| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
20 Nov 2003 06:26:24 PM |
| Object: |
War Critics Astonished as US Hawk Admits Invasion was Illegal |
War Critics Astonished as US Hawk Admits Invasion was Illegal
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.
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.
"They're just not interested in international law, are they?" said
Linda Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,
which launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year.
"It's only when the law suits them that they want to use it."
- click full story -
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1089180,00.html
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| User: "Winston Smith, American Patriot" |
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| Title: Re: War Critics Astonished as US Hawk Admits Invasion was Illegal |
20 Nov 2003 07:23:59 PM |
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wrote in inimitable style:
War Critics Astonished as US Hawk Admits Invasion was Illegal
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.
Perle must have been reading this naturally:
http://hume.realisticpolitics.com/WarCriminalBush.html
[on the web since the end of March 2003]
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| User: "Average Joe" |
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| Title: Re: War Critics Astonished as US Hawk Admits Invasion was Illegal |
21 Nov 2003 11:08:54 AM |
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On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:26:24 -0800, david.bozzi wrote:
"They're just not interested in international law, are they?" said Linda
Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which
launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year. "It's
only when the law suits them that they want to use it."
Linda, my friend, you're so naive! Like anyone in a position of extreme
power, the U.S. administration is extremely respectful of the law, the
supreme law, the law of the jungle, that is: "might makes right".
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