http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm


http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/iraqwar.html


http://middleeastinfo.org/article2270.html



http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/...158859,00.html
Martin Bright, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday February 29, 2004
The Observer
Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears over its legality just days before the British and American bombing campaign was launched, The Observer can today reveal.

The explosive new details about military doubts over the legality of the invasion are detailed in unpublished legal documents in the case of Katharine Gun, the intelligence officer dramatically freed last week after Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, dropped charges against her of breaking the Official Secrets Act..............
............Goldsmith also wrote to Blair at the end of January voicing concerns that the war might be illegal without a second resolution from the United Nations. Opposition MPs seized on The Observer's revelations last night, accusing Goldsmith of caving in to political pressure from the Prime Minister to change his legal advice on the eve of war.............
.......................Last week, Goldsmith controversially agreed to drop the Government's prosecution of the former GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. Her defence had demanded documents relating to his legal advice, including communications with the Prime Minister.

Although Goldsmith denied his decision to drop the case was political, critics of the war believe the Government was desperate to prevent these details from being revealed in open court.





http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...650822,00.html
Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’
Michael Smith
MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.




http://deoxy.org/wc/warcrim2.htm



http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/03/19/boutros_iraq030319
Former UN head calls Iraq war 'illegal'
Last Updated Wed, 19 Mar 2003 22:44:26

WINNIPEG - The man who ran the United Nations following the last Gulf War isn't hopeful the attack that began Wednesday night will leave Iraq a better place.

Even before the strike against Baghdad, Boutros Boutros-Ghali said any U.S.-led invasion of Iraq without specific UN authorization would violate international law.

"This intervention is illegal," he told an audience in Winnipeg on Tuesday.





http://peaceandjustice.org/article.p...84&mode=print0
Foreign Office official's resignation letter reveals that Attorney General did change his mind on legality of Iraq war
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
24 March 2005
Independent

Documentary evidence has emerged showing that the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, changed his mind about the legality of the Iraq war just before the conflict began. The damning revelation is contained in the resignation letter of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a legal adviser at the Foreign Office, in which she said the war would be a "crime of aggression". She quit the day after Lord Goldsmith's ruling was made public, three days before the war began in March 2003.

The critical paragraph of her letter, published yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act, was blanked out by the Government on the grounds that it was in the public interest to protect the privacy of the advice given by the Attorney General. But last night the contents of the paragraph were leaked, and Tony Blair was facing fresh allegations of a cover-up. There has long been speculation that Lord Goldsmith was leant on to switch his view, and to sanction the war - and confirmation of that would be devastating for the Prime Minister. The Wilmhurst letter stops short of explaining what caused Lord Goldsmith to change his mind.

The revelations come two weeks after it emerged that there had never been a detailed dossier from the Attorney General setting out the case for military action before troops were committed, and that Britain went to war on the basis of nine paragraphs on a single sheet of A4 paper.

Last night's revelations - broadcast on Channel 4 News - showed that Ms Wilmshurst said the Attorney General had initially agreed with the Foreign Office legal team that a war on Iraq would be illegal without a second UN resolution.




http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/ma...lawy-m22.shtml
Canadian law professors declare US-led war illegal
By Henry Michaels
22 March 2003

The US-led coalition’s war against Iraq is illegal, declared 31 Canadian professors of international law at 15 law faculties in an open letter issued Wednesday, just before US President Bush announced that the war had commenced.

A US attack “would be a fundamental breach of international law and would seriously threaten the integrity of the international legal order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War,” the letter stated.

The attack would violate the UN Charter, which forbids countries to wage war except in self-defense or when authorized by the UN Security Council to preserve or restore international peace.

The professors condemned the war “in the strongest terms” and pointed to its militarist and colonial character: “Illegal action by the US and its allies would simply return us to an international order based on imperial ambition and coercive force.”



Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday November 20, 2003
The Guardian

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.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062701584.html
In public, British officials were declaring their solidarity with the Bush administration's calls for elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But Straw's memo and seven other secret documents disclosed in recent months by British journalist Michael Smith together reveal a much different picture. Behind the scenes, British officials believed the U.S. administration was already committed to a war that they feared was ill-conceived and illegal and could lead to disaster.




http://www.robincmiller.com/ir-legal.htm

__________________

'Never was so much owed by so many to so few.' Sir Winston Churchill.

Nearly 750,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion. That is a cause for shame, not pride.

P.S. I'm against the war, before you accuse me of anything, Stalin Jnr.

js_mac

Anyone who feels like it - post your hate-messagesl to me here and I duely will explain why I am better than you.

im am in no way hurt people like you only make me laugh

you claim bordness at getting beated at debates
The fact that you can't even spell the words you use to insult me is the only thing i need to say about that.

dissing me and the others was, im am in no way hurt you and your chums are tossers.
you obviously have neither a job or education, definitely not white trash bimbos who live in a caravan park

Lord Barker
04-28-2005, 11:25 PM
There really is no point in persuing this.
Js may be retarded/foolish/a woman/fat/thick.

__________________

'Never was so much owed by so many to so few.' Sir Winston Churchill.

Nearly 750,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion. That is a cause for shame, not pride.

BNP, the future!

__________________

'Never was so much owed by so many to so few.' Sir Winston Churchill.

Nearly 750,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion. That is a cause for shame, not pride.

I was asked to post why the war in Iraq is illegal idiot. I know reading is not your strong point, but then what is? Still, if you can't make a serious contribution, shut up and I'll stop making the silly quote posts too.

__________________

'Never was so much owed by so many to so few.' Sir Winston Churchill.

Nearly 750,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion. That is a cause for shame, not pride.

I believe that this may be enlightening. From my point of view, along with many others, all of these requirements were met when we attacked Iraq. Some will view it as opposite of that.

If we look purely at the question, "Was the war morally just?" we can see here it was morally just.

From Thomas Aquinas and later writers, these principles have become accepted as "the rules of engagement" for a war that is justified:

Principles of the Just War

A just war can only be waged as a last resort, after reasonable attempts to bring justice have been exhausted.
A just war can only be waged by a legitimate authority. People, vigilantes, terrorists do not wage just wars; only a legitimate government is permitted to wage a war that can be considered justified.
A just war can only be fought to redress wrongs that have been committed. A first strike attack on a nation that has committed no atrocities cannot be considered justice; that's aggression.
A just war can only be fought with "right" intentions. War is not justified to gain control of another nation, it's assets or it's people. If the right intention for going to war is not present, justice is not present.
A just war can only be fought if there is a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.
A just war can only be fought if the ultimate goal is to re-establish peace. More specifically, war is not justified if the situation in a country cannot be reasonably expected to be better after the war than before.
A just war must never allow the force used to be disproportional to the need. Nations must be prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the wrongs that have been committed.
A just war must employ weapons and tactics that discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Innocent civilians are never permissible targets of war, and war can only be just if every effort is made to avoid civilian casualties.


on treatment of civilians during war
http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/wm251.cfm


If we want to look at the legal aspect, we turn to Kurusch's points. It is difficult because the question must be asked, "How much weight does information have at the time of a decision in hindsight when some of that info is proven wrong at a later date?" I am still asking myself that and looking into it. The role of UN in US decision making must also be looked at.

The other question that can be asked in light of the info above is, "How much does the end justify the means?"

"Although war is evil, it is occasionally the lesser of two evils." -McGeorge Bundy

__________________
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
- John Stuart Mill

Well, we can cut the other stuff out, you asked about the legality, not the morality.
We can also cut the 'ends justifying the means'.

Now we're left with; '"How much weight does information have at the time of a decision in hindsight when some of that info is proven wrong at a later date?"'
And you're obviously ignoring the evidence as to how the legality of invasion was manufactured to suit the war-mongers.

__________________

'Never was so much owed by so many to so few.' Sir Winston Churchill.

Nearly 750,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion. That is a cause for shame, not pride.

From a UN point of view it's illegal and has been subsequently proved to be unjustified - i.e. No WMD. From a USA point of view it's legal and justified. Who's right? Answer; The country/organisation/person that gets called to account. I wonder who that'll be and when, if ever...

The reason I brought up the justness of the war is simple. If it is proved that a war is just (which I think it has), how much weight does international law and regulation carry? The question of if laws were broken doesn't have to do with the justness of the war (provided that the laws and justice conflict), it has mostly to do with the legality of the war. Thus, if it is proven that the war is just, how much weight does the legal stuff have? I thought it was an interesting thought.

You can't call WMD "manufactured by war-mongers" a fact. You can argue for it if you wish. The fact is they weren't there (there is still a good chance that Saddam moved them out). As soon as you say, "They weren't there," the immediate question is, "Who is responsible for getting it wrong?" The president is the leader, and so he does take some responsibility. But is it right that he take all the blame? Let me rephrase, Did those who decided to go to war go on premises that they knew full-well were untrue? How responsible are those that produced the inaccurate information?

All these questions do play into the legality discussion because if those who decided upon war believed the info leading to it, aren't they deceived as well as we are? And so one must look at what people really believed, which is next to impossible. Then we turn to the legal documentation. Your documentation might show something a little different than you believe. All of your proof is based on the way the war was declared. You have made a great argument for the declaration of war being illegal. I see a difference between the war as a whole and the declaration that made it so. I might well be wrong. The relationship between declaring war and the war as a whole is crucial.

I dismiss the laws of the UN because there is a sort of an elastic relationship between them and the US. Your case really doesn’t need them anyway. But I still haven’t fully answered your documentation yet, have I? You sure gave a lot. It is taking quite some time to analyze it.

A few more thoughts for you to mull over while I pursue your documentation further.

__________________
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
- John Stuart Mill