THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

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The Attorney General breaks his silence: 'I believe war was lawful'
By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent
20 July 2004

Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, defied his critics yesterday by denying he was unduly influenced by ministers or senior military staff when giving his legal advice on the war.

In his first full interview since coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein, Lord Goldsmith told The Independent that his belief in the lawfulness of the war remained unshakeable.

"My view on the legality which I gave to Parliament was my independent view and not the result in any way of pressure from anyone, as one or two people have suggested," he said. "That's not the way I operate and that's not the way the government operates in relation to the law."

But his comments will do little to deflect the criticisms of many lawyers, including at least one senior government adviser, who said Lord Goldsmith's interpretation of international law is wrong. He remains defiant. "First, it's now very clear what the advice is based on, and Butler has confirmed that it was based on the repeated defiance of Saddam Hussein of resolutions on the terms of the unanimous resolution 1441 and his failure to take the final opportunity that was given to him by 1441 ... There are differences of view and I respect those. But I believed the war was lawful and I still do."

Lord Goldsmith will not divulge the full process behind his view but he says Lord Butler's report makes public for the first time there was "specific correspondence" with military chiefs before the war.

Opposition politicians said this persistent perception of undue influence could be instantly rebutted if the Attorney- General, the government's most senior law officer, published his advice in full. But Lord Goldsmith sees no reason for a change of policy. "As far as I am aware, there are only two occasions in the past 100 years where the actual advice of law officers has been disclosed which referred to very special situations involving legal proceedings," he said.

"I don't think the convention needs reforming. I thought the chairman of the Bar put it very well when he said it was important that the Government has complete confidence in the advice, so there can be a full and frank exchange between lawyer and client, and it is important, so we continue to maintain the rule of law. We don't want governments being frightened of asking for advice and giving the full facts on decisions that have to be made."

Lawyers in the failed prosecution of Katharine Gunn, the whistleblower at GCHQ, also called for the Attorney General's advice to be disclosed, although the decision to drop the case had nothing to do with his legal opinion. He said: "This was not based on any considerations ...some people were suggesting, [it] had to do with the legality of the war."

Lord Goldsmith's brief now includes ministerial responsibility for the courts-martial system after several military personnel made successful challenges to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg over the fairness of the constitution of the tribunal that heard allegations against them.

In the past month, the Attorney General has announced two courts-martial of British soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners. Many lawyers say these cases would be better heard by the new International Criminal Court (ICC).

But Lord Goldsmith said: "I don't think it will go to the ICC because we are perfectly capable of dealing with the allegations such as they are. There should be a fair and professional investigation and independent and professional decision whether to prosecute or not. An independent tribunal will decide on guilt or innocence."The Army prosecutors are independent and that's why I have the general superintendence of them and they don't report to the military chain of command. There might be circumstances where there are concurrent jurisdictions with our regular civilian courts in relation to certain offences. So there's a possibility that we might end up with a trial in a Crown court."

He still has concerns about the fairness of the trials of the four Britons in Guantanamo. "I was not satisfied there were sufficient guarantees of the trial being fair by international standards and discussions continue."

After a US Supreme Court ruling, the Pentagon said the military would hold "status tribunals" to determine the legality of the detention of all the suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Source

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Interesting article thanks Walter.

The problem for the Attorney General is two fold

1. NO ONE believes him

because

2. He could clear up the whole matter instantly if he jsut made public the full advise he gave to govt.

Falling back on the client-lawyer confidentiality argument is pathetic.

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Apologies for the length of this but I had a few thoughts about the Big Debate on Iraq in the House of Commons today

I was thinking last night that there were always two concurrent objectives in the Iraq war

1. To find and destroy Iraq's illegal weapons

2. To change the regime and bring democracy peace and security to that country and hence to the region.

If BOTH had been achieved Bush and Blair would have been completely vindicated and seen as heros.

If EITHER had been properly achieved, Blair would have been ok. (That is find the weapons...no one worries that Iraq is still lawless. Or bring peace democracy etc etc and no one worries that the weapons have not been found, yet)

But the fact is NEITHER objective has successfully been made. I think they found one old mustard gas shell left over from the Iran Iraq war. Saddam is in gaol, but he still has support. Whole areas of the country are not under coalition/Iraq govt. control. Anarchy rules. Peaceful it aint. A majority of Iraqis say life is worse now than it was under Saddam, though they don't want Saddam back.

So the public want to know how and why we got into this mess. And the more they find out, the more untenable Blair's position becomes.

Its pretty clear to me that Blair was determined to do whatever the current administration in Washington wanted. (He has described the UK US relationship as central to his scheme of things). If Al Gore came into the oval office with a programme of containment, that would have been fine with Blair. As it was Bush arrived with a plan of invading Iraq in his back pocket, and before he even asks, Blair says that's fine with him...(admittedly after 9/11).

I believe Blair gave his agreement to British involvement in the invasion of Iraq to Bush at his ranch in Crawford in early 2002 or possibly earlier. Everything subsequently was merely window dressing in an attempt to sell the plan to the public, and to establish some sort of legal basis for it.

Perhaps Blair really bought into the neo-con dreams of establishing democracy in Iraq as a "cake walk". That coalition troops would be greeted with flowers (now called rocket propelled grenades), and a bit like Hitler thinking of the Soviet Union, that we only have to kick in the door and the whole lot will come tumbling down.

But personally I don't think Blair is that naive. He was faced with an exceptionally difficult dilemma. To support Britain's most powerful and most important ally in what he probably considered a risky if not foolhardy adventure, (which was going to take place regardless of British involvement), or to walk away from the Americans having just pledged after 9/11 to be "shoulder to shoulder" with them.

Had we done that the Americans would have regarded the Brits as no better than the French or the Germans, possibly worse...(if thats possible).

So Tony took a gamble. He placed his bet on the competence of Bush and the neo cons, to deliver what they promised. And there must have been reasonable expectations that at least one of the two objectives (above) would be achieved. So Tony gambled with our money (and of course other people's lives) and lost. Bye bye.

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Quote:

If the Iranians would like to have better relations with the United States there are some things they must do," including halting the country's alleged nuclear weapons program and support for terrorism, Bush said.

What makes Bush think the Iranians give a s***t. about having better relations with the US. After all they have what we want and need OIL. We have nothing they need. In addition despite all the rhetoric there is no doubt they are aware that the US is in no position to come at them militarily As for the UN [the debating society] they will continue do as they always do, nothing. And Iran will continue to develop a nuclear capability and support terrorism while they deny it.

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Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake in Niger; no, it didn't, or in any case the proof of it was too weak for the assertion to be included in the State of the Union; the documents involved were forgeries; hold on, there were other sources and documents on which the assertion could have legitimately been based on; but didn't those go back to the same original forged document? Two bloggers summarize ...

The long summary:

Quote:

July 15, 2004 -- 12:28 PM EDT // link // print)

Robert Novak today has a column crowing about the Senate intel committee report with respect to Joe Wilson and the Niger matter. Nonetheless, he still manages to misstate its findings.

At the head of Novak's column he says that committee Democrats "did not dissent from the committee's findings that Iraq apparently asked about buying yellowcake uranium from Niger."

Dissenting from this finding would admittedly have been a challenge since this is not in fact what the Report said.

As this article by Doyle McManus in today's Los Angeles Times notes, "the committee found that the CIA's statement, in a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, was reasonable' at the time. The committee added, however, that the evidence behind the assertion turned out to be weak, and charged that the CIA failed to make that clear to policymakers."

The truth is that we simply don't know whether the Iraqis ever 'sought' uranium in Niger or Africa in the years leading up to the war, though all the evidence we thought we had for such a claim has turned out to be baseless. (There remains the Brits' evidence which they stand by yet won't disclose, and we'll address that later.) And part of the uncertainty is based on the capaciousness of the term. 'Sought' can mean a lot of things -- everything from purchases and active negotiations to vague feelers which might have been intended to lay the groundwork for later attempted purchases.

One bit of evidence that weighs heavily against such claims that Iraq was hunting about looking for a uranium seller in the years just before the war is the simple fact that Iraq seems -- after a rather intense investigation -- not to have had any active nuclear program, thus rather diminishing the need to go around trying to buy uranium, with all the risks that would involve.

Even that doesn't entirely settle the question, though.

As a very knowledgable intelligence source pointed out to me recently, one of the things the Iraq Survey Group found was that from time to time Saddam would call aside this or that scientist or general and ask something to the effect of, 'If we had to, how long would it take us to restart this or that WMD program?'

(Beneath this there is an even further debate and question as to whether Saddam himself knew the extent of the decrepitude of his own army or just how shuttered his WMD programs were.)

My source's recollection was that the particular instances of this that the Survey Group found related to chemical weapons. But it's not inconceivable that Saddam might at some point have asked a similar question on the nuclear front. And that could explain why Iraq -- which had no active nuclear program -- might nevertheless have put out feelers about the possibilities of uranium purchases.

In any case, this is all theoretical or rather hypothetical -- speculation in the absence of any evidence. One point worth noting is that the Senate Report said the Niger uranium judgment was 'reasonable' as of September 2002 -- the time of the authorship of the NIE.

That was just before the forged documents came into possession of the United States. However, the main evidence that the US had at the time -- that which presumably made the judgment 'reasonable' -- was pair of reports the US had gotten from the Italian intelligence service, SISMI. And as later became clear, those reports were based on the forged documents. In other words, the evidence that made the claim 'reasonable' later turned out to be bogus.

And the short summary:

Quote:

July 19, 2004

Um...

So far, we've known that the Niger-uranium claim was based on (a) forged documents, (b) an Italian summary of the forged documents, (c) a French analysis of the forged documents, and (d) UK intelligence's conviction that the claim was true. The UK was, in turn, basing its analysis on (a) forged documents, and (b) a mysterious second source. Today, via Laura Rozen the Guardian reports that the second UK source "almost certainly" came from France. Does that mean the second source was really the same forgery passed around again through a different route? Hard to say. It would be nice to hear from UK intelligence why, if Iraq tried to get the yellowcake, it didn't succeed in getting the yellowcake. Assuming the attempt was made, knowing why it failed is pretty crucial to knowing what to think about it.

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I believe intelligence on Iraq flowed two ways. Firstly from the intelligence services via the JIC to the government. It then rebounded from government via the chairman of the JIC to the general public.

The first stream was an impartial representation of the truth about what was going on in Iraq as best it could be known. No doubt the Prime Minister considered it carefully before coming to any decision, but his decision did not depend upon it.

The reverse stream represented a highly partial version of what was known about Iraq, and was selectively used by the Prime Minister to justify the decision he had made. Thus the intelligence which was made available to the general public was absolutely dependent on the Prime Minister's decision.

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It is becoming clearer, especially in the light of the interview given by Dr Jones on BBC radio this morning, that the decision to invade Iraq predated the security-based reasons to justify that action, in this country at least.
(And of course in the USA too, but our security people speak only for Britain)
Then, the security-based reason were concocted, in a dishonest way. The allegations concerning the Iraqi threat were found to be hugely exaggerated and partly just plain wrong.
Then, recently, the reasoning was changed to "Well, the world is a better place without Saddam in power."

This will never be other than a massive murderous fraud.

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William Hague has just made a very good speech.

Summary: it was right to go to war. The govt. screwed up the public relations aspect of selling it.

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I heard Brian Jones too. Everything he said points to the irrelevance of intelligence to the decision to go to war, i.e. it was already decided

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The plan for invading Iraq by Americans dates back at least to 1997, and the foundation of the Project for a New American Century. What disgusts me is that the Right in the U.S. continues to act as though they had never heard of the PNAC, and that such a policy was not conceived of before the "war on terror." I haven't the least doubt that absent the tragedy of September 11th, this adminstration would have gotten around to establishing a causus belli.

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And now Teddy Taylor is banging on about Iran. (wrong debate?)

Apparantly Iran is a free democratic country which guarantees freedom of religious worship.

They should be allowed nuclear weapons if they want them. America is wrong to supply Iraq with wmd they used against Iran, wrong to start mounting an anti Iran propaganda campaign (now involved with 911 aparantly) and is wrong to consider a pre emptive strike before they got hold of Russian nuclear fuel rods.

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Quote:

I haven't the least doubt that absent the tragedy of September 11th, this adminstration would have gotten around to establishing a causus belli.

But 911 conveniently came along. And having established the principle that 911 justifies whacking any country, they will whack any country they want to whack.

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With so many assassinations of Iraq's new government, I wonder which middle east country is eager and lined up for the next democracy?

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The Arabian Candidate
July 20, 2004
By PAUL KRUGMAN

In the original version of "The Manchurian Candidate,"
Senator John Iselin, whom Chinese agents are plotting to
put in the White House, is a right-wing demagogue modeled
on Senator Joseph McCarthy. As Roger Ebert wrote, the plan
is to "use anticommunist hysteria as a cover for a
communist takeover."

The movie doesn't say what Iselin would have done if the
plot had succeeded. Presumably, however, he wouldn't have
openly turned traitor. Instead, he would have used his
position to undermine national security, while posing as
America's staunchest defender against communist evil.

So let's imagine an update - not the remake with Denzel
Washington, which I haven't seen, but my own version. This
time the enemies would be Islamic fanatics, who install as
their puppet president a demagogue who poses as the
nation's defender against terrorist evildoers.

The Arabian candidate wouldn't openly help terrorists.
Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be
their enemy.

After an attack, he would strike back at the terrorist
base, a necessary action to preserve his image of
toughness, but botch the follow-up, allowing the terrorist
leaders to escape. Once the public's attention shifted, he
would systematically squander the military victory:
committing too few soldiers, reneging on promises of
economic aid. Soon, warlords would once again rule most of
the country, the heroin trade would be booming, and
terrorist allies would make a comeback.

Meanwhile, he would lead America into a war against a
country that posed no imminent threat. He would insinuate,
without saying anything literally false, that it was
somehow responsible for the terrorist attack. This
unnecessary war would alienate our allies and tie down a
large part of our military. At the same time, the Arabian
candidate would neglect the pursuit of those who attacked
us, and do nothing about regimes that really shelter
anti-American terrorists and really are building nuclear
weapons.

Again, he would take care to squander a military victory.
The Arabian candidate and his co-conspirators would block
all planning for the war's aftermath; they would arrange
for our army to allow looters to destroy much of the
country's infrastructure. Then they would disband the
defeated regime's army, turning hundreds of thousands of
trained soldiers into disgruntled potential insurgents.

After this it would be easy to sabotage the occupied
country's reconstruction, simply by failing to spend aid
funds or rein in cronyism and corruption. Power outages,
overflowing sewage and unemployment would swell the ranks
of our enemies.

Who knows? The Arabian candidate might even be able to
deprive America of the moral high ground, no mean trick
when our enemies are mass murderers, by creating a climate
in which U.S. guards torture, humiliate and starve
prisoners, most of them innocent or guilty of only petty
crimes.

At home, the Arabian candidate would leave the nation
vulnerable, doing almost nothing to secure ports, chemical
plants and other potential targets. He would stonewall
investigations into why the initial terrorist attack
succeeded. And by repeatedly issuing vague terror warnings
obviously timed to drown out unfavorable political news,
his officials would ensure public indifference if and when
a real threat is announced.

Last but not least, by blatantly exploiting the terrorist
threat for personal political gain, he would undermine the
nation's unity in the face of its enemies, sowing suspicion
about the government's motives.

O.K., end of conceit. President Bush isn't actually an Al
Qaeda mole, with Dick Cheney his controller. Mr. Bush's
"war on terror" has, however, played with eerie perfection
into Osama bin Laden's hands - while Mr. Bush's supporters,
impressed by his tough talk, see him as America's champion
against the evildoers.

Last week, Republican officials in Kentucky applauded
bumper stickers distributed at G.O.P. offices that read,
"Kerry is bin Laden's man/Bush is mine." Administration
officials haven't gone that far, but when Tom Ridge offered
a specifics-free warning about a terrorist attack timed to
"disrupt our democratic process," many people thought he
was implying that Al Qaeda wants George Bush to lose. In
reality, all infidels probably look alike to the
terrorists, but if they do have a preference, nothing in
Mr. Bush's record would make them unhappy at the prospect
of four more years.

E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/opinion/20krug.html?ex=1091326143&ei=1&en=3b0ad62da35ea31c

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Released 11 minutes ago.
****

Iran Dismisses Talk of Sept. 11 Links as 'Fantasy'

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran dismissed as "fabrication and fantasy" Tuesday U.S. suggestions that it may have been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

President Bush (news - web sites) said Monday Washington was "digging into the facts" to determine whether Iran played a role in the al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.

A U.S. commission investigating the attacks will detail links between Iran and al Qaeda in its final report this week. The report is expected to say that several of the 19 hijackers passed through Iran on their way to the United States.

Tehran acknowledges that some of the Sept. 11 plotters may have been in Iran before the attacks but says they did so after entering the country undetected along its lengthy and porous borders with Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Pakistan.

"Any claim about Iran's direct or indirect links to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is fabrication and fantasy," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told the official IRNA news agency.

"It is not strange that some people manage to slip through a country's borders illegally ... What is funny is the fact that the country which has given them visas, residency permits, pilot training and sabotage training is making such claims," he said.

Bush, who in 2002 labeled Iran part of an "axis of evil" alongside North Korea (news - web sites) and Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Iraq (news - web sites), reiterated U.S. accusations that Iran is harboring al Qaeda leaders and urged Tehran to hand them over to their countries of origin.

Iran says it has arrested and deported about 500 al Qaeda suspects since the Sept. 11 attacks. But its refusal to hand over a number of senior al Qaeda members it is holding -- believed by security sources to include al Qaeda's security chief Egyptian Saif al Adel -- has infuriated Washington.

Bush said Monday that if Iran wanted to have better relations with Washington, "there are some things they must do," including ending what U.S. officials say is its nuclear weapons program and its support for terrorism.

Asefi said such terms were unacceptable for Iran.

"The time is over for carrot and stick policy. The Iranian nation has proved that it accepts relations with other countries only based on mutual respect and equal footing," he said.

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They may re-open these enquiries, as truth is teased out of Blair, Hoon, and Scarlett:

Blair faces new inquiry as critics prepare for key debate
By Andrew Grice, Colin Brown and Kim Sengupta
20 July 2004
Tony Blair is facing another Commons inquiry into the flawed intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction by MPs who claim they were not given the full picture during a previous investigation.
The Foreign Affairs Select Committee will meet tomorrow to discuss whether to reopen its inquiry into the Iraq war after the Butler report revealed last week that MI6 withdrew crucial evidence that bolstered the case for war because it was discredited.
It emerged yesterday that Lord Hutton, who investigated the death of the government scientist David Kelly, would welcome a new Commons inquiry. His own inquiry was not told about the doubts within MI6.
Lord Hutton, whose report absolved the Government and intelligence services of charges of "sexing up" a dossier on Iraq's weapons, cannot revisit his inquiry because there is no constitutional or legal avenue for doing so. But senior sources believe that John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, could be asked why they failed to tell Lord Hutton that MI6 withdrew key intelligence.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=542777

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Looks like another diversion tactic for Bush and company. When will they ever learn that constantly moving the target only works with their supporters?

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Another interesting twist from Iraq.
*********

Iraq Requests Return of UN Nuclear Inspectors

1 hour, 39 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Amil Khan

CAIRO (Reuters) - Iraq (news - web sites) has asked the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to send inspectors to conduct an inventory of the country's nuclear material, and the agency's head said U.N. arms experts should also return to finish their job.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said inspectors charged with the task of verifying the status of Iraq's nuclear material would return to Baghdad soon.

"We received an official request from (Iraqi Foreign Minister) Hoshiyar Zebari for the return of international inspectors in the coming days," ElBaradei told reporters after arriving at Cairo airport.

Unlike their pre-war counterparts, these inspectors will not be searching for signs of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.

Instead, they will be performing a routine task that even Iraq's ousted President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) allowed the U.N. agency to carry out after barring U.N. weapons inspectors from Iraq in the wake of U.S. and British bombing raids in December 1998.

The IAEA said it hoped it would be a step toward a resumption of full inspections.

"This is a necessary requirement, that the IAEA conducts this inventory," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said. "That said, the IAEA is looking forward to the U.N. Security Council revisiting its mandate for the IAEA to return to Iraq to rule out any reconstitution of a clandestine nuclear weapons program."

In four months of inspections before the war started in March 2003, the IAEA never found any signs that Saddam had revived his nuclear weapons program -- despite U.S. and British assertions that he was pursuing nuclear arms.

However, in its pre-war reports to the Security Council, the IAEA never ruled out the possibility that U.S. and British charges were true. Now ElBaradei wants to bring that chapter of Iraq's history to a conclusion.

"The return of international inspectors to Iraq is considered necessary, not to search for the weapons of mass destruction, but so the agency can write a final report on the non-presence of weapons of mass destruction so the international community can lift sanctions on Iraq," ElBaradei said.

Two U.N. agencies hunted for banned weapons in Iraq before last year's invasion. ElBaradei's IAEA handled nuclear inspections, while the UNMOVIC agency was charged with looking for chemical, biological and ballistic arsenals.

When an interim Iraqi government formally took power in June, ElBaradei said U.N. inspectors were ready to begin talks with the new administration to arrange a return.

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Vienna)

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the reincarnation of suzy wrote:

In the long run, of course it will.

In the long run it won't matter at all! What will matter in the long run is whether or not we do the right things. Were we more liked before Bush replaced Clinton? We were not! Osama publically declared war on America three times during the Clinton administration. Osama's gang killed Americans several times before Bush was elected. Those on the left are still trying to convince themselves that Bush is solely responsible for 9/11/2001, an event that occurred less than 9 months after Bush was inaugurated.

the reincarnation of suzy wrote:

Except perhaps in the eyes of people like yourself, Ican, who think people hate us simply because of our "freedoms".

You must enjoy being wrong because you persist in being wrong.

We are hated because we do the right things more often than those invidious soles who hate us. We are hated because we are more productive. We are hated by those that resent those who accomplish more and love those who accomplish less than themselves. We are hated by those who root against people who rise above them. We are hated because they are taught to hate us by those who resent our constant reminder that they are malignancies of human civilization.

the reincarnation of suzy wrote:

Why do immigrants come to America? That's an easy one. Choose a side: The bully who always wins, or the skinny kids who keep getting knocked down by him.

Wrong again!

They come to America because they value liberty more than they value dependency. They come to America to be free of the invidious vipers that control their homelands. They come to America to be the best they can be. They come to America for a better life. They come to America because they prefer to learn how to emulate winners instead of losers. They come to America because they like Americans.

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Wow, you're WRONG on all counts! How can you even believe THE bunk you spew?
By the way, neither I, nor many I know, actually BLAME Bush for 9/11. That's a good "cover" story, but it doesn't jibe with reality.
There is plenty else to blame Bush for, though. He's a crappyass president who has done little good for the nation.
I suggest you open your eyes and mind to reality, rather than what you wish was reality. You come off sounding very ignorant and old-school (has 9/11 taught you nothing? Perhaps you should reflect!), yet you also sound like a know-it-all; not a good combo. It's just not working for you! Try again.

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THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

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