DeadCode said:The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously--let me say that again, unanimously--for Resolution 1441, which found Iraq in material breach of its international obligations over the previous 16 resolutions in 12 years and offered "serious consequences" (U.N.-speak for military intervention) if Iraq continued to violate its responsibilities.
And we get to hold people accountable for failing to uphold UN dictates the moment we uphold those dictates ourselves. Billions of dollars in unpaid UN dues, a withdrawal from the UN population fund, a refusal to abide by Geneva convention rules for the treatment of our prisoners: we aren't even abiding by international law now. We're not called on it because we are powerful. In any functionally important way, the international community is irrelevant to us.
You are fundamentally missing the point of what I was saying. I did not argue that Iraq did not commit violations of international law. I was arguing that we cannot use international law as a justification for war if we do not respect it ourselves. No one can claim grievance under the law who does not himself uphold it.
Please note that I am also not equating our violations of international law with Saddam's. They are not equivalent. But it is intellectually dishonest to suddenly respect international law the moment it becomes politically convenient for us to do so. I can only hope that this cynical tactic results in a greater demand on the part of the American people for a Presidential commitment to compliance with the other international obligations we are shirking, but so far, no luck.
I fail to see how this is relevant to the point I'm making. I'm saying that the rhetorical tactic of invoking the UN's authority is inconsistent with the disrespect we otherwise pay it.Iraq flagrantly violated that resolution like it did all the others. All Saddam Hussein had to do was allow the weapons inspectors to do their job--like a responsible member of the community of nations that had been ordered to do so with 17 resolutions--and there was no possible way this war would've happened.
Yes. There were three planks: WMDs, which we knew existed in North Korea, and which we knew were being built in Iran; Al Qaeda, agents of whom intelligence sources placed in Pyongyang in 2002, who were given land and aid in Sudan, who were directly funded by Syria and Jordan, and who were only by the most tenuous tissue of associations linked to Iraq; and international law, which is a laughable argument from any nation that so thoroughly disrespects it. Tell me how, out of all of that, we came up with Iraq as the biggest threat.Possible al Qaeda involvement with Iraq (which I believe exists, read above) was at most a very minor detail in the case for liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein. It took 12 years of diplomacy and approximately 3 weeks of war to do that.