Former British prime minister, Tony Blair, has expressed “regret” that he did not challenge intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Tony Blair has voiced “more sorrow, regret, and apology than you may ever know or can believe” for his role in the invasion of Iraq.

Michael McFaul’s editorial piece on the Syrian crisis (Irish Examiner, December 24) is disingenuous to Russia, insensitive to Europeans and offensive to the thinking mind.

Brent crude hit an 11-year low of $36.20 this week, in part because Opec has ceased to function.

Tony Blair has apologised for aspects of the Iraq War, sparking claims of attempted “spin” ahead of the Chilcot Inquiry findings.

Hersh Tahir is speaking about the women who have been abducted and abused by IS but who have managed to escape.

Italian police in riot gear have forcibly removed a few dozen African migrants who had been camping out for days at the Mediterranean border with France.

Tariq Aziz, the debonair Iraqi diplomat who made his name by staunchly defending Saddam Hussein to the world during three wars and who was later sentenced to death as part of the regime that killed hundreds of thousands of its own people, has died in a hospital in southern Iraq, officials said. He was 79.

Iraqi officials say they believe government forces have killed the last remaining Saddam Hussein henchman on the run in Iraq.

The framework nuclear agreement with Iran has caused little consternation in Europe, but has got the US Republicans up in arms, writes Carl Bildt

The alleged planner of the Peshawar school massacre has been killed in a shootout, a Pakistani official has said.

I unreservedly condemn acts of terrorism including those which took place in Pakistan and Australia recently. 

During the reign of Saddam Hussein, Shias suffered terribly in Iraq. After the US invasion they were in command. And now they are fighting to hold off the threat of Isis. writes Janine Di Giovanni

Cork-based Ali Raza is haunted by a childhood of expulsion and war in Iraq, writes Ellie O’Byrne

The Islamic State’s staggering successes come at a cost. After all, it’s not cheap to wage war and manage territorial conquests whose population is now roughly the size of Austria’s.

A sanitised presentation of conflict on TV screens, and the use of unmanned drones to carry out attacks, leaves many people unaware of the full horror of war, writes Dan Buckley

ALBERT REYNOLDS was a unique taoiseach in that he was also a highly successful businessman. Unlike any of the other taoisigh who held the office since the foundation of the State, he came into politics on the back of a career as an entrepreneur.

US air strikes continued in Iraq yesterday as US Central Command said drones and jet aircraft hit Islamic State armed trucks and mortar positions near Irbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region.

THE summer holidays! Picnics and barbecues. Sunshine and beaches. Bombs and missiles. On the beach with my son the other day I wonder what it was like for those boys on the beach in Gaza, the bloodied ones running for their lives when the Israelis dropped the second bomb that killed them.

The unfolding debacle in Iraq has set off a furious — and drearily predictable — partisan dispute in Washington over who was more to blame: George W Bush or Barack Obama, writes Bill Powell

Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric yesterday stepped up the pressure on politicians to agree on Iraq’s next prime minister, after incumbent Nouri al-Maliki lost the confidence of former allies in the fight against Sunni militants.

Tony Blair has been criticised after claiming the violent insurgency in Iraq is not the result of the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Iraq’s Shi’ite clerical leadership yesterday called on all Iraqis to defend the country from Sunni militants who have seized large swaths of territory, and a UN official expressed "extreme alarm" at reprisal killings in the offensive, citing reports of hundreds of dead and wounded.

As our own history shows, chaos — or as the victors might call it, revolutionary restructuring and reeducation, often fills the vacuum left by a retreating imperial force.

Militants who seized large areas of Iraq’s Sunni heartland with lightning advances this week have pushed into an ethnically mixed province and captured two towns north east of Baghdad, officials said.

Islamic militants have vowed to march on Baghdad to settle old scores after seizing a number of cities and towns in Iraq.

Barack Obama threatened US military strikes in Iraq yesterday against Sunni Islamist militants who have surged out of the north to menace Baghdad and want to establish their own state in Iraq and Syria.

Al-Qaeda-inspired militants seized effective control of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, expanding their offensive closer to the Iraqi capital as mass beheadings were being reported.

Tony Leen was at Anfield 25 years ago tonight for the most remarkable league triumph in football history.

Tony Blair has played down an attempt by a bar worker to arrest him.

I AM conscious of the rush to action in Syria. I served in the FCA in the 1980s. It was brief and a debacle. I loathed firing guns. Our Lee-Enfield rifles kicked like mules. Embarrassingly, I was unable to ever hit my targets. No matter how wide or near the target, I could never perforate it with a bullet. Thankfully, I never hit anything by accident, either.

Naturist’s delight

A crazy golf course has been criticised for featuring models of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein on its nine-hole set.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for simultaneous raids on two Iraqi prisons and said more than 500 inmates had been set free in the operation, one of its most brazen in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein’s half brother, facing the gallows for his role as chief of the regime’s security service, has died of cancer in a Baghdad hospital.

Rockets and mortar rounds struck a refugee camp for Iranian exiles next to Baghdad’s international airport today, killing six people and wounding about 40, police and UN officials said.

Truth is, retired Gen H Norman Schwarzkopf didn’t care much for his popular “Stormin’ Norman” nickname.

Retired US General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded the international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in 1991, has died. He was 78.

Executed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein once gave a £840,000 (€1.4m) fortune to the father of a Briton who was murdered in an Alps massacre, it has been claimed.

Former Arsenal star Anders Limpar has claimed working under his old Arsenal boss George Graham was “like living in Iraq under Saddam [Hussein]”.

A nephew of Saddam Hussein has been detained in Austria and taken to a “safe place” to protect him from possible attack by Iraqis with grievances against the former dictator.

Saddam Hussein’s trusted personal secretary and bodyguard was executed by hanging today, the Iraqi justice ministry said.