codshit.com: Blair was advised that Iraq invasion could be illegal

Tuesday 1 March 2005

Blair was advised that Iraq invasion could be illegal

"Could be"; only the most twisted and abtuse reading of international law could even begin to condone what we and the Americans are doing in Iraq. It's all smokes and mirrors, don't forget that this is Chapel Perilous, up is down and black is white. Remember that and it might all start to make more sense.

Fresh revelations have emerged describing the frenetic efforts of the Blair government prior to the launching of the Iraq war to find a legal pretext for its participation in the US-led attack. Just two weeks before the invasion began, the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that a war could violate international law.

On Wednesday, February 23, the Guardian published extracts from a soon to be published book, Lawless World: America and the making and breaking of global rules. The author is Phillipe Sands, a professor of international law at University College London.

Sands has used his connections in senior legal circles to provide a detailed account of the Labour government’s manoeuvres to secure legal advice giving official imprimatur to the war.

The war’s legality was an issue for the Blair government not due to any respect for international law, but because it feared future prosecution. The published extracts reveal that the prime minister was conscious that the invasion, as an act of preemptive aggression, had little or no basis in international law but was determined to proceed regardless.

Having decided on this course of action, Sands discloses that to protect itself against any potential consequences, the government “took steps to put together a legal team to prepare for possible international litigation.”

The government’s concerns were shared by Britain’s senior military leaders. “I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was behind bars,” the Guardian reported General Sir Mike Jackson, head of the army, as saying. “I have no intention of ending up next to him in the Hague.”

The chief of defence staff, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, sought a clear assurance from the attorney general on March 10, 2003, as to the war’s legality. According to Sands, Boyce wanted to be sure that British soldiers would not be “put through the mill” at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Britain, unlike the US, is a signatory to the ICC.

Under the government’s ministerial code of conduct, the attorney general is to be consulted “in good time before the government is committed to critical decisions involving legal considerations.” Attorney General Goldsmith was first asked about the legality of an invasion of Iraq at a meeting with several government ministers in July 2002.

“They were reminded,” Sands’s book states, “that the prime minister had told President Bush that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change, so long as a coalition had been created and UN weapons inspectors had been given a further opportunity to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.”

Goldsmith informed the ministers that a war could not be justified on self-defence or humanitarian grounds, and that the goal of regime change would be unlawful. This opinion was again confirmed after the attorney general considered legal advice with the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence.

Full story...

Enlightenment

Do you feel like you're living in some Orwellian nightmare? Or perhaps you feel as if you're plugged into The Matrix? Well if so, you've come to the right place. No matter how messed up you thought the world was, by the time you've finished reading some of the things I've found on my travels in Cyberspace you'll realise that 1984 was just a typo!

A note to the non-ravers out there: codshit is NOT a derogatory or insulting term and bears no relation in offensiveness to its four-letter cousin, it's a word used to describe the nonsense that people sometimes talk when they are off their heads. To understand what codshit is watch the film Human Traffic.

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Wisdom

Americans have different ways of saying things. They say 'elevator', we say 'lift'...they say 'President', we say 'stupid psychopathic git'....
.: Alexi Sayle :.

If you confront the Universe with good intentions in your heart it will reflect that and reward your intent... usually... It just doesn't always do it in the way you expect.
.: G'kar :.

So there, we have figured it out, go back to bed America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control again. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed America, here's American Gladiators. Here's 56 channels of it. Watch these pituitary retards bang their fuckin skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go America, you are free... to do as we tell you.
.: Bill Hicks :.

Let there be no doubt that the people of the free world are engaged in a war... In the next few years, we are either going to see the people of the free world rise up against these fascists, now setting the stage for global war, or we are going to see the end of democracy as we know it with martial law the end result.
.: David Shayler :.

Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.
.: Albert Einstein :.

Wisdom