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Originally Posted by loquitur
We went into Iraq for a number of stated reasons (and I'm choosing my words carefully) of which WMDs was a rather late arrival to the list. It was added because Blair prevailed upon Bush to go to the UN, and the prior UN resolutions were heavily weighted toward disarmament and disclosure. So the UN presentation was heavily focused on the WMD issues. Bush had been prepared to go in without that whole kabuki dance in the UN, which ended up delaying things by about 6 months. As things stood at that point, before Powell's speech, the inspectors had been tossed out in '98 in violation of the Gulf War-ending resolutions, there were regular shots taken at coalition planes in the no-fly zones and a whole bunch of other stuff going on. That's the irony here - it's not like WMDs were a necessary condition to the Iraq invasion. Whether they were a sufficient reason is a different question. Whether the invasion was a good idea even if Saddam had WMDs is yet a third question.
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And had the UN given up permission, things would have been different. They didn't. We had a coalition of the willing invade instead of UN forces. Saddam didn't break US resolutions, he broke UN resolutions. The horrible irony to all of this is that the US broke the UN Charter on the grounds of upholding an UN resolution.
If you remember the Gulf War, the invasion was MANDATED by the UN. That's how these things are done legally. Whether you agree with the Gulf War or not, the argument can't really be made that it was illegal (so far as I know). 'Iraqi Freedom' (ugh) was quite the opposite. Kofi Annan, the Sec Gen of the UN has specifically agreed with my expert analysis when he said:
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Originally Posted by Kofi Annan, 9/16/04
I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal.
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