Sir John Chilcot’s full statement introducing the Iraq War inquiry report

We were appointed to consider the UK’s policy on Iraq from 2001 to 2009, and to identify lessons for the future.

Our Report will be published on the Inquiry’s website after I finish speaking. In 2003, for the first time since the Second World War, the United Kingdom took part in an invasion and full-scale occupation of a sovereign State.

That was a decision of the utmost gravity. Saddam Hussein was undoubtedly a brutal dictator who had attacked Iraq’s neighbours, repressed and killed many of his own people, and was in violation of obligations imposed by the UN Security Council.

But the questions for the Inquiry were:

• whether it was right and necessary to invade Iraq in March 2003; and
• whether the UK could – and should – have been better prepared for what followed.

We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted.