Lord Goldsmith's position was not helped by the fact that both his immediate underlings clearly thought that this was all drivel... One of them points out that you can actually look up what was said about 1441 at the time it was passed on the internet... and this does not seem to back Lord Goldsmith up...
...and, indeed, one of them actually resigned rather than agree to implement his instructions. Maybe it is not an accident that there are so few women interviewed by the Iraq Inquiry.
Of course the key question then is did the other parties to 1441 intend for it to be a sanction to use military force and had they conceded this in private negotiations. Jack Straw has some document which it is vaguely claimed might relate to this matter but cant be shown in public so Lord Goldsmith agreed with the Inquiry that he had taken this on trust.
The Inquiry then asked if he had thought of talking to the French about what they thought was so important that they had never articulated it and Lord Goldsmith said he couldn't do that because it would undermine the diplomatic effort against Iraq.
As a result Lord Goldsmith pootled off to the USA to make enquiries about the negotiations at the time with the other parties to the negotiation of 1441 and concluded that a case could be made that the words that might imply force was sanctioned without another new resolution and that crucial words which could be stretched to intimate an intention to allow action without another resolution "could not have been included by accident" and therefore they must have been deliberate.
Lord Goldsmith infamously, we learnt with hindsight, changed his mind from "it isn't legal" to "it is legal" as the date of the invasion approached. His explanations for this are extremely long winded (you dont get to be Attorney General by using one word when a thousand will do). But it comes down to something like this...
...after analysing the syntax of resolution 1441 he decided that a case could be made that it implicitly sanctioned the use of force even though it clearly didn't say that explicitly. From this point he decided that it would be wrong to view the document "in a vacuum" and that the context and meaning intended by the Security Council members should be considered.
Anyway ...amongst the most controversial evidence given to the Iraq Inquiry was, of course, that of Lord Goldsmith on the legal advice for going to war. In case you haven't heard it (it took a while to find its way into the public domain) here it is again...
Tony Blair assured the Inquiry that he hadn't made any promises about going to war and that George W Bush was an understanding person....
Jonathan Powell Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, 2001 - 2007 claims that there were some misunderstandings.
More redaction before Sir Lawrence Freedman asserts that after UNSCOM withdrew from Iraq in the late 90s MI6 lost most of its sources.. . ...
