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The official inquiry in London about the Iraq war is not a trial or an attempt to assign blame. It is an attempt to uncover the facts about the war and to consider lessons that should be learned from the war. Much of the testimony, which the inquiry has heard recently, has been about whether the war was legal under international law and was a "just" war — morally justifiable.

The Chilcot inquiry heard from the legal advisers to the foreign secretary. They testified that, in their view, in the absence of a further U.N. resolution, the war was illegal. They explained that they had so advised the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who was himself a lawyer but not, as Foreign Office officials pointed out, an international lawyer. Straw had...