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by Laura Lynch
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair faced heckling and condemnation as he made a second appearance at an official inquiry into Britain’s role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The 57-year-old Blair was called to testify a year after his first appearance, after other witnesses and documents raised fresh questions.
From the outset, though, the five-member panel was hamstrung. Cabinet officials refused to release details of key correspondence and phone calls between Blair and then President George W. Bush in the run-up to the invasion.
The panel had to ask Blair for his version. The former prime minister testified that he promised President Bush that he could count on Britain. “We’re going to be with you in tackling this, but here are the difficulties,” Blair said he told Bush. “I was having to persuade him to take a view radically different from any of the people in his administration. So what I was saying to him was, I am going to be with you in handling it this way, I’m not going to push you down this path and then back out when it gets too hot politically, because it is going to get hot politically, for me — very, very much so.”
The problem was the reluctance of other nations to go to war without explicit authorization from the United Nations Security Council. President Bush apparently saw no need for the new resolution that other leaders were demanding.
Blair was assuring Bush of his solidarity, even though he didn’t have the solid backing of his own cabinet ministers, a fact he kept hidden in the months before the invasion. “If I had through that period in January and February, gone out and said anything that indicated there was a breach in the British position, that there was a chink of light that had opened up, it would have been a political catastrophe for us,” Blair testified.
Blair defended his actions for four hours today, then he took a moment to try to make amends for an oversight during his last appearance before the Iraq inquiry.
A year ago, he said he had no regrets. Today, with the relatives of fallen soldiers sitting right behind him, Blair tried again. “I want to make it clear that, of course, I regret deeply and profoundly the loss of life,” he said, his voice catching with emotion, “whether from our own armed forces, those of other nations, the civilians who helped people in Iraq or the Iraqis themselves.”
But Blair was interrupted by members of the audience who shouted, “Too late! Too late!” Two women turned their backs on Blair, and then walked out.
Outside the hearing, Sarah Chapman, who lost her brother, said Blair’s statement sounded insincere. “It wasn’t an act of contrition, it wasn’t heartfelt,” she said. “He didn’t turn to look at us.”
The invasion of Iraq and all the controversy it caused will always be a troublesome part of Tony Blair’s legacy. That may be why he took pains today try to refocus the debate on Iran, suggesting it was time for world leaders to consider another confrontation against another regime.
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