Amir Taheri as usual cuts to the chase. Referring to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s claim that the Iraq war was illegal (or to be more precise, his half-hearted endorsement of the words conveniently put into his mouth by a BBC journalist), Taheri points out that such a claim, if true, is immensely serious. It would mean that the US, Britain and the 32 other member states who supported the war violated the UN charter. If this is so and the war was indeed illegal, says Taheri acidly, then the inescapable logic is that the UN should take action against those states and restore Saddam Hussein to power in Iraq:

‘If, on the other hand, he is making these accusations just to look good, he must know that he is destroying the little that is left of the U.N.'s credibility. How can an organization, whose chief executive accuses the principal members of its board of violating its charter with impunity, be taken seriously? Why didn't Annan resign when he clearly saw that the U.N. Charter was being violated by a group of "rogue states" led by America? And why, if the toppling of Saddam was illegal, is the U.N. helping consolidate regime change in Iraq by supervising elections for a new government? Annan knows damn well that the toppling of Saddam was perfectly legal. The action taken by the United States and its allies was backed by no fewer than 12 mandatory Security Council resolutions. In any case, Saddam's Iraq had been at war against the U.N., the only state ever to be in that position, since 1990. Yesterday, Annan's aides were trying to pretend that he had not quite meant what he had told the BBC, and thus there was no need for him to take action against the alleged "law-breaking" nations. The truth is that the U.N. is in the biggest mess it has ever been in since its inception over half a century ago. Annan's latest maneuver cannot but make the mess even bigger than it is.’

Not just the UN’s own mess, unfortunately, but the terror in Iraq and the war against free peoples everywhere.

Posted by melanie at September 20, 2004