THE NEXT MOVE FOR WAR: Two weeks before the Iraq invasion, attorney general Lord Goldsmith warned the war could be illegal.
So Downing Street set up a team of lawyers ready to plead its case in international courts. Somewhat like those East End gangsters who ensure they kept their slippery briefs close when they went out to collect their monies.
The Guardian reports:
It appears that Lord Goldsmith never wrote an unequivocal formal legal opinion that the invasion was lawful, as demanded by Lord Boyce, chief of defence staff at the time.
The Guardian can also disclose that in her letter of resignation in protest against the war, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, described the planned invasion of Iraq as a "crime of aggression".