BY HAMZA A. BAJWA
Tony Blair was unrepentant during the gruelling six-hour session at the Chilcott inquiry and said that not only did he feel no regret over the invasion of Iraq but confirmed he would do it all again.
"Responsibility, but not regret," was his answer to the question of whether he regretted anything about his decision towards the end of the session.
Mr Blair and his closest supporters have come under increasing fire following a series of revelations as the inquiry continues to scrutinise the circumstances surrounding the decision to go to war.
Ex-International Development Secretary Clare Short told the inquiry that Mr Blair's cabinet had been "misled".
She also claimed that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had been "leaned on" to change his advice before the invasion, and that "everything was done on a wing and a prayer".
Unlike the round of applause given to Ms Short after her three-hour examination, Mr Blair was at one stage heckled by members of the audience.
When leaving, however, he was booed by some members of the public with two women shouting "you are a liar" and "you are a murderer".
Prior to and during his grilling, large protests were also underway around the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre.
Blair insisted that Saddam Hussein was a "monster and I believe he threatened not just the region but the world".
"If we had left Saddam in power, even knowing what we know now, we would still have had to deal with him... we have a completely new security environment today.
"I am sorry it was divisive and I tried my level best to bring people back together again. If I am asked whether Iraq is better, I believe in time to come, if it becomes the country its people want to see, we can look back with an immense sense of pride."
The only thing he was sorry about was that it was "divisive".
"I'm sorry about that, and I tried my level best to bring people back to together again.
"In time to come, if Iraq becomes the country its people want to see, then we can look back - and the armed forces in particular - can look back in pride."
And he did admit learning some lessons. Future leaders bent on invading "semi-fascist" countries should "assume the worst", he said.
Asked why Lord Goldsmith, after initially saying he thought it would be illegal, in line with all government lawyers at the time, made a statement saying it would be legal a week before the invasion began, Mr Blair said the attorney general "had to come to a conclusion".
He also insisted that Iraq did have a WMD programme.
"It was at least reasonable for me at the time, given this evidence of what the JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] was telling me, that this was a threat I should take very seriously," he said.
"All the intelligence we received was to the same effect. There were people perfectly justifiably and sensibly also saying that you cannot sit around and wait ... you have got to take action clearly and definitively.
"I decided that this intelligence justified our [understanding] that Saddam continued to pose a significant WMD threat."
Blair's only concession was that tabloid headlines in the run-up to the war that Iraq had weapons it could deploy in 45 minutes should have been corrected by the government.
But he maintained that the figure only later took on a significance that had not been appreciated at the time.
He acknowledged "things obviously look quite different" now given the failure to discover any weapons after the invasion.
He also rejected claims he manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion.
He also repeatedly pointed to Iran posing a current threat to the region because it assist terrorist organisations.
A "tough line" was needed against with Iran, he said, accusing it of colluding with al-Qa'ida to destabilise Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion.
"When I look at the way Iran links up with terror groups, a large part of the destabilisation in the Middle East comes from Iran.
"There are very strong links between terrorist organisations and states that will sponsor them. There are those states, Iran in particular, which are linked to this extreme and misguided view of Islam," he told the inquiry.
Mr Blair also said the government had planned effectively, but conceded that the problem was the Iraqi civil service was a "completely broken system".
He told the inquiry: "I think in the future you're best to make this assumption - that if we're required to go into this type of situation, you might as well assume the worst, actually.
"Because you are dealing with states that are very repressive, deeply secretive. Power is controlled by a very small number of people and it's always going to be tough."
Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot said that the lesson "may have turned out to be an expensive" one.
But the bloody aftermath of the war evidently did not affect Mr Blair's belief in it.
"Nobody would want to go back to the days when they had no freedom, no opportunity and no hope," he said.
"We do have to take our responsibility seriously in these situations... but the lesson out of it in my view is you've got to be prepared for the long haul. You've got to be prepared to stick it out to the end."