Your report (Blair was ‘not straight on Iraq war’ – Chilcot, 7 July) adds nothing to what we know about Tony Blair and the Iraq war but says something about the mindset of people like Sir John Chilcot, and should make us doubly wary about the appointment of another senior civil servant to head the Grenfell Tower inquiry. The inordinate amount of time taken by the inquiry and the absurd length of the final report amounted to an obstruction of justice and has meant that Chilcot himself is no stranger to self-justification.

When he reported to parliament in July 2016 the statement from Chilcot was widely viewed as damning. Translating “mandarin” into English, he concluded that Tony Blair lied to the British people about the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and its possession of nuclear and chemical weapons and that he took the country into an illegal war at the behest of the US, to whom he had professed support.

Although continuing with his critical comments in the reported interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Chilcot adds that Tony Blair spoke “emotional truth”. People in Chilcot’s position may find it emotionally and professionally unacceptable to say that other servants of the state, particularly those in powerful positions like a prime minister, have actually lied. I translate “emotional truth” here to mean the lies Blair told, with evident determination, to get around an obstruction to his own interests. In ordinary language these are just plain, unadorned lies.

Tony Booth

Cambridge

• You report that Sir John Chilcot, the chairman of the public inquiry into the Iraq war, considers that Tony Blair “had … been ‘emotionally truthful’ in his account of events leading up to the war”. He goes on to say that “Blair is always and ever an advocate. He makes the most persuasive case he can. Not departing from the truth but persuasion is everything.”

On 7 September 2002, Tony Blair met President Bush at Camp David. The Washington Post reported the next day that Blair said “the threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability – that threat is real. We need only to look at the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites to realise that”. Bush made some remarks about an IAEA report showing that Iraq was only six months away from a nuclear bomb.

There was no report from the IAEA about Iraq on 7 September 2002. The IAEA statement saying that the Iraqis were six months away from a nuclear weapon came from an IAEA report in 1996 and referred to the situation in 1991.

“Emotionally truthful”? “Not departing from the truth”? It doesn’t seem like that to me. The word “lies” seems more appropriate.

Norman Dombey

Brighton

• Unfortunately, it is your headline “quotation” that is “not straight”. Laura Kuenssberg had tried to put words into Sir John’s mouth and his actual response, as quoted accurately in the body of the text, was: “I think any prime minister ... has got to be straight with the nation and carry it … with him … I don’t believe that that was the case in the Iraq instance.”

At no point did Sir John say Blair was “not straight on [the] Iraq war”. Indeed, he said clearly that Blair had not departed from the truth. There are two elements in Sir John’s reply. In view of his statement regarding the veracity of Blair’s account, the most likely and best interpretation of Sir John’s words is that Blair was straight, as any prime minister would have to be over such a serious matter, but that, in Sir John’s opinion, he failed to take the nation with him.

Clearly, the prime minister failed to carry some of the nation with him. One can only wonder where this story would be if weapons of mass destruction had been found, as was anticipated by virtually everyone at the time. It was an intelligence failure that led directly to war, not a casual desire by Blair to smear his reputation for ever. As for the bloody aftermath, that lies squarely on the shoulders of Paul Bremer, the man who deliberately collapsed the Iraqi state.

Roy Boffy

Sutton Coldfield

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