Originally posted by Chunder
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More reality , but i hope she can prove her accusations .
Former minister Clare Short launched a damning attack on Tony Blair's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and said she believed the government's chief legal adviser at the time had misled the cabinet over its legality.
Short, a long-time Blair critic who was then International Development Secretary, disputed evidence the former prime minster gave last week to an inquiry into the war, saying he had kept ministers in the dark about his plans.
Discussions were limited and there had been a "block on communications," said Short, who voted in favour of the 2003 invasion but quit Blair's government shortly afterwards.
Last Friday, Blair made a robust defence of his decision to go to war, saying Saddam Hussein had posed a threat to the world and had to be disarmed or removed.
He also told the inquiry that there had been "substantive discussion" with senior ministers in the cabinet.
But Short said she had been excluded from talks and that Blair had not wanted Iraq discussed in the cabinet because he was afraid of leaks to the media.
"There was secretiveness and deception on top of that," she told the Chilcot inquiry which is examining Britain's role in the war and its aftermath.
"Normal communications were being closed down."
Short criticised former Attorney General Peter Goldsmith who she accused of not telling the cabinet of his doubts about the legality of war, nor that senior Foreign Office lawyers believed it would be illegal without a second U.N. resolution.
Goldsmith has said he too initially doubted the war's legality and only concluded it would be lawful without such a resolution a week before the invasion, and just days before the cabinet were briefed.
"I think he misled the cabinet, he certainly misled me, but people let it through," Short said. "I was stunned by his advice."
She told the inquiry she believed Goldsmith had been pressured by Blair, something he denies, but had no direct evidence to back this up.
Short said she had seen the intelligence and there was no imminent threat from Saddam, and she was also damning of the planning that had been made for the aftermath of the invasion.
"There was no reason why it had to be as quick as it was," she said. "It was all done on a wing and a prayer.
"We could have gone more slowly and carefully and not had a totally destabilised and angry Iraq into which came al Qaeda which wasn't there before and that would have been safer for the world."
Short quit the Labour Party parliamentary group in 2006 to become an independent, saying Blair had engaged in deceit over the Iraq War.
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