[dipso]

The UN disagrees.


Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan
Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian, Thursday September 16 2004

The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time last night that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal.
Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN's founding charter.

Even Richard Perle agrees, it was illegal.

War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal
Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian, Thursday November 20 2003

International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.
In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.

But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

French intransigence, he added, meant there had been "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein".

Mr Perle, who was speaking at an event organised by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, had argued loudly for the toppling of the Iraqi dictator since the end of the 1991 Gulf war.


It is totally illegal. Trumped up charges, forged documents, etc.
I would not be surprised if there are charges brought on these guys when they are out of office.

There should be. For wasting all our money like that.