Rumsfeld.
He has been urged by allies to express his disappointment that Bush did not feel able to follow through his commitments to press the Middle East peace process, and to pin the blame on the then vice-president, Dick Cheney.
There is barely disguised contempt among Blair's friends over the way in which some permanent secretaries, and the former British ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer, have criticised the war. Some also regard the performance of the former foreign secretary Jack Straw as dissembling, by claiming a level of private opposition to the war that he never displayed at the time.
