Former British prime minister Tony Blair had set his mind on invading Iraq in 2003 despite frequent recommendations from advisers to abandon the idea, an analyst has said.

Blair “was determined to pursue a fatal course of action. Fatal insofar as it has cost hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have died since 2003 as a result of these warring interventions which were contrary to international law,” Dr. Shahrar Ali with Britain's Green Party, told Press TV in an interview on Friday.
He also said that the human costs were inevitable. Moreover, Britain's former statesmen were aware of the fact and did not truly regret the loss of lives.
Ali further suggested that Blair apparently tried to preserve his image on Friday at the public inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war.
Ali's comments come on the heels of Tony Blair's remarks during his second appearance at the public inquiry, also known as the 'Chilcot Inquiry,' where the former premier was supposed to clarify the 'discrepancies' in his earlier accounts.
Blair has admitted to having been warned about the illegitimacy of engagement in a non-UN mandated war, but brushed his legal advisers' comment aside as 'provisional.'
In a letter to the Inquiry, however, Blair's top legal adviser, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, said that the former premier repeatedly shut him out of crucial talks about the legality of an invasion.
The inquiry panel believes there were inconsistencies in Blair's previous accounts of the Iraq invasion and has thus summoned him again to testify further.
While the U.S. military claims 77,000 Iraqis were killed between January 2004 and August 2008, a former Iraqi lawmaker has dismissed the figure, protesting that the estimate is misleading as it does not include assassinations and victims of US military operations.
In 2006, a study conducted by the British medical journal, The Lancet, revealed that 655,000 Iraqis had died in the war. An Opinion Research Business study has put the number of post-invasion deaths at over 1 million.
(Source: Press TV)
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