Government pressured on legality of Iraq war

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID...

LONDON (Reuters) - The government is facing growing pressure to release the advice it received from its senior lawyer regarding the legal justification for the war in Iraq.

The environmental group Greenspeace is demanding access to the advice given by the Attorney General so that it can defend 14 activists facing charges relating to an anti-war protest.

It comes since the trial of the former intelligence officer Katharine Gun was dropped on Wednesday after her lawyers asked to see the advice on the legality of the Iraq war.

Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, later denied the case against Gun, who was accused of leaking a top-secret U.S. memo, had been dropped because of her demands.

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[POed_Ex_Repub]

1. You got to wonder how long they can keep up the house of cards

First they bug the UN, and now this... something is gonna give eventually.

[teryang]

2. Unclean hands

...they can't throw bricks in a glass house. That's why Dachau, I mean Gitmo has to work for them.

[T_i_B]

3. Here we go

Front page of many of the papers

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=496269

The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, changed his advice in the run-up to war in Iraq to declare that the conflict was legal, The Independent on Sunday has learnt.

Lord Goldsmith's full opinion on the legality of the war has never been made public. The desire to keep it secret is believed to be the main reason why the Official Secrets Act prosecution of Katharine Gun, a 29-year-old former employee of GCHQ, the Government's monitoring centre, was abandoned at the Old Bailey last week.

The case could have revealed that in November 2002 the Attorney General believed Britain required specific authorisation for war from the UN Security Council, but that he later changed his stance.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1158801,00.html

Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears over its legality just days before the British and American bombing campaign was launched, The Observer can today reveal.
The explosive new details about military doubts over the legality of the invasion are detailed in unpublished legal documents in the case of Katharine Gun, the intelligence officer dramatically freed last week after Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, dropped charges against her of breaking the Official Secrets Act.

The disclosure came as it also emerged that Goldsmith was forced hastily to redraft his legal advice to Tony Blair to give an 'unequivocal' assurance to the armed forces that the conflict would not be illegal.

Refusing to commit troops already stationed in Kuwait, senior military leaders were adamant that war could not begin until they were satisfied that neither they nor their men could be tried. Some 10 days later, Britain and America began the campaign.

Goldsmith also wrote to Blair at the end of January voicing concerns that the war might be illegal without a second resolution from the United Nations. Opposition MPs seized on The Observer's revelations last night, accusing Goldsmith of caving in to political pressure from the Prime Minister to change his legal advice on the eve of war.