Looking Back

TTimes reviews the Chilcot investigation last week:
Tony Blair saw 9/11 as an attack on Britain as well as the US.
He told the inquiry: “I never regarded September 11 as an attack on America, I regarded it as an attack on us.”

Blair understood there was no link between Iraq and 9/11, even though the US claimed there was.
Blair told the inquiry: “It is true we did not have evidence that Saddam [Hussein] was, for example, behind the September 11 attacks, and part of the difference between ourselves and the Americans was we were always saying, ‘We don’t accept that’.”

Nevertheless when Blair met George W Bush in Texas in April 2002, Blair signed up to dealing with Saddam, by force if necessary.
He told the inquiry he made “a commitment to deal with Saddam ...
I was saying ... we are going to be with you [the US] in dealing with this threat”.
He added: “The US view was regime change ... If we tried the UN [United Nations] route and it failed, then my view was it had to be dealt with.”

From the start the US view was that Saddam was not going to bow to the UN and therefore would have to be removed by force.
Blair told the inquiry: “The US view throughout was that this leopard wasn’t going to change his spots.”

Britain’s armed forces were in favour of war — maybe.
Blair told the inquiry: “The very first thing I do is I ask the military for their view, and their view in this instance was that they were up for doing it and that they preferred to be right at the centre of things.”
That’s not how Alastair Campbell, Blair’s communications chief, saw it.
His diaries record that at Chequers in March 2002, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, then chief of the defence staff, “mainly set out why it was hard to do anything” about Iraq. Campbell said Boyce “appeared to be trying to shape the meeting towards inaction, constantly pointing out the problems”.

Blair admitted he should have corrected the misleading impression — which he allowed to develop — that Saddam had long-range weapons of mass destruction capable of being deployed at 45 minutes’ notice.
Why did he not correct it at the time?
He was specifically asked to explain it in a parliamentary question in October 2002. Blair replied evasively: “These points reflect specific intelligence information.”

Blair and Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, were advised all along that war would be illegal unless sanctioned by the UN.
Sir Michael Wood, then senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office, warned that military action would be a “crime of aggression” and potentially leave troops and civil servants open to charges of murder. Right up to the invasion, Foreign Office legal experts continued to advise that there was no legal basis for military action.

Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, was blocked from expressing his doubts to cabinet.
More than once Goldsmith, who doubted the legality of war, wanted to communicate his views to Blair and the cabinet. He was blocked by Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, and Straw. On January 30, 2003, only weeks before the invasion, Goldsmith was still “unpersuaded” there was any legal justification for war.

At the inquiry Blair dodged the issue of whether the cabinet should have been told of Goldsmith’s doubts.
He said: “The issue is not how many times he [Goldsmith] comes to the cabinet, the issue is whether he is giving his advice to the prime minister and the ministers, and Peter [Goldsmith] was.”
Not entirely. Campbell’s diaries record that in September 2002 Patricia Hewitt, then a cabinet minister, specifically suggested that the attorney-general should come to cabinet “to explain the legal position”. He was not asked to do so.

Goldsmith was largely persuaded to change his view on the legality of war after being sent to the US to talk to lawyers and politicians.
In February 2003, Goldsmith went to Washington for talks. The day after he returned he revised his advice to say a “reasonable case” could be made for war even if there were no further UN resolution.

The military finally forced Goldsmith into making a clear decision.
British military chiefs wanted a simple answer: was war legal or not, yes or no? Despite his doubts, Goldsmith felt “they were entitled to have a clear view”. So on March 13, just a week before the war, he decided that “on balance, the better view was that it was lawful”.

On that day Goldsmith still wanted to tell the cabinet the legal position was “finely balanced”.
Straw asked him not to, according to a document released to the inquiry.

Later that same day Goldsmith met two of Blair’s closest colleagues, Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan. He denied they browbeat him into changing his mind about the legality of war. He said he had already made his decision.
Goldsmith said: “When I saw them, I, of course, had reached my opinion [that on balance war would be lawful]. . .” Nobody has asked whether he was browbeaten on another issue: whether or not he should still have told the cabinet the legal position was “finely balanced”.

Blair claimed that war would not have happened if Goldsmith had ruled it illegal.
Blair told the inquiry: “Let me make it absolutely clear, if Peter [Goldsmith] in the end had said, ‘This cannot be justified lawfully’, we would have been unable to take action.”
No pressure on Goldsmith there, then — only the fact that British forces were massed on the Iraqi border and the US was intent on beginning an invasion within days.