September 17, 2004

Allies insist Iraq war legal

Britain, Australia, and a former US official, stung by criticism from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, insisted yesterday that their countries' military action in Iraq was legal.

All three governments face elections in the near future and have had to grapple with varying degrees of public protest about their decision to wage war against Saddam Hussein.

Speaking to the BBC Wednesday, Annan said the US-led invasion of Iraq was illegal as it violated the UN Charter.
[How could this be when the invasion was launched after the official U.N. acknowledgement that Saddam had violated 16 U.N. resolutions and they'd just passed another one saying the same thing?
Kofi was there.
As President Bush asked the organization at the time, was the U.N. just going to keep passing resolutions, doing nothing and become irrevelant?--Jen]

Asked whether he thought it broke international law, he said: ''Yes, if you wish. I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter from our point of view. . . . It was illegal."
[The nerve! And he's a liar to boot!]

The United Nations yesterday played down his statement that the US-led invasion had been illegal, saying Annan's position on the war had long been known.

''He feels it is no different from what he has been saying for more than a year, and that position is very well known to member governments," the UN chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said.

Not so, said Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, on the campaign trail ahead of an Oct. 9 election. ''The legal advice that we had, and I tabled it at the time, was that the action was entirely valid in international law terms," he told Australian radio.

Howard's view was echoed by Prime Minister Tony Blair's office, which said the British government's top lawyer -- Attorney General Lord Goldsmith -- had reached the same conclusion before the invasion was launched in March last year.
[And the Brits are very big on these "international law" things, don't you know?!]

Randy Scheunemann, a former adviser to US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said of Annan: ''To do this 51 days before an American election reeks of political interference." Blair is expected to call an election in May next year.

Yep, Kofi can't wait to make his "friend" President Bush and the U.S. look bad on the world scene, while trying to push the Oil-for-Food scandal (which implicates Annan's son) under the rug and stalling around about doing anything about the genocide in Darfur, where Islamist Arabs are killing black Christians and animists in the Sudan.
When, oh when, are we going to get the U.S. out of the U.N. and vice versa?

(And of course, Kofi's and John Kerry's real pals, the French, have sided with him on the "illegal" question:

France backs Annan on illegal status of war
and this is trumpeted in Al Jizzeera, naturally.
Are we ever going to forget or forgive the French giving their word to SecState Colin Powell that they *were* going to back the U.S. on the use of force for Iraq, then publicly went back on their word?
I think not and continuing to back Kofi on the "illegality" of the war is just making it worse. Merde, froggies! You missed another opportunity to shut up again.) 

Update: Colin Powell and the nations of Poland and Bulgaria (part of the Coalition) joined their voices to Britain's and Australia's on the legality of OIF:
Powell rebukes Annan on Iraq:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday expressed strong disapproval of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's description of the U.S.-led war in Iraq as illegal, saying the comment was "not a very useful statement to make at this point."
[Colin's starting to sound like Rummy with his use of "helpful" and "not helpful."--Jen]

"What does it gain anyone? We should all be gathering around the idea of helping the Iraqis, not getting into these kinds of side issues," Mr. Powell said in an interview with editors and reporters at The Washington Times.
[The argument that a given war is "illegal" is, yes, a Leftist talking point and one they used to the very bitter end about Vietnam.--J.T.]
[...]
In a wide-ranging interview, Mr. Powell said the United States was determined to improve the security situation in time for national elections in Iraq; pledged to keep international attention focused on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan; and lamented the unwillingness of many in the Muslim and Arab world to take on Islamic extremists in their midst.

[...]
The U.N. chief had made no secret of his belief the United States and its allies should have sought an explicit Security Council resolution authorizing the war.
[Uh, Kofi, we tried very hard. The French stabbed us in the back and spoiled the vote on the resolution authorizing force, thuse ensuring that there would be a war.]
    
But he went much further in the BBC interview, saying, "From our point of view, from the [U.N. Charter] point of view, it was illegal."
    
Mr. Powell said the Constitution gives the United States the right to act in its own self-defense without U.N. approval,
[DAMN STRAIGHT!]
but argued that the Iraq war itself was justified by Saddam's "material breach" of a string of earlier U.N. resolutions on his weapons programs.
    
"What we did was totally consistent with international law," he insisted.
    
Officials in Britain, Australia, Bulgaria and Poland yesterday joined Mr. Powell in rejecting Mr. Annan's argument. Many allies would face severe political difficulties at home if the war was seen as lacking U.N. sanction.
[That's because these allies have sadly subjugated their national sovereignity too often in the past to the NWO-Gruppedenke of the U.N. and the E.U. of "peace at any price."]

Powell then goes on in this interview to address the security situation in Iraq, the crisis in Darfur, how we're handling the intransigence of Syria in Lebanon, the lack of religious freedom in Soddy Arabia, and the possibility of a popular revolt in Iran.
He is clearly on top of every serious situation in the world and the war and I'm delighted that he's going to be sticking around for President Bush's second term!