Despite public outcry at home and international opposition abroad, the Bush Administration deployed troops and invested millions in preparation for a massive military assault on Iraq. In Against War With Iraq, three legal scholars from the Center for Constitutional Rights argue persuasively that the war against Iraq is both unnecessary for national security and illegal.
Michael Ratner, Jennie Green, and Barbara Olshansky expose the Bush administration's justifications as pretexts, demonstrate that there is little evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and argue that inspections were adequate to deal with any possible covert Iraq weapons program. The writers also emphasize that a war with Iraq made the world less safe, the region less stable, and that we in the United States would likely face more terrorism on our own soil as a result. Underlying the Bush administration's drive for war was its desire to dominate the Middle East, control Iraqi oil, and insure United States dominance for many years to come.
Olshansky provides a clear explanation of the meaning of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 and describes why that resolution did not authorize the U.S. to launch a new war. It explains that the Bush administration's doctrine of preemptive strikes is flatly contrary to international law and may, if carried out, constitute a war crime.
Barbara Olshansky is the Leah Kaplan Distinguished Professor in Human Rights at Stanford University. Previously, she served as deputy legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and director counsel of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative there. She was one of the lead attorneys in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that resulted in a decision allowing the nearly 600 detainees held at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba to challenge their unlawful indefinite detentions. Olshansky is the co-author of The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing George W. Bush from Office, among other titles, and the author of Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the Threat to Democracy and Democracy Detained: Secret Unconstitutional Practices in the U.S. War on Terror. She lives in California.
A law professor at the University of Minnesota, Jennie Green formerly served as Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. While there, she specialized in international human rights legal actions—primarily lawsuits in U.S. courts against human rights violators. Her most high profile case was against John Ashcroft and other U.S. government officials responsible for the post-9/11 arbitrary detention by the Immigration and Naturalization Service of thousands of non-citizens. Other successful cases have included those against Unocal, Royal Dutch/Shell, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, former Chinese Premier Li Peng, former Guatemalan Minister of Defense Hector Gramajo, and former Haitian dictator Prosper Avril. She has also worked on international human rights claims for organizations such as the International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the Inter-American human rights system. From 1992–1995, Green served as the Administrative Director at the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program. She has worked for a wide range of nongovernmental human rights organizations, including Amnesty International.
Michael Ratner is the President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Over the years, he has litigated at least a dozen cases challenging a U.S. President's authority to go to war, as well as many cases against international human rights violators. He acted as co-counsel in a 2004 case brought against the United States Supreme Court, arguing the Guantánamo Bay detainees have the right to test the legality of their detentions in court. As part of the Center's focus on human rights and civil liberties violations in the wake of the September 11 attacks, Ratner has led several other cases representing detainees held at Camp X-ray in Cuba. He is the author and co-author of several books and numerous articles including Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in 21st-Century America. Ratner lives in New York.
