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Iraq war was illegal, Dutch panel rules

Juan Cole 01/23/2010

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Iraq war was illegal, Dutch panel rules | World news | guardian.co.uk

Of course it was illegal. There are only two conditions under which war may be launched according to the United Nations Charter, which most countries have signed. One is self-defense. Iraq did not attack the US in 2003. The other is if the UN Security Council authorizes a war, as with the Gulf War where collective security was invoked to push back the aggression on Kuwait. The UNSC could also authorize intervention to stop genocide, e.g.

Craig Murray, then a UK ambassador to a Muslim-majority country who was copied with diplomatic positions from London, confirms that the initial position of the Blair government was that previous UNSC resolutions did not provide an automatic trigger for war. The British inquiry into the Iraq War, which sheds loads of illumination on the Bushies’ lies and crimes, is being studiously ignored by US mass media.

There was no UNSC authorization, and no issue of self-defense. The most egregious violation of the post- World War II international order by a major Power we have yet seen. I said all this in my first blog posting here at Informed Comment in April of 2002.

You kind of hope it means Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hadley and the Neocons can never safely vacation in Europe again.

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End/ (Not Continued)

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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