Bush's doctrine makes Orwellian use of the word
preemption.From a
piece that ran on Democratic Underground's home page following the capture of Saddam:
Mr. Bush had declared that the United States would take preemptive action against any country deemed to be a threat to the United States. Under international law, the term "preemptive strike" means that an immanent threat exists to a state and the threatened state strikes first. However, an examination of Mr. Bush's words show that he was talking of something else. Bush was clearly speaking of a threat that had not yet materialized, but may become a real threat at some time in the indefinite future. This is not a preemptive strike but a preventive
strike, which is a violation of international law.
What Mr. Bush was declaring was that the United States had the right to make war at any time against any state for any reason or no reason at all. Of course, that would satisfy a justification to invade Iraq. In fact, it pretty well covers all contingencies.
If Saddam actually had some WMDs, then had he used them against American and British troops while they were massed on the Kuwaiti frontier with Iraq just prior to the invasion, that would have been a
preemptive strike. Under the UN Charter, Saddam would have been within his rights.
As it was, there were no weapons, only vague "programs" and other plans to construct them at some future time. The invasion was carried out to
prevent Saddam from becoming a threat, although no one could really say whether he would have ever become one or whether means short of war would have sufficed to remove the threat. The action was
preventive and not sanctioned under the UN Charter without approval of the UN Security Council. Since an enabling resolution before the Security Council was withdrawn when it faced certain defeat, there was no such approval and the invasion was illegal.