Tony Bliar--in detail

Blogger Xymphora provides lots of detail about how Tony Blair got the Brits into the war, including the severe arm-twisting performed on Attorney General Lord Goldsmith in order to get an opinion of "legality" for the crime we hanged Nazis for after WWII. Here's one part of it:

In the February 2003 American woodshedding of Goldsmith, he met with no fewer than five Bush Administration lawyers: Alberto Gonzales, then Bush's chief legal adviser; William Taft IV, chief legal adviser to the then Secretary of State Colin Powell; Jim Haynes, chief legal adviser to Donald Rumsfeld; John Bellinger, chief legal adviser to Condoleezza Rice; and then U. S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft. Wow! No wonder he was walking funny when he came back to London. Despite all the free legal advice, he still wasn't able to deliver the clean legal opinion that Blair wanted and the British military insisted upon, which is why he was sent off to be worked over by Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan (who were then kind enough to write his opinion for him).

Here's my guess at how that visit to Washington went:

Goldsmith: I appreciate the sincerity of you Yanks, but British law isn't the same as U.S. law. Our law is bloody explicit about this; going to war against Iraq is quite out of the question.

Gonzales: Electrodes! Electrodes!

Taft: Slow down, Al. Lord Goldsmith is our ally, after all.

Haynes: Not if he won't support our war, he isn't.

Goldsmith: Oh, bollocks.

Bellinger: I could get Condi to put on her stiletto heels and walk on his genitals.

Gonzales: Yeah! Yeah! Stilettos!

Goldsmith: Bloody hell. I'm not signing.

Ashcroft: Alright, everybody settle down. Say, Lord Goldsmith, would you like to hear my new song? Because you're an ally, I'll sing you the full, uncut version. (Sings) Let the eagle soooooooooar...

Goldsmith: Aaargh! I'll sign! I'll sign!

Gonzales: Can we still do the stilettos?