CHILCOT: 'Is the explanation that we have heard earlier today that it was in the former Prime Minister's nature to move from one big challenge to the next and that the big challenge at that particular time, 2002/3, was Iraq and it was his personal project, is that part of an explanation?'
Turnbull's reply... read it carefully - it's spoken word and not entirely clear.
LORD TURNBULL: 'I think it is the explanation. [His emphasis] You talked to him last week and quite early on -- you know, very early on, even as late as 2001, he is already thinking about Iraq.
It is not that George Bush is dragging him along. He has identified the risk that Iraq -- in his own mind -- I think he was wrong -- but he identified this risk, partly being misled by or misread intelligence – a combination of the two -- that this WMD programme was not active, detailed and growing, but in abeyance and its weakness was being disguised. That's what we effectively know from the survey group*.
Nevertheless, he had formed this view that you couldn't sit back and wait for a rogue state, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorist groups somehow to form an alliance and then attack you at a time of their choosing and you had to go out and deal with it.
Now he had followed this philosophy successfully twice before, and I think he thought he could do it again, but with even less backing from the UN he had pulled off the Kosovo -- rescued Kosovo as a country and safeguarded it and deposed Milosevic. He could do the same again.'
Lord Wilson,Turnbull's predecessor, told the inquiry that if asked whether there were "proper cabinet" decisions in the run-up to war, he would say "emphatically not".
He said he remembered saying in March 2002, a year before the invasion: "There is a gleam in [Blair's] eye that worries me."
At the time, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, gave "strong advice" that military action was illegal without a fresh UN security council resolution. Blair's response was: "Well ... ", Wilson told the inquiry.
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