On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, seven in 10 people think Britain was wrong to join George W Bush’s military adventure.
Yet there are signs a small but growing minority of Britons think, with the passage of time, that taking action was right, Ipsos MORI researchers found.
Some 20 per cent now say they backed the 2003 invasion and UK involvement. In 2007, when controversy over the use of intelligence was at its height, only 11 per cent admitted supporting the cause.
The finding came as former prime minister Tony Blair spoke out to justify his decision by saying Iraq would have suffered a bloody revolution anyway, which would have been “a lot worse than Syria”. In the invasion which toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, Britain lost 179 servicemen and women, before the last British troops were withdrawn in April 2009. Estimates of the number of Iraqis killed in the invasion and violent aftermath range from 110,000 to some 600,000 if indirect health effects are included.
Mr Blair told the BBC: “I certainly think that if Saddam had still been in power, it’s true there would have been, probably, an uprising among his people. But I think it would look a lot more like Syria and probably a lot worse than Syria.” He said Saddam used chemical weapons. “That’s why, when people say to me, ‘Do you regret removing him?’ my answer is, ‘No — how can you regret removing somebody who was a monster, who created enormous carnage?” Mr Blair is likely to be criticised in the Chilcot inquiry report into the Iraq War, due out later this year.
Last month, his former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott admitted he now thinks the war “cannot be justified as an intervention”.
