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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike M who wrote (658)	3/20/2003 6:44:09 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 21614

Saddam has indeed harbored terrorists. There have indeed been reported instances of Al Qaeda terrorists within Iraq. And Germany, France, Britain, Saudi, Pakistan, Egypt, Austria, Yemen, Eritrea, Israel, Russia, Italy... And I think you'll find the Sep.11 murderers were being 'harbored' in... the USA. Or did you mean Abu Nidal - that relic from the 1970's, who may actually have been assassinated by Saddam's forces after being found in hiding? Some support. news.bbc.co.uk There have even been terrorists training camps within his borders. Er, yup. But that was in the bit WE control, up in Kurdish territory (you know, our democratic allies: or terrorists, as Turkey calls them). Saddam can't do much about that, on account of we tend to destroy anything military of his that we spot in the no-fly zones. Complicated, isn't it. He is further a risk to supply terrorists with weapons if he hasn't already done so. Well, in theory, so is every single country in the world. And every single arms manufacturer. Why, every single soldier - even the US ones - might be a risk; they've got weapons, and you can't prove absolutely that they won't give them to terrorists. I don't believe any of the above are sufficient argument for declaration of war and invasion. Honestly, do you? Preemptive war, however, is unequivocally illegal. As far back as 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected Germany’s argument of the necessity for preemptive war against Norway and Denmark, judging it: “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” This prohibition was incorporated into the United Nations Charter as the basis for a new system of collective security in which no state retained the unilateral right to attack another–with two specified exceptions: self defense and Security Council authorization. In self-defense, states may retaliate against an armed attack or the imminent threat of one. But only if, in the words of Daniel Webster, an earlier Secretary of State, the threat is “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation.” The Bush Administration did not offer a shred of substantiated evidence that Iraq either participated in the attacks of 9/11, or has the means and intention to launch an imminent attack against the U.S. The Security Council may authorize force outside of self-defense when necessary to maintain international peace and security. But only after all peaceful alternatives have been exhausted—clearly not the case in Iraq with the UNMOVIC weapons inspectors literally begging for more time. commondreams.org