Tony Blair and Jack Straw brushed aside repeated warnings from Government lawyers that they would not have a 'leg to stand on' if Britain invaded Iraq.
Devastating evidence at the Iraq inquiry yesterday revealed that every senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office believed the conflict was in breach of international law.
Astonishingly, Downing Street asked lawyers to assess what the consequences would be if Britain toppled Saddam Hussein without legal authority. When they received the lawyers' memo, No.10 demanded: 'Why has this been put in writing?'
Sir Michael Wood, then the Foreign Office's senior legal adviser, warned ministers again and again that to go to war without approval from a UN Security Council resolution would constitute a 'crime of aggression' in international law.
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