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What Kerry was referring to was the fact that if you are going to try to convinnce the rest of the world in general, and the United Nations in particular, to take "serious actions" against a nation, that you have better be honest with the rest of the world with the means that you use to convince them.
As Kofi Annan pointed out when he stated that he believed that the U.S. war in Iraq was illegal, that if any nation is going to base going to war with another nation on its "violation" of U.N. Resolutions, they had better go to the U.N. and have the U.N. as a group decide whether any violations occured, and that if a resolution calling for "serious consequences" for any nation that violates U.N. resolutions is to be meted out, it should be the United Nations and not one single nation or small group of nations that decides what form and shape that those serious consequences takes.
Kerry has repeatedly sttes that the U.S. has the right to defend itself against imminent threat, but that absent such threat, the treaty obligations that the U.S. has taken upon itself by being a signatory to the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremburg Accords obligate the U.S. to go to the international community and the international bodies issuing such resolutions prior to acting in defense of the resolutions made by those bodies. After all, all of the claims that George Bush made against Saddam Hussein and his regime revolved around Iraq violating treaties, sanctions, and resolutions made by those international bodies and not the U.S.
If the U.S. reserves the right to defend itself under imminent threat, the international community has the right to decide how its resolutions and rules are enforced, not the United States.
Absent his arguments about Saddam Hussein's violations of numerous United Nations resolutions, he Bush Admininstration had no viable arguments for going to war with Iraq, as none of the reasons that this administration had to bas a war on imminent threat existed.
The fact that Iraq had the ability to develop WMD's and the desire to do so once (when and IF) the United Nations removed its sanctions, does not constitute a gathering threat, much less imminent danger. Under international law, going to war because somebody might do something once the world stops watching them does not constitute a legal justification for war. Thus, the U.S. has absolutely no justification under international law for going into Iraq, and even under U.S. law, had not right to do so, as there was not even a growing threat in Iraq as long as U.N. sanctions remained in place. All evidence gathered during the inspection ordered under resolution 1441 indicated that the sanctions placed by the United Nations in the years after the Gulf war were entirely effective in eliminating Iraq as a gathering threat, and totally eliminated Iraq as an imminent threat to the world.
The only justification that this administration had to go into Iraq was based totally on the concept of violation of U.N. resolutions, and as the U.S. does not feel that the rest of the world has the right to interefere with the laws and regulations of the United States, the rest of the world has the right to demand that the United States does not act independently with regard to decisions made by thr international community.
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