Tony Blair: road to the Iraq inquiry
Updated on 29 January 2010
As Tony Blair makes his long-awaited appearance in front of the Iraq Inquiry, Channel 4 News looks back on the decisions he made along the way.
Interest in Tony Blair's appearance has mounted over the past three months as the panel has heard, sometimes apparently conflicting, accounts from his former aides, legal advisers and military bosses.
As prime minister, the former barrister was the ultimate advocate of the case for backing for the US-led invasion of Iraq and consequently the hottest ticket at the Iraq inquiry.
More than 3,000 people applied for the 80 places to watch proceedings.
He remains the only Labour prime minister to win a third term in office, but for many his legacy will be forever bound up with Iraq. So how did he end up here?
More Channel 4 News coverage of the Iraq war inquiry
- Iraq inquiry: day by day
- Blair was 'optimistic not criminal'
- How Blair's war shattered Iraqi lives
- Iraq: 'I am grateful to Mr Blair'
Weapons of mass destruction
In September 2002, Blair presented parliament with a dossier saying the intelligence showed "beyond doubt" that Saddam continued to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
He wrote: "I am in no doubt that the threat is serious and current, that he has made progress on WMD, and that he has to be stopped."
In November 2002, the United Nations security council passed resolution 1441, which found Saddam Hussein was in "material breach" of the conditions of the ceasefire after the first Gulf war.
Blair was told in January 2003 by his most senior legal adviser, Lord Goldsmith, that the legality of war without a second UN resolution was unclear.
As the Iraq inquiry has already heard, Goldsmith eventually decided that a second resolution was not necessary for war.
MPs voted in favour of military action in Iraq, with support from the Conservatives, in March 2003. The issue saw a record rebellion of Labour MPs, including the resignation of the then leader of the house, Robin Cook (the first cabinet resignation on a matter of policy).
Public discontent about the war ran high and on 15 February 2003, an estimated 1m people took to the streets in the country's biggest-ever protest march. Blair was derided by critics as 'Bliar' and 'Bush's poodle'.
The government was later accused of 'sexing-up' the intelligence and inserting the claim that Saddam could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes in the knowledge this was probably wrong, sparking a furious war of words between Blair's former press chief Alastair Campbell and the BBC.
Eventually, however, it became clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction.
Late last year, Blair was asked by Fern Britton whether he would have removed Saddam Hussein, had he known this.
He said: "I would still have thought it right to remove [Saddam Hussein]. I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat."
Military intervention
Earlier in his premiership, Blair authorised far less controversial military intervention in Kosovo and Sierra Leone.
In a speech in Chicago in April 1999, he described the "doctrine of the international community" and set out five key tests for military intervention in another country, a part of his speech later revealed to be drafted by inquiry panel member and military historian Lawrence Freedman.
In October 2001, days before military action in Afghanistan, he described September 11th as a "turning point in history".
British troops were deployed to Afghanistan, originally in a push to weed out Osama Bin Laden and combat international terrorism.
Crawford
Blair spoke privately to George W Bush at a summit at Crawford ranch in Texas in April 2002.
It was after this meeting that Blair shifted his position from one of containment and disarmament of Saddam, to one of the US-backed regime change, former Washington ambassador Christopher Meyer told the Iraq inquiry.
A day after the summit, Blair made a speech using the phrase "regime change" for the first time.
Sir David Manning, Blair's former foreign policy adviser, told the inquiry Blair was "absolutely prepared to say he was willing to contemplate regime change" if the peaceful, UN route did not work.
Alastair Campbell and former chief of staff Jonathan Powell both dismissed the idea that Blair had changed his mind after the summit with Bush when they appeared before the inquiry.
On his final appearance at prime minister's questions, Blair said he was "truly sorry" about the dangers faced by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said: "I know some may think they face these dangers in vain. I don't and I never will. I believe they are fighting for the security of this country in the wider world against people who would destroy our way of life."
Religion
While working as Tony Blair's chief spokesperson and strategist Alastair Campbell famously, if not infamously, told a journalist that "we don't do God".
Blair seemed rattled when asked by Jeremy Paxman in a major TV show in the run-up to the Iraq war, whether he and committed Christian George Bush "prayed together".
Blair said: "No, we don't pray together Jeremy, no."
Three years later, Blair told David Dimbleby that God would judge him for his actions: "If you believe in God (the judgement) is made by God."
Shortly after stepping down from office, he converted to Catholicism, and founded the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.
Blair now spends much of his time abroad as an envoy in the Middle East, working with Palestinians as part of the international peace effort. He also holds a lucrative advisory role with investment bank JP Morgan and has a well-paid sideline as a paid speaker.
His long-awaited appearance before the Iraq inquiry marks a comparatively rare public appearance in the UK.
