legality of war II
The whole article would be too didactic, even for me.

This attempt to invent a 'continuing authorisation' for war against Iraq is unconvincing. It is also disingenuous. For example, the coalition's interpretation of resolution 1441 conveniently ignores the fact - once again a matter of public record - that the US put up an initial version of that resolution, authorising the use of force if Iraq did not adequately comply with its terms, but withdrew the draft when it became clear that the proposal did not command the council?s support.

Likewise, the US and UK ambassadors to the UN said to the Security Council on November 8, 2002 that resolution 1441 contained ?no hidden trigger for war?. How it could now be seriously suggested that resolution 1441 implicitly authorises force is beyond comprehension.

As for the 1990 and 1991 resolutions, the coalition is effectively saying: ?We much prefer what the Security Council said about the first Gulf War and we?ll pretend that it applies to unforeseen events 13 years later.? This is as ludicrous as if the US President had learnt that the necessary resolution authorising this war was not going to pass both houses of Congress, but had pressed ahead undaunted, calling on congressional resolutions endorsing the 1991 war.

Chris Maxwell is a barrister in Melbourne. Hilary Charlesworth is professor and director at the Centre for International and Public Law at the Australian National University in Canberra. This article originally appeared in The Australian.

The Sydney Morning Herald also has an opinion by Gavan Griffith QC, former solicitor-general of the Commonwealth.

I cannot characterize the advice as an opinion. The short paragraphs 14 to 18 of the brief seven page advice read as weak best arguments for the use of force. Para 34 of SCR 678, cited in para 18, denies the continued authority of that resolution to support present action by individual states, as does the entire SCR 1441.

The final sentence of the advice concluding that the authority of SCR 678 to use force "would only be negated by a Security Council Resolution requiring Member States to refrain from using force against Iraq" is a fanciful proposition, an Alice in Wonderland inversion of meaning of plain words in the resolutions themselves. It is unsupportable. The authors are making it up.

It is significant that the authors of this Advice, on the important issue of giving legal sanction to war, do not even entitle it as 'Opinion'. Its brevity and lack of force is exceeded only by the one-page 'Opinion' of the United Kingdom's Attorney-General tabled in the United Kingdom Parliament, that makes the completely untenable assertion that "all resolution 1441 requires is a report to and discussion by the Security Council of Iraq's failures, but not to express further decisions to authorize force".