Jonathan Freedland (Guardian Utd): Now there's no chance Blair can move on

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Thursday April 28

Now there's no chance of moving on
The timing of the leaked legal advice couldn't be worse for Blair
By Jonathan Freedland

Could this be the smoking gun? In the last US presidential election, Democrats waited desperately for the killer document that would somehow blow a hole in George Bush's case for war on Iraq. Could the Guardian's publication today of substantial parts of the attorney general's advice to the prime minister on the legality of the war play such a role in the final days of this campaign?

There is much in the document that, as Lord Lester writes in today's paper, should be "devastating" for the government. First, the attorney told the PM that it was for the UN security council, not him, to decide whether Iraq was complying with UN resolutions on disarmament or not. Yet we know it was the PM who took that decision.

The result was a surreal circularity, whereby the attorney ruled that war would be legal if Downing Street was sure Saddam was not complying. Downing Street said it was sure and so the attorney was satisfied. The war was legal - because Tony Blair said it was legal.
Second, Lord Goldsmith stated that the government would need "hard evidence" of noncompliance: yet we know that Hans Blix and his inspectors were reporting a rising degree of Iraqi cooperation. Third, he said that even an "unreasonable veto" by a security council member would not allow Britain to proceed as if it had security council backing. Yet when France did block plans for a second UN resolution, the government took that as a green light for action.

Finally, it becomes clear that Blair handled this document the same way he handled the intelligence on Iraq: by stripping out the caveats.

Read more.

Blair will survive the election, but how long will he survive beyond that?