[Peace-discussion] Neocon warhawk Perle admits Iraq invasion was illegal (Guardian)

[Drew Johnson]

War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion
was illegal

Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday November 20, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html


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."

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'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 govern ment 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 ac counting 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.

Meanwhile, there was a hint that the US was
trying to find a way to release the Britons held
at Guantanamo Bay.

The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said Mr
Bush was "very sensitive" to British sentiment.
"We also expect to be resolving this in the near
future," he told the BBC.







      ____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss a thing.  Make Yahoo your home page.
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
_______________________________________________
usgp-media mailing list
usgp-media@gp-us.org
http://lists.gp-us.org/mailman/listinfo/usgp-media