British troops died in Iraq because vital kit was delayed by Tony Blair, the Chilcot inquiry heard Tuesday.

Former Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon admitted soldiers went into battle without enhanced body armor, boots and other essential gear because Downing Street refused to let the military prepare properly for the 2003 invasion.
Hoon claimed he and the chief of defense staff Sir Michael Boyce begged Blair in October 2002 to be allowed to start planning for war but were told to “calm down”.
He said the PM stalled preparations so he could “minimize publicity” about the planned operation to topple Saddam Hussein. Hoon said: “(Sir Michael and I) were both made very well aware of the attitude in Downing Street of minimizing the publicity and avoiding the visibility of preparations. We could not go out and overtly prepare.”
He implied that the inability to plan resulted in the deaths of some of the 179 troops to be killed in Iraq, including Sgt Steve Roberts who died in March 2003 because he did not have enhanced body armor.
Hoon, who recently led a botched coup against Gordon Brown, also claimed Brown turned down requests for more funds. But he said the main problem was getting kit to troops.
He said Blair's insistence on getting a second UN resolution authorizing military action before planning could begin meant vital orders of 30,000 sets of enhanced body armor could only be made five months before the invasion.
The delay meant that they were only delivered to Iraq on April 13 - a month after the invasion.
Hoon told how officers shared out the kit on a “most at risk” basis. And he cited Sgt Roberts as an example of a soldier who lost his life because of the limited supplies.
He added he was “sure some soldiers did not have the right boots” and that many of the 46,000 troops on the ground were forced to wear green rather than desert combats due to shortages.
Hoon also said he had a “big concern whether we could manage” a full-scale land invasion because of commitments in Afghanistan.
It also emerged that Hoon was warned a year before the war by Britain's top law officer that an invasion could be illegal without a United Nation's resolution.
A furious Attorney General Lord Goldsmith wrote to him in March 2008 attacking him over a TV interview in which he said Britain would be “perfectly entitled” to invade without a resolution.
Lord Goldsmith said he had not been consulted over the legal position and that the “apparently authoritative way” Hoon had stated the case put him in a “difficult position”.
(Source: mirror.co.uk)