FORMER UK prime minister Tony Blair was heavily criticized in the official report of the inquiry into the 2003 Iraq War, which said his government overstated the threat posed by the then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, sent ill-prepared troops into battle and had "wholly inadequate" plans for the aftermath. Global Times commented on Thursday:

It is now a universal consensus that the 2003 Iraq War, which claimed the lives of 179 British soldiers, thousands of American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, was waged on the basis of flawed intelligence if not intentionally hyped misguidance.

The intervention in Iraq was not about eliminating weapons of mass destruction, as they didn't exist, but instead about overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein. Many in the West argued before the war that Iraq was not capable of developing nuclear weapons, nor had it long-range missiles and chemical and biological weapons.