Your Questions for Tony Blair

Back in June, 38 Degrees members took action to make sure that the Iraq Inquiry was held in public.  Thousands of us signed a petition calling for Gordon Brown to drop his commitment to a private inquiry, and the Prime Minister was forced to listen to us.

This month, Tony Blair is giving evidence to the Inquiry.  With the man responsible for taking us to war up for questioning, this is the moment to discover the truth about why we went into Iraq.  But the Inquiry and its leader, Sir John Chilcot, have already been accused of being too lenient on witnesses and leaving important questions unasked. There are also worries that Blair, desperate to save his reputation, will use security concerns as an excuse for not answering tough questions. It’s time for us to put the pressure back on the government. We need to make sure that when Blair gives evidence, he is asked the right questions, in public, and properly held to account.

We asked you to choose the questions that Tony Blair is asked when he gives evidence, and so far we’ve had a massive response.  Many of us just want to express our anger at Blair: for ignoring the views of the people he represented and taking us to war in spite of enormous popular opposition, and for apparently deceiving us about why he was doing so.  Others want Blair to answer for the current mess in Iraq: why wasn’t more done to prepare for the reconstruction of Iraq, post-invasion?  We also want to know about the financial angle: who has profited from the war in Iraq, and to what extent? However, the main focus of the questions is, unsurprisingly, on two issues: did Blair actually believe that going to war was a legitimate and necessary action, or was it a means to other ends, and were the steps that he took to persuade others to support him in this action themselves legitimate?

Please keep the questions coming by signing up on our website, here: http://38degrees.org.uk/blair-iraq-questions/