Ousting Saddam 'no cause for war' (Human Rights Watch )

[papau]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3430331.stm

Ousting Saddam 'no cause for war' -
The reasons for the war are still being questioned

A leading human rights group has said the US and UK are wrong to use the toppling of a brutal regime in Baghdad to justify going to war against Iraq.

In its annual World Report, the New York-based Human Rights Watch also said:
• Human rights are deteriorating in Afghanistan due to a reliance by US-led forces on warlords to defeat Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters
• The Bush administration uses threats to national security to justify putting executive action in the United States above the law
• Russian authorities justify the war in Chechnya as their contribution to the war on terror, while European and other governments ignore appalling human rights abuses there
• There was a "moment of hope" in Africa with African leaders trying to stop regional wars and the associated abuses, through bodies like the African Union <snip>

"Only mass slaughter might permit the deliberate taking of life in using military force for humanitarian purposes," it said.
"Brutal as Saddam Hussein's reign had been, the scope of the Iraq Government's killing in March 2003, was not of the exceptional and dire magnitude that would justify humanitarian intervention.
"The Bush administration cannot justify the war in Iraq as a humanitarian intervention, and neither can Tony Blair." <snip>