07-03-2005, 04:24 PM
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#78 (permalink)
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Banned
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by moosenose
By "suspecious targets", you're referring to AAA guns and missile launchers that shot at them first, right? How DARE we bomb people who shot at us first!
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The evidence indicates that the U.S. and UK were the instigators and aggressors
Quote:
http://www.vermontguardian.com/dailies/0904/0622.shtml
Bombing raids were illegal, UK documents say
LONDON – A spike in British and U.S. 2002 bombing raids on Iraq, reportedly designed to goad Saddam Hussein into retaliating, was illegal under international law, according to British Foreign Office legal advice leaked to the UK’s Sunday Times. The advice indicated that the goal of the bombing was to provoke Hussein, thus providing a pretext for war.
British Ministry of Defense records show that the spike began in May 2002.
The leaked legal advice, appended to a cabinet briefing paper for a July 23 meeting with Blair, indicated an awareness that allied aircraft were legally entitled to patrol no-fly zones only to deter attacks by Saddam’s forces on the Kurdish and Shia populations. It noted that the allies had no authority to use military force to put pressure on the regime.
The increased attacks, which senior U.S. officials admit were designed to degrade Iraqi air defenses, began six months before the UN passed Resolution 1441, which the allies claimed as their authorization for military action.
UK Liberal Democrat Lord Goodhart, vice-president of the International Commission of Jurists and an authority on international law, said the intensified raids were illegal if they were meant to “pressurize” the regime.
Intensified bombing, known in the Pentagon as the Blue Plan, began in August 2002, following a meeting of the U.S. National Security Council. In his autobiography, allied commander Gen. Tommy Franks said he wanted to use the bombing to make Iraq’s defenses as weak as possible. However, if the purpose was to soften up Iraq for a future invasion, or even to intimidate the regime, coalition forces were acting without lawful authority, Goodhart claims.
The revelations suggest that Bush may have acted illegally, since Congress didn’t authorize military action until Oct. 11. 2002. At that point, the air war had been going on for six weeks. The spikes were underway five months earlier.
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Quote:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...0300_2,00.html
The Sunday Times - Britain
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Elizabeth Wilmshurst, one of the Foreign Office lawyers who wrote the report, resigned in March 2003 in protest at the decision to go to war without a UN resolution specifically authorising military force.
Further intensification of the bombing, known in the Pentagon as the Blue Plan, began at the end of August, 2002, following a meeting of the US National Security Council at the White House that month.
General Tommy Franks, the allied commander, recalled in his autobiography, American Soldier, that during this meeting he rejected a call from Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to cut the bombing patrols because he wanted to use them to make Iraq’s defences “as weak as possible”.
The allied commander specifically used the term “spikes of activity” in his book. The upgrade to a full air war was also illegal, said Goodhart. “If, as Franks seems to suggest, the purpose was to soften up Iraq for a future invasion or even to intimidate Iraq, the coalition forces were acting without lawful authority,” he said.
Although the legality of the war has been more of an issue in Britain than in America, the revelations indicate Bush may also have acted illegally, since Congress did not authorise military action until October 11 2002.
The air war had already begun six weeks earlier and the spikes of activity had been underway for five months.
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