Robert
Willman,
Jr has turned a lawyer’s eye, , 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
—

Proportionality

36.
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, JrAttorney at Law San Antonio, Texas

US
Occupation imposes new Limits on Journalists in
Iraq (from the Arabic
press)

See Also