Many Americans Still Don’t Grasp Iraq War Is Illegal

Many Americans Still Don’t Grasp Iraq War Is Illegal

By Sherwood Ross


Mistakenly, many Americans still believe President Bush’s war on Iraq is justified because Congress supported it and funds it.

Yet, as international legal authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois points out, President Bush got congressional backing by lying that Hussein had W.M.D. and that Hussein was connected to 9/11. That’s fraud, probably the bloodiest, costliest lie in White House history.

Also, to start a war, a country needs UN Security Council approval, which Bush failed to get. Otherwise, a nation can fight only in self-defense when attacked.

By attacking Iraq, Bush violated the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, the UN Charter, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals, and the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles, Boyle said.

As all treaties become the supreme law of the land under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, the Bush-Cheney presidency is guilty of breaking all of the above, warmongering in spades.

In testimony defending U.S. soldiers who have refused to fight in Iraq, Boyle noted that, under Nuremberg, “a soldier has a right to absent himself or herself from committing international crimes.” In short, if given a criminal order, the defense used by Adolf Eichmann, Hitler’s master killer, that he was only doing his job, is a phony.

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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/10451

just in case there's any confusion.

and say he had some tacit approval for using force "to disarm Saddam of his WMDs", as soon as it became clear that there were none the only legal recourse would have been to say "oops, excuse us, wrong country" and leave. The morphing of the mission from WMDs to regime change to establishing democracy to well, just keeping a lid on things to whatever it is now is all illegal. It is not even an occupation. There are international rules for running an occupation, too, and we are not anywhere near following those. The only rationalization for any of our troops being there doing anything would be as a "peacekeeping force" there at the request of the host nation. I believe the UN reserves that role to itself, and doesn't send such forces into an active civil war. A peacekeeping force has to have a peace to keep. I just wish the Iraqis would tell us to leave. More and more of them are saying that; if the so-called head of the government made it formal, we'd be done.

Nope, it's all extra-legal and the entire administration should be in jail. Sanchez is right, but did not go far enough. They would be court martialed for incompetence, yes, but also for violating international law.

Especially when the Husband...er, Dictator, is in complete denial.

I went off on that tangent already today; people need to read John Dean's "Broken Government." Legal scholars go into it extensively (the reason this behavior is completely illegal).

Secondly, Clinton voted for the same malarky again when she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, yet again inappropriately yielding her constitutional authority to someone who did something unconscionable the last time she did the same type of thing.

Somehow, after I bashed someone in the head with a baseball bat, my "pre-emptive strike" argument didn't hold up in court, even after I provided them with crayon-written documents from my six-year daughter explaining that the alleged victim "was goeng to hert my daddy reel bad."