August 19, 2004

Iraq - an illegal war

Much of the talk on the war in Iraq seems to have shifted from the initial issue of the existence WMDs in Iraq, to how best to prosecute the war. John Kerry is playing this game as well in his election pitch. However, such an appraoch misses certain central legal points.

If there was an imminent threat of attack by Iraq against the US; or If the Security Council had approved military action against Iraq.

The US ( assisted by the British) set out to, and in fact did, mislead the Security Council and the world community, but did not do so convincingly as to have avoided the need for completion of the weapons inspection regime, before a war could have been lawfully prosecuted. The UN had not satisfied itself that Iraq still had WMDs and the inspectors needed another 6 weeks or so to have concluded the inspections. What would have been lost if the inspections process had been concluded ? certainly no lives? There was the false story of Iraq making nuclear related purchases from Niger; and the 45 minutes weapons strike capability of Iraq; and then the pre-emptive withdrawal of the weapons inspectors from Iraq. All of these ploys, one can now see, were designed to give some legitimacy under international law to the war policies being advanced by the Bush administration. Lies were fed the American people and the world community to launch this ?oil war?. A war mood was developed, nurtured and supported with lies.

When one reads Hans Blix?s book ( recall: he was the Chief UN Weapons Inspector), entitled ? Disarming Iraq?, it becomes quite clear that the US violated international law in starting this war. Blix makes very clear his concern about the damage that would have been done to his orgainisation?s reputation if he had made a false, yet definitive statement that Iraq had WMDs, as he was being urged on to do by the US, so as to place the cloak of legality on the planned US aggressive action against Iraq.

Now that it is perfectly clear that Iraq does not have WMDs, and that a broad based insurgency wants the US to end the occupation of Iraq ? what new pretext do we now invent to validate and try to make legal, the war that had been illegally launched against Iraq?

Somehow, many people really do not want to put into this Iraq invasion equation the motivation that oil has played the major part in the incursion policy advanced by the Bush administration. For obvious reasons George Bush could not have declared ? we need to invade Iraq because we have our sights focused on the rich Iraqi oil supplies! ? so, the American people ended up with the WMDs pretext instead.

In conclusion, may I ask ? if citizens, patriots and residents of the US were faced with a Muslim invasion of the US, because the invading Muslim forces wanted to rid the US of the unelected Bush administration ? what ? pray tell ? would every patriotic American be doing? Fighting the invading and occupational forces, or welcoming them with flowers?

I think that a lot needs to be considered and re-considered by the American people about this misguided and illegal invasion of Iraq.