Peter Goldsmith, the government’s senior legal adviser at the time, wrote in 2002 that he was “not aware of existence of material” that would indicate an “imminent threat from Iraq”.

“I think you should know that I see considerable difficulties in being satisfied that military action would be justified on the basis of self-defence,” Goldsmith wrote to Geoff Hoon, Britain’s defence minister from 1999 to 2005.

“In particular I am not aware of the existence of material indicating the existence of an imminent threat from Iraq of the sort which would justify military action without support of a [UN] Security Council Chapter VII authorisation.”

Goldsmith later told the cabinet in March 2003 that the war was legal without a UN resolution, and the US-led invasion went ahead three days later.

The letters were released as Hoon gave evidence to a British public inquiry into the Iraq war.

He is the most senior politician to appear before the hearings so far.

‘Legal justification’

Hoon told the hearing in London on Tuesday that Goldsmith had “categorically” concluded that “there was a legal justification for military action” in his final conclusion in 2003.

He also said the government wanted a diplomatic solution to the crisis and did not think Tony Blair, the UK prime minister at the time, gave a promise to George Bush, the US president, to support war come what may.

“I think that right up until the vote in the House of Commons, our attitude towards
the use of force was always conditional,” Hoon said.

He identified mid-2002 as the period when it become clear that Washington “meant business” over Iraq, because the country was so deeply traumatised over the September 11, 2001 attacks and it perceived Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader at the time, as another threat.

“It was getting pretty real by then. I think there was a real sense of the Americans thinking through in a very practical way the consequences of the ‘axis of evil’ speech [by Bush] and focusing on Iraq.

“So we had no doubt at that stage in the summer that they meant business.”

Bush first branded Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil” in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002.

Wide-ranging inquiry

The Iraq war inquiry is Britain’s third and widest-ranging inquiry into the conflict, which triggered huge anti-war huge protests in the UK at the time and in which 179 British soldiers died fighting.

Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in London, said the inquiry will be looking to Blair, who is due to testify on January 29, for key evidence at the hearing.

“The Iraq inquiry says it is ’struggling to find’ key intelligence evidence supporting Tony Blair’s case for war,” she said.

“It will be asking him to fill in those gaps when he appears here next week.”

Two previous reports on aspects of the war have cleared Blair’s government of wrongdoing over the conflict.

Blackwater's role in the Iraq war has been highly controversal

Seven lawsuits concerning alleged illegal activities that led to deaths in Iraq filed against the firm formerly known as Blackwater have been settled out of court in the US.

The company, now known as Xe, said in a statement that they were “pleased” with the settlement, which came after months of negotiations.

Susan Burke, the lawyer for the firm, filed for the cases to be dismissed in court late on Wednesday.

“This enables Xe’s new management to move the company forward free of the costs and distraction of ongoing litigation, and provides some compensation to Iraqi families,” the company said.

Further details of the settlement were not released by the court or Xe.

Dozens of Iraqis had accused the company of behaviour that led to a culture of recklessness and illegality, including the deaths of several people, and sought compensation through the courts.

“[Blackwater founder, Erik] Prince personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army … to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians,” one civil lawsuits asserted.

‘Victory’

In one cited case, 17 Iraqis were left dead in 2007 in Nasoor Square in Baghdad, the capital, after alleged shooting by personnel from the security contractor.

“I feel like I achieved victory against the Blackwater firm,” Hassan Jabir, a lawyer who was injured in the Nasoor Square incident, said.

Jabir added that the victims’ families and those wounded in that shooting met lawyers in a Baghdad hotel about a week ago.

The lawsuits also included the killings of three people guarding the Iraqi Media Network in February 2007 and the 2006 killing of an Iraqi guard, amongst others.

The firm has faced intense scrutiny in the US and Iraqi chambers of government in past years.

Last week, a US federal court dropped the charges against the five contractors accused for the 2007 shooting deaths.

Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has said that Baghdad will still bring them to account, but many Iraqi’s see that decision as a further indication that foreign contractors in the country have been allowed to act above the law.

Afghan arrests

Meanwhile, two former Blackwater contractors have been arrested on murder charges following the killings of two Afghans in 2009.

An indictment charges 27-year-old Justin Cannon and 29-year-old Chris Drotleff with second-degree murder, attempted murder and weapons charges. Both of them are in custody.

Both Cannon and Drotleff have said in recent interviews that they were justified when they opened fire on a threatening vehicle last year. Blackwater fired both men after the shooting for failing to comply with the terms of their contract.

The September 2007 shooting in Baghdad left 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians dead

The Iraqi government will push to appeal a US court ruling dismissing charges of murder against five security guards of the private Blackwater firm, an official has told Al Jazeera.

Saad al-Muttalibi, an adviser to the Iraqi council of ministers, said on Friday that if the guards did not receive a just sentence for the killing of 14 Iraqis in 2007, the issue would complicate relations between Iraq and the United States.

“This matter will be appealed in the American court and if not resolved correctly, this will definitely add another strain on the relationship between Iraq and the United States,” he said.

“The legality or the procedures of the court case should not stop the criminals from facing justice and receiving a just sentence.

“This is very bad … for the overall look of the United States outside its borders. It’s very important for the Americans to realise that this will work against their interests in Iraq and other places.”

Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government spokesman, said in a statement: “The Iraqi government will follow up on this issue in strength and resolution to bring those murderers of Blackwater to accountability in order to return the rights of iraqi people who are the victims of this crime.”

He said “the investigations carried out by the specialised Iraqi authorities confirmed with no doubt that the guards of Blackwater company have committed a criminal murder act and they have violated the combat environment rule to use force while there was no threat against them”.

Promise of immunity

Ricardo Urbina, a district judge, dismissed the charges against the five men on Thursday, saying US justice department prosecutors improperly built their case on sworn statements that had been given under a promise of immunity.

Urbina said the government’s explanations were “contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility”.

The September 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s busy Nisour Square left at least 14 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad.

The Iraqi government wanted the guards to stand trial in Iraq and officials there said they would closely watch how the US judicial system handled the case.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the US justice department, said the department was “obviously disappointed by the decision”.

Prosecutors can appeal the 90-page ruling and Boyd said the department was “still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options”.

Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan explained that the judge did say that the case can be brought back to court without prejudice but it was going to be difficult for the justice department to build the case from scratch without using the defendants’ statements.

Contract extended

Blackwater Worldwide, which had been hired to guard US diplomats in Iraq at the time, has since changed its management and name to Xe Services.

Despite a string of investigations following the deadly shooting and in spite of an Iraqi government ban on the company, the US state department extended a contract with a subsidiary of the firm in September to continue providing security to US diplomats in the country.

The five guards, Donald Ball, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nick Slatten and Paul Slough, all formerly in the US military, had been charged with manslaughter and weapons charges, which carried mandatory 30-year prison terms.

It was unclear what the ruling means for a sixth Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, who had pleaded guilty to killing one Iraqi and wounding another.

Defence lawyers said the guards were thrilled by the ruling after more than two years of scrutiny.

“It’s tremendously gratifying to see the court allow us to celebrate the New Year the way it has,” said lawyer Bill Coffield, who represents Liberty.

“It really invigorates your belief in our court system.”

Ball’s lawyer, Steven McCool, said “it feels like the weight of the world has been lifted off” his client’s shoulders”.

“Here’s a guy that’s a decorated war hero who we maintain should never have been charged in the first place,” he added.

Urbina’s ruling does not say whether the shooting was proper, only that the government improperly used evidence to build the case.

‘Self-defence’

The guards claimed to have acted in self-defence after a convoy they were protecting near Nisour Square came under attack.

Witnesses, however, said the men unleashed an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.

After the shooting, the US state department had ordered the guards to explain what happened.

Investigators promised the men that their statements were to be used only for the internal inquiry and would not be used in a criminal case.

Such limited immunity deals are common in police departments so officers involved in shootings cannot hold up internal investigations by refusing to co-operate.

The deal meant that prosecutors had to build their case without using those statements, something Urbina said the justice department failed to do.

Prosecutors read those statements, reviewed them in the investigation and used them to get search warrants, Urbina said.

Meyer said it was impossible to see how weapons inspectors could conclude their work in time

The military timetable for war in Iraq did not allow UN weapons inspectors the time to conclude their work, a former British ambassador to the US has told a public inquiry.

Christopher Meyer told a hearing in London on Thursday that because contingency military plans had been decided before inspectors went in, “we found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun”.

“When you looked at the timetable for the inspections, it was impossible to see how [Hans] Blix could bring the process to a conclusion, for better or for worse, by March,” when the US invasion began.

He said the result was to turn a UN Security Council resolution, which would have called on Saddam Hussein to comply with disarmament obligations, “on its head”.

“And suddenly, because of that, the unforgiving nature of the military timetable, we found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun, which was another way of saying ‘it’s not that Saddam has to prove that he’s innocent, we’ve now bloody well got to try and prove that he’s guilty’.”

“And we – the Americans, the British – have never really recovered from that because of course there was no smoking gun,” he said.The five-member panel also heard that Condoleeza Rice, former US secretary of state, had raised the issue of Iraq hours after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“She said there’s no doubt this was an al-Qaeda operation, we are just looking to see if there could possibly be any connection with Saddam Hussein,” Meyer said.

Asked at what point war with Iraq was inevitable, Meyer said “that is a damn hard question to answer”.

“What was inevitable was that the Americans were going to bust a gut to carry out the mandated policy of regime change,” he said.

‘Signed in blood’

Meyer also said Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister at the time, may have supported US calls for regime change after meeting George Bush, the then US president, at his Texas ranch in 2002.

He said Blair’s line on Iraq seemed to harden following talks at the Crawford ranch, many of which were held in private.

Meyer told the inquiry he was “not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch.”

The inquiry is billed to be the most wide-ranging investigation into the conflict, looking at Britain’s role in Iraq between 2001 and 2009, when nearly all its troops withdrew.

On Wednesday the panel heard from a former senior civil servant who said Britain knew in the days leading up to the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein’s forces may not have had the capability to deploy chemical weapons.

William Ehrman, the then director of international security for the UK foreign office, said that British intelligence was told Iraqi weapons may not have been assembled in the build-up to the conflict.

The inquiry also learnt that Libya and Iran were Britain’s main security concerns before the invasion of Iraq.

The hearings are expected to climax when Blair takes the stand next year.

The Iraq inquiry will report by the end of 2010.

Reported By: Al Jazeera