You're absolutely correct... but the US/UK invasion of Iraq wasn't a war of aggression - it was conducted under the authority of existing UN Security Council Resolutions. If Resolution 678 - which authorized a Chapter VII use of force against Iraq - wasn't still in effect, then when did it become inoperative?

Doesn't the Iraq Resolution (Public Law 107-243) specifically cite the "all necessary means" provision of Resolution 678, though?

Wehn you corss a border your attacking its agression. The UN would contradict its foudning charters for Americans....Doubtful. Bush would have gone no matter what. Nobdy will or should give them a pass for this catastrophy and loss of life based on some shaddy lawyers inproper interprtation of the UN descion.

Doesn't the supremacy clause of Article VI of the US Constitution make treaties made under the authority of the United States "the supreme law of the land"? This was Truman's justification for going into Korea despite not having Congressional authorization - that the US treaty obligation to uphold the UN Charter gave him the power to intervene.

If they mean war im sure they would have been specfic. This should ony reinforcfes American bitching about the UN and its utter uselessness. As the Americans and Isrealis use the UN and toss it away when ever convient nobody else should want to abide by its descions especaily when the results are further warfare and loss of life for econmic gain.

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was aggression - the Coalition's military response to that aggression, as authorized by Resolution 678, was a justified reaction to that aggression. That conflict was ended by the ceasefire encapsulated by Resolution 687, which required (among other things) that Iraq provide "an accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure" of all aspects of it's WMD programmes. The UN waited 12 years for Iraq to live up to it's ceasefire obligations and still Iraq was in material breach of the agreement. The choice was this... either the US and UK had to go into Iraq and make sure it didn't still have WMD's or they'd have to just take Saddam's word for it that he didn't still have them.

If you were President, would you have been willing to take Saddam's word for it?

It is more complicated than simple resolutions.

I fully agree... where it comes to the war itself. However, on the more narrow question of whether the war was illegal or not, what other recourse is there than to resort to the letter of the law?

You have to talk about specific case scenerios. In this case operation Desert Fox had dramatically impaired Saddam and this is now even agreed upon by conservatives who backed the war back in 2003. Saddam was completely misrepresented as the threat they made him out to be after 9/11.

Isn't that a case of hindsight being 20/20, though? How was it possible to make an ironclad assessment of Iraq's capabilities prior to the invasion? Desert Fox may have impaired his conventional capabilities, but who was to tell what Iraq's WMD capabilities were after the expulsion of inspectors?