The father of a soldier who died in Iraq has issued a stinging rebuke to Tony Blair, accusing him of turning a marathon press conference into an attempt to write his own Iraq report – “one that was completely different to the report Sir John Chilcot has just published”.
Roger Bacon, whose son Matthew was killed by a roadside bomb in Basra in 2005, said he had listened in amazement as Mr Blair delivered a 6,000-word statement in response to the Chilcot Report.
“I listened,” said Mr Bacon, “And I listened, and listened and listened as he went on and on and on.
“I began to feel that actually what was happening was that I was hearing Iraq Report Mark II – one that was completely different to the report Sir John Chilcot has just published.”
“I was amazed really,” added Mr Bacon, a former police officer. “I knew he was going to make a statement, but then he started going into such forensic detail, disappearing down the road of what was happening now and what was happening in the future. It was as if he was writing Iraq Report II. It was one huge justification for his actions.”
Earlier Mr Bacon had revealed that he and other bereaved relatives were considering legal action against the former Prime Minister, at a press conference where the sister of one dead soldier called Mr Blair “the world’s worst terrorist”.
After listening to Mr Blair, Mr Bacon laughed out loud at the ex-Prime Minister’s insistence that the Chilcot Report stated that Parliament and Cabinet had not been misled.
He directed Mr Blair to Sir John’s statement that: “We have also concluded that the judgments about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - WMD - were presented with a certainty that was not justified.”
Mr Bacon, who was awarded the British Empire Medal for his work helping other bereaved service families, said: “We were misled and the report effectively says so in black and white.”
Mr Bacon added that without studying the report in detail, he could not say whether Mr Blair lied outright, “But quite clearly he certainly misled us into believing that this [the Iraq war] was for a just and right cause.
“It’s a bit naïve to think we weren’t. It’s not as if it was just one or two people who don’t understand how the world works – we have got prominent people in the Establishment who agree they were misled.”
He added that despite Mr Blair’s “strident” tone in the press conference, he now struck rather a pitiful figure.
“He’s lost,” Mr Bacon said. “He doesn’t seem to know where he is at. Does anybody take him seriously? The impression you get is that he is a bit of a lost soul.
“He knows things aren’t right, but he’s got to justify his actions and make it appear that he was right and everyone else was wrong.”
Mr Blair’s press conference performance came after Mr Bacon’s wife Maureen had predicted to The Independent: “I am sure he [Mr Blair] will be well rehearsed again when the report comes out.”
The retired primary school teacher had added that Mr Blair “Will be able to go back to his family, but 179 families will live the rest of their lives without their sons or daughters. And then there are all those who were injured, and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died. And after all this time, Iraq is still in a dreadful state.”
Stressing how much she grieved for her “always smiling, always joking son”, Mrs Bacon had added: “It doesn’t get better. It gets worse. You don’t get over it. It doesn’t work that way when you have lost your child.”
Last March, Mr and Mrs Bacon had travelled to Iraq, to the spot where their son was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED).
Rejecting Mr Blair’s insistence that he would “never, ever accept that those troops who got injured or gave their lives did so in vain,” Mr Bacon said: “Having been on the ground, meeting people out there and seeing something of it, all I can say is that I do not think that what occurred in Iraq was worthwhile.
“Do I feel that Matthew lost his life in a worthwhile cause? The answer is no.”
