Do you consider that the Prime Minister’s words were compatible with the advice you had given him? No...I was uncomfortable about them...my concern was that we should not box ourselves in by the public statements that were made, and create a situation which might then have to be unravelled. But a careful reading of Lord Goldsmith’s admittedly tortuous reasoning reveals that this is a deeply misleading interpretation. For the statement above referred only to one particular legal point on which Blair ignored his advice. And this is how the questions and his answers subsequently went (my emphasis in bold): Did you consider, at the time you gave the advice, that your oral advice of 27 February, and your written advice of 7 March 2003, constituted a "green light" for military action? 6.2. Yes. How does your characterisation of the 7 March advice as a "green light" sit with your explanation that "a reasonable case does not mean that if the matter came before a court you would be confident that the court would agree"? 6.3. I was relying at this point on the precedent established in previous cases that a reasonable or respectable case was sufficient Precedent in the Law Officers' department is commonly followed. However I was careful to explain what I meant by the phrase "reasonable case" and to highlight in my advice all the difficulties in interpreting the effect of the resolution. As the tribunal knows, however, having delivered my advice of 7 March 2003, I continued to reflect on the position and on 13 March 2003 concluded that the better view was that there was a lawful basis for the use of force without a further resolution. How does your characterisation of the 7 March advice as a "green light" sit with the number of difficulties with the argument that no further Security Council determination is needed which you identify in that advice but do not resolve? 6.4. I was well aware of the contrary arguments and had set them out in detail in my advice. They could not be resolved because the language of the resolution lacked clarity and the statements made on adoption revealed differences of view within the Council over the legal effect of the resolution. The issue for me therefore was to consider whether the argument that the resolution authorised the use of force was of sufficient weight to reach the threshold of certainty that my predecessors had concluded was necessary. I concluded that it was and I knew that therefore I was giving a "green light". How does your view that a "reasonable case" is sufficient to decide on the lawfulness of military action reflect the framework of the UN Charter and the prohibition on the use of force except in self-defence or where clearly authorised by the Security Council in the circumstances set out in Chapter VII? 6.5. A "clear" or "certain" basis for use of force will always be preferable to a "reasonable" or "respectable" one. That is why I argued in my advice of 7 March 2003 that the safest legal course would be to secure the adoption of a further resolution to authorise the use of force, though to achieve the intended effect it did not need to be explicit in its terms. If we had achieved the second resolution that would have provided more certainty - although even then it is still likely to have been in terms relying on the revival of original 1990/91 authorisation which would not have satisfied all international lawyers. We had however previously engaged in the use of force on the basis of a reasonable or respectable case that action is authorised by a UNSCR or self defence or humanitarian intervention and my understanding was and is that this is a sufficient basis. As noted above, however, and as the Inquiry knows, having delivered my advice of 7 March 2003, I continued to reflect on the position and on 13 March 2003 concluded that the better view was that there was a lawful basis for the use of force without a further resolution. So as early as February 2003 -- before he made the trip to the US during which, according to popular belief, he finally yielded to the thumbscrews and reversed his advice – he was giving a ‘green light’ to military action. The very opposite, in other words, of the interpretation put on his evidence by the media which -- as far as I can see—did not report at all the passage above about the ’green light ‘ . From my reading of his evidence, this is what Lord Goldsmith was saying. He had serious doubts about the legality of proceeding to war on the basis of what was to become UN Resolution 1441 while it was being drafted, and felt that his advice was not being sought by the Prime Minister. His concern at that timewas that the wording of the resolution did not provide a legally watertight case for war. He disagreed with one particular argument put forward by Blair and the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that an ‘unreasonable veto’ on war from a member of the Security Council could be overridden. That was the point on which he said Blair’s statement to the Commons and on TV on January 15 and February 6 2003 conflicted with his advice. Nevertheless, even as early as February 2003 he had, in his own words, given a ‘green light’ to military action. In other words, the ‘unreasonable veto’ point was merely one point and not the whole issue. His ‘green light’ was strengthened when, upon further reflection, he concluded there were more grounds for believing the case for war was immune to legal challenge than he had previously thought. Now one can certainly be sceptical about all this; and there are those who will always be convinced that Lord Goldsmith was pressured to change his advice. I do not know what went on inside Lord Goldsmith’s head. But from this latest evidence, two things strike me: the tenacity with which he stuck for many months with his concerns that the case for war was open to legal challenge, and the fact that he was kept so much out of the loop of the intensive discussions going on (doubtless precisely because Blair thought the Attorney would give him advice he didn’t want to hear) that he was ignorant of the negotiating history which he himself says was important for him to know. Those two points suggest to me that, first, it is unlikely that, having held out for so long, he would suddenly have crumbled under pressure; and second, that it becomes rather more plausible that he did genuinely change his mind once he had access to the information he had previously been denied. On Friday, Tony Blair is being recalled to the Iraq War Inquiry to answer more questions arising from the evidence so far. We await his explanation of all this. Whatever he says, for a number of people it's verdict first, evidence afterwards: they are certain that he is guilty of the crime of going into an illegal war on a lie,and unless this inquiry duly rubber-stamps that verdict its members will be damned alongside him. In any event, the whole issue of the legality of the war has always seemed to me irrelevant. Britain and America went to war in the Balkans without a UN resolution. No-one protests or holds Bosnia War Inquiries to prove the illegality of that war. The issue of the legality of the Iraq War is being used for one reason only: to punish Blair by those who opposed the war in Iraq -- which has become the symbol of the west’s hysterical denial of the civilisational war being waged against it. The reason for the collapse of the Israeli left is that the multi-culturalist, third-worldist assumptions that sustained it have taken a 10 year beating from which they were never going to recover. Ever since Barak’s peace offers, brokered by Bill Clinton in 2000 and 2001, were flatly rejected by the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership in favour of violence and rejectionism the core argument of the Israeli left that the Palestinian cause was based on legitimate grievances that could be addressed via the ‘land for peace’ formula simply lacked credibility inside the Israeli electorate. And given that socialWednesday, 19th January 2011
The Iraq war witch-hunt (ctd)
The media hanging jury has seized upon the latestevidence by the former UK Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith to the Iraq War Inquiry as the all-but final nail in Tony Blair’s coffin as the man who took the UK into an illegal war. Everyone has seized on the following exchange to prove the case beyond any doubt by showing that Blair ignored the Attorney's advice that war would be illegal:Tuesday, 18th January 2011
The left's sleep of reason
10:26am
As ever, Robin Shepherd sees the wider picture. Writing of the attack by the ultra-leftist Ha’aretz journalist Gideon Levy upon the decision by the Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak to leave Labour and found a new party, Atzmaut (Independence), Shepherd writes:
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Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Melanie Phillips
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