Blair Iraq war admission sparks fresh outrage

Source Agence France-Presse

Tony Blair's admission that Britain would have backed the Iraq war even if he knew it did not have weapons of mass destruction sparked outrage Sunday and calls for his prosecution for war crimes. The former British prime minister, who backed the US-led invasion in 2003, told the BBC he would "still have thought it right to remove" Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein because of the threat he posed to the region. Lawyers representing the deposed Iraqi leadership said they would seek to prosecute Blair following his remarks, while one newspaper commentator said it was a "game-changing admission" for the ongoing official inquiry into the war. Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix added: "The war was sold on the WMD, and now you feel, or hear that it was only a question of deployment of arguments, as he said, it sounds a bit like a fig leaf that was held up."