4) Read my letter to President Bush below that I sent him just as war became imminent ...

03-20-03

Mr. President

When you took office, you swore to uphold and defend the United States Constitution.  You told us as much when you appeared on national television and declared that attacking Iraq is your Constitutional duty as Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces.

Unfortunately, America’s preemptive war on Iraq violates the U.S. Constitution.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land."

Those treaties that "shall be made" include the United Nations Charter and the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, which outlaw preemptive wars, wars of aggression, and wars without approval of the U.N. Security Council.

According to our own Constitution, international law is part of the supreme law of the land. As noted by the Law Professors for the Rule of Law: "The international rule of law is not a soft luxury to be discarded whenever leaders find it convenient or popular to resort to savage violence. The international rule of law is a bulwark against the horrors of warfare that we Americans have so recently felt first-hand."

We helped establish the United Nations so that the rule of law could be imposed on every country equally, including the United States, to make it illegal for nations to attack others unless they were themselves under attack. We are not under attack by Iraq, and we never have been.

I ask that you stand up to your advisers who pushed you into this war, who encouraged you to burn bridges with and sever ties to our allies, who deceived you into thinking this war can ever be justified to the international community.

Stand up for the principles on which our country was founded. Stand up for the U.S. Constitution. Stand up for due process. Stand up for justice. Admit that it is not right to send our brave soldiers into an illegal and unnecessary war.

I urge you to worry less about reelection and more about what the history books will report about you and your administration.

Get us out of Iraq and historians will call you one of the most courageous presidents who ever served the United States of America. Stay in and you will be seen as a war criminal.

Sincerely,
 

Dr. Matthew B. Robinson
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC
USA

5) read these important statements on the war ... think they are radical or accurate?

"How To Start A War In Iraq" By William Rivers Pitt of "t r u t h o u t" (Friday 29 August 2003)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/082903A.shtml

War, Aggression and State Crime; A Criminological Analysis of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (Adobe Acrobat PDF format)
By Ronald C. Kramer and Raymond J. Michalowski.  The British Journal of Criminology Vol. 45, Iss. 4: p. 446.