Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a robust defence of his actions in relation to Iraq during evidence at the Chilcot inquiry in London this afternoon.
In particular, Mr Blair denied striking a 'covert' deal with former US President George W Bush to invade Iraq.
He also denied that he had put pressure on former British Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith to declare the conflict legal.
Mr Blair insisted that it was important to consider what the consequences would have been if Saddam Hussein had not been overthrown.
He added that he had believed beyond doubt that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
In his long-awaited appearance before the Iraq Inquiry, the former prime minister made clear that it was always his intention to join the US if it came to war with Iraq.
He said that in the aftermath of the 9 September attacks on the US, he firmly believed that he could not run the risk that Saddam Hussein would reconstitute his banned weapons programmes.
‘The decision I took - and frankly would take again - was if there was any possibility that he could develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) we should stop him,’ he said.
‘That was my view then and that is my view now.’
Mr Blair insisted that there had been no ‘covert’ deal with George Bush to go to war when they met at the president's Texas ranch in Crawford in April 2002 - 11 months before the invasion.
‘The one thing I was not doing was dissembling in that position. How we proceed in this is a matter that was open. The position was not a covert position, it was an open position,’ he said.
‘We would be with them in dealing with this threat and how we did that was an open question, and even at that stage I was raising the issue of going to the UN.’
But pressed on what he thought Mr Bush took from the meeting, he went further, saying: ‘I think what he took from that was exactly what he should have taken, which was if it came to military action because there was no way of dealing with this diplomatically, we would be with him.’
Mr Blair defended his assertion in the Government's controversial Iraq dossier, published in September 2002, that the intelligence had established ‘beyond doubt’ that Saddam Hussein had WMD.
‘What I said in the foreword was that I believed it was beyond doubt. I did believe it and I did believe it was beyond doubt,’ he said.
He said he had been convinced by reports he was receiving from the Joint Intelligence Committee that Hussein retained WMD.
‘It was hard to come to any other conclusion than that this person is continuing WMD programmes,’ he said.
He accepted it had been a mistake not to make clear that the now-notorious claim that some WMD could be launched within 45 minutes referred to battlefield weapons and not long-range missiles.
‘I would have been better to have corrected it in the light of the significance it later took on,’ he said.
No deception
Mr Blair insisted that he had not deceived anybody over the grounds for going to war with Iraq.
He told the inquiry he had made the judgement that Britain should not ‘run the risk’ of allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power.
He said: ‘This isn't about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception.
‘It's a decision. And the decision I had to take was, given Saddam's history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking UN resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons programmes or is that a risk that it would be irresponsible to take?’
He went on: ‘I had to take the decision. I believed, and in the end the Cabinet believed - so did Parliament incidentally - that we were right not to run that risk.’
Mr Blair did not publicly discuss military planning of a possible Iraq invasion earlier because he did not want to be led down an ‘irreversible path’.
‘Had I said 'yes, we are doing military planning', our fear was people would push you into a position where you appear to be on a kind of irreversible path to military action,’ he said.
Mr Blair told the inquiry that he wanted to secure a second UN Security Council resolution before going to war.
‘A second resolution was obviously going to make life a lot easier, politically and in every respect,’ he said.
‘The American view, throughout, has been 'This leopard isn't going to change his spots - he was always going to be difficult',’ Mr Blair said.
Despite continuing discussion over the threat posed by Iraq, Mr Bush decided the UN backing was not needed.
‘His view was that it wasn't necessary but he was prepared to work without one,’ said Mr Blair.
Mr Blair said it was ‘correct’ to say that he shared that view - if Saddam was seen to be continually breaching UN regulations and there was political backing for the move.
But he stressed that he worked on getting the backing ‘right up until the last moment’.
Mr Blair insisted it was important to consider what the consequences would have been if Saddam had not been overthrown by Britain and the US in 2003.
‘Sometimes what is important is not to ask the March 2003 question, but to ask the 2010 question,’ he said.
‘Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons who were going to follow him in charge of Iraq - he had used chemical weapons, caused the death of over a million people.
‘What we now know is that he retained absolutely the intent and the intellectual know-how to restart a nuclear and a chemical weapons programme when the inspectors were out and the sanctions changed, which they were going to do.
‘Now, I think that it is at least arguable that he was a threat, that had we taken that decision to leave him there, with an oil price of not $25 but $100 a barrel, he would have had the intent, he would have had the financial means, and we would have lost our nerve.’
