An official inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq War released it's findings July 6, heavily criticizing the country’s leadership for a conflict that it determined could have been avoided. It could also permanently taint the legacy of the country’s prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, who came in for the sharpest critique of all — and responded with a marathon news conference on Wednesday afternoon at which he was by turns deeply contrite and pugnaciously defiant. Getting rid of Mr. Hussein was “the right thing to do,” Mr. Blair wrote, predicting that “his departure would free up the region.” 
 
 Fourteen years later, Mr. Blair’s pledge was revealed publicly on Wednesday as part of a voluminous, seven-year official investigation into how and why Britain went to war in Iraq. The findings by a team of British investigators are the culmination of seven years of work in which they were given nearly unfettered access to British documents and witnesses.  LONDON — On July 28, 2002, roughly eight months before the American-led invasion of Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain sent President George W. Bush a personal note that alarmed some of Mr. Blair’s top national security aides — and was greeted with relief in Washington. Former British prime minister Tony Blair reacts to the sweeping Chilcot report of Britain's role in the Iraq War, which blamed the country’s political, military and intelligence leadership for a conflict that could have been avoided and that ended “a very long way from success.” (AP) 
 
 With violence in Iraq still raging — a bombing in Baghdad on Sunday left more than 250 people dead — the inquiry casts blame widely for a conflict that cost the lives of 179 British troops and, at the time of the British withdrawal in 2009, at least 150,000 Iraqis. He says then-Prime Minister Tony Blair's government presented an assessment of the threat posed by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons with "certainty that was not justified," and military planning for the war and its aftermath were not up to the task. Iraq descended into sectarian strife after the occupiers dismantled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's government and military apparatus, unleashing chaos that helped give rise to the Islamic State group. In a statement delivered Wednesday in London, the report’s lead author, retired civil servant John Chilcot, said Blair took the country to war “before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.” 
 
 [Tony Blair kind of apologized for the Iraq war, but many Brits still hate him] 
 
 Chilcot, speaking at a conference center in central London, was applauded by relatives of British troops who were killed in the war. Sarah O’Connor, whose brother, Sgt. Chilcot said the question was beyond the scope of his inquiry and could “only be resolved by a properly constituted and internationally recognized court.” 
 
 In two hours of passionate statements after the report’s release, Blair said that “not a single day” passes without him thinking over the Iraq War decisions. After 13 years of violence, the war to depose Hussein hardly seems worth it even to those who celebrated his fall.
– A sweeping, seven-year investigation by Britain into its decision to join the US in the Iraq War is out, and "scathing" is beginning to sound like an understatement. The report by Sir John Chilcot faults every aspect of the decision by Tony Blair's government, reports the Telegraph. "It is now clear that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments," said Chilcot as the report was released. "They were not challenged, and they should have been." He said the UK went to war before exhausting "peaceful options," adding that "military action at that time was not a last resort." After that, Britain bungled the post-war strategy as Blair overestimated his ability to influence George W. Bush, says the report. "I will be with you whatever," he had written to Bush in a 2002 note. The AP points out one key aspect of the report: It will not make a finding on whether the invasion was legally justified. That's likely to disappoint critics of the war, who were hoping Blair would face prosecution on war crimes. The report does accuse Blair and his team of making a case against Saddam "with a certainty that was not justified," specifically in regard to weapons of mass destruction. Blair himself reacted on Wednesday: "Whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein, I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country." A link to the full report can be found here. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post point out that at more than 2 million words, it's much longer than War and Peace.