The Channel 4 News Iraq Inquiry blogger examines the newspaper reaction to the first week of the Inquiry.
It may be Sunday but the Inquiry still got its fair share of column inches today, with the Mail on Sunday in pole position. It reports that the then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith – for overseas readers, the UK Government’s chief legal adviser – wrote to Prime Minister Blair eight months before the war advising that “deposing Saddam Hussein was a blatant breach of international law.”
For his pains, the paper says, Number 10 ‘gagged’ Goldsmith and banned him from attending Cabinet – allegedly resulting in his threatening to resign (and losing three stone in weight…) The MoS says Chilcot has the legal note and both Blair and Goldsmith can expect to be questioned about it when they appear early next year.
Looking back on the week The Observer said that the hearings had been used as a vehicle for senior diplomats and civil servants to exact revenge on the ex-PM: “Blair’s reputation had been sliced like salami day after day,” a theme a number of papers allude to.
Over at the Independent on Sunday John Rentoul – who says he still thinks the invasion was justified – argues that the Inquiry’s energies are misplaced. Rather than cover old ground over WMD and intelligence he’d prefer that they concentrate on “the weakness of planning for, and the poor handling of, the post-invasion phase” (which, in fairness, Chilcot says they’ll move onto).
But Rob Liddle in the Sunday Times argues otherwise, identifying eight specific areas he says the hearings have shed new light on. Doesn’t preclude a jab at the committee’s structure though: “like a very upper-class version of the Channel 4 series Come Dine with Me, with charming, learned and polite knighted people asking the gentlest of questions of charming, learned and polite knighted people, before breaking for lunch.”
A reminder that tomorrow’s witness is Sir David Manning, Blair’s foreign policy adviser in the key period 2001-2003. He’s almost certain to be asked about the ‘smoking memo’ [http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/james-macintyres-blog/2009/06/iraq-manning-blair-inquiry] that appeared to show that the PM was dead-set on regime change as early as March 2002.
Doesn’t start until the afternoon so don’t worry if there aren’t many tweets in the morning – I’m off but my fellow lurker will be with you from 1400h. (Fyi techfans we’re trialling a tiny new netbook computer after last week’s gremlins, so please do bear with us.) Enjoy.