But it's not as cut and dried as that. As the inquiry continues it's becoming increasingly apparent that the war was very likely illegal (as every lawyer in the Foreign Office said it was)

Not quite cut and dried as that even. As the inquiry continues there have been number of people who have appeared before Chilcot & Co who have expressed their opinions as to what they thought regarding the legality of the war. Unfortunately that is all it is a collection of opinions. For "legal" purposes there was only one opinion that ever really counted, i.e. that of the Attorney-General. So Blair is to be recalled to clarify what advice he was given by Lord Goldsmith, wouldn't the best plaan be to recall Lord Goldsmith and ask him, why he changed his mind, although I think that if you did that you would not get an explanation that you would agree with or accept, because I don't think Goldsmith changed his mind at all did he? But I think that is the way it was rather carelessly reported.

He was asked about about Regime Change, and he quite correctly said Regime Change does not work from the UK's point of view because Regime Change is not mentioned as being required in any of the previous UN Resolutions relating to Iraq.

Rather poorly Goldsmith put up three circumstances under which military action would be considered legal:

- Direct threat
- Humanitarian Grounds
- UN Authorisation

It could not be argued that Iraq was a direct threat to the UK

The case for acting out of humanitarian concern could not be argued

Which left UN Authorisation, at that time that devolved to UNSCR 678 & UNSCR 687. 678 authorised military action against Iraq related to its occupation of Kuwait; 687 detailed the terms and conditions that Iraq had to comply with in order to halt hostilities associated with 678. As 1441 was not at this time in force, and Iraq had not complied with the terms and conditions agreed to, then military intervention to enforce Iraqi compliance was perfectly legal.

Blair went back for a second resolution to put the legality of any military action beyond doubt.

Oh, no he did not, he may have wanted to, but Chirac had made it perfectly plain that France was going to veto any second resolution. So the diplomatic route came to a dead end, the second resolution was never even drafted for consideration.