Blair’s administration originally used WMDs to justify going to war, leaving the public feeling that the former minister had entered Iraq under false pretenses, using the language that was most convenient at the time.

Blair maintains that Saddam Hussein’s presence in the region would have been enough of a threat to justify the war.

“I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean, obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat,” Blair told the BBC.

The target of the attack appeared to be Ahmed Subhi al-Fahal, the head of the city’s anti-riot squad.

The bomber struck on a busy street in the town, some 95 miles (150km) north of the capital, Baghdad.

Reports said at least two of the others killed were Mr Fahal’s bodyguards, who were accompanying him while he shopped.

“The attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, who was wearin

The bomber detonated an explosive belt inside a funeral tent in the mostly Sunni area of Haditha, about 140 miles (220 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad. At least 15 people were injured, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

The funeral was for a member of the al-Jaghaifa tribe, which is split between members of the police and military and supporters of the Sunni insurgency.

Haditha is located in Anbar Province, which was once a stronghold for the Sunni insurgency but became a key battleground for U.S.-led forces after many tribes turned against al-Qaida in Iraq and other groups.

Parliament officials have scheduled a Thursday session to seek some compromises in the three-way dispute that has held up critical laws on oil investment and increased worries about more ethnic-driven violence. But each side — Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen clans — has shown little sign of giving in as they did in January’s races for provincial councils.

At stake is political control of Iraq’s northern oil field and its hub city. But the Kirkuk showdown is further tangled by historical claims and rivalries in one of Iraq’s most ethnically mixed regions.

And in more than six years, that is what Americans have created here: cities in the sand.

With American troops moved out of Iraq’s cities and more than 100 bases across the country continuing to close or to be turned over to Iraq, the 130,000 American troops here will increasingly fall back to these larger bases.