* "This isn’t about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception. It’s a decision. I had to take the decision. I believed, and in the end the Cabinet believed - so did Parliament incidentally - that we were right not to run that risk."

* "The decision I took - and frankly would take again - was if there was any possibility that he could develop weapons of mass destruction we should stop him. That was my view then and that is my view now."

* "This is a profoundly wicked, I would say almost psychopathic, man [Saddam Hussein]. We were obviously worried that after him his two sons seemed to be as bad, if not worse."

* "The point about those acts in New York is that, had they been able to kill more people than the 3,000, they would have. My view was you can't take risks with this issue."

* "Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons who were going to follow him in charge of Iraq - he had used chemical weapons, caused the death of over a million people.”

* On his claim in the dossier that Iraq possessed WMD: "What I said in the foreword was that I believed I was beyond doubt. I did believe it and I did believe that it was beyond doubt."