But if I may say from my experience of government what a war cabinet is like.
However, Mr Berlusconi - who was elected in 2001 - holds the record for leading the longest-serving post-war cabinet.
On that same subject, David Cameron's suggestion that if he won power, he would bring opposition leaders into a war cabinet would strike many people as a very sensible one.
And we're meeting this week to discuss Yemen and Somalia as well as other things, so the idea that there is no effective war cabinet - it meets about every week.
At first, the Secretary of War, a Cabinet member who, from the start, was a civilian, was called the Secretary at War, a holdover from the Revolution but also a prepositional manifestation of an ideological commitment: the department was chiefly to be called upon only if the nation was at war.
It is a charge that resonates beyond romantics who recall the post-war golden age of cabinet government when Whitehall was a collection of ministerial baronies, each run by a big beast and overseen by a prime minister who was merely primus inter pares.
Former International Development Secretary Clare Short, who also resigned from the Cabinet after the war, also told the inquiry on Tuesday that Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush decided to go to war last summer -- and that it had to be in the spring.
We now know that he and his military cabinet were ready to begin war early in 1913, aware that neither France nor Russia was ready.
Plans for a war with Iraq were not being discussed the cabinet meeting, the first in two months, Downing Street added.
Ms Liddell said she would take MSPs views to the Westminster Cabinet if they expressed opposition to war during the debate on Thursday.
And in February Justice Secretary Jack Straw vetoed the publication of minutes of cabinet meetings discussing the legality of the war in the run-up to the invasion.
He argued that if the minutes were published "cabinets are likely to be more cautious how they approach the matter in the cabinet setting" when it came to "war and peace decisions".
Sir Robert also said divisions in government, cabinet and public opinion over the legitimacy of the war inhibited post-war reconstruction efforts.
According to the programme Gen Ashkenazi considered such an attack on Iran, "a strategic mistake" because of the risk of a war, while Mr Dagan deemed it "illegal", saying a full cabinet decision was needed.
He said Rumsfeld's comments vindicated his decision to resign from his Cabinet job as leader of the House of Commons in protest against the war.
If cabinet government means collective decision-making, it vanished in the first world war, when the job of the state grew and power was spun out to a web of committees with the prime minister at the centre.
After all, just eight months ago, Mr Blair received a withering dressing-down over his style of government from Lord Butler, a former cabinet secretary, who reported on the uses and misuses of intelligence before the war with Iraq.
Top U.S. government cabinet officials are in Mexico today to talk to President Felipe Calderon about the escalating drug war that is ripping up parts of Mexico.
The Yugoslav Cabinet voted on Saturday to approve the decree that sets the terms for the extradition of war crimes suspects -- including Milosevic -- to The Hague.
For example, the sudden leap in to the headlines last week of war time controls of stop and search powers on the streets, which had not been cleared by the Cabinet.
Meanwhile, sources close to Foreign Secretary Mr Hague have confirmed that he has written to cabinet ministers reminding them of government policy not to comment on the justification or otherwise for the Iraq war until after the Chilcot Inquiry reports.
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