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US, UK acted as 'vigilantes in Iraq invasion

Says top British judge

The Guardian Online
One of Britain's most authoritative judicial figures last night delivered a blistering attack on the invasion of Iraq, describing it as a serious violation of international law, and accusing Britain and the US of acting like a "world vigilante".
Lord Bingham, in his first major speech since retiring as the senior law lord, rejected the then attorney general's defence of the 2003 invasion as fundamentally flawed.
Contradicting head-on Lord Goldsmith's advice that the invasion was lawful. Bingham stated "It was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had." Adding his weight to the body of international legal opinion opposed to the invasion, Bingham said that to argue, as the British government had done, that Britain and the US could unilaterally decide that Iraq
had broken UN resolutions "passes belief".
Governments were bound by international law as much as by their domestic laws, he said "The current ministerial code," he added "binding on British ministers, requires them as an overarching duty to 'comply with the law, includ ing international law and treaty obligations'."
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats continue to press for an independent inquiry into the circumstances around the invasion. The government says an inquiry would be harmful while British troops arc in Iraq. Ministers say most of the remaining 4,000 will leave by mid-2009.
Addressing the British Institute of International and Comparative Law last night, Bingham said: "If I am right that the invasion of Iraq by the US, the UK, and some other states was unauthorised by the security council there was, of course, a serious violation of international law and the rule of law.
"For the effect of acting unilaterally was to undermine the foundation on which the post 1945 consensus had been constructed: the prohibition of force (save in self defence, or perhaps, to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe) unless formally authorised by the nations of the world empowered to make collective decisions in the security council..."
The moment a state treated the rules of international law as binding on others but not on itself, the compact on which the law rested was broken, Bingham argued. Quoting a comment made by a leading academic lawyer, he added: "It is, as has been said, "the difference between the role of world policeman and world vigilante'."
Bingham said he had very recently provided an advance copy of his speech to Goldsmith and to Jack Straw, foreign secretary at the time of the invasion of Iraq. He told his audience he should make it plain they challenged his conclusions.