Powerbroker Richard Perle was one of the prime movers behind the 2003 war on Iraq. He'd been pushing for it for more than a decade, since the original Gulf War.
This superhawk, known in the Beltway as the Prince of Darkness, was Reagan's Assistant Secretary of Defense, and he advised the first President Bush on foreign policy. He's heavily involved with two prime outlets of neo-conservative war-mongering — the Project for a New American Century and the American Enterprise Institute.
As the Chair of the influential, unaccountable Defense Policy Board — which advises the Defense Department's leaders — from 2001 to March 2003, he was in a perfect position to push for an Iraq attack. Not only did he have Rumsfeld's ear, he was backed by the number-two and number-three men in the Defense Department — Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith — who for years had been jonesing to kick Iraq's ass. (Feith is the one who appointed Perle to the board.)
So it was very strange when Perle admitted that the war he fought so hard to start was illegal. Speaking in London at an event for the Institute of Contemporary Arts, he told the audience: “I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.” He groused that international law “would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone,” something that Perle and his cohorts couldn't tolerate.
The London Guardian explains:
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 here we have the Pentagon's top adviser, who regularly appeared on TV to bang the drum for war, admitting that the US engaged in an illegal invasion.
As they say in Washington: Laws are for the little people. 