And you don't have to take my word for that:
One of Britain's most authoritative judicial figures last night delivered a blistering attack on the invasion of Iraq, describing it as a serious violation of international law, and accusing Britain and the US of acting like a "world vigilante".
Lord Bingham, in his first major speech since retiring as the senior law lord, rejected the then attorney general's defence of the 2003 invasion as fundamentally flawed.
Contradicting head-on Lord Goldsmith's advice that the invasion was lawful, Bingham stated: "It was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had." Adding his weight to the body of international legal opinion opposed to the invasion, Bingham said that to argue, as the British government had done, that Britain and the US could unilaterally decide that Iraq had broken UN resolutions "passes belief".
Addressing the British Institute of International and Comparative Law last night, Bingham said: "If I am right that the invasion of Iraq by the US, the UK, and some other states was unauthorised by the security council there was, of course, a serious violation of international law and the rule of law.
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ReplyDeleteDear David Lindsay,
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So it's a matter of legal dispute. You can find lawyers arguing both sides. Hardly surprising. And not really relevant. It could be right but illegal, or wrong but legal, after all.
ReplyDeleteIf the Iraq War was illegal then why has no one been arrested and put in prison yet?
ReplyDeleteaelfheah: Good question. The answer should tell you something about the nature of and enforcement mechanisms for international law. Hence the failure to punish systematic breaches of international law by Saddam Hussein over several decades until 2003.
ReplyDeleteSome people never learn, do they...?
ReplyDeleteAnd I've put up the Guardian comment because the grammar and punctuation are so bad that they feed a certain nostalgia about the real Guardian.
Must be a while since you last read it, though.
"So it's a matter of legal dispute."
ReplyDeleteNo, it isn't. It's a matter of failure to prosecute, that's all.