This Thesis is about the international law and the invasion of USA on Iraq on 20th March 2003. This thesis introduces how the military intervention could be legitimate according to the international law. The method which used in the thesis is descriptive study, qualitative content analysis and argumentation analysis. The issues about Iraq started in Iraq-Iran war and even later on 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, which caused the UN and USA to impose financial and trade sanctions against Iraq.
Since Iraq had already financially losses after the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran, this sanction had affected Iraqi civilisans severely. The US also attacked strategically integral places that they thought held mass destruction weapons (WMD). After the attack on 11th September 2001, the issues started around that Iraq supported terrorism and was behind the twin tower attack. George W.Bush stared to press more sanctions on Iraq. Bush, without any evidence and validations claimed that Iraq had WMD, biological and chemical weapons. He allegedly argued these weapons were dangerous and can be used against the US and the world. This thesis present the international laws and highlights how military intervention can be legimitmate. It also present analysis on US and other nations agrument such as United Kingdom who played a big role in the international law.
The purpose of this study is to clarify when the military intervention can be considered legitimate and whether US intervention in Iraq 2003 had a legitimate justification. This means that arguments used by US in the Iraqi war could motivate the international law. Through international law I will investigate whether the US argument in the Iraqi war were considred legitimate. I used two quesion, the first one involves that the international law states in regard of international right and obligations regarding military interventions, and the second question involves the argument the US used to legalize the invasion of Iraq.
In this thesis, the result states that prior to the miltary intervention, the actiors must follow the international law and in order for war to become legitimate the state must have authorizad reason as it conditioned by the international law.
The reason behind the Iraqi war was because of the US and the United Kingdom had suspicions about Iraqi supporting terrorism, and when the US together with UN putted sanctions on Iraq in 1990, the Iraqi sovereignty became weaker. The US accused Iraq for manufacturing WDM, which was the biggest threat against US and the world in general. US used the agument about protecting their nation against terrorism, on 20th March 2003 the first attack on Bagdad took place.
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