"If I am asked whether I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better, with Saddam and his two sons out of office and out of power, I believe indeed we are.
"It was better to deal with this threat, to remove him from office, and I do genuinely believe that the world is safer as a result."
Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, in front of the same inquiry said that there was such a surge of warnings of home-grown terrorist threats after the invasion of Iraq that MI5 asked for – and got – a 100 per cent increase in its budget. Baroness Manningham-Buller, who was director general of MI5 in 2002-07, told the Chilcot panel that MI5 started receiving a "substantially" higher volume of reports that young British Muslims being drawn to al-Qa'ida.
She told the inquiry: "Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people – a few among a generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam."
She added: "Arguably we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before."
So was the world and/or the UK safer after the invasion, maybe the Chilcot Inquiry should recall Tony Blair and ask him about Eliza Manningham-Buller's evidence.
After being asked about the above, maybe he could be asked about Eliza Manningham-Buller's comments regarding the dossier that "We were asked to put in some low-grade, small intelligence to it and we refused because we didn't think it was reliable"
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