Richard Butler

Richard Butler

Richard Butler (diplomat)

Richard William Butler AC has served as an Australian diplomat, a United Nations weapons inspector and the Governor of Tasmania.-Life and career:...

, who led the UN inspection teams in Iraq until 1998, accused the United States of promoting "shocking double standards" in considering unilateral military action against Iraq. He said, "The spectacle of the United States, armed with its weapons of mass destruction, acting without Security Council authority to invade a country in the heartland of Arabia and, if necessary, use its weapons of mass destruction to win that battle, is something that will so deeply violate any notion of fairness in this world that I strongly suspect it could set loose forces that we would deeply live to regret." In pointing out that the United States has not responded in the same way to Syria, which is also suspected of having weapons of mass destruction, and that several US allies, including Pakistan, India, and Israel, have such weapons without having signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, Butler asked why the United States is "permitting the persistence of such shocking double standards". However, part of the U.S.'s position is that Iraq is a unique case. Iraq is the only country out of this list that has had 12 years of defiance against 17 U.N. resolutions calling for its disarmament. Butler himself, upon leaving Iraq for the last time in 1998 said he could not say that Iraq had disarmed. Nor could he confirm that Iraq possessed WMDs.

Nelson Mandela

In February, 2003, Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...

, former president of South Africa, sharply criticized Bush and his drive for war, saying, "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America." Mandela also said, "One power with a president who has no foresight – who cannot think properly – is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust." Mandela also accused Bush of "ignoring the U.N.". Mandela went on by asking "Is this because the secretary general of the United Nations is now a black man?" Bush's supporters argue that he had been working through the U.N. on this issue since the previous September; however, he and his Cabinet made it clear that they would act with or without UN agreement.

Scott Ritter

As of August 2002, former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter

William Scott Ritter, Jr. was an important United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, and later a critic of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Ritter stated that Iraq possessed no significant weapons of mass...

, who believes U.N. inspections effectively verified the destruction of over 90% of Iraq's weapon capabilities, is actively campaigning against an invasion, and challenging the Bush administration to make public any evidence that Iraq has rebuilt the capabilities which were destroyed under the auspices of UNSCOM. Says Ritter, "If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof." However, critics of Ritter point out that four years earlier he had exactly the opposite view as inspectors were forced to leave Iraq. In 1998, upon leaving Iraq, Ritter sharply criticized the Clinton administration and the U.N. Security Council for not being vigorous enough about insisting that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction be destroyed. Ritter also accused U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan

Kofi Annan

Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...

 of assisting Iraqi efforts at impeding UNSCOM's work. "Iraq is not disarming," Ritter said on August 27, 1998, and in a second statement, "Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike."

Mary Robinson

Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and ex-president of Ireland Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson

Mary Therese Winifred Robinson served as the seventh, and first female, President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She first rose to prominence as an academic, barrister, campaigner and member of the Irish Senate...

 was also highly critical, in an article published in The Irish Times

The Irish Times

The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...

.

Lech Wałęsa

Leader of the opposition to the communist regime in Poland during the 1980s, former president of Poland and Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...

 laureate, Lech Wałęsa

Lech Wałęsa

Lech Wałęsa is a Polish politician, trade-union organizer, and human-rights activist. A charismatic leader, he co-founded Solidarity , the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland between 1990 and 95.Wałęsa was an electrician...

 supports the invasion and said that the UN should accept the war because it has done nothing worthy of its name in the last few years.

Václav Havel

The most well known and highly regarded dissident in Communist Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

 and later President of democratic Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, Václav Havel

Václav Havel

Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...

 spoke in favour of a projected American and Allied invasion of Iraq as early as September 2002, stating that "Saddam Hussein's regime poses a major threat to many nations and to his own people ... there should be international intervention." http://www.meaus.com/havel-iraq.htm

Adam Michnik

Adam Michnik

Adam Michnik

Adam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1966–1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland...

, the most important intellectual of the Polish Solidarity movement, also issued statements in support of the war, pointing to historical reasons for the former eastern bloc

Eastern bloc

The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...

 countries' support for the American action in Iraq.http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1086.cfm

Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton

Former American Presidents Carter

Jimmy Carter

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...

 and Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

 have both offered criticism on the war. While Clinton was in favor of regime change, and supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, he strongly objected to the ways in which he perceived the Bush administration to be ignoring the will of the America's traditional allies and undermining proper UN procedures. President Carter opposed the war entirely, and the Carter Center outlined a specific "alternative to war" plan that involved an increased presence of weapons inspectors.