The Iraq war remains highly controversial and the country itself is mired in turmoil.
Not to worry, now argues Tony Blair, Britain simply had to invade the country for purely human rights reasons:
Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.
The former prime minister made the confession during an interview with Fern Britton, to be broadcast on Sunday on BBC1, in which he said he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
“If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?” Blair was asked. He replied: “I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]”.
Significantly, Blair added: “I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.” He continued: “I can’t really think we’d be better with him and his two sons in charge, but it’s incredibly difficult. That’s why I sympathise with the people who were against it [the war] for perfectly good reasons and are against it now, but for me, in the end I had to take the decision.”
He explained it was “the notion of him as a threat to the region” because Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people.
In fact, when Saddam did use chemical weapons he was being supported and armed by the West.