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The long-awaited Chilcot report has been released today and states that Tony Blair convinced himself there were weapons of mass destruction, despite the fact that the secret intelligence reports he had been shown 'did not justify' his certainty.
Blair presented the case of going to war in 2003 with 'a certainty which was not justified' based on 'flawed' intelligence, Sir John Chilcot found.
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The damning report concluded that the former PM deliberately blurred the lines between what he 'believed and what he knew', the Independent reports.
It was also found that Blair and then-president George W Bush were made fully aware of the risk that Iraq could descend into violence after the fall of Saddam Hussein, which is contradiction to what Blair told the Iraq Inquiry.
Meanwhile, intelligence chiefs have also been criticised for allowing Blair to get away with misrepresenting what they had told him.
The question of whether the PM lied to parliament to justify the invasion of Iraq has been a source of controversy for 13 years.
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The report also stated that 'war was not the last resort' and the planning for post-war Iraq was 'wholly inadequate'.
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The 2.6-million-word report has taken seven years to complete, while families of those killed in Iraq have waited and campaigned for the truth to come out.
Words Claire Reid
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