Snapshot on Chilcot II: "Well, maybe he should have listened to the BBC"

From tonight's PM on Radio 4:

Hugh Sykes: That's interesting. We've heard Tony Blair saying "the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. People in Iraq might say, 'Well, the world is, but Iraq is not'. 

And just down the road from here - Saturday night, Sunday morning - there was a massive bomb explosion. It killed...we're not quite sure how many people. People have almost lost count. 150? 250? 250 is the latest estimate - the worst single bomb attack since 2003. 

Tony Blair also said just now, didn't he, "the aftermath was more bloody and hostile than we ever imagined"? Well, maybe he should have listened to the BBC because in 2002 - in July 2002, well before the decision to invade was made - I interviewed an analyst in Jordan and he said to me...and I'm just remembering this verbatim. I haven't even written it down. I haven't listened to the tape for a while...He said, "If the Americans and the British invade Iraq there will be such a wave of suicide bombings that you cannot imagine it". 

Well, we know there was. He was right. Why were the diplomats and the politicians, in Britain and America, not listening more closely to people who could have told them, 'Don't do this, without being very, very careful about what happens after you win? Because if you win you'll lose, because there'll be a vacuum and it will be filled with extremely dangerous people - some of whom will be ex-Saddam supporters - members of the armed forces which were disbanded, the police who were disbanded. Some of them will be Al Qaeda in Iraq'. 

And all that, of course, has now morphed into ISIS, the Islamic State, who set off that terrible bomb in Karrada, here in Baghdad, over the weekend.