Robin Cook, the British cabinet minister who resigned from the government over Iraq, is at his snarky best in today's
Guardian.
He is offering some sympathy for Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, who provided legal advice to the British government regarding the legality of the proposed war:
On Iraq he was expected to find a basis in international law for Downing Street to perform as the loyal ally of a Bush administration that consistently rejected even the concept of international law.
More below:
Cook divides the evolution of Goldsmith's opinion in to three phases. Phase one lasted six months, up to the eve of war. At the end of this phase, Goldsmith:
... agreed with the legal advisers to the Foreign Office that invasion would require a second security council resolution to be lawful. This view was dropped only when it became clear that there would be no second resolution.
After a second 10 day phase, Goldsmith:
...argued that invasion might be lawful on the basis of existing resolutions, but that the British government could be vulnerable to being challenged in court.
Unfortunately, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the chief of defence staff, refused to commit troops to action without an unequivocal guarantee that it would be lawful. So, in a final three day phase, Goldsmith provided
...a written statement that authority to use force could be exhumed from the ceasefire resolution of the first Gulf War over a decade earlier.
You've gotta love exhumed. But Cook is on a roll, and the snark continues:
The official line is that this opinion was Lord Goldsmith's "genuinely held, independent view". But presumably his two earlier opinions were also genuine and independent, albeit flatly in conflict with his final one. What is missing is any explanation of why his genuine and independent opinions changed so often.
Cook finds it in him to regard Goldsmith as perhaps more sinned against than sinning:
[Goldsmith's] final statement on the legal case for war rests on the assumption that Saddam Hussein was in breach of his obligations to disarm his imaginary weapons of mass destruction. .
So Goldsmith obtained from Blair an "unequivocal assurance that Iraq was in breach of its disarmament obligations".
And the rest of the story we know. However, to Brits, and most of all to British Labour supporters, like me the mystery is why Blair should ever have taken such a risk, especially in support of a US president with whom he shares so little, ideologically. Later in the article, Cook (who is in a position to know) puts his finger on at least one part of the answer.
I suspect also that as Tony Blair turned out the bedroom light last night, he was mystified that the controversy over Iraq still haunts him. In the many conversations we had in the run-up to the war, he always assumed that the war would end in victory, and that military triumph would silence the critics. In his worst nightmares Tony Blair never dreamt that Iraq would dog him a whole two years later.
As to why Iraq is still dogging both Blair and Bush two years later is, Cook puts attributes the reason in part to:
...the breathtaking naivety with which both the White House and Downing Street believed the easy promises of Iraqi exiles that foreign occupation would meet with no resistance.
However, here is where Cook put in his final, classy boot:
But the major reason why Iraq has remained such a source of constant controversy is the slow seepage of the information that was kept from us when we were being sold the case for war.
We were told that the threat was current and serious, but we now know the intelligence was limited and the sources unproven.
We were told that occupying Iraq would be a defeat for terrorism, but we now know the joint intelligence committee warned, correctly, that it would give a boost to terrorism.
And now we learn that the legal case for war was cobbled together at the eleventh hour after months of equivocation.
Read the whole article - no-one snarks quite like Cook.
The tragedy is that snark is not a quality that people look for in a party leader.
Update: A short bio of Robin Cook here. He was Blair's first foreign secretary, and launched into an "ethical foreign policy" but was something of a disappointment. He was edged out of the centre of power by being demoted to "Leader of the House". He resigned from the government in March 2003 and sits as a Labour backbench MP. He looks like a gnome.