Sunday, November 29, 2009

The smoking gun: Tony Blair accused of betrayal over law chief's memo saying war was illegal

Daily Mail -

ony Blair was accused of a 'gross betrayal' of the Queen and Parliament last night after it emerged that the Government's chief law officer warned him eight months before the Iraq invasion that regime change would be illegal.

In a previously undisclosed memo, described as 'the most vital piece of the jigsaw so far', Attorney General Lord Goldsmith told the then prime minister that the war would be a blatant breach of international law.

But rather than slow his rush to war, Mr Blair froze Lord Goldsmith out of Cabinet meetings and sent two of his closest allies to menace him into changing his mind.

President Bush
Minds made up: Blair and Bush in September 2002, months
after
they had secretly agreed on war with Iraq

On March 13, 2003, a week before the invasion, the then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Mr Blair's political fixer Baroness Morgan reportedly launched a 'pincer movement' on Lord Goldsmith and 'pinned him up against the wall and told him what Blair wanted'.

No comments:

Post a Comment