My old friend Peter Harvey has posted the following thought-provoking comment on the two-part entry below about Iraq and the question of the legality of the war in the light of the Attorney-General’s advice. My own reply to Peter follows.
The main importance of the 13-page ‘advice’ of the Attorney-General on the legality (or lack of it) of going to war against Iraq without a second UN resolution authorising it, given to the prime minister on 7 March 2003, lies in the harsh and unforgiving light it sheds on the same Attorney-General’s ‘opinion’, published 10 days later
In Part I of this piece, I have suggested that the suppression of the warnings and qualifications in the Attorney-General’s advice of 7 March ’03 in effect misrepresented his unqualified opinion published 10 days later as being a much firmer basis for going to war with Iraq than in fact it was: and that the [...]
Letter to the Guardian on the advice and implications
An analysis of that advice, and the implications for Mr Blair
About a trip to New York: how things have changed
Did the prime minister really not see the Foreign Office legal advisers’ advice on the legality of the war?
Neither the criminal blunders over Iraq nor the wholesale destruction of our rights under cover of the soi-disant ‘war on terror’ appear to be discussed by any of the major parties in their campaigns
