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Unless correspon- dents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate. |
Robert Willman, Jr has turned a lawyer's eye, Friday, April 29, 2005, on the legal advice given to Tony Blair about attacking a sovereign country, Iraq and finds it clearly defines what happened as a war crime
The lies that Tony Blair was told and repeated, knowing them to be lies
THE web address below [London Evening Standard] is the memo of March 7, 2003 that was prepared by the British Attorney General's Office as its advice to Tony Blair on the legality of the aggressive war against Iraq.
http://images.thisislondon.co.uk/v2/news/Iraq2520Resolution.pdf
It is also at the government's website www.number-10.gov.uk
It contains a lot of tap dancing and slithering around the legal bases for the use of force, although the author(s) are literate. A proper legal basis is definitely not clear.
But more important is paragraph 36. It sinks Tony Blair and has not yet been reported in any print or broadcast report I have seen or heard today. It says ---
Proportionality36. Finally, I must stress that the lawfulness of military action depends not only on the existence of a legal basis, but also on the question of proportionality. Any force used pursuant to the authorisation in resolution 678 (whether or not there is a second resolution):
-- must have as its objective the enforcement [of] the terms of the cease-fire contained in resolution 687 (1990) and subsequent relevant resolutions.
-- be limited to what is necessary to achieve that objective; and
-- must be a proportionate response to that objective, ie securing compliance with Iraq's disarmament obligations.
That is not to say that action may not be taken to remove Saddam Hussein from power if it can be demonstrated that such action is a necessary and proportionate measure to secure the disarmament of Iraq. But regime change cannot be the objective of military action. This should be borne in mind in considering the list of military targets and in making public statements about any campaign.
Simply put, anything more than making sure that Iraq was disarmed is illegal and not authorized.
I have not read all the applicable United States laws on the use of force.
The Congressional resolution as usual improperly lets the president declare war, when the constitution requires that Congress affirmatively declare it.
But if there is anything like proportionality applicable to the U.S. by statute, judicial interpretation, or treaty, then the war is illegal on that basis alone and can be the legal rationale to impeach Bush and Cheney.
Robert
Willman, Jr
Attorney at Law San Antonio, Texas
US
Occupation imposes new Limits on Journalists in
Iraq (from the Arabic
press)
David Irving