What happened
The Chilcot Inquiry, which reported in 2016 after a 7-year investigation, was unambiguous: the decision to go to war was made before UN inspectors had finished their work, was based on intelligence that Blair knew was uncertain, and was driven by a personal commitment to support George W. Bush regardless of what the evidence showed.
The Iraq War had consequences beyond the 179 British military deaths and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths. It destabilised an entire region, created the conditions for the rise of ISIS, and shattered public trust in political institutions. The lie — and the Hutton and Butler reviews\' subsequent whitewashing of it — also significantly damaged the BBC when it accurately reported government doubts about the dossier's claims.
Blame for the government's conduct is not mitigated by the fact that Saddam Hussein was a dictator. The justification given to Parliament was WMDs. None were found. The justification was false.