This could be the most explosive week yet at the Iraq inquiry ahead of Tony Blair’s appearance on Friday, writes the Iraq Inquiry Blogger.
Big week – really big. I know, I know: I probably say it each Monday, but it genuinely is this week and the overwhelming theme is legality.
We get a couple of defence secretaries this afternoon and then tomorrow Michael Wood (FCO legal adviser 2001-06), David Brummell (legal secretary to the law officers 2001-04) and Elizabeth Wilmshurst (FCO deputy legal adviser 2001-03).
You could be forgiven for not immediately remembering any of those names but at least two of them have the potential to be, well, explosive.
The Observer reported yesterday that it understands Wood will tell the inquiry he thought Blair’s decision to take the UK to war without a second UN resolution was illegal.
Elizabeth Wilmshurst could be equally devastating. She resigned from the FCO just two days before the war started because she too believed it to be unlawful.
Her resignation letter said that war with Iraq would be a “crime of aggression” – but crucially one key paragraph of it was censored; a paragraph which suggested, as Gary Gibbon revealed, that the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith – the Government’s chief legal adviser – had previously held the same opinion.
According to the Guardian he changed his mind after a meeting with two of Blair’s closest advisers one week before the invasion.
So who better to hear from on Wednesday than Lord Goldsmith himself. The vagaries of Chilcot timetabling (whole day Hoon, half day Straw, 90 minutes Omand?) are anyone’s guess but the fact Goldsmith does get a day to himself speaks for itself.
Oh and Tony someone or other on Friday. Apparently “domestic chatter” about Blair’s appearance at the end of the week led in part to the weekend’s terror threat-level hike.
Which seems peculiar as he’ll surely be better-protected at the QEII than at almost any other time, but greater minds appear to have reasoned otherwise.
Tweets from 14h00 at twitter.com/iraqinquiryblog.
By the way suggested questions for Blair much welcomed, either in comments here, on the Twitter page or
asktonyblair@gmail.com