Was the invasion of Iraq justified?

Question

Well a review of the Iraqi war/ invasion is underway here in the UK, and there is talk of the whole invasion being illegal as no proof of nuclear weapons of MOD were found, but if so why did the US/UK invade? Although there reason for doing so was to stop the development of "WOMOD" overall was the UK/US's cautious approach justified?

The toppling of Saddam was probably a good thing as he was an evil dictator convicted of war crimes and he was someone that the West couldn't trust so that may be one reason in the UK/US's defense..

Answer 1

No.

Saddam was supported by the USA and Britain in the 1980s when he was fighting Iran and they helped him at a time when he was carrying out some of his worst atrocities against his own people such as gassing people in villages.

The only mistake he made was to invade Kuwait because they were side drilling into Iraqi oil reserves.

From then he became an enemy as far as the USA was concerned.

There were never any weapons of mass destruction to find in the 1990s and Bush actually decided to invade Iraq before 9/11 happened to show his father that he could finish off what he had failed to do.

After 9/11 Bush felt humiliated by the failure to get Osama bin Laden so the Iraqis were made to suffer instead, 4,000,000 killed and displaced. They never suffered that under Saddam

Answer 2

No! The invasion was not justified.



Tony Blair would like us to believe that the invasion came about because of concerns about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). But that is a bare faced lie. The reality is that first Bush & Blair decided to invade & only after that decision was taken did they look around for reasons to justify the invasion.



George Bush was the more honest of the two, because he always admitted that toppling Saddam Hussein was the real reason for invasion. The problem with this approach is that it has no possible justification under international law. This means that the invasion was an "aggressive war" under the terms of the Nuremberg Conventions & was, therefore, a war crime.



Tony Blair relied more on WMD & argued that existing UN resolutions sanctioned the invasion. This was never true, although Blair did manage to find a couple of pet lawyers to argue that it was. However, all such arguments are rendered irrelevant by the way in which the war was fought.



Even a "just war" must be fought using "proportionate means", but "operation shock & awe" (the bombing campaign which killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians & destroyed the country's infrastructure) was disproportionate to any defence the Iraqis could possibly mount. So once again, the invasion has to be seen as a war crime.



To sum up:

(1) The invasion of Iraq was a classic example a "might is right" approach international diplomacy.

(2) Neither the invasion itself nor the way in which the war was fought can be justified under international law.

(3) Those responsible for the war, principally Bush & Blair, should be tried, convicted & executed for crimes against humanity.

Answer 3

This invasion was deemed as illegal right from the beginning. Not because no WMDs were ever found. That was totally irrelevant at the time.



Before any country that is a member of the United Nations can invade another country, they must have a majority approval in a vote by the other members of the UN. There were two votes and in both, the majority voted against an invasion. The US/UK went ahead and invaded Iraq. That alone made it an illegal invasion. And to make matters worse, there were no WMDs found. Which then made the US/UK look like liars.



Although Saddam and his sons was captured and executed, Iraq is in more turmoil and unstable today than it was when they were still in control. They may have been oppressive leaders but at least the country's economy was more stable and the different religious factions were not killing each other for control of the country.



So, to answer your question...no, the invasion was not justified.

Answer 4

The original recommendation to Blair was that toppling an evil dictator just because he's an evil dictator was a violation of International Law and that he shouldn't do it, further, we now know that Blair was informed 10 days before the invasion that Saddam's WMDs had already been dismantled. He ordered the troops in anyway because he'd promised Bush that Britain would back anything he did no questions asked before finding out what Bush intended to do. It was also known that Saddam had almost certainly had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack on New York which Bush had used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan. Given that Saddam posed no threat to Britain or it's allies I would say the invasion was totally unjustified, and illegal as well.

Answer 5

You would have to ignore a whole lot of history to claim it illegal and unjustified. Neither Clinton nor the UN were willing to hold Saddam to the letter of the law-- cease fire agreement. Weapons inspections were at best, a farce. France, Germany and Russia all accepted bribes from Saddam. Based on these truths alone, the war was justified purely as a continuation of Desert Shield/Storm and the massive number of infractions. Beyond that, consider this: The idiots of the left would have you believe that Bush lied and that Bush was an idiot. Really? There are 435 voting members in Congress. If each only employs 2 to read through and research the legislation before the vote, that means there would be minimally 1305 sets of eyes looking for lies and mistakes. It was nearly a unanimous decision to go to war based on the intel. made available. And no one saw through the lie before the vote? So either a whole lot of people didn't read the proposal OR there was never a lie being perpetrated. Here's a little hint, Bush is no genius. So, who lied? Think about that. Then think about Nancy Pelosi's comment regarding Obama Care, "If you want to know what's in it. Vote on it and find out!" Along with her response of "I was misled" regarding her authorizing water boarding. Get the impression maybe that the left hasn't been doing the job for which they're paid handsomely for decades?

Answer 6

No, invasion is never a good thing and maybe it was a bad decision to go to war but if Saddam Hussein had managed to get nuclear weapons it would be quite feasible that he would have been crazy enough to use them, he did after all invade Kuwait so that he could use their oil, this would have made Iraq a very powerful country and with Saddam at the head, who knows how far he would have gone, the invasion was caused because Saddam was very obstructive of the search for nuclear weapons in Iraq which was a breach of the surrender agreement after the Kuwait invasion was stopped and the west could not take the chance that he had achieved nuclear capabilities, if he had given free reign to the searchers of these weapons, the invasion would not have been necessary, I personally think that toppling Saddam Hussein was the safest thing to do for world peace, he may not have had these weapons but could we really take the chance, if Osama Bin Ladin had them, I think that there is no doubt that he would use them.

Answer 7

No, because it was an illegal war based on lies and excuses which have changed since the original 2003 invasion. The latest spin is that they are trying to tie Iraq up with 9/11, but Bush himself said in a speech years ago that they were separate issues. I am disgusted that even now these liars and fabricators are trying to cover themselves, how stupid do these politicians think we are?

So many people protested, so many MPs resigned, so many terrorist attacks worldwide as a result of this war not to mention countless lives of civilians, soldiers and innocent hostages. On top of that, the British military was reluctant to go due to faulty equipment, the list is not exhaustive. The reasons for going to war though is and the only reason that the US and UK and coalition forces invaded Iraq was for oil and greed, the other "excuses" are lies and I feel sorry for anyone who believes them now.

If I had my way, Bush, Blair and the other cronies would be done for war crimes against humanity plus they should pay compensation to the Iraqi people and the families of the dead soldiers and hostages out of their own pockets and that is that.

Answer 8

No.



The plan to invade Iraq was formed before the reasons to invade were manufactured and sold to the public. Cheney and the oil CEO's carved up the oil fields between them so that they could profit post invasion.



The US wanted to preserve US dollar hegemony. Iraq had large oil contracts with France and Russia at the time, and Iraq was preparing to sell it's oil in Euros. Other oil producing nations were leaning this way too. Without the need for other countries to buy US dollars in order to buy oil, the US currency would collapse.



So in a way it could be called for reasons of national security, although not the ones sold in the propaganda campaign, but basically it was just another imperialistic move in The Great Game over the Middle East.



That's how I saw it at the time, and as things are revealed, seems more or less the right take.

Answer 9

At that time all data said yes. To Monday morning QB the decision is not relevant to what happened then.

Answer 10

Sure.

Why not?

Look in the real world.

Decode this lyrics " You'll see "

"Wonderful world"

"The Final Countdown"

"Reality"

"One in a million"

"All Rise"

"The good, the bad and the ugly"

Was steeping onto a hornets nest without being aware of it being exposed in time.

It was a bigger problems than we thought and see?

It was the survival of Mankind being at risk?

WMD?

Was there all along.

Was from poor communication .

Not many was able to see the nigh- mares out there in time.

All evidence is out there in front of TV news reels and in prints?

Not what we see or hear-say.

The Truth is all out there in time.

How those behind were able to reduce heavy tolls of casualties before further damages being done in time

Thanks to those great teams behind doing a great job in reducing further damages in time.

Luke 8.10-17

Luke 21.30-36

Luke 24.44-45,47-48

What do you think?

Answer 11

No it was not. It has not solved anything. It has caused more civil unrests that has spread around the world. You clearly have no idea.