According to Richard Perle, Tony Blair and George Bush went to war illegally. Coming from Perle, one of the primary architects of the administration's Iraq policy, it's quite the admission. Not that he's saying the two countries did anything wrong; just that international law sucks.
International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.
In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.
But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.I'm sure the principals in the affair will be absolutely delighted with Mr. Perle's refreshing honesty. And I'm sure lexicographers will be scrambling to fit Perle's definition of "moral" into their frame of reference.