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Originally Posted by areyoushittin'me?
I think they met their obligation, however, and this is where it appears that we differ...they have never made a determination about what to do next...no declaration that codifies the legality of going into Iraq to remove Saddam (please recall that I've not declared the Iraq war Illegal, in fact, per our congress it may be...just that the UN did not provide the authorization).
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Why was such a declaration necessary, though? If Iraq was in material breach of the ceasefire and was given one final chance to comply and then issued a bogus statement that put them in further material breach, then wasn't the hand of the Security Council pretty much forced? How could you overlook the further material breach and still maintain any credibility?
Also, I'd like you to clarify why you believe that if Iraq was in material breach (and further material breach) of the Resolution 687 ceasefire then why didn't Resolution 678 come back into effect? If Resolution 678 authorized the Gulf War hostilities and those hostilities were suspended by Resolution 687, then once Resolution 687 was declared breached, then why shouldn't the state of active hostilities come out of suspension?
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Originally Posted by areyoushittin'me?
Agreed regarding that there was no demand for another resolution, however, that likely would have been the format that any declaration of war would have been taken...and none has ever been...it could be concluded that Iraq was a legitimate target and congress apparently determined as such...but the UN hasn't...I'm agreed, a final final final would have been absurd but who can argue that the UN is not a bit of that?
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Can the UN actually "declare war", though? It can authorize force to seek compliance with Security Council Resolutions, but aren't declarations of war a purely national function?
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Originally Posted by areyoushittin'me?
Actually, I was quite upset that we didn't go after Saddam at the time...I have, however, since changed my position after learning that we didn't discourage him from going into Kuwait in the first place and after getting further educated on how we used propaganda to go into a war that never should have been necessary to begin with.
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Can you name a modern war which wasn't the result of miscalculation?
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Originally Posted by areyoushittin'me?
Well, I argued against it before we went into Iraq and it appears that I was right...what I find a bit fascinating though is that you can argue that it was authorized for us to do something that wasn't authorized for you to join us in doing.
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We would have been authorized to join you in Iraq - we could have had a vote on the matter in Parliament, just the way you did in Congress - but our Government decided that wasn't the way it wanted to go. We decided that we weren't going to participate without an explicit Security Council Resolution.