We believe there is more than what Lord Goldsmith defined a “reasonable case” for saying that the Iraq war could have been avoided through the exile of Saddam Hussein.
The entire truth needs to emerge or we will have missed an opportunity to restore the west's credibility in the promotion of human rights, rule of law and democracy.
According to a WikiLeaked cable, on 22 September 2009, in a meeting with officials of the UK administration U.S. Undersecretary for Justice Ellen Tauscher stated that the General Director of the British Ministry of Defence Jon Day had assured her that the UK had “put measures in place to protect [American] interests” during the UK inquiry into the causes of the Iraq war. The Chilcot inquiry did not ask Mr. Day to deny that statement.

Main facts
19 February 2003 the Italian Parliament with the support of Government adopted the radical proposition (345 yes, 38 no, 52 abstentions) which committed Government to seek support in all international bodies, primarily within the Security Council of the United Nations, to the option of an exiled dictator of Iraq and [...] establishment of a provisional government that will restore a control of the full exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms of all Iraqis.

During a meeting in Crawford, on 22 February 2003, Bush said to Aznar that Gaddafi told Berlusconi that Saddam wants to go.
Aznar: «Is it true that there’s a possibility of Saddam Hussein going into exile?»
Bush: «Yes, that possibility exists. Even that he gets assassinated».
Aznar: «An exile with some guarantee»?
Bush: «No guarantee. He’s a thief, a terrorist, a war criminal. Compared to Saddam, Milosevic would be a Mother Teresa.

1 March 2003 – Colonel Gaddafi disrupts the Arab League meeting of Sharm el-Sheik where the United Arab Emirates (UAE) representatives were supposed to table the document outlining the exile plan as agreed by Saddam Hussein.
18 March 2003 – The White House spokesperson states that the American troops and their allies will enter Iraq anyway, no matter how.
19 March 2003 – Bahrain officially offers Saddam Hussein a last-ditch proposal to go into exile.
Clare Short, on 2 February 2010: “I'm sure that's in the public domain, were initiatives from the Saudis and the Jordanians about possibly getting Saddam Hussein to go into exile, which would have been an attractive option, it seems to me.”
“As I have said, Saudi Arabia and Jordan were talking about getting him into exile. There was the possibility of the International Criminal Court. He wasn't popular in his country. There is an argument about very strong sanctions that you actually lock countries in, and it is better to open them up, because then, as with Serbia, that's the way we got -- in the end, the people of Serbia sent Milosevic to the International Criminal Court. That was all another option. “
“the Arab world was talking more and more about taking him out, getting him into exile, you know, getting more pressure on him, getting a resolution of the problem and him out without a war. It is just not true that he was jerking any strings. He was -- the pressures were mounting and mounting.”
A dispatch sent by Ellen Tauscher, the US Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, describes a conversation with Jon Day, the MOD Director General for security policy, in which he "promised that the UK had ’put measures in place to protect your [US] interests’ <http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cables/2009/09/09LONDON2198.html> during the UK inquiry into the causes of the Iraq War.

Freedman: So timing of your advice is determined by questions of diplomacy and readiness for armed forces - but your advice might've been different two or three weeks later?

Goldsmith: That depends what would have happened. More could have come to light. If there'd been a sea-change, if Saddam had gone into exile say, why would we then need force.

Hans Blix, 27 July 2010: “I thought it was, both then and in retrospect, a bit curious that precisely at the time when we were going upward in evidencing cooperation, at that very time the conclusion from the UK side and also from the US side was that no, inspections are useless.”
“They had opened the doors. I had said on some occasions it is not enough to open doors. You also have to be proactive. I think that's what they became when they came up with the idea of further excavations, for instance.”

“Was Iraq a danger in 2003? They were not a danger. They were practically prostrate and could not – it would have taken a lot of time – to reconstitute in selling oil.”
As Elizabeth Wilmshurst put it at the Iraq Inquiry, “I could see that the UK reputation as an upholder of the rule of law and as an upholder of the United Nations would be seriously damaged, at least that's what I foresaw.” We believe that the same applies for the reputation of democracy and the rule of law. The things Jod Day said to the American undersecretary of defense in september 2009 cast a worrying shadow over the Chilcot inquiry and its criteria and limits. Should none of the members of the inquiry look into the dark pages that Blair wrote, so that the International Criminal Court would not be able to proceed, the liberal and democratic values and society that we struggling to uphold will be compromised for generations to come.

Finally, the Cato Institute has mentioned a recent debate in which Condoleeza Rice partook, to possibly spark a debate on the fact that Saddam might have been willing to go into exile. Justin Logan (associate director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute) writes in Opposing views that “if there was anything approaching a realistic opportunity to make this happen, we really missed out on the bargain of the century here. You’re looking at something like 500%-1000% returns, not counting several thousand American and a-hundred-or-so-thousand Iraqi lives saved.”

The exile of Saddam Hussein would have set an important precedent as far as conflict-resolution is concerned. Had it been applied - possibly under the thrust of the UN authority - for the first time to an influential country whose strategic position and role is of the utmost importance in the development of the world order, the benefit of it would reverberated in the Middle East, in the Arab world and beyond. Thus, the most precious lesson to learn from the 2003 invasion may not be drawn by a seemingly endless analysis revolving around the (il)legality vs. (il)legitimacy of the military action, but by a deeper understanding of the reasons why a peaceful outcome was not eventually sought. So far, former rulers who peacefully ousted through include Idi Amin Dada (Uganda), Gen. Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), Charles Taylor (Liberia), Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire) and Hissene Habre (Chad).