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BAGHDAD: Many Iraqis were unaware on Friday that Tony Blair was facing a public grilling in London, and those who had heard of the Chilcot inquiry thought it came too late to benefit their war-wrecked country.
"I don't think this will lead to anything because the damage is already done," said Sami Ali Hamadi, 57, a retired government worker from the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in northern Baghdad, referring to Blair's testimony.
The former prime minister's appearance at the inquiry into Britain's involvement in the war was not screened on Iraqi television and has gained only low key coverage on the inside pages of local newspapers in Baghdad.
Hamadi said the invasion was launched on a false prospectus in 2003 by then US president George W. Bush and his staunchest ally, Blair, to rid the country of now executed dictator Saddam Hussein.
"The aggression against Iraq was based on the belief that we had weapons of mass destruction, but we did not have any," said Hamadi.
"It was an excuse, manufactured by Bush and his poodle Blair to suit their purposes of ousting Saddam."
Hamadi's friend, Abbas Massud Moussa, 59, said he believed Iraq is a better place without Saddam and his regime, but he was still critical of Blair's actions in the lead-up to the invasion.
"As a country we are now going in the right direction to achieve democracy, but that does not put right what happened," said Moussa, a schoolteacher in Sadr City, where horse-drawn carts convey the neighbourhood's primitive surroundings and often abject poverty.
"Blair should have used another way. He should have supported people within Iraq who could have brought down Saddam. The invasion was unjust," he added.
In Adhamiyah, a Sunni district in northern Baghdad where Saddam made his last public appearance as president and where the human scars of war are everywhere, young people in particular were unaware of Blair's testimony.
Marwan Abdul Razak, 21, who lost his lower left leg in a car bomb two years ago but continues to work as an ice-seller, said he was too busy to think about whether the inquiry would achieve anything.
"My father was killed by the Mahdi army," said Razak, standing with the aid of crutches and referring to a now dormant Shiite militia loyal to the radical, anti-US Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which is said to have carried out thousands of sectarian killings at the height of Iraq's insurgency.
"Now I just concentrate on my job. I don't follow the news."
At a nearby tea shop, however, Abu Senan, a 55-year-old unemployed labourer, was aware that Blair was due to give evidence and was hopeful it would hold him to account.
"The inquiry was not motivated by the British government's conscience," said Senan, sipping tea and wearing a long wool coat and green and white scarf to keep out the cold.
"The war happened and we did not have the capability to make weapons of mass destruction, but I hope the British or Blair will finally reveal to the world the fact that they knew this."
Abu Senan's friend, Abu Alaa, a 62-year-old labourer, said the inquiry, chaired by retired civil servant Sir John Chilcot, did not have sufficient powers to hold Blair to account for his actions.
"The British should put Blair in the dock of a just court to reach a result that will be accepted," Alaa said.
"He should be sentenced for mistakes because the mistakes he made were big. They were the mistakes of an ignorant man."
In the capital's commercial district of Karrada, meanwhile, mobile telephone trader Muaid Fahad, 50, said the inquiry was irrelevant.
"It is not in our hands," he said. "Whether it was Bush or Blair the war was an assault on Iraq. Their first option was to invade, and that was their conclusion." - AFP/de
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