Creating an Illegal War

To reiterate the obvious, the war in Iraq (and Afghanistan) is illegal. Iraq was a war of aggression--the primary war crime enumerated by the Nuremberg Trials. You can't simply attack a country for no reason at all, they must at least have presented a credible threat to you--and that probably isn't reason enough. They need to have attacked you or need to be obviously about to do so. At that point, military action is justified under international treaty and law. In the case of Iraq, there was no credible justification presented at all. In the end, we did what we'd decided we would do long before 9/11, and made up the justifications as we went along. Now, on the anniversary of the Downing Street Memos, Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, presents some history to bring the process back to mind. Have a look.