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Blair: I would have removed Saddam Hussein anyway

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he would have taken the decision to remove Saddam Hussein even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In an excerpt from a BBC interview to be aired Sunday, Blair said: "I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat."

Blair, who left office in 2007 and now serves as a special envoy to the Middle East, will be questioned next year at an inquiry into Britain's role in the 2003 conflict.

At the time of the conflict the British government based its decision to go to war on evidence, contained within a dossier it published in September 2002, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) ready to deploy within 45 minutes.

Read entire article at CNN