The war on Iraq is lawful IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, war is illegal unless in self-defence or with the specific authorisation of the UN Security Council. The argument that previous wars have been conducted outside this framework and they were accepted (Kosovo, bombing, Afghanistan) is absurd. It's like saying that mugging old people would become legal if you can do it three times and get away with it! Well if the war isn't lawful, at least it's humanitarian? THE WEST has intervened in Iraq countless times since the formation of the state 80 years ago, each time leaving thousands dead, millions of refugees and epidemics of malnutrition and disease.
Will it really be different this time? 16 million Iraqis depended on UN food handouts that have now ceased. The Geneva Convention places a heavy responsibility on Britain and the US to ensure food and medical supplies to civilians and ensure hygiene and public health.
Yet the US and British armies have stockpiled only 3.5 million food rations, not enough to feed a quarter of these people for one day. They claim to be avoiding damage to the civilian infrastructure. But in Basra - not even cited as a "military target" - bombing soon cut off the water and electricity supplies throwing over one million people into what the Red Cross called an urgent humanitarian crisis. This war is not motivated by US greed for Iraqi oil which will be held in a UN-trust YEARS of UN-controlled oil sales and distribution disprove any claim that the Iraqi people would therefore benefit. Besides companies have to be given the profitable contracts to exploit and distribute this oil. No prizes for guessing which country they will come from, Clare Short, "conscience of the Labour party", , thought it would be cowardly to quit, claiming the aid agencies wanted her to stay A DELUGE of charities renounced any such opinions immediately. As a Guardian letter writer put it: her decision to stay shows that the Labour Party has no conscience.
She claims she was swayed by Blair's
"humanitarian pledge" and the "legal ruling". Presumably she would only have
quit if Blair had promised absolutely no humanitarian March
by publicly ruling out any withdrawal from the settlements. War is justified because the real threat is of a link up between extreme terrorist assistance and an illegal groups and dictatorships war. As a speaker at the possessing weapons of mass
demo in destruction (Blair's main point in his TV address at the London put it: at least she now has some- outset of war
thing to reconstruct. THEY CAN'T prove Iraq has these
weapons. They can't prove any link
"France has
mere potential of the two linking up. Total mortal blow to speculation about imagined future events.
The progress of US and British forces at Basra was unexpectedly held up by "irregular forces" and "zealots dressed up as civilians" because of leaves on the line. ure of the earlier claim that the Southern Shia communities would rise up in support of the invasion. The Iraqi government's Convention Do these Blair fails to win over a sceptical audience on the need for war, and winds up to embarrassing silence on a Trevor McDonald special