Blair the liar and War criminal

Tony Blair has confessed he would have gone to war in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein even if he had known there were no weapons of mass destruction there. In remarks that will outrage anti-war campaigners, the former Prime Minister said he would have ‘deployed different arguments’ to justify the invasion. His admission will fuel claims that he sent 179 British servicemen and women to their deaths on a false premise. 

Mr Blair secured Parliamentary backing for the war in 2003 by insisting Saddam could deploy chemical and biological missiles in 45 minutes – a claim that proved to be untrue.

But asked in a BBC1 interview with presenter Fern Britton if he would still have proceeded to war if he had known Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blair said: ‘I would still have thought it right to remove him.’

He went on: ‘I mean obviously you would have ’I can’t really think that we would be better with him and his two sons still in charge but it is incredibly difficult. I sympathise with the people who were against it for perfectly good reasons and are against it now, but for me you know in the end I had to take the decision.’ The interview comes as the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War prepares to hear Mr Blair’s evidence in the New Year