BRITAIN

BRITAIN

Evening Standard, London, Jan. 27: The appearance before the Chilcot inquiry of Lord Goldsmith, the government’s senior legal adviser in the run-up to the war in Iraq, provides fresh embarrassment for ministers. His testimony makes clear the tentative character of his final advice that the war was legal. His previous view was that it was not, and that this view was “not terribly welcome” to Tony Blair. What he eventually provided was a far from categoric legal basis for invasion.

Late in the day

What seems abundantly clear is that Lord Goldsmith’s advice was sought late in the day and that he was neither as fully briefed by the prime minister, nor as closely involved with the critical decisions to go to war as he, or we, might have expected. Of course, legal advice can be discounted by ministers. But when it came to Blair making the case for the war, he never acknowledged the dubious nature of its legal backing. He may have felt that the moral case for removing a dictator was the decisive factor, as was Britain showing solidarity with the U.S., but those were not the grounds he actually gave us.

The political effect of the inquiry will be real, even though Tony Blair is no longer a player. It is a reminder, months before an election, of the single most damaging action undertaken by the Government since 1997. And the appearance before it of Gordon Brown will bring to mind the awkward reality that he was a backer of the war.

Granted, had the war been a success, if Saddam Hussein had possessed weapons of mass destruction, if the aftermath of the invasion had not been so mismanaged, we might now be discussing it in different terms.

CANADA

The Gazette, Montreal, Jan. 26: Haiti’s new army of friends, meeting in Montreal, didn’t get far beyond platitudes.

About 20 countries, the United Nations, the World Bank and other groups convened to discuss rebuilding Haiti.

They agreed with the words of Jean-Max Bellerive, the devastated country’s prime minister, who said that although the reconstruction effort is “colossal,” his country can lead it.

“Colossal” is an understatement — 200,000 people or more are believed dead after the Jan. 12 earthquake — and Bellerive conceded that Haiti will have to “rely strongly” on foreign friends.

Freely elected government

Certainly, but Haitians must build their own country. There is a freely elected government in place, although it is now obscured by rubble. And Haiti’s people have through long decades of misrule learned a self-sufficient resiliency that will help them now.