Jack Straw rejected advice in the run up to war that invading Iraq without UN backing would break international law, the Iraq inquiry heard.
BBC NEWS
January 26, 2010
Mr Straw’s chief legal adviser at the time, Sir Michael Wood, told the then foreign secretary it would “amount to the crime of aggression”.
But Mr Straw told him he was being “dogmatic” and that “international law was pretty vague”, Sir Michael said.
Ministers used the attorney general’s advice on the war’s legality instead.
Lord Goldsmith, who is due to appear before the inquiry on Wednesday, advised the government that force could be used legally without a second UN resolution.
‘Not authorised’
But the Iraq inquiry heard there were serious concerns about the way in which the decision was reached among the Foreign Office’s senior legal advisers.
Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned in protest days before the invasion of Iraq, described the process as “lamentable” and lacking in transparency.
She said it was “extraordinary” that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had only been asked for his opinion about the war just days before British troops went into action. …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8479996.stm
And below is something else from the BBC that many Americans may not be aware of:
How the US has investigated the Iraq war
The UK public inquiry into the Iraq war, which has just begun, follows a series of investigations by the US into the 2003 invasion.
In September 2006 the US Senate Intelligence Committee published one of the definitive public accounts of the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.
Its 400-page report, three years in the making, laid bare the justifications for the invasion – and found little or no evidence to back a raft of claims made by the US intelligence community concerning Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction [WMD].
The report came just weeks before George Bush’s Republicans were trounced in mid-term elections dominated by the issue of the war.
Days after the defeat, then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the war’s chief architects, quit the government.
Those weeks may have been a significant moment in the reckoning of the Iraq war in the US, but the intelligence committee’s report was just one of a number of inquisitions into all aspects of the conflict that have been going on since the 2003 invasion.
‘Dead wrong’
Eighteen months before the Senate report, the Silberman-Robb commission – set up by President Bush in early 2004 – had reported in no uncertain terms that US intelligence had been “dead wrong” in judging that Iraq had been developing WMD before the invasion.
Led by retired judge Laurence Silberman, the report was highly critical of intelligence failings, but it had attracted criticism from Mr Bush’s opponents who had wanted it to report back before the November 2004 presidential election.
While it was not conceived as a backward-looking inquiry into the Iraq war, one of the most high-profile investigations of the conflict was the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8376977.stm
What does the below part of the above report mean?
Eighteen months before the Senate report, the Silberman-Robb commission – set up by President Bush in early 2004 – had reported in no uncertain terms that US intelligence had been “dead wrong” in judging that Iraq had been developing WMD before the invasion.
It appears that the above excerpt is trying to link “wrong” information from US intelligence to Mr. Bush’s “trek” into Iraq. But there are other Ex-CIA voices that would refute the “blame it on U.S. Intelligence” idea.
From the CBS’s 60 Minutes platform Tyler Drumheller, a 26-year veteran of the CIA spoke out on the “bad intelligence” accusation.
(CBS) When no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Bush insisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faulty intelligence. But a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller — a 26-year veteran of the agency — has decided to do something CIA officials at his level almost never do: Speak out.
He tells correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in the intelligence community but in the White House. He says he saw how the Bush administration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit the president’s determination to go to war and turned a blind eye to intelligence that did not.
“It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it’s an intelligence failure. It’s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure,” Drumheller tells Bradley.
Drumheller was the CIA’s top man in Europe, the head of covert operations there, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the White House promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn’t:
“The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen one way or the other,” says Drumheller.
Drumheller says he doesn’t think it mattered very much to the administration what the intelligence community had to say. “I think it mattered it if verified. This basic belief that had taken hold in the U.S. government that now is the time, we had the means, all we needed was the will,” he says. …
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtml
Pertaining to the Iraq war and America’s neocons, all of the questions in 2001 and all of the questions generated in 2003 are still just questions. There are no answers. The neocons issues orders to other heads of state to “COME CLEAN” while they “squeal like a stuck pig” at the mere suggestion of “investigating” the CIA. Of course an investigation and an inquiry may not be the same thing.
If the neocons know its the fault of the CIA that Mr. Bush marched off into Iraq, why not let an investigation into the CIA prove their point?
An Iraq Inquiry, like the one going on in Britain, seems to say that the British have a higher mandate than political party. I wonder if the neocons of America also have a higher mandate than political party? Is the Constitution of the United States of America really just a GODDAM PIECE OF PAPER or is it a mandate by which America should be ruled?
With one exception, the neocons are in a class by themselves.
