Burpblade
Thanks for that - an interesting perspective - value your thoughts as this plays through.
I've found the original legal advice (07 Mar 03) released by No. 10. (
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/files/pd...ion%201441.pdf).
Discounting self-defence, humanitarian intervention and fresh explicit UN Security Council authorisation, the only hope for the legality of the war was the so-called revival argument - i.e, that the UN authorisation for GW1 had not ended and could be "revived". It is worth quoting the A-Gs advice in para 9 in full.
Sorry for the length:
9. Law Officers have advised in the past that, provided the conditions are made out the revival argument does provide a sufficient justification in international law for the use of force against Iraq. That view is supported by an opinion given in August 1992 by the then UN Legal Counsel, Carl-August Fleischauer. However, the UK has consistently taken the view (as does the Fleischauer opinon) that, as the cease-fire conditions were set by the Security Council in resolution 687, it is for the Council to assess whether any such breach of those obligations has occurred. The US has rather a different view they maintain that the fact of whether Iraq is in breach is a matter of objective fact which may therefore be assessed by individual Member States. I am not aware of any other state which supports this view. This is an issue of critical importance when considering the effect of resolution 1441.
This was written by the A-G and dated 7 March 2003.
In other words, two weeks before the war kicked off, the A-G is saying that the UK could not go to war on the basis that it did, unless it joined the Americans in a minority of 1 in their assessment of the legal position.
Did international law fundamentally change in those two weeks? No.
Did the Secuirty Council authorise force? No.
Did the Bush Administration decide that they were going to invade Iraq anyway? Yes.
What were Blair's intentions / actions? Draw you own conclusions.
S41