We went to the U.N. for the diplomatic process of spelling out the breakdown in the ability to secure the demands of the truce that had been imposed on Saddam - the demands of the coalition that imposed and obtained that truce - and to seek the SUPPORT of the Security Council; not to ask their “legal” PERMISSION, as if without it our actions would be “illegal”, because they would NOT and were NOT illegal, UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW, with or without the support of the U.N. Security Council.
Mr. Chirac and his Russian and Chinese friends proved only one thing, and it has nothing to do with international law - the irrelevance of the U.N.
“We went to the U.N. for the diplomatic process of spelling out the breakdown in the ability to secure the demands of the truce that had been imposed on Saddam - the demands of the coalition that imposed and obtained that truce - and to seek the SUPPORT of the Security Council; not to ask their “legal” PERMISSION, as if without it our actions would be “illegal”, because they would NOT and were NOT illegal, UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW, with or without the support of the U.N. Security Council.”
And this is precisely why we did not declare war. Declaring war would have been illegal under international law. Lawyers suck and international law is bogus.