War

Senator Jay Rockefeller calls for the FBI to investigate the Bush Administration's use of forged documents to support its claims that Iraq sought to purchase uranium. "An investigation should 'at a minimum help to allay any concerns' that the government was involved in the creation of the documents to build support for administration policies, Rockefeller wrote in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller." (AP reporter Ken Guggenheim in the Kansas City Star, 3/14/03.)

"George W. Queeg?" -- Paul Krugman in the New York Times, March 14, 2003:

Over the past few weeks there has been an epidemic of epiphanies. There's a long list of pundits who previously supported Bush's policy on Iraq but have publicly changed their minds. None of them quarrel with the goal; who wouldn't want to see Saddam Hussein overthrown? But they are finally realizing that Mr. Bush is the wrong man to do the job. And more people than you would think -- including a fair number of people in the Treasury Department, the State Department and, yes, the Pentagon -- don't just question the competence of Mr. Bush and his inner circle; they believe that America's leadership has lost touch with reality.

Michael Walzer on " The Right Way" to oppose war in Iraq (New York Review of Books, 3/13/03):

We say of war that it is the "last resort" because of the unpredictable, unexpected, unintended, and unavoidable horrors that it regularly brings. In fact, war isn't the last resort, for "lastness" is a metaphysical condition, which is never actually reached in real life: it is always possible to do something else, or to do it again, before doing whatever it is that comes last. The notion of lastness is cautionary??" but this is a necessary caution: look hard for alternatives before you "let loose the dogs of war."

Right now, even at this last minute, there still are alternatives, and that is the best argument against going to war. I think that it is a widely accepted argument, even though it isn't easy to march with. What do you write on the placards? What slogans do you shout? We need a complicated campaign against the war, whose participants are ready to acknowledge the difficulties and the costs of their politics.

Or, better, we need a campaign that isn't focused only on the war (and that might survive the war)??"a campaign for a strong international system, organized and designed to defeat aggression, to stop massacres and ethnic cleansing, to control weapons of mass destruction, and to guarantee the physical security of all the world's peoples.

Haroon Siddiqi on the Bush administration's credibility self-destruction (Toronto Star, 3/13/03)

Bill Clinton tells Bush to slow down, cooperate with UN (3/12/03)

Julian Borger et al., writing 3/12/03 in The Guardian, on the illegality of US/British intervention in Iraq without an enabling Security Council resolution:

Going to war without a new UN resolution backing military action would be illegal despite claims to the contrary made by Britain and the US. This is the near-unanimous view of international lawyers, and was supported this week by the UN secretary general. "If the US and others were to go outside the security council and take unilateral action they would not be in conformity with the [UN] charter," Kofi Annan said.

Some international lawyers say war is justified - with or without any further resolution - because Saddam has not honoured the UN-backed ceasefire terms after the 1991 Gulf war.

However, the widespread view in Whitehall is that a new, strongly-worded UN resolution was needed before a war could be regarded as being backed by international law.

This view is believed to be shared by Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, who yesterday had a meeting with Mr Blair and Mr Hoon.

Mr Blair may be hoping that he can persuade MPs that a draft resolution backed by a majority on the security council would amount to a "yes" vote, irrespective of any veto by one or more of the permanent members. While this might strengthen the prime minister's position politically, and even morally, it will make no difference to the legality or legitimacy of a war.

Legally, any claim by Mr Blair that a French veto would be "unreasonable" is irrelevant. And with a veto there will be no new resolution.

Resolution 1441, by which ministers have laid so much store, speaks only of "serious consequences" if Saddam Hussein does not disarm. The phrase falls far short of an instruction to UN member states to use "all necessary means" - the traditional UN term for armed intervention.

Alexander Cockburn speculates about how "evidence" of prohibited weapons may be prepared for consumption after the invasion begins (3/12/03):

Does anyone seriously believe that in the event of U.S. invasion, "discovery" of Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction won't be long delayed? The stakes are simply too high. It won't take much: a blueprint or two, a few canisters noisily identified as chemical or biological agents, a "facility" for production of nuclear munitions.

Already there are vague, unconfirmed stories of preliminary manufacture of the necessary smoking guns that can be deployed by undercover teams as U.S. troops advance and then dramatically disclosed to the hungry press. For those who entertain doubts about the likelihood of the United States or its ally Britain manufacturing necessary "evidence," consider the recent explicit charge of forgery leveled by Mohammed ElBaradei, the chief UN inspector looking for evidence of nuclear capability in Iraq.