Kofi Annan, when pressed Wednesday by a BBC interviewer, admitted for the first time that he considered the US-led invasion of Iraq “illegal”. Until now the UN secretary-general has only said the attack on Saddam was “not in compliance with the UN Charter”. He has always believed a second Security Council resolution necessary for military action.
Resolution 1441, passed on Nov. 8, 2002, warned Iraq only that there would be “serious consequences” if it did not comply with UN demands over its suspected weapons programs. Those consequences were not spelled out. Even Tony Blair recognized that the Americans should seek to obtain specific Security Council backing for the attack. When the efforts of US and British diplomats to bring the Security Council, in particular Russia, France and Germany round to backing the invasion failed, the diplomats changed tack: No further resolution was needed after all. Resolution 1441 justified the attack because Saddam had not cooperated with weapons inspectors. Britain’s most senior political law officer, the attorney general, apparently produced advice that 1441 was quite sufficient for war.
The US-British position has been trotted out again in apparently angry response to Annan’s clear assertion that what Washington, London and their allies did in Iraq broke international law. Resolution 1441 was predicated upon the certain belief that Saddam’s Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction, even after the first weapons inspection teams in the wake of the first Gulf War had done their search-and-destroy missions. The British and the Americans then used what turned out to be largely false evidence to demand the UN back an early attack to stop Saddam from unleashing his deadly arsenal.
It was all hokum, as we now know. Despite massive searches since Saddam’s overthrow no evidence whatsoever has been found of the fully armed and primed WMD weaponry that could be ready for action in 45 minutes, weaponry that the war was supposed to destroy. Therefore even if 1441 could have been stretched to authorize the invasion, the evidence upon which even the resolution had been built, had been falsified. The sole object of the George W. Bush White House was to get Saddam, the man who had survived his defeat at the hands of the George Bush Senior. Any excuse would be good enough to permit Washington to go after him. The legality could be sorted out when the dictator had been ousted and jubilant liberated Iraqis thronged the streets.
Unfortunately for everyone, especially the Iraqis, the post-Saddam streets were not filled for very long with any cheering. Iraqis turned first upon their “liberators” and then also upon each other. Since the invasion did not work out as Washington expected — “planned” would be too big a word for White House thinking — its legality and possible perjury produced to create support for it become important. In the end, of course, history is always written by the victors. Who, one wonders, will write the present history of Iraq ?
