Prime Minister Jean Chrétien refused to take Canada into Gulf War II in 2003. He was criticised by former Prime Minister Mulroney, because for the first time ever, Canada did not join with its traditional allies, the US, the UK and Australia when they all went to war.
And yet, as summarised by the Chilcot Report:
• The UK chose to join the invasion before peaceful options had been exhausted;
• Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein;
• Blair promised George Bush: ’I will be with you, whatever’;
• The decision to invade was made in unsatisfactory circumstances;
• George Bush largely ignored UK advice on postwar planning;
• There was no imminent threat from Saddam;
• Britain’s intelligence agencies produced ‘flawed information’;
• The UK military were ill-equipped for the task;
• UK-US relations would not have been harmed if UK stayed out of war;
• Blair ignored warnings on what would happen in Iraq after invasion;
• The government had no post-invasion strategy;
• The UK had no influence on Iraq’s postwar US-run administration;
• The UK did not achieve its objectives in Iraq;
• The government did not try hard enough to keep a tally of Iraqi civilian casualties.
And most significantly: the untold number of Iraqis who died, estimated to be perhaps half a million.
Merci, Monsieur Chrétien, for keeping us out of that god-awful war.