I will be with you, whatever.

— Prime Minister Tony Blair in a private note to President George W. Bush on July 28, 2002.

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British coverage of the report on Wednesday quickly focused on Mr. Blair’s promise to Mr. Bush, perhaps because it confirmed what many Britons saw at the time as a cozy and uncritical relationship with the American leader that included a commitment to war long before other avenues of pressure on Saddam Hussein had been explored.

News reports of Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush together at Camp David in Maryland and at other places, often dressed informally, moreover, seemed to confirm the idea that the eloquent Mr. Blair had become a global ambassador for American plans, even though many Britons disagreed with the idea of going to war.

At home, Mr. Blair depended on opposition Conservative lawmakers to

win support for his contention that the purpose of war was to disarm Mr. Hussein of unconventional weapons, even though such arms were never found.

A parliamentary vote on Feb. 26, 2003, exposed deep divisions in Mr. Blair’s governing Labour Party, with around 120 of its lawmakers (nearly one-third) supporting a dissenting motion that the case for military action was “as yet unproven.”

Beyond the rowdy session in Parliament on that day, an estimated one million Britons demonstrated in the streets of London on Feb. 15, 2003, joining similar antiwar demonstrations across Europe.

At that time, Britain, Portugal and Spain supported Mr. Bush, but the Western European heavyweights France and Germany did not.

When John Chilcot, the leader of the inquiry, said that Mr. Blair had overestimated his ability to influence Mr. Bush, the finding recalled protesters’ taunts in 2003 that the British leader had become a “poodle” of his American

counterpart.

At the time, protesters frequently reversed two letters in Mr. Blair’s surname to label him “Bliar.”