In the UK, the Chilcot commission has conducted a serious investigation how the Tony Blair government came to join in the Iraq invasion.

The report has not been reported to the public, but leaks are coming out, and the latest leak that ministers were instructed to burn the attorney general’s opinion which cast the invasion into doubt, and this one is big, because it demonstrates a direct knowledge that the invasion was on (at best) shaky legal ground, and that there was an active and aggressive cover-up of this:

Tony Blair has denied reports that ministers were instructed to ‘burn’ a report questioning the legality of the Iraq war less than three weeks before British forces invaded the country.

The Mail on Sunday quotes an unnamed senior No 10 figure saying that the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, presented a 13-page legal opinion on 7 March 2003 that suggested the war could be challenged under international law because of the lack of UN backing.

The paper’s source says: “There was pandemonium. The date when war was expected to start was already in the diary, and here was Goldsmith saying it could be challenged under international law. They said ‘burn it, destroy it’ and got to work on the [attorney general].”

………

On Thursday, Sir John Chilcot announced he would publish his long-awaited report into the Iraq war in June or July next year, giving government officials up to three months to carry out national security checks on its findings. In a letter to the prime minister, Chilcot said the text of his report – which is expected to be around 2 million words long – would be finalised in the week of 18 April 2016.

Blair’s office denied that he was the cause of the delay, saying he had replied to documents he received as part of the Maxwellisation process – in which witnesses who are to be criticised are given a right to reply – in August this year after receiving them in January.

Someone within the Chilcot commission has concerns that this report is going to get buried, and so stuff is leaking out.

Assuming that this report is accurate, and it certainly smells true, it creates a real possibility of some sort of repercussions to Tony “The Smiler”, even if it is just making him toxic enough that foreign governments who have been paying him big bucks (Pounds) as a “consultant” might terminate their deals.

I’d like to see him in the Hague, along with Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, and the rest of their Evil Minions^™, but that is not going to happen.