Eng Grez
07-19-04, 11:31 PM
Iraq
Legal Justification For War
http://usembassy.state.gov/islamabad/wwwh03032003.html
The United States declaring that it has the authority to invade Iraq is irrelevant. The information contained within that declaration is not. It is a prime example of circular logic to say "We have the authority to invade Iraq because we say we have the authority." If that authority is not granted by an external, legally binding document, then it is, in effect, worthless.
The most relevant portion of this link is this paragraph here:
On April 3, 1991, the UNSC adopted Resolution 687, which established conditions for a cease-fire to suspend hostilities. Among other requirements, UNSCR 687 required Iraq to (1) destroy its chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles with ranges greater than 150 km; (2) not use, develop, construct, or acquire biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons and their delivery systems; (3) submit to international inspections to verify compliance; and (4) not commit or support any act of international terrorism or allow others who commit such acts to operate in Iraqi territory. On April 6, 1991, Iraq communicated to the UNSC its acceptance of the conditions for the cease-fire.
"Regime change" in Iraq has been the official policy of the United States since 1998, when Saddam Hussein expelled UN inspectors from the country after charging that its members were American spies.
After President Bush made a speech to the UN on September 12, 2002, the UNSC unanimously passed UNSC Resolution 1441.
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/02110803.htm
13. Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations;
The wording of this is ambiguous. While one can say that only the United Nations can enforce UN Resolutions, just who has the authority to enforce UNSC Resolution 1441 and numerous other UNSC Resolutions is not made clear. Iraq is told that it will "face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations."
What is not ambiguous, though, is that sovereign nations have an undeniable legal right to defend themselves that trumps the authority of the UN, and that only the governments of those nations have the authority to make the decision to defend themselves. In any case, Iraq was in material breach of the UNSC 687 (the resolution that framed the terms for the cease-fire that ended the Persian Gulf War), UNSC 1441, and numerous other UN Resolutions, as shown here.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affai...y_10022003.html
abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20040702_209.html
www.newsweek-interactive.net/id/5060648
It is completely undeniable that Saddam Hussein was in full, material breach of UNSC 687, 1441, and numerous other UNSC resolutions, and that a war intended to remove his regime from power was completely legitimate and legal thanks to these resolutions and the undeniable, inalienable right of nations to defend themselves, and for that nation and no other to make the decision on what actions to take in regards to its own self-defense.
The amount of WMD found is completely and utterly irrelevant in regards to the legality of the war. If so much as one WMD was found, war was legal. If so much as one missile capable of flying farther than 150 km, war was legal.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq...Oct_2002.htm#07
Moral Justification for War
Much has been made of the fact that while 3,000 civilians died on September 11th, 11,000 civilians have died in the 18 months since the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.
But to say this, one must also consider how many Iraqis, Iranians, Kuwaitis, Israelis, Americans, etc., Saddam Hussein killed during his thirty-year rule in Iraq. Such an examination shows that it is quite reasonable to assume that a similar number of Iraqis would have died or been spirited away into the night, to spend the rest of their lives imprisoned and tortured, in the same time period, if Saddam's rule had continued.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Article...ble.asp?ID=5773
Saddam's invasion of Iran sparked the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the longest and most destructive conflict on the planet since the Second World War. Indeed, the United States did support Saddam in the conflict, as did France, Germany, Russia, Britain, and the other nations of the "West" and satellites of the USSR. Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution in Iran was seen as a dangerous threat to the stability of the Middle East and Central Asia, and Saddam was seen as a secular bulwark against that threat. This in no terms whatsoever means that the West in general or the United States in particular was behind the war. An opportunity was seen to take the Ayatollah down a peg or two, and that opportunity was taken.
The war cost well over a million lives. After only two years of rearming, Saddam invaded Kuwait for the same reason he did Iran: he wanted a larger coastline and control of rich oil fields that were just beyond the Iraqi-Iranian and Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. It was also his intent to eventually invade Saudi Arabia, giving him a vast empire with control of nearly 35% of the world's proven oil reserves. As a result of this and the subsequent Desert Shield / Desert Storm operations, as many as 35,000 Iraqis, hundreds or thousands of Kuwaitis, and hundreds of Coalition soldiers died.
After the war Iraq's Shiites, indeed urged on by President George H.W. Bush, rose up and succeeded in gaining control of almost all of Iraq. Indeed, after being told that the Coalition would not oppose the use of the Republican Guard to quell the uprising, Saddam crushed it, resulting the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The Coalition did not and could not have procured the support and authority of the UN to remove Saddam from power during the Gulf War, and did not and could not do so after either.
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol...r/0325clwyd.htm
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID...15-061541-8539r
The idea that humanitarian justification for war is some post hoc reasoning after the "failure" to discover WMD (a blatant lie, as conclusively proven above) is simply not the case. Ending the oppression of the Iraqi people was given as a reason at least as important as WMD from day one by Tony Blair and George W. Bush, the obvious leaders of the Coalition (not to be confused with the Coalition of the First Gulf War).
No one accurately knows how many Saddam Hussein has killed. The number is certainly well over the million mark. Just where were, and where are, the marches for the 300,000 in mass graves scattered underneath the shifting dunes of Iraq?
Much has also been made of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed 'by the sanctions' imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf War.
Iraq was allowed to sell two billion dollars worth of oil a year for the purpose of buying food and medicine for its people. The money from this was placed into an escrow account controlled by the UN, not Saddam. The French bank BNP Paribas was the principle body in charge of the finances of the program.
abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Investigation/oil_for_food_ripoff_040420-1.html
acepilots.com/unscam
http://www.heritage.org/Research/In...ions/bg1748.cfm
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/o...6HEUY6eG4UPyDhQ
After the fall of Baghdad, it was discovered that Saddam may have, over the 7 years of the program, personally pocketed up to ten billion dollars from that escrow account. How? By giving bribes to UN officials and high-profile, influential Europeans, Americans, Arabs, etc.
The list of those receiving bribes was published by the Iraqi daily Al-Mada. Many of the names on the list, such as George Galloway of Britain and American Shaker Al-Kaffaji, were stalwart in their opposition to the war.
Saddam Hussein killed well over a million people. The real number will never be known, although it is likely that one day we will be able to name a figure that is close to it. Any talk regarding civilians killed in the war as a basis for opposition to it is deliberately, coldheartedly ignorant to Saddam's victims and deliberately ignorant to the horrific realities of war.
The hoped-for transformation of Iraq into a secular, liberal democracy and the transformation of Arab and Muslim society could be placed here, but they require far more preparation than the half-hour it took me to come up with this.
I also left a lot out of this. I didn't go as in-depth as I could have on Saddam's rape of Iraq - no other word can accurately describe it - including his draining of the marshes in southern Iraq that resulted in thousands of Shiites losing their way of life and their homes, the Iraq-terror connections (which will come in the War on Terror section), and the security threat Iraq posed to the United States (which will also come in the War on Terror section). I also did not make any mention of the ridiculous conspiracy theories surrounding the war, including that it was primarily for oil or for Halliburton to make money. They are nothing more than engagements in the fine logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.
Legal Justification For War
http://usembassy.state.gov/islamabad/wwwh03032003.html
The United States declaring that it has the authority to invade Iraq is irrelevant. The information contained within that declaration is not. It is a prime example of circular logic to say "We have the authority to invade Iraq because we say we have the authority." If that authority is not granted by an external, legally binding document, then it is, in effect, worthless.
The most relevant portion of this link is this paragraph here:
On April 3, 1991, the UNSC adopted Resolution 687, which established conditions for a cease-fire to suspend hostilities. Among other requirements, UNSCR 687 required Iraq to (1) destroy its chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles with ranges greater than 150 km; (2) not use, develop, construct, or acquire biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons and their delivery systems; (3) submit to international inspections to verify compliance; and (4) not commit or support any act of international terrorism or allow others who commit such acts to operate in Iraqi territory. On April 6, 1991, Iraq communicated to the UNSC its acceptance of the conditions for the cease-fire.
"Regime change" in Iraq has been the official policy of the United States since 1998, when Saddam Hussein expelled UN inspectors from the country after charging that its members were American spies.
After President Bush made a speech to the UN on September 12, 2002, the UNSC unanimously passed UNSC Resolution 1441.
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/02110803.htm
13. Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations;
The wording of this is ambiguous. While one can say that only the United Nations can enforce UN Resolutions, just who has the authority to enforce UNSC Resolution 1441 and numerous other UNSC Resolutions is not made clear. Iraq is told that it will "face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations."
What is not ambiguous, though, is that sovereign nations have an undeniable legal right to defend themselves that trumps the authority of the UN, and that only the governments of those nations have the authority to make the decision to defend themselves. In any case, Iraq was in material breach of the UNSC 687 (the resolution that framed the terms for the cease-fire that ended the Persian Gulf War), UNSC 1441, and numerous other UN Resolutions, as shown here.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affai...y_10022003.html
abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20040702_209.html
www.newsweek-interactive.net/id/5060648
It is completely undeniable that Saddam Hussein was in full, material breach of UNSC 687, 1441, and numerous other UNSC resolutions, and that a war intended to remove his regime from power was completely legitimate and legal thanks to these resolutions and the undeniable, inalienable right of nations to defend themselves, and for that nation and no other to make the decision on what actions to take in regards to its own self-defense.
The amount of WMD found is completely and utterly irrelevant in regards to the legality of the war. If so much as one WMD was found, war was legal. If so much as one missile capable of flying farther than 150 km, war was legal.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq...Oct_2002.htm#07
Moral Justification for War
Much has been made of the fact that while 3,000 civilians died on September 11th, 11,000 civilians have died in the 18 months since the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.
But to say this, one must also consider how many Iraqis, Iranians, Kuwaitis, Israelis, Americans, etc., Saddam Hussein killed during his thirty-year rule in Iraq. Such an examination shows that it is quite reasonable to assume that a similar number of Iraqis would have died or been spirited away into the night, to spend the rest of their lives imprisoned and tortured, in the same time period, if Saddam's rule had continued.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Article...ble.asp?ID=5773
Saddam's invasion of Iran sparked the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the longest and most destructive conflict on the planet since the Second World War. Indeed, the United States did support Saddam in the conflict, as did France, Germany, Russia, Britain, and the other nations of the "West" and satellites of the USSR. Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution in Iran was seen as a dangerous threat to the stability of the Middle East and Central Asia, and Saddam was seen as a secular bulwark against that threat. This in no terms whatsoever means that the West in general or the United States in particular was behind the war. An opportunity was seen to take the Ayatollah down a peg or two, and that opportunity was taken.
The war cost well over a million lives. After only two years of rearming, Saddam invaded Kuwait for the same reason he did Iran: he wanted a larger coastline and control of rich oil fields that were just beyond the Iraqi-Iranian and Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. It was also his intent to eventually invade Saudi Arabia, giving him a vast empire with control of nearly 35% of the world's proven oil reserves. As a result of this and the subsequent Desert Shield / Desert Storm operations, as many as 35,000 Iraqis, hundreds or thousands of Kuwaitis, and hundreds of Coalition soldiers died.
After the war Iraq's Shiites, indeed urged on by President George H.W. Bush, rose up and succeeded in gaining control of almost all of Iraq. Indeed, after being told that the Coalition would not oppose the use of the Republican Guard to quell the uprising, Saddam crushed it, resulting the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The Coalition did not and could not have procured the support and authority of the UN to remove Saddam from power during the Gulf War, and did not and could not do so after either.
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol...r/0325clwyd.htm
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID...15-061541-8539r
The idea that humanitarian justification for war is some post hoc reasoning after the "failure" to discover WMD (a blatant lie, as conclusively proven above) is simply not the case. Ending the oppression of the Iraqi people was given as a reason at least as important as WMD from day one by Tony Blair and George W. Bush, the obvious leaders of the Coalition (not to be confused with the Coalition of the First Gulf War).
No one accurately knows how many Saddam Hussein has killed. The number is certainly well over the million mark. Just where were, and where are, the marches for the 300,000 in mass graves scattered underneath the shifting dunes of Iraq?
Much has also been made of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed 'by the sanctions' imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf War.
Iraq was allowed to sell two billion dollars worth of oil a year for the purpose of buying food and medicine for its people. The money from this was placed into an escrow account controlled by the UN, not Saddam. The French bank BNP Paribas was the principle body in charge of the finances of the program.
abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Investigation/oil_for_food_ripoff_040420-1.html
acepilots.com/unscam
http://www.heritage.org/Research/In...ions/bg1748.cfm
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/o...6HEUY6eG4UPyDhQ
After the fall of Baghdad, it was discovered that Saddam may have, over the 7 years of the program, personally pocketed up to ten billion dollars from that escrow account. How? By giving bribes to UN officials and high-profile, influential Europeans, Americans, Arabs, etc.
The list of those receiving bribes was published by the Iraqi daily Al-Mada. Many of the names on the list, such as George Galloway of Britain and American Shaker Al-Kaffaji, were stalwart in their opposition to the war.
Saddam Hussein killed well over a million people. The real number will never be known, although it is likely that one day we will be able to name a figure that is close to it. Any talk regarding civilians killed in the war as a basis for opposition to it is deliberately, coldheartedly ignorant to Saddam's victims and deliberately ignorant to the horrific realities of war.
The hoped-for transformation of Iraq into a secular, liberal democracy and the transformation of Arab and Muslim society could be placed here, but they require far more preparation than the half-hour it took me to come up with this.
I also left a lot out of this. I didn't go as in-depth as I could have on Saddam's rape of Iraq - no other word can accurately describe it - including his draining of the marshes in southern Iraq that resulted in thousands of Shiites losing their way of life and their homes, the Iraq-terror connections (which will come in the War on Terror section), and the security threat Iraq posed to the United States (which will also come in the War on Terror section). I also did not make any mention of the ridiculous conspiracy theories surrounding the war, including that it was primarily for oil or for Halliburton to make money. They are nothing more than engagements in the fine logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.