Report: Bush, Blair decided to go to war months before UN meetings | csmonitor.com

Report: Bush, Blair decided to go to war months before UN meetings | csmonitor.com:

"Britain's Channel Four TV network, which says it has seen the minutes of the meeting, reports that during the meeting, Mr. Bush raised the idea of painting US U-2 spy planes in the colors of the United Nations, in the hope that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would fire on the planes, and thus give the US and Britain a legal basis to attack Iraq. Bush also supposedly said the war against Iraq would start on March 10, 2003. It actually started 10 days later.

In his book, 'Lawless World,' author Philippe Sands writes that the purpose of the meeting was focused on the need to 'identify evidence that Saddam had committed a material breach of his obligations under the existing UN Resolution 1441.'

'I think no one would be surprised at the idea that the use of spy-planes to review what is going on would be considered. What is surprising is the idea that they would be used painted in the colours of the United Nations in order to provoke an attack which could then be used to justify material breach. Now that plainly looks as if it is deception, and it raises some fundamental questions of legality, both in terms of domestic law and international law.'"