I noticed someone in the cabinet being interviewed who said that they went ahead with the war because of Hans Blix report that sadam was not doing what he was supposed to do under the ceasfire agreement. Except what I remember Blix saying was that sadam was in fact cooperating more than he ever had, and what they really needed was more time to make him cooperate completely. Blix officially said things were improving, unofficially he has said he had found no evidence of wmd and was not expecting to. Kind of what the French said. I think there were even cases which the Americans were citing as reasons for war which were demonstrated to be incorrect somewhere in the fine print of his (very long) official report.
The attourney general said it would be legal to invade either if the Un said yes, or if sadam indeed did have wmd which threatened Britain. He was also arguing that any country could unilaterally decide that sadam had broken his ceasfire agreement and hence anyone could invade him. A very dodgy argument invented by the Americans which we used to disagree with. Next someone will say that China is entitled to invade Japan because they are in breech of their ceasfire agreement after WW2 because they have now rebuilt their army. Or Russia would be entitled to invade Germany because they have rebuilt theirs. There has to be an end when you are no longer entitled to restart an old war.
Don't believe the tories will save your hospital. They will not. They have a policy of saving money and in the NHS this currently means amalgamating things into bigger and bigger hospitals. This was Tory policy before and labour inherited it. Tory central office has also stated that even though individual MPs may support a local campaign, this does not mean that they will back him if they win.
Howard might now be more independant of Bush. The invasion has already happened and we can not just walk away. So in fact there is nothing now which Howard could do differently. He can afford to officially distance himself from Bush a little wheras Blair is still saddled with supporting his original decision. But if Howard had been prime minister when Bush asked for his favour, I think he would have done exactly the same as Blair. Any British prime minister is obliged to help if America asks, because of the wonderful 'special relationship'.