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Lord Goldsmith's Papers on Iraq - Trouble for Blair over the legality of the Iraq War

Well it looks like the debate over the Iraq War has been given new life over in the UK with the release of Lord Goldsmith's papers outlining his legal advice to Tony Blair before the war...

BBC Analysis of the papers and the implications:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politi...ge/4482029.stm

Quote:

Analysis: Iraq war legality
The full advice that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith gave to the prime minister before the Iraq war has been published on the Downing Street website.

The 7 March 2003 advice examines possible doubts and arguments about the legality of the war that were not published at the time.

Of course with all the political campagining going on there was bound to be a statement by the Tories about the Iraq War... to bad Howard comes off sounding like Bush...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politi...ge/4497777.stm

Quote:

Last Updated: Friday, 29 April, 2005, 15:40 GMT 16:40 UK

Howard stance on Iraq 'unlawful'

Experts in international law have criticised Tory leader Michael Howard's stance on the Iraq war as "unlawful".

Mr Howard told a BBC Question Time Special he would have invaded Iraq even if he had known then Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

If find it particularlly interesting that the arguement for "regime change" was discounted because of it's illegality in international law... as well as the arguement that discounting France's veto, and going to war wouldn't be exactly legal either...

However most interesting is the hardening or change that Lord Goldsmith's report went through, so that a week later all these legal issues where gone and the UK declared war.

You know, not to knock the investigation or anything, because this is serious when the system is abused for the wrong reasons, but the whole title "the war was illegal" just makes me laugh. Since when do we all sit down and decide that any war is good and legal? It's just funny to use a civilized term such as legal in the same sentence as war to me...

Quote:

Originally posted by RUgreek
You know, not to knock the investigation or anything, because this is serious when the system is abused for the wrong reasons, but the whole title "the war was illegal" just makes me laugh. Since when do we all sit down and decide that any war is good and legal? It's just funny to use a civilized term such as legal in the same sentence as war to me...

Exactly. "International law", and what it says is legal is always tempered by who has the biggest guns. The later always gets the final say :)

Well part of the controversy surrounding the papers, aside from the arguements about the legality of the war, are the implications that some political pressure may have been made to sway Lord Goldsmith to be more in line with Blair and US policy - implications that if they continue to dog the political campaign could be very damaging to the Labour Party and Tony Blair.

Since the war ended a while ago and these papers are miraculously becoming newsworthy right before the elections next week, I don't think either side is interested in the truth or the legality of the Iraqi war. It's all about politics and not about doing the right thing. Blair will win this election and this will become yesterday's news like the hunt for Osama Bin ... hmm, who was that guy again?

Quote:

Originally posted by RUgreek
Since the war ended a while ago and these papers are miraculously becoming newsworthy right before the elections next week, I don't think either side is interested in the truth or the legality of the Iraqi war. It's all about politics and not about doing the right thing. Blair will win this election and this will become yesterday's news like the hunt for Osama Bin ... hmm, who was that guy again?

Of course it's not about truth or legality; it's politics.

I'm sure gassing and killing Kurds and Iranians was legal and so was the UN abuse of the Iraq oil for food programs.

-Rudey

Quote:

Originally posted by Rudey
Of course it's not about truth or legality; it's politics.

I'm sure gassing and killing Kurds and Iranians was legal and so was the UN abuse of the Iraq oil for food programs.

-Rudey

I'd say it's more about the politics off truth and legality - if the Blair government could be shown to have maniupulated truth and legality to fit a political adgenda then they'll fall; either by the public or the Queen (it has happened before). But on the other hand if Blair can successfully defend himself in the face of these attacks/accusations it'll most likely end up strengthening his position politically.

The gassing and killing of Kurds isn't a UK issue, after-all they didn't supply the chemical weapons (that'd been the US)... however there has been some mention of the Oil for Food scandal - as some contributers to the Labour Party have been implicated.

PS> You might be interested to note that asylum seekers from Darfur where protesting outside of 10 Downing Street asking for more UK support of the peacekeeping efforts in Sudan.

Quote:

Originally posted by RACooper
I'd say it's more about the politics off truth and legality - if the Blair government could be shown to have maniupulated truth and legality to fit a political adgenda then they'll fall; either by the public or the Queen (it has happened before). But on the other hand if Blair can successfully defend himself in the face of these attacks/accusations it'll most likely end up strengthening his position politically.

The gassing and killing of Kurds isn't a UK issue, after-all they didn't supply the chemical weapons (that'd been the US)... however there has been some mention of the Oil for Food scandal - as some contributers to the Labour Party have been implicated.

PS> You might be interested to note that asylum seekers from Darfur where protesting outside of 10 Downing Street asking for more UK support of the peacekeeping efforts in Sudan.

What do you mean by the Queen?

-Rudey

Quote:

Originally posted by Rudey
What do you mean by the Queen?

-Rudey

Technically it is in the power of Royal Prerogative to remove a Prime Minister (ie. forced to retire) from office and appoint a new one to govern until a new one is elected (either by party or general election). While convention and practice general prohibit this - the last PM summarilly booted was back in 1834 - it could conceivably happen either through back channels (during the weekly meetings between the Queen and PM + Cabinet) or openly by the Monarchy issueing a statement "disapproving" the continued leadership of the PM, which whould cause the PM's party to boot him and replace him.

Techninaclly these are some of the same political powers of Canada's Governor General (as the representative of the Queen), but they are rarely exercised - except in cases of political scandal and/or political instability.

Well it looks like more documents being leaked in the UK show both the reservations of the British government - and of the concern that the US was determined to go to war with Iraq regardless of international opinion or intelligence.

Link to article covering the debate:
Memos Show British Concern Over Iraq Plans
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...g_street_memos

Quote:

By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 22 minutes ago

LONDON - When Prime Minister
Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser dined with
Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11, the then-U.S. national security adviser didn't want to discuss
Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida. She wanted to talk about "regime change" in
Iraq, setting the stage for the U.S.-led invasion more than a year later.

President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate about Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein.

In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and compelling military reason for war.

"U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing," Ricketts says in the memo. "For Iraq, `regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."

The documents confirm Blair was genuinely concerned about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, but also indicate he was determined to go to war as America's top ally, even though his government thought a pre-emptive attack may be illegal under international law.

"The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September," said a typed copy of a March 22, 2002 memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press and written to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

"But even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW (chemical or biological weapons) fronts: the programs are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up."

Details from Rice's dinner conversation also are included in one of the secret memos from 2002, which reveal British concerns about both the invasion and poor postwar planning by the Bush administration, which critics say has allowed the Iraqi insurgency to rage.

The eight memos — all labeled "secret" or "confidential" — were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

The AP obtained copies of six of the memos (the other two have circulated widely). A senior British official who reviewed the copies said their content appeared authentic. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secret nature of the material.

The eight documents total 36 pages and range from 10-page and eight-page studies on military and legal options in Iraq, to brief memorandums from British officials and the minutes of a private meeting held by Blair and his top advisers.

Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert who teaches at Queen Mary College, University of London, said the documents confirmed what post-invasion investigations have found.

"The documents show what official inquiries in Britain already have, that the case of weapons of mass destruction was based on thin intelligence and was used to inflate the evidence to the level of mendacity," Dodge said. "In going to war with Bush, Blair defended the special relationship between the two countries, like other British leaders have. But he knew he was taking a huge political risk at home. He knew the war's legality was questionable and its unpopularity was never in doubt."

Dodge said the memos also show Blair was aware of the postwar instability that was likely among Iraq's complex mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds once Saddam was defeated.

The British documents confirm, as well, that "soon after 9/11 happened, the starting gun was fired for the invasion of Iraq," Dodge said.

Speculation about if and when that would happen ran throughout 2002.

On Jan. 29, Bush called Iraq, Iran and North Korea "an axis of evil." U.S. newspapers began reporting soon afterward that a U.S.-led war with Iraq was possible.

On Oct. 16, the U.S. Congress voted to authorize Bush to go to war against Iraq. On Feb. 5, 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the Bush administration's case about Iraq's weapons to the U.N. Security Council. On March 19-20, the U.S.-led invasion began.

Bush and Blair both have been criticized at home since their WMD claims about Iraq proved false. But both have been re-elected, defending the conflict for removing a brutal dictator and promoting democracy in Iraq. Both administrations have dismissed the memos as old news.

Details of the memos appeared in papers early last month but the news in Britain quickly turned to the election that returned Blair to power. In the United States, however, details of the memos' contents reignited a firestorm, especially among Democratic critics of Bush.

It was in a March 14, 2002, memo that Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, David Manning, told the prime minister about the dinner he had just had with Rice in Washington.

"We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq," wrote Manning, who's now British ambassador to the United States. Rice is now Bush's secretary of state.

"It is clear that Bush is grateful for your (Blair's) support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States. And you would not budge either in your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option."

Manning said, "Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed." But he also said there were signs of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks.

Blair was to meet with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on April 8, and Manning told his boss: "No doubt we need to keep a sense of perspective. But my talks with Condi convinced me that Bush wants to hear your views on Iraq before taking decisions. He also wants your support. He is still smarting from the comments by other European leaders on his Iraq policy."

A July 21 briefing paper given to officials preparing for a July 23 meeting with Blair says officials must "ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks."

"In particular we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective... A postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point."

The British worried that, "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden. Further work is required to define more precisely the means by which the desired end state would be created, in particular what form of government might replace Saddam Hussein's regime and the time scale within which it would be possible to identify a successor."

In the March 22 memo from Foreign Office political director Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Straw, Ricketts outlined how to win public and parliamentary support for a war in Britain: "We have to be convincing that: the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for; it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran)."

Blair's government has been criticized for releasing an intelligence dossier on Iraq before the war that warned Saddam could launch chemical or biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice.

On March 25 Straw wrote a memo to Blair, saying he would have a tough time convincing the governing Labour Party that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq was legal under international law.

"If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the U.S. would now be considering military action against Iraq," Straw wrote. "In addition, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with OBL (Osama bin Laden) and al-Qaida."

He also questioned stability in a post-Saddam Iraq: "We have also to answer the big question — what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything."

___

On the Net:

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/fcolegal020308.pdf

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/manning020314.pdf

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/meyer020318.pdf

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/ods020308.pdf

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/ricketts020322.pdf

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/dowdoc/straw020325.pdf

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...648758,00.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...593607,00.html

The links listed at the end of the article are the links to copies of the documents/memos in question...

Brother Cooper, while this is all so interesting, it is an after the fact statements arent they?

The Members of The USA Military are losing many more Members as there are More there. Second guessing is a wonderfull thing.

As far as I am concerned, pull out all troops from all Nations and Drop a Big One on them!:mad: Make a glass table top of the damn place.

Until this little penney anti Country starts trying to protect them selves, what is it worth? The Oil. Hell, why do you think France and Germany back them? That was where they were gettting their oil?:( 7 %? ) Screw Them!

Now Brother Cooper, Name The Quoters:

1. To be Vanquised and yet not Surrender, that is a Victory".

2. The World continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout heats and sharp words.

3. If he cannot fly a good jet__and he hasnt the heart to be of a hunter--he'll never be a fighter pilot.

Do I have sympathy for them NO! They cannot get their Heads out of the sand, their so-called religion, or their collective asses.

I am not or ever will degrad what Canadians ever did in fighting many wars, there were Heros enough to go around.

We screwed up by not taking it when We had a chance! What War Bro?

:confused:

Who envaded and what was the name of the fighting force!?;)

Quote:

Originally posted by Tom Earp
Brother Cooper, while this is all so interesting, it is an after the fact statements arent they?

The Members of The USA Military are losing many more Members as there are More there. Second guessing is a wonderfull thing.

While it may be after the fact, that doesn't mean that the concerns and issues raised within the memos are invalid - because they speak to the motivations behind the war, and the concern that the post-war occupation wasn't being dealt with... which do speak to the current situation in that the people that pushed for it and failed to properly plan are still currently in charge of planning and policy - which then leads one to ponder on the current policies and planning (or at least I hope it does).

Quote:

As far as I am concerned, pull out all troops from all Nations and Drop a Big One on them!:mad: Make a glass table top of the damn place.

Until this little penney anti Country starts trying to protect them selves, what is it worth? The Oil. Hell, why do you think France and Germany back them? That was where they were gettting their oil?:( 7 %? ) Screw Them!

I personally wish that more of the planners looked into the history or Iraq, and the problems that the Biritsh Empire had when dealing with a 50 year insurgency - the problem now is that the troops on the ground are dealing with the results of poor planning and flawed policy - case in point would have been Rumsfeld's policy about the total number of troops needed to provide security for Iraq in the post combat phase; by providing only pockets of control and security, and failing to secure the borders, following the defeat of the Iraqi military it created a power vacuum that the current isurgents where able to coalese in and exploit - perhaps if greater consideration was given to the analysts from outside of the administration's inner circle or supporters the insurgency problem may not be as bad as it is now.

Quote:

Now Brother Cooper, Name The Quoters:

1. To be Vanquised and yet not Surrender, that is a Victory".

2. The World continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout heats and sharp words.

3. If he cannot fly a good jet__and he hasnt the heart to be of a hunter--he'll never be a fighter pilot.

No idea who said any of the above...

Quote:

Do I have sympathy for them NO! They cannot get their Heads out of the sand, their so-called religion, or their collective asses.

Now Brother Earp while you may feel anger over the current state of affairs over in Iraq - there is NO reason why you should be insulting the faith of Islam :(

Quote:

I am not or ever will degrad what Canadians ever did in fighting many wars, there were Heros enough to go around.

We screwed up by not taking it when We had a chance! What War Bro?

:confused:

Who envaded and what was the name of the fighting force!?;)

Again taking what Tom? ;)

As for who invaded and the name of the fighting force you'll have to be a little more specific - which war, and which year.

Quote:

Originally posted by RUgreek
Since the war ended a while ago...

What did I miss. When did the war end? We're talking about the one with Iraq, right? The one with all of the car bombs going off and American Servicepeople being killed daily?

I know that The President said on that aircraft carrier that the fighting had ended, but I think most folks think that may have been a tad premature.

Or was there another war that I missed?

I know that people are tired of hearing about it, but this whole situation gets more like Viet Nam (at least to me) every day.

That one was called illegal by some people as well.

What is really scary is that the administrations back then kept talking about pacification and "Vietnamization" of the war as a way for the US to find "Peace with Honor." Vietnamization was longhand for getting the South Vietnamese to the point where their military forces could take over from the US.

Of course, that never happened.

In any event, it's no surprise that there may have been some background pressure -- and maybe a little stretching of the truth in making a case for this invasion.

Why is anyone surprised?