I caught a Mark Danner NY Review of Books article on "The Secret Way to War" (with special emphasis on the Downing Memo -- remember that?). This is an appropriate coda to my recent post on the 10/02 Blank Check and the reasons given for it. In part, the article notes:
"Iraq, the President said, still had the power to prevent war by "declaring and destroying all its weapons of mass destruction" —but if Iraq did not declare and destroy those weapons, the President warned, the United States would "go into battle, as a last resort."
It also notes that the Brits recognized "three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or [United Nations Security Council] authorization" existed to justify the war. The second not really currently operative, though:
[It] might have been given as a reason for intervention in 1988, for example, when the Iraqi regime was carrying out its Anfal campaign against the Kurds; at that time, though, the Reagan administration— comprising many of the same officials who would later lead the invasion of Iraq—was supporting Saddam in his war against Iran and kept largely silent. The second major killing campaign of the Saddam regime came in 1991, when Iraqi troops attacked Shiites in the south who had rebelled against the regime in the wake of Saddam's defeat in the Gulf War; the first Bush administration, despite President George H.W. Bush's urging Iraqis to "rise up against the dictator, Saddam Hussein," and despite the presence of hundreds of thousands of American troops within miles of the killing, stood by and did nothing.
It's useful to remember these things now that the question "why" is being asked and Dubya is traveling to Idaho to sell his war policies. For instance, Samantha Power (a new advisor to the new senator from Illinois) was on some educational channel recently discussing our role in promoting human rights. She cares about the issue, as suggested by her book on the subject of genocide. But, she was against the war in Iraq, partly because of how it was handled, partly because of fears of blowback. And, partly because it was not really in response to current atrocities. The deaths of 20K civilians (on our consciences) to answer deaths a decade or two ago (after one of which, we increased our aid to Saddam) just does not cut it.
So, the move was to go to the UN. And, ignore them, apparently. Mind you as spelled out in Presidential Power by Louis Fisher, authorization from the UN won't do it either -- you need constitutionally based authorization. Such authorization, or the shadow thereof, was tied to UN backed inspections and invasion to uphold its dictates -- even if the UN itself opposed it. So, the UN justification doesn't work, and we are left with self-defense. The term is elastic, though the aspects emphasized (currently a CNN documentary examines how dubiously this was done) are fairly straightforward. WMDS and such.
So it goes. Btw Pat Robertson is an schmuck, but the government should not target him for his stupid views. It is not the same as the Janet Jackson boob controversy (also stupid) in that it deals with opinion not explicit images.