totally fcuk'ed up

* "Goldsmith told Blair 'war could be illegal'... Sir Menzies Campbell, the party's foreign affairs spokesman, added: "Trust in the Prime Minister, particularly over the legality of the war, depends on full disclosure of the Attorney General's advice and his thinking. Only the Prime Minister knows if he lied but the British people are justified in their continuing scepticism."" LINK
this story just keeps giving. the only problem is that Howard seems despicable - and theres not a snowflakes chance that kennedy can win.

* "Blair aides dismissed the claim. "There's nothing new to this story," said one. But it prompted both main opposition leaders to renew their attacks. Charles Kennedy demanded that the government bow to the inevitable and show how it became involved in what he called "a dreadful error, carried out on the basis of the wrong arguments and for the wrong reasons"." LINK

* "Mr Kennedy responded to Mr Howard's attack by saying he would not stand for any Conservative "claptrap" about a war for which he said they were the chief cheerleaders." LINK

* "Sensing that the tide could swing against Mr Blair, the Liberal Democrats today publish anti-war advertisements depicting Tony Blair and George Bush smiling together with the message: "Never again"." LINK

The attorney general told colleagues that:
· It was the UN's job, not that of individual states, to decide if Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions;
· The use of UN resolution 1441 to justify war might be deficient because it did not include the phrase "all necessary" to enforce it;
· A second UN resolution was needed in 2003 to make the looming war legal;
· Earlier UN resolutions against Saddam could not easily be revived to justify the invasion;
· The UN weapons inspectors were still doing their work and had found no banned weapons;
· The US position on legality did not apply to Britain because Congress had voted President George Bush special war-making powers.
(the independent has the details)

* in a fun development, it turns out that a version of the stoopid brit dossier was actually produced in arabic before the invasion. for some reason, nobody had actually compared the two. as it happens, there were some, ummm, mistakes in the 'translation' - like substituting the word 'biological' for 'nuclear' - little things like that - which, incidentally, made it a whole lot scarier. robert fisk has the details.
the funny part about it (which fisk doesnt mention) is that they didnt even bother to rework the english version - the simply copy/pasted that 10 year-old student piece from the web somewhere (complete with spelling mistakes)...