Link: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=633717

The (in)famous advice by the UK Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, to PM Tony Blair on the legality of participating in the US-led war on Iraq has finally been published - and the timing could not have been worse with a UK general election only 1 week away.
Blair is now likely to spend the next 7 days ducking and weaving, since the published documents clearly show that the advice given was far from the unambiguous endorsement that Blair claimed he had received at the time. For example, referring to the assertion that the then-existing U.N. resolutions authorized the war, Lord Goldsmith politely demurred and wrote:
"In these circumstances, I remain of the opinion that the safest legal course would be to secure the adoption of a further resolution to authorise the use of force."
The full text of the advice is here.
Lord Goldsmith is already ducking and weaving and issuing press releases in an attempt to justify the way that his advice was written. Incredibly, Blair was continuing to insist as late as yesterday that the advice authorized the war as legal. He seems to be following a common political tactic of consistently repeating falsehoods in the hope that they will eventually be perceived as the truth.
Watching this unfold from Dallas reminds me of the quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the effect that everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own set of facts.