Former prime minister to be questioned in public and private over evidence he gave to panel on invasion’s legalityThe Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war is to summon Tony Blair back to give evidence and he will be asked to testify in both public and private, officials saidlast night.The former prime minister, who gave nearly [...]
On at least two crucial points, the Chilcot inquiry allowed Tony Blair to get away with murder (Righteous, responsible but no regrets: Blair’s day in the dock, 30 January). First, Blair continued to claim an essential link between Iraq and 9/11. It is a matter of record, however, that just a few hours after the 9/11 [...]
When Tony Blair appeared at the Chilcot inquiry last week, the families of some of the British soldiers killed in Iraq were there to hear him defend his decision to go to war. Here Reg Keys, whose son was one of six military policemen brutally killed in 2003, writes about the mix of fierce anger [...]
It has become increasingly clear that the PM was fully signed up to the overall Iraq war planGordon Brown was in meetings for most of Friday and only caught glimpses of Tony Blair’s televised appearance before the Chilcot inquiry. But with his own appearance only a few weeks away, he will have read the reaction [...]
The country needed answers on Iraq, but this limp inquiry couldn’t touch such a consummate performer as the ex PMThere was a moment during Tony Blair’s appearance before the Iraq inquiry – it came in the stretch when his limp inquisitors were fumbling an attempt to pin him down on the legality of the war [...]
The Chilcot inquiry summoned Tony Blair last week to establish facts for the historical record. But Mr Blair turned up to win history’s approval, its gratitude even. The result was pure theatre; the fluent former prime minister was given the stage and the cues. He performed.The questioning was neither forensic nor consistent enough to disturb [...]
Tony Blair’s appearance at the Iraq inquiry is examined in detail in the papers with the Times among those to focus on his apparent lack of regret.
Slowly he established dominance and it was Chilcot and his colleagues who took on a hunted lookThis was the big one. Yet as we sat down to the climax of the Chilcot inquiry, in walked a ghost. Its muscles were taut, its eyes bloodshot, its tan implausible, its mouth unsmiling. The hand visibly shook when [...]
There is a planet, some way removed from the real one, on which Tony Blair lives. He invited the Chilcot inquiry to join him on it yesterday. On this alternative earth, certainties dissolve and falsehoods become truths. Facts are transformed into opinions and judgments turn into evidence. Success and failure are both the same. On [...]
Slick, self-righteous or sincere? Experts analyse Blair’s performanceAfua Hirsch Guardian legal affairs correspondentThe sheer length, lack of focus, and scope for manoeuvre in the Chilcot panel’s questions were revealed at the Iraq inquiry today, as a nervous and tense Tony Blair nevertheless managed to remain more or less within his comfort zone.Questions appeared to be [...]