As time flies, it may be difficult for people to understand the details of the scandal brewing in the UK over the illegality of war actions against Iraq.
The damning revelation is contained in the resignation letter of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a legal adviser at the Foreign Office, in which she said the war would be a "crime of aggression".
Here you'll find an outline of the legal smokes and mirror game that Blair was forced to engage in, prior to attacking Iraq, as his Attorney General was unable to find solid justification for declaring war on Iraq.
Forced to pretend that parts of the AG's reasons should be kept secret (since they didn't stand the light of day) Blair told Parliament that the country was legally justified in joining the attack on Iraq, and thus secured the support of the legislators in a close vote.
Subsequently, Blair and his cohorts have done what they could to keep the public in the dark as to the Attorney General's doubts. However, recent releases of documents and statements by central players are casting the government, and Blair, in the role of international aggressors. The ramifications of the recent disclosures will go far.
Attorney General Goldsmith had indicated that he could not find justification for an attack on Iraq without a second UN Security Council Resolution.
Washington was furious, and Goldsmith was told to reconsider the available "evidence." Outside counsel was sought, and a redraft document was presented to Blair, where a number of higly doubtful legal maneuvers were conducted. These maneuvers forced the resignation of Robin Cook, then majority leader in Parliament and also the resignations of various other highly placed officials.
Blair was under pressure, as his High Command had declared that it would not commit forces unless it was made clear, under international law, that an attack on Iraq was justified.
The UK had signed the International War Criminals Act and UK officers were therefore unwilling to engage in action that would make them open to charges of war crimes.
Goldsmith created an elaborate argument, using UN Security Council Resolutions 678, 687 and 1441.
678 was the 1990 Resolution condoning action against Iraq in order to force the country to abandon Kuwait and withdraw into Iraq.
687 was the ruling passed following the conclusion of Operation Desert Storm. 687 suspended, without ending, the right to use force against Iraq in accordance with 678. If Iraq could be shown to be in contravention of the conditions of 687, then the right to apply force according to 678 was automatically implemented.
In 2002, the Security Council ruled that Iraq had not obeyed previous restrictions. This ruling by the SC was based on charges subsequently shown to be false re. WMD, but at the time, they resulted in a resolution that went against Iraq.
To the surprise of most parties, the Iraqis went along with full inspections inside Iraq, in order to avoid having the right to attack, according to 687/678 reinstated.
But the US and the UK had made up their minds. Bush wanted to attack Iraq, and Attorney General Goldsmith had to make the ruling that there was "material breach" against 1441, thus opening the way to go backwards to 678 and launch an attack on Iraq, under the pretext that this attack was justified, according to international law.
The enormous scandal now brewing in the UK goes back to whether information was withheld from AG Goldsmith, in order to make him rule that Iraq was in material breach. If so, then the attack on Iraq was an act of international aggression, wholly unjustified, and the perpetrators of such an attack would then be war criminals.
This is why the US and the UK were desperate to find evidence of WMD inside Iraq once Saddam fell, and why they went to measures such as Abu Ghraib and other despicable contraventions of the Geneva Convention and their own Rules of Engagement. They were desperate to find some justification for their attack, as they knew that an Iraq without WMD could spell endless troubles for them once the facts became known.
Following Kay and Duelfer's findings, as well as Hans Blix's conviction that there were no WMD, Blair is finding himself in the hotseat as more and more revelations are made as to the manner in which he single-handedly steered the country to war, against the available evidence, in order to do Bush's bidding.
If the Tories hadn't supported the war against Iraq, then Blair would be finished by now. Yet, with elections coming up, Blair finds himself under increasing fire, and greater and greater criticism.
Attorney General Goldsmith was convinced that a second UN resolution was required, before armed action could legally be undertaken against Iraq. Blair and Bush tried, but failed in getting UN support for a second resolution, they then manipulated the letter, tenet and intent of international law in order to justify their naked aggression against Iraq, based on trumped up, falsified and invented claims as to Iraqi WMD capabilities.
Today, a couple of years later, many thousands of lives later and hundreds of billions of dollars later, Blair's action is bound to be a stigma against his reputation forever.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=623125