As it Happened: The Archive Edition - Former British PM Tony Blair defends Iraq mission
Blair spoke to As It Happens in 2010 as the Chilcot Inquiry examined his government's wartime actions
A decade ago this month, the U.K. launched its probe into the Iraq war.
It's also known as the Chilcot Inquiry — for its chairman, John Chilcot. And it was set up to examine the Labour government's decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Seven years later, in July 2016, the inquiry issued its final report. And its conclusions were an unflinching condemnation of its chief witness, former British prime minister Tony Blair.
Blair sat down for a feature interview with As it Happens host Carol Off in 2010, a year into the inquiry and after he first testified before the committee,
He had just published a book called A Journey: My Life in Politics. Here are some highlights from that interview.
On how 9/11 changed everything
"What was really going through my mind was this sense that a whole lot of things I'd seen developing over time to do with this extremism had then come together in one awful event.
And the thing that was always impacted on me about 9/11 was that 3,000 people died in the worst terrorist attack ever. But I was constantly aware of the fact that if they could have killed 30,000 or 300,000, they would have. And so for me from that moment — rightly or wrongly — my calculus of risk about the world, about the security threat we face, just completely changed and altered.
And I took the decision after that that we should be shoulder to shoulder with America — that this wasn't just an attack on America, but on all of us — and that we were going to stay the course with them."
On why he believed removing Saddam Hussein was justified
"The fact that when we get rid of someone like [former Iraq president] Saddam [Hussein], we give people a United Nations process, a democratic process, that they can then hold on to — the Iraqi people then decide that's what they want, and they vote in the election — the fact that al-Qaeda then come in and try to destabilize it doesn't mean you have to leave the Iraqi people with Saddam.
And the fact that al-Qaeda will come in and exploit this situation is not a reason for conceding to them. It's a reason for standing up to them. And the trouble is, if this were just about Iraq or Afghanistan, then I could see the point that people are making. The fact is these elements and these forces are at work virtually everywhere throughout that region and the wider region."
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On whether he had any regrets
"As I say in the book, how on Earth could you not regret the loss of life? Of course you do. You regret it deeply, but when it comes to the decision, I take responsibility for the decision. And as I say in the book, that's got its present and future tense, as well as its past tense.
When you look at what's happening in the Middle East today, when you look at the challenge that Iran poses, the same tough decisions await the decision makers of today.
You know, you've been interviewing me today and putting perfectly reasonable, sensible points about the decisions I took, and the downside of them. It's just worth reflecting on a moment: if you took the opposite decisions, what is also the downside of them?"
On his friendship with George W. Bush
"You can agree or disagree with [former U.S.] president [George W.] Bush, but I saw him close up and in these circumstances, and he was motivated by a desire to protect America. And I think if you think back to that time on 9/11, there's not a single American president that, faced with that situation, would not have profoundly altered American foreign policy.
On his likely legacy
"I never really know about that. You know, you get a lot of things written about you.
I mean, the fact is before I became the leader of the Labour Party, everybody never won two successive full terms. Under my leadership, we won three successive full terms. The government was in power for more than twice the previous longest serving Labour government.
Obviously, people focus on the foreign policy issues, but we had a big domestic program. We had a big program on the economy, major investment and reform in health and education, we were the first governments since the war to cut crime substantially. We had a big program of inner-city investment helping poverty. We introduced Britain's first minimum wage. We introduced equality for gay people. We ended up with a trebling aid to Africa, winning the Olympic bid, peace in Northern Ireland, devolution. It was quite a big domestic program.
So I think, though of course — and rightly in a sense, incidentally — there will be a huge focus on the foreign policy, there is a whole other dimension to the work we did and to the creation of the concept of New Labour."