War critics astonished as US hawk
admits invasion was illegal

From the London Guardian via Eschaton:

International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.
In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.

But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

Of course, we already knew that the invasion was illegal, didn't we? And that the invasion, rather than leaving "Saddam Hussein alone," was what was actually "morally unacceptable." Click here for more. Man, those neo-cons sure love to run their mouths...

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