Will We Learn of the “Many Dark Actors”?
By: emptywheel Monday November 30, 2009 7:16 pm
Anyone who has been following over the last eight years will not be surprised that Lord Goldsmith told Tony Blair that the Iraq War was illegal.
On July 29, [2002, Lord Goldsmith] wrote to Mr Blair on a single side of A4 headed notepaper from his office.Friends say it was no easy thing for him to do. He was a close friend of Mr Blair, who gave him his peerage and Cabinet post. The typed letter was addressed by hand, ‘Dear Tony’, and signed by hand, ‘Yours, Peter’.
In it, Lord Goldsmith set out in uncompromising terms why he believed war was illegal. He pointed out that:
War could not be justified purely on the grounds of ‘regime change’.
Although United Nations rules permitted ‘military intervention on the basis of self-defence’, they did not apply in this case because Britain was not under threat from Iraq.
While the UN allowed ‘humanitarian intervention’ in certain instances, that too was not relevant to Iraq.
It would be very hard to rely on earlier UN resolutions in the Nineties approving the use of force against Saddam.
Lord Goldsmith ended his letter by saying ‘the situation might change’ – although in legal terms, it never did.
I’m more interested, though, in the description of the scrum two Labour officials used to to convince Goldsmith to give the Iraq War some legal sanction.
He was summoned to a No10 meeting with Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Baroness Sally Morgan, Mr Blair’s senior Labour ‘fixer’ in Downing Street. No officials were present.
A source said: ‘Falconer and Morgan performed a pincer movement on Goldsmith. They more or less pinned him up against the wall and told him to do what Blair wanted.’
After the meeting, Lord Goldsmith issued his brief statement stating the war was lawful.
With this stuff coming out during the Iraq War inquiry, I honestly wonder whether we’ll eventually learn about the “dark actors playing games” who went after David Kelly.
Eric:
You are lucky you can have coffee right across the street from your Congressman. Since she became Speaker, few can get normal face time with Pelosi unless she plans it while in Washington or you go to visit her.
I think we’re watching the peeling of an onion here. I don’t know what the President will say, but I think we’re beginning to see the edges of the Iraq War lies fall apart, not just with Kerry’s Tora-Bora report, but also the inquiry in the UK on Blair’s acquiescence to play along with Bush Cheney, even though he knew full well there was no justification to invade Iraq.
Is this an effect of the Uranus station direct?
This is Maurice Hinchey, my congressman from the Hudson Valley region of New York State. I have coffee with him fairly regularly at Dominick’s Cafe, and I have known him on and off for about 15 years. One thing I can tell you is that were I in congress, I would have about the same voting record as Maurice.
He once had a news conference at Dominick’s on an energy-related issue. It was really just four reporters and the congressman sitting at the back table, having a casual conversation, on the record.
I asked him why bin Laden was not wanted by the FBI for the Sept. 11 attacks. I noted the Most Wanted Terrorist poster on the FBI’s site, which does not include Sept. 11. I said basically, “We knew enough to go to war with Afghanistan, but not enough to have him wanted for the attacks? Why is that?”
His answer: that would have distracted people from going after Saddam Hussein and invading Iraq. (It turns out that in order to be on the FBI’s most wanted list, you need a grand jury indictment against you; but his answer was telling, and what you see in this video is consistent with what he told me.)
There is a lot more to the story than this. But this is a good starting point. Maurice is an early Scorpio with a Sagittarius Moon and Capricorn rising. Pholus is in his ascendant, opposite Chiron in Cancer. His data is Oct 27, 1938, 11.58 am, Manhattan. Published with permission.
FROM MARCY WHEELER’S “EMPTYWHEEL” BLOG:
Will We Learn of the “Many Dark Actors”?
By: emptywheel Monday November 30, 2009 7:16 pm
Anyone who has been following over the last eight years will not be surprised that Lord Goldsmith told Tony Blair that the Iraq War was illegal.
On July 29, [2002, Lord Goldsmith] wrote to Mr Blair on a single side of A4 headed notepaper from his office.Friends say it was no easy thing for him to do. He was a close friend of Mr Blair, who gave him his peerage and Cabinet post. The typed letter was addressed by hand, ‘Dear Tony’, and signed by hand, ‘Yours, Peter’.
In it, Lord Goldsmith set out in uncompromising terms why he believed war was illegal. He pointed out that:
War could not be justified purely on the grounds of ‘regime change’.
Although United Nations rules permitted ‘military intervention on the basis of self-defence’, they did not apply in this case because Britain was not under threat from Iraq.
While the UN allowed ‘humanitarian intervention’ in certain instances, that too was not relevant to Iraq.
It would be very hard to rely on earlier UN resolutions in the Nineties approving the use of force against Saddam.
Lord Goldsmith ended his letter by saying ‘the situation might change’ – although in legal terms, it never did.
I’m more interested, though, in the description of the scrum two Labour officials used to to convince Goldsmith to give the Iraq War some legal sanction.
He was summoned to a No10 meeting with Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Baroness Sally Morgan, Mr Blair’s senior Labour ‘fixer’ in Downing Street. No officials were present.
A source said: ‘Falconer and Morgan performed a pincer movement on Goldsmith. They more or less pinned him up against the wall and told him to do what Blair wanted.’
After the meeting, Lord Goldsmith issued his brief statement stating the war was lawful.
With this stuff coming out during the Iraq War inquiry, I honestly wonder whether we’ll eventually learn about the “dark actors playing games” who went after David Kelly.
Eric:
You are lucky you can have coffee right across the street from your Congressman. Since she became Speaker, few can get normal face time with Pelosi unless she plans it while in Washington or you go to visit her.
I think we’re watching the peeling of an onion here. I don’t know what the President will say, but I think we’re beginning to see the edges of the Iraq War lies fall apart, not just with Kerry’s Tora-Bora report, but also the inquiry in the UK on Blair’s acquiescence to play along with Bush Cheney, even though he knew full well there was no justification to invade Iraq.
Is this an effect of the Uranus station direct?
This is Maurice Hinchey, my congressman from the Hudson Valley region of New York State. I have coffee with him fairly regularly at Dominick’s Cafe, and I have known him on and off for about 15 years. One thing I can tell you is that were I in congress, I would have about the same voting record as Maurice.
He once had a news conference at Dominick’s on an energy-related issue. It was really just four reporters and the congressman sitting at the back table, having a casual conversation, on the record.
I asked him why bin Laden was not wanted by the FBI for the Sept. 11 attacks. I noted the Most Wanted Terrorist poster on the FBI’s site, which does not include Sept. 11. I said basically, “We knew enough to go to war with Afghanistan, but not enough to have him wanted for the attacks? Why is that?”
His answer: that would have distracted people from going after Saddam Hussein and invading Iraq. (It turns out that in order to be on the FBI’s most wanted list, you need a grand jury indictment against you; but his answer was telling, and what you see in this video is consistent with what he told me.)
There is a lot more to the story than this. But this is a good starting point. Maurice is an early Scorpio with a Sagittarius Moon and Capricorn rising. Pholus is in his ascendant, opposite Chiron in Cancer. His data is Oct 27, 1938, 11.58 am, Manhattan. Published with permission.