With war in Iraq still raging, the inquiry casts the blame widely for a conflict that cost the lives of 179 British troops and, at the time of the British withdrawal in 2009, at least 150,000 Iraqis.

In exacting detail, the report lays out a series of failures and misjudgments in a war initially sold to the public on both sides of the Atlantic as a vital intervention to rid Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were ever found.

The report describes British intelligence painting a flawed picture of Iraqi military capacity, with agencies never considering that the weapons of mass destruction may not exist. The Iraqi leader, it said, posed “no imminent threat” to Britain.

In making their case to the public, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and other British officials described the case against Saddam Hussein “with a certainty that was not justified.” In their private deliberations, they ignored warnings that the invasion of Iraq could be a boon to Islamist extremists.