The Iraq war and the fall-out afterwards has left a dark stain on Blair’s time as PM. His legacy will forever be tainted by the war and the reasons for it. Now the man who led the investigation into the war has broken his silence.
Sir John Chilcot has said he doesn’t think Tony Blair was “straight with the nation” about his decisions in the run-up to the Iraq war.
The chairman of the public inquiry into the 2003 conflict had been “emotionally truthful” in his account of events leading up to the war, meaning he relied on both emotion and fact.
He told BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, Chilcot said: “Tony Blair is always and ever an advocate. He makes the most persuasive case he can. Not departing from the truth but persuasion is everything.”
Chilcot was later asked if Blair was as truthful with him and the public as he should have been during the seven-year inquiry.
He replied: “Can I slightly reword that to say I think any prime minister taking a country into war has got to be straight with the nation and carry it, so far as possible, with him or her. I don’t believe that was the case in the Iraq instance.”
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