Chilcot said Blair's government had not exhausted peaceful means of dealing with Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction — clearly inferring Blair had jumped prematurely into war.
Blair — along with George W. Bush — had failed to agree a United Nations resolution that gave the US and UK the go-ahead to invade. Blair sought the advice of the UK Attorney General, Peter Goldsmith.
Sir John said: "We have, however, concluded that the circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action were far from satisfactory."
Reading the #Chilcotreport out loud at #EdinburghFestival as part of the 'Iraq Out & Loud' show pic.twitter.com/ELT2VvdCcb
— Sputnik UK (@SputnikNewsUK) August 17, 2016
.@colinfoxssp reading aloud Chilcot at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe!https://t.co/C1Sylc0T6L pic.twitter.com/iLKwieTfcP
— The SSP (@The_SSP_) 16 August 2016
In Edinburgh, the entire contents of the report are being read out by actors, politicians and others over a period of days. One of the readers, former Scottish Socialist lawmaker Colin Fox told Sputnik:
"It felt like taking part in the biggest legal indictment of Tony Blair that's ever been. There are twelve volumes — 2.6 million words — and I only read about 100, so I feel I've party indicted Tony Blair for war crimes, which is what millions in this country want to do."
"He deserves it doesn't he? This was 2003 — 13 years later [reading the report] I was wearing my Scottish Socialist Party t-shirt to remind people we were at the forefront of [the anti-Iraq war campaign]. It feels like only five minutes ago, it's still very important," he told Sputnik.
'Ethnic, Bloody, Barbaric'
He said the situation in Iraq — post-war — is still unstable. "It's a sectarian civil war. It's absolutely hellish. People are butchering each other. A couple of weeks ago, there was the biggest ever loss of human life in one day when a car bomb went off and killed 250 people shopping in a bazaar. It didn't even make the news.
"What Toy Blair has left behind in Iraq is an ethnic, bloody, barbaric civil war. It's absolutely shocking and it's almost like a living testimony to what George W. Bush and Tony Blair did to the world. It's appalling," he told Sputnik.
Chilcot also blamed flawed intelligence for the decision to go to war. "The Joint Intelligence Committee should have made clear to Mr. Blair that the assessed intelligence had not established 'beyond doubt' either that Iraq had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons or that efforts to develop nuclear weapons continued."
If you're coming down to #IraqOutLoud to read the #ChilcotReport at #venue212 — this is what you're looking for. pic.twitter.com/prafKEYwwS
— IraqOutLoud (@IraqOutLoud) 15 August 2016
The creator of the show, Bob Slayer, told Sputnik the idea behind staging the mass readout of the Chilcot report:
"People are coming out of [the readings] saying, 'Oh! We actually got a juicy bit there,' thinking that was perhaps a one-off. But a lot of the subject matter is a lot of testimonials with individuals who were involved, so you get their complete picture, so you can sit there and, in an hour, get a certain person's complete picture of what went on."
