Mr Blair denied that he had deceived the country or Parliament about the reasons for going to war, or over Iraq’s ability to launch WMD. He defended his assertion in the notorious dossier of September 2002, which made the case for war, that the intelligence services had established “beyond doubt” that Saddam had WMD. “I did believe it and I did believe it was beyond doubt,” he said. “It was hard to come to any other conclusion than that this person is continuing WMD programmes.”