War Critics Astonished As
US Hawk Admits Invasion
Was Illegal
By Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger
The Guardian - UK
11-20-3
WASHINGTON -- 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 at the Old Vic theatre 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."
Mr Perle's remarks bear little resemblance to official justifications
for war, according to Rabinder Singh QC, who represented CND and also
participated in Tuesday night's event. Certainly the British
government, he said, "has never advanced the suggestion that it is
entitled to act, or right to act, contrary to international law in
relation to Iraq".
The Pentagon adviser's views, he added, underlined "a divergence of
view between the British government and some senior voices in American
public life [who] have expressed the view that, well, if it's the case
that international law doesn't permit unilateral pre-emptive action
without the authority of the UN, then the defect is in international
law".
Mr Perle's view is not the official one put forward by the White
House. Its main argument has been that the invasion was justified
under the UN charter, which guarantees the right of each state to
self-defence, including pre-emptive self-defence. On the night bombing
began, in March, Mr Bush reiterated America's "sovereign authority to
use force" to defeat the threat from Baghdad.
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has questioned that
justification, arguing that the security council would have to rule on
whether the US and its allies were under imminent threat. Coalition
officials countered that the security council had already approved the
use of force in resolution 1441, passed a year ago, warning of
"serious consequences" if Iraq failed to give a complete accounting of
its weapons programmes.
Other council members disagreed, but American and British lawyers
argued that the threat of force had been implicit since the first Gulf
war, which was ended only by a ceasefire.
"I think Perle's statement has the virtue of honesty," said Michael
Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University who opposed the war,
arguing that it was illegal. "And, interestingly, I suspect a majority
of the American public would have supported the invasion almost
exactly to the same degree that they in fact did, had the
administration said that all along."
The controversy-prone Mr Perle resigned his chairmanship of the
defence policy board earlier this year but remained a member of the
advisory board.
A Pentagon spokesman pointed out yesterday that Mr Perle was not on
the defence department staff, but was a member of an unpaid advisory
board.
Mr Perle refused to elaborate on his remarks.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html
"life is like a mushroom, they feed you ***** and keep you in the dark"
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