wolverine>>

well to be honest i take the view that the war was actually illegal, but what i am saying is that you could make a case for it being legal...although the general consensus is that it was illegal...its not undecided, and a chat with an american lawyer might convince you that it was legal.

not only based on WMD, but basically on implicit authorisation of UN Resolution. its contentious yes , but its not absurd. there are other reasons as well that are put forward, but that is the most likely legally acceptable reason as far as i can rememebr

as for the weapons, well i dunno i used to beleive they didnt have any either, but listeing to a talk radio show over here, a kurdish guy who used to work for the iraq gov phoned up and gave some pretty precise detalis about the location of some wmds. that info has been passed to the us intelligence agancies, and you never know we may find weapons yet. however, it does tend to lead me to conclude that perhaps they do still exist, and owuld have been at the disposal of saddam had he still been in power. just becasue you cant find something, doesnt mean it isnt there.

furthermore, morally the case to remove saddam justified the war imo, in terms of humanitarian reasons.

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Originally posted by George Smiley The argument is that as Saddam was not complying with weapons inspections then he was in violation of the UN Resolutions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War, and therefore the US/UK had the right to act to enforce those resolutions

yeah thats correct, but also through the fact that the resolution adopted relating to the invasion of Kuwait, permitted a continued authorisation for force, which is the subject of a lot of the legal debate.

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Originally posted by svens_bath well why do you say the war was illegal? ive read some of the arguments about whether it was legal or illegal, and i dont really want to go into them here otherwise the thread will get totally sidetracked, with people coming back and forth and whatever, but i assure you you can quite convincingly argue a case for the war being legal. whther or not the UN inspection teams found WMD, and they did find some evidence of chemical capabilities if im not mistaken, i still beleive they are there. just fuckin well hidden. for that reason, id say the threat was such that it justified removing him..for the sake of his own people, and for the sake of the security of the region. as for the war being all about oil..well thats your opinion, and nobody knows for sure whether that was the govs true agenda, but i personally doubt it. theres a thread on this forum that deals in great detail about this, and although ive not read it properly, the argument agaist the oil idea seems pretty reasonable to me.

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well why do you say the war was illegal?

Firstly because you mentioned it, and secondly because all the evidence or lack of, points in that direction.

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well why do you say the war was illegal?

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well to be honest i take the view that the war was actually illegal

Enough said........

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Originally posted by zig Firstly because you mentioned it, and secondly because all the evidence or lack of, points in that direction.

yeah ok, i mentioned it, but i thought that you would argue that the war was illegal and so the troops shouldnt have been there in the first place, so i just said that it could be argued either way. perhaps should have brought it up then, my bad.

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Originally posted by zig Enough said........

enough said nothing, and dont get all arsey either. i said it could be argued either way didnt i?

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Originally posted by George Smiley The argument is that as Saddam was not complying with weapons inspections then he was in violation of the UN Resolutions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War, and therefore the US/UK had the right to act to enforce those resolutions

I know your thoughts, so I know you're simply stating that's what the arguments were. The thing is that we had weapons inspectors on the ground not finding anything. The 2nd vote in the U.N. also never occured. Just to play devil's advocate, would that mean that a country would be justified to invade Israel for the resolutions they have failed to follow?

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Originally posted by wolverine16 Just to play devil's advocate, would that mean that a country would be justified to invade Israel for the resolutions they have failed to follow?

justified? perhaps not. legally allowed? depends on what the resolutions say.

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Originally posted by svens_bath enough said nothing, and dont get all arsey either. i said it could be argued either way didnt i?

If the war is illegal then how can it be argued either way....its either legal or illegal.....there are no suspended sentences handed down.

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enough said nothing, and dont get all arsey either.

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Originally posted by wolverine16 I know your thoughts, so I know you're simply stating that's what the arguments were. The thing is that we had weapons inspectors on the ground not finding anything. The 2nd vote in the U.N. also never occured. Just to play devil's advocate, would that mean that a country would be justified to invade Israel for the resolutions they have failed to follow?

The thing with laws (and this is especially the case with international law) is that a law is only a law when it can be enforced! So technically, the UN is the 'ultimate authority' but in reality only those countries where that law can be enforced counts (ie the weak states). As for Israel, that obviously means no-one can invade to enforce them, whether it would give them a right to is another matter. I have a little experience with the main resolutions against Israel (242 & 388) and none of them say force can be used to enforce them so I would say not. The resolutions passed against Iraq in 1991 do (I think altho not sure) grant the use of force to uphold them (in fact we've been bombing Iraq for 15 years now! Not just since 2003!)

UN Resolutions have to grant the use of force, I dont think the rule is anyone with an outstanding resoltuion can be invaded!

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Originally posted by svens_bath wolverine>> well to be honest i take the view that the war was actually illegal, but what i am saying is that you could make a case for it being legal...although the general consensus is that it was illegal...its not undecided, and a chat with an american lawyer might convince you that it was legal.

Well what are the grounds that are actually true that would convince me that it's legal? I'm at work right now with lots of American lawyers as we speak.

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not only based on WMD, but basically on implicit authorisation of UN Resolution. its contentious yes , but its not absurd. there are other reasons as well that are put forward, but that is the most likely legally acceptable reason as far as i can rememebr

The U.N. resolution passed was based unanimously and depended on having a 2nd vote which never took place.

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as for the weapons, well i dunno i used to beleive they didnt have any either, but listeing to a talk radio show over here, a kurdish guy who used to work for the iraq gov phoned up and gave some pretty precise detalis about the location of some wmds. that info has been passed to the us intelligence agancies, and you never know we may find weapons yet. however, it does tend to lead me to conclude that perhaps they do still exist, and owuld have been at the disposal of saddam had he still been in power. just becasue you cant find something, doesnt mean it isnt there.

Would this be the author of "The Bomb in My Garden"? He's been around for quite some time, so that should have panned out by now. Let's think about this for a moment if it hasn't already been checked out. We are told we need to go to war because of the fear that WMDs could be used against us and we have to act quickly, why wouldn't we do everything in our power to find them and check out every tip and search for any intelligence we can find on it? It has been concluded by the U.S. & British administrations both through their own investigations that none can be found. The search has already long been called off. If the threat was ever true, I would expect we'd be in grave danger, but apparently it's no big deal we don't know where they are, along again, with what I mentioned before that we had no proof that more weapons were produced, which would have had to have been the case since the 1991 weapons would have expired.

Can I just make arbitrary claims about any country and invade them and claim I'm justified or should I at least have to have one shread of evidence of proof? Otherwise I can go around the world lying and invading countries and when my claims aren't true I can always fall back on "just becasue you cant find something, doesnt mean it isnt there.:" and no one can really doubt me.

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furthermore, morally the case to remove saddam justified the war imo, in terms of humanitarian reasons.

OK, then why specifically Iraq and we've done nothing anywhere else based on humanitarian reasons. Do people of the Sudan and Congo not count?

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