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Ferre
Cannabis Sacrament Minister.
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 Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:31 am Post subject: Tony Blair Declared War Criminal |
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War Criminal?
Sunday Herald
February 27, 2005
For Tony Blair, the war in Iraq may never be over. As new questions are
asked about whether the invasion was illegal, the advice of the attorney
general – and his sudden change of mind – puts the Prime Minister back in
the dock
The increase in the minimum wage was supposed to be top of the agenda at
Tony Blair’s monthly press conference at Downing Street on Friday. The
Prime Minister was anxious to engage in the debate, or indeed any debate
on any subject – domestic or international – bar one.
But again it was Iraq that dominated proceedings. Two years after the
invasion that put him under enough pressure to end most careers, the
spectre of Iraq continues to haunt him in the days running up to an almost
certain general election on May 5.
Blair has fought off opponents within his own party, faced down the one
million-plus who marched in the streets to oppose the war and saw the BBC
retreat as it reported – accurately – criticism within his own security
services. But Iraq has not faded away quietly.
At the core of Blair’s problem is the issue he cannot avoid: the legality
of his decision to unquestionably support the Bush administration in going
to war in Iraq when virtually all international legal advice warned there
was no justification for doing so.
Enemies looking for legal evidence that would brand Blair a potential war
criminal have seized upon the publication next week of Lawless World, by
University College London law professor and QC Philippe Sands. His book is
a detailed account of how the attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, changed
his mind on the legality of the war within a crucial 10-day period in
March 2003. An added embarrassment for the government is that Sands is
attached to Cherie Blair’s legal chambers, Matrix.
Goldsmith presented his first advice to Downing Street on March 7 in a
13-page document which laid out the argument that going to war without a
new UN resolution sanctioning hostilities “could be found to be illegal”.
“The March 7 memorandum is rather equivocal,” says Sands. “It is as
well-balanced a document as one would expect from a lawyer of that
quality. It sets out pros and cons and reaches a conclusion, including a
view that it would be safer to have a second resolution.”
Yet 10 days later – on March 17 – Goldsmith published another report in
which he felt able to state that the existing UN resolution 1441 would, by
itself, provide a legal basis for invading Iraq.
What happened to change his mind – and indeed the exact basis on which he
issued his original warning – have still not been revealed.
This much we do know: when Goldsmith first warned the war could be
illegal, the government put together a team to defend itself against any
legal challenge. The chief of the defence staff, Lord Boyce, requested an
explicit statement from the attorney general on the legality of the
proposed invasion.
According to eminent QC and Labour peer – and now Sunday Herald columnist
– Helena Kennedy, Washington ordered Downing Street to find a legal
opinion to justify the war. Certainly, the dominant view in legal circles
and in the UK Foreign Office was that a US-led war, outwith the UN’s
authority, was not justified. “The legal advisers at the Foreign Office
had already taken the view that you needed a second resolution,’’ says
Sands.
It has been suggested that on the same day Goldsmith delivered his summary
report to parliament, a memo from the Foreign Office to the foreign
affairs select committee made clear there was no “automaticity” in
resolution 1441 to justify war.
Clare Short, who like the rest of her Cabinet colleagues did not oppose
the content of the two-page document when it passed through Cabinet on
March 17, now feels Number 10 leaned on Goldsmith to change his advice.
She later resigned from government, but there were more immediate
consequences.
On March 18 – the day of the Commons vote on the war – Elizabeth
Wilmshurst, the Foreign Office’s deputy legal adviser, tendered her
resignation. She could not go along with the attorney general’s advice and
saw the invasion of Iraq, without a second UN resolution, as a “crime of
aggression”.
Goldsmith denies claims that the March 17 document was in fact drawn up by
Downing Street officials. He insists it was the work of his own office by
a team which included Harriet Harman, the solicitor general, three
officials from the Foreign Office and Christopher Greenwood, a law
professor at the London School of Economics.
Greenwood was regarded as one of only two leading academic lawyers in the
UK who would give the government the opinion it needed, namely, that if a
second resolution was not possible the use of force could still be
justified. Goldsmith is adamant that Number 10 did not influence matters.
Attempts to discover the basis for Goldsmith’s original advice have proved
fruitless. When the Freedom of Information Act came in last month,
attempts were made to use it to unveil his full 13-page judgment, as
opposed to the two-page summary given to parliament. The request was
refused.
When Lord Butler last year published his report into the intelligence
failures that had become clear since the conclusion of formal conflict in
Iraq, Lord Goldsmith again offered his opinion on the legal position. He
said attacking Iraq was legal, despite Butler’s conclusion that the
intelligence used to justify the war was “seriously flawed”. He said the
case for war had not been altered by Butler’s findings, which finally
prompted Blair to concede that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
That conclusion has been repeatedly challenged. Last year the UN
secretary-general, Kofi Annan, claimed the US-led invasion of Iraq was
illegal and contravened the UN charter. Annan said the decision to take
action should have been made by the Security Council, and not
unilaterally, and he believed there should have been a second Security
Council resolution following Iraq’s failure to comply with UN weapons
inspections.
The head of the weapons inspections team, Hans Blix, was equally critical
of the legal authority the British government still insists is valid.
Blix, trained in international law, said the advice given by Goldsmith on
the eve of war had no legal justification. Blix’s view is shared by other
leading law experts: a second UN resolution which explicitly authorised
the use of force had to be in place to make any invasion of Iraq lawful.
“I don’t buy the argument that the war was legalised by the Iraqi
violation of earlier resolutions,” said Blix.
He said that while it was possible to argue that Iraq had breached the
ceasefire by violating many of the UN resolutions adopted since 1991, the
“ownership” of the resolutions rested with the entire 15-member Security
Council, not with individual states. “It’s the Security Council that is
party to the ceasefire, not the UK and the US individually,” Blix said.
The importance of Goldsmith’s backing for the legality of war was crucial
to Blair in the run-up to the invasion. According to Plan Of Attack,
written by the Watergate investigative reporter Bob Woodward, President
Bush made it clear to Blair as long ago as September 2002 that he was
going after Saddam. At a meeting at Camp David, Bush told Blair: ‘‘We must
work together to deal with this threat and the world will be better off
without him.’’ Bush laid out the consequences: there would likely be a
war; Blair might need to send troops. According to Woodward’s sources,
Blair’s reply was unequivocal: ‘‘I’m with you.’’
Bush told the UN on September 12, 2002: “We will work with the UN Security
Council for the necessary resolutions.” Blair remained convinced for
months that is what Bush would do.
But by early 2003 the mood in Washington had changed. On January 20, Colin
Powell, the US Secretary of State, went back to the Security Council.
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, and Vice-President Dick Cheney
both told him he shouldn’t bother. But after the session, when the French
foreign minister, Dominic de Villepin, told a press conference that
“nothing, nothing” would justify war against Iraq, all hopes of a second
UN resolution had gone. De Villepin had flagged France’s intention to use
its veto – and in the custom and practice of the Security Council’s
culture, no second resolution would be presented if it was known it would
fail due to a veto.
The following day, January 21, Bush told some of his economic advisers he
would lead a “coalition of the willing” to disarm Saddam. Ten days later,
Blair was back in the US for more talks at the White House, and he told
Bush he required, and politically needed, a second UN resolution.
Blair tried to convince the President not to abandon the UN route. Bush
didn’t want to bother with more argument. Powell and Cheney thought the UN
route all but closed, but to keep Blair on board, they sided with Bush,
saying that if Blair needed it – because of the promises he’d made to his
own party and beyond – then they’d try.
But the desired momentum inside the UN, and the impetus to get the French
to pull back from vetoing anything that looked like an authority to go to
war, never happened.
For the US the legality of the war was not a great issue. In a
neo-conservative dominated political arena, in a country still reeling
from 9/11, the idea that international law could stop military retaliation
by the world’s strongest nation was a non-starter. Once Congress gave Bush
the authority to use force the war against Iraq was on.
In the UK, the status of the war in international law was crucial, and not
just to satisfy sceptical Cabinet members and Labour backbenchers who were
dubious about supporting military action. Senior British military
officials wanted assurances that the war, which like any conflict involved
killing, would be within international law. Their main concern focused on
the exposure to prosecution of British troops in international criminal
courts if the war wasn’t legal. As the government’s senior legal adviser,
Lord Goldsmith’s revised opinion was pivotal. It allowed Blair to go to a
pre-war summit in the Azores with Bush and the Spanish prime minister,
Jose Maria Aznar, with the legal backing to keep his promise to the US
President.
The Azores summit – which effectively finalised when the war would start –
fell between Goldsmith’s first detailed draft and his short parliamentary
summary.
Philippe Sands’s conclusion is that the British government disregarded
international law in the pursuit of an illegal war and he believes that is
why the government has consistently refused to publish the attorney
general’s advice.
“My interest is in ensuring that international law is complied with,” says
Sands. “If the British attorney general gives an opinion that is at odds
with the general opinion among international lawyers it is in the public
interest to know what that advice is”.
He adds: “Lawyers do change their minds and do take second and third
opinions. It is perfectly normal for them to take advice from other
lawyers and from independent experts. If the story is as the Prime
Minister and the attorney general are indicating, there would be nothing
lost in putting these documents in the public domain.”
It is, says Sands, not just a matter of legal interest. “Relying on bad
legal arguments destroys the credibility of governments. And credibility
is important right now. Undermining the rules of international law
diminishes our response and when two countries have broken ranks with
others it make it more difficult to act in unity when there is a real
threat.”
http://www.sundayherald.com/48047
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Ferre
Cannabis Sacrament Minister.
Joined: 14 Apr 2003
Posts: 7295
Location: Amsterdam
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 12:10 am Post subject: |
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More is comming to the surface now...
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Clare Short:
How ministers were misled on the legality of Iraq invasion
09 March 2005
Following the recent controversy about the Attorney General's advice, I
have gone over in detail the process by which he gave his advice on the
legality of the war. I have concluded that he failed to comply with the
Ministerial Code when giving his advice to the Cabinet and that he misled
the Cabinet about his legal advice.
The Ministerial Code lays down that: "The Code should be read against the
background of the overarching duty on Ministers to comply with the law,
including international law and treaty obligations."
When the Attorney came to the Cabinet on 17 March, the text of what
purported to be his advice was distributed around the table. He began to
read it out. There were murmurings indicating that he did not need to read
it as members of the Cabinet could read it for themselves. I then
attempted to initiate a discussion. I asked why it was so late and whether
he had changed his mind. No discussion was allowed. The paper he provided
was then published as an answer to a parliamentary question.
I was very surprised by the advice, but I accepted it as the official and
authoritative advice of the Attorney. I said at the time: "The Attorney
General has made clear that military action would be legal under
international law. Other lawyers have expressed contrary opinions. But for
the UK Government, the Civil Service and the military, it is the view of
the Attorney General that matters and this is unequivocal." But I am
afraid that the advice was not in truth unequivocal. It had been hedged
around with qualifications. But none of this was revealed to the Cabinet
or to Parliament.
The evidence provided by the Butler report shows that he was not wholly
honest with the Cabinet. The report provides details of the complex
process through which his advice developed. Butler tells us that prior to
the adoption of UN Resolution 1441 the Attorney concluded that "there
would be no justification for the use of force against Iraq on the grounds
of self-defence against imminent threat". The Butler report confirms what
I heard from my officials that after the passage of 1441 and following
disagreement among Foreign Office legal advisers, all concerned agreed
that the final word would belong to the Attorney.
Butler also tells us that in the weeks following the adoption of the
resolution, the Attorney General had a number of discussions with the
Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary about whether 1441 was sufficient to
authorise the use of force, and that he talked with our ambassador to the
UN and in February 2003 met members of the US administration. Butler says
that he informed the Prime Minister's advisers of his view at a meeting on
28 February 2003 and that his office asked him to put these views in
writing, which he did in a formal Minute to the Prime Minister on 7 March
2003. None of these exchanges or the content of the minute were reported
to the Cabinet.
This is very significant because the Attorney failed to share his concerns
with the Cabinet and to describe how he came to be persuaded of the
legality of war. Butler informs us that his minute required the Prime
Minister, in the absence of a further UN Security Council resolution, to
be satisfied that there were "strong factual grounds for concluding that
Iraq had failed to take the final opportunity to comply with its
disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Security Council
and that it was possible to demonstrate hard evidence of non-compliance
and non-co-operation with the requirements of Security Council Resolution
1441, so as to justify the conclusion that Iraq was in further material
breach of its obligations".
All of this was kept from the Cabinet, although at this time I was reading
telegrams of Dr Blix's reports to the Security Council indicating
increased co-operation from the Iraqi regime. Butler tells us that on the
basis of the Attorney's advice, military campaign objectives were drawn
up, making it clear that the objective was to bring about Iraq's
disarmament in accordance with its obligations under UN Security Council
resolutions.
Butler tells us that the Attorney then informed Lord Falconer and Sally
Morgan at a meeting on 13 March that in his view it was lawful under
Resolution 1441 to use force without a further UN resolution, but on 14
March, after the breakdown of negotiations at the UN, his Legal Secretary
wrote to the Prime Minister's Private Secretary seeking confirmation that
"it is unequivocally the Prime Minister's view that Iraq was in material
breach of its obligations under 1441". The Prime Minister so confirmed,
and the Butler inquiry was informed that the Prime Minister relied on
intelligence and other sources including Unmovic information. None of this
was reported to Cabinet and it is notable that the Prime Minister was
reaching dubious conclusions about factual questions without any Cabinet
discussion. I was at the time reading accounts of Unmovic's reports which
did not point to this conclusion.
I have therefore made a complaint under paragraphs 22 and 23 of the
Ministerial Code. Paragraph 23 provides that "When advice from the Law
Officers is included in correspondence between Ministers, or in papers for
the Cabinet or Ministerial Committees, the conclusions may if necessary be
summarised, but if this is done, the complete text of the advice should be
attached."
My view is now that by failing to reveal his full legal advice and the
considerations that underpinned his final advice, the Attorney misled the
Cabinet and therefore helped obtain support for military action
improperly. This is a very serious matter in relation to the war in Iraq,
the integrity of his office, his own integrity and the proper working of
UK constitutional arrangements.
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=618099
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Blair broke code to keep war advice from Cabinet
MPs clamour for inquiry as row flares again over legality of Iraq invasion
By Marie Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent
09 March 2005
Tony Blair is facing calls for a formal investigation after it emerged
that he breached the official code of conduct for ministers by failing to
show the Attorney General's full advice on the legality of the Iraq war to
the Cabinet.
MPs demanded that Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary, launch an
immediate inquiry into whether Mr Blair and the Attorney General, Lord
Goldsmith, flouted the code.
Politicians from all parties seized on a written answer from the Prime
Minister as an admission that cabinet ministers should have been given
Lord Goldsmith's full legal opinion before Britain went to war.
The former cabinet minster Clare Short stepped into the row yesterday when
she accused Mr Blair and Lord Goldsmith of flouting the code. In a letter
copied to the Prime Minister and Sir Andrew, Ms Short accused Lord
Goldsmith of failing "to comply with the ministerial code when giving your
advice to the Cabinet".
She said: "I am afraid that it is now clear to me that by failing to
reveal your full legal advice and the considerations that underpinned your
final advice, you misled the Cabinet and therefore helped obtain support
for military action improperly. This is a very serious matter in relation
to the war in Iraq, the integrity of your office, your own integrity and
the proper working of UK constitutional arrangements."
The former international development secretary added: "The logic flows to
Blair but I am starting with the Attorney General. There should be a
proper system of investigation of complaints under the ministerial code."
The Attorney General's office said it had not seen Ms Short's letter but
would respond when it arrived.
A number of ministers have resigned for breaching the code, which sets out
how ministers should behave. Mr Blair's apparent breach emerged after
Simon Thomas, a Plaid Cymru MP, asked the Prime Minister whether he was
"required under the ministerial code of conduct to show full legal advice
from the Attorney General relating to matters before the Cabinet to each
member of the Cabinet."
Mr Blair did not deny he was required to show full legal advice to his
colleagues but referred Mr Thomas to the part of the code relating to "the
conduct of cabinet business" and "advice received from the law officers".
It says when a summary of legal advice is given to ministers, the full
advice should be attached. "When advice from the Law Officers is included
in correspondence between Ministers, or in papers for the Cabinet or
Ministerial Committees," the code says, "the conclusions may if necessary
be summarised but, if this is done, the complete text of the advice should
be attached."
A Downing Street spokesman said: "As far as the legal advice on Iraq is
concerned he has behaved properly at all times."
Mr Thomas said the reply was an "admission" from Mr Blair that he was in
breach of the code. He added: "It puts him in the frame. For the first
time you see through the cracks in his defences and he has had to admit he
has breached the code. I am writing to Sir Andrew asking him to
investigate and to the Prime Minister saying, you have breached the code."
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman,
said: "On the face of it, the Prime Minister was in breach of the
ministerial code. The unsatisfactory nature of events is illustrated by
the fact that the guardian of that code is the Prime Minister himself."
Cabinet members were not shown the full advice before the decision was
made to go to war. They were given a presentation by the Attorney General
and a copy of his parliamentary answer about his advice.
Lord Goldsmith told the House of Lords that the written answer setting out
his views on the legality of war was "a summary of my view of the legal
position, rather than a detailed consideration of legal issues".
In his introduction to the code, Mr Blair said the code was crucial to
"the bond of trust between the British people and their Government". It is
the Prime Minister himself who is the watchdog and must initiate
investigations into the code.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=618151
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aeroplane
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 10 Nov 2004
Posts: 1472
Location: Valhalla
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| Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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Now if we can only get him to admit he's a war criminal he'll be on the right path for recovery. But if he continues in denial, and an intervention of the world court seems unlikely, his bad karma will continue to breed more bad karma.
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