Tony Blair will be quizzed over a devastating official memo warning him that war on Iraq would be illegal eight months before he sent troops into Baghdad, it was claimed last night.

The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war will consider a letter from Lord Goldsmith, then Mr Blair's top law officer, advising him that deposing Saddam would be in breach of international law, according to a report in The Mail on Sunday.

But Mr Blair refused to accept Lord Goldsmith's advice and instead issued instructions for his long-term friend to be "gagged" and barred from cabinet meetings, the newspa

Originally posted by zerbot565
reply to post by Chastral

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byproduct or not but its still illegal

soldiers kill more civilians then soldier vs soldier casulties

makes the training you recive at boot camp pretty useless , might as well strap forks to garden gloves and shout anarchy

Iraq war illegal, says Annan

The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter

He said the decision to take action in Iraq should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally

When pressed on whether he viewed the invasion of Iraq as illegal, he said: "Yes, if you wish. I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

Blair was told Iraq war ‘illegal’: report

The government's chief legal advisor informed then British prime minister Tony Blair in 2002 that deposing Saddam Hussein would contravene international law, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
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Peter Goldsmith, the Attorney General at the time, wrote to Blair eight months before the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, but the premier ignored the advice

Blix: Iraq War Was Illegal

The former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has declared that the war in Iraq was illegal, dealing another devastating blow to Tony Blair.

Mr Blix, speaking to The Independent, said the Attorney General's legal advice to the Government on the eve of war, giving cover for military action by the US and Britain, had no lawful justification. He said it would have required a second United Nations resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force for the invasion of Iraq last March to have been legal.
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Mr Blix demolished the argument advanced by Lord Goldsmith three days before the war began, which stated that resolution 1441 authorized the use of force because it revived earlier UN resolutions passed after the 1991 ceasefire.

Mr Blix said that while it was possible to argue that Iraq had breached the ceasefire by violating UN resolutions adopted since 1991, the "ownership" of the resolutions rested with the entire 15-member Security Council and not with individual states. "It's the Security Council that is party to the ceasefire, not the UK and US individually, and therefore it is the council that has ownership of the ceasefire"

He said to challenge that interpretation would set a dangerous precedent. "Any individual member could take a view - the Russians could take one view, the Chinese could take another, they could be at war with each other, theoretically," Mr Blix said.

The Attorney General's opinion has come under fresh scrutiny since the collapse of the trial against the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun last week, prompting calls for his full advice to be made public.

Mr Blix, who is an international lawyer by training, said: "I would suspect there is a more skeptical view than those two A4 pages," in a reference to Clare Short's contemptuous description of the 358-word summary.

It emerged on Wednesday that a Foreign Office memo, sent to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the same day that Lord Goldsmith's summary was published, made clear that there was no "automaticity" in resolution 1441 to justify war.

Asked whether, in his view, a second resolution authorizing force should have been adopted, Mr Blix replied: "Oh yes."

The use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States, defying all international treaties, will slowly annihilate all species on earth including the human species, and yet this country continues to do so with full knowledge of its destructive potential.

Since 1991, the United States has staged four wars using depleted uranium weaponry, illegal under all international treaties, conventions and agreements, as well as under the US military law. The continued use of this illegal radioactive weaponry, which has already contaminated vast regions with low level radiation and will contaminate other parts of the world over time, is indeed a world affair and an international issue.
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ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW

Four reasons why using depleted uranium weapons violates the UN Convention on Human Rights:

LEGALITY TEST FOR WEAPONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW

TEMPORAL TEST – Weapons must not continue to act after the battle is over.

ENVIRONMENTAL TEST – Weapons must not be unduly harmful to the environment.

TERRITORIAL TEST – Weapons must not act off of the battlefield.

HUMANENESS TEST – Weapons must not kill or wound inhumanly.


International Human Rights and humanitarian lawyer, Karen Parker, determined that depleted uranium weaponry fails the four tests for legal weapons under international law, and that it is also illegal under the definition of a ‘poison’ weapon. Through Karen Parker’s continued efforts, a sub-commission of the UN Human Rights Commission determined in 1996 that depleted uranium is a weapon of mass destruction that should not be used:

RESOLUTION 1996/16 ON STOPPING THE USE OF DEPLETED URANIUM - DU

The military use of DU violates current international humanitarian law, including the principle that there is no unlimited right to choose the means and methods of warfare (Art. 22 Hague Convention VI (HCIV); Art. 35 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva (GP1); the ban on causing unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury (Art. 23 §le HCIV; Art. 35 §2 GP1), indiscriminate warfare (Art. 51 §4c and 5b GP1) as well as the use of poison or poisoned weapons.

The deployment and use of DU violate the principles of international environmental and human rights protection. They contradict the right to life established by the Resolution 1996/16 of the UN Subcommittee on Human Rights.