The Chilcot Inquiry has at last disclosed something novel: Lord Goldsmith believed at one time that a second UN resolution would be a pre-requisite for legitimate military action. Goldsmith may well have been right, but not on the grounds he stated.
A letter from Jack Straw reveals that Goldsmith misunderstood the wording of 1441. For a man who presented himself last week as a cipher amid titanic events, it’s an extraordinary letter, and its tone, phrasing and even the punctuation are crushingly condescending.
The Attorney General had argued that ‘he did not find much difference between’ the French proposal and 1441’s final wording. Straw replied:
‘With respect, there is all the difference in the world…The French text would have given the Security Council the exclusive right to determine whether there had been a further material breach. We resisted that because it automatically bound us into a second Resolution to authorise the use of force.
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