I personally believe that because of Sept 11th the Americans stood up and took notice after letting Saddam get away with years of flouting UN rules. North Korea,Libya and Iran have aspirations of becoming nuclear powers and it was assumed rightly or wrongly that Iraq was too. Because Saddam had flouted these rules and because the US and UK are worried about a new arms race it was decided that action should be taken.
I think they already knew all thy needed to. 9/11 was such a public act it was more of a case of \"being seen to take notice\"
there has been a certain status quo for years with these countries, and as long as nothing happens to have a major public impact, the americans have been happy to let it ride.
UN rules are pretty worthless unless there is a global agreement to enforce all UN rules. There isn\'t, so the UN are pretty toothless. The US continuously broke many UN regulations prior to the war in Iraq over the so called \"oil for food\" programme. They got exclusivity over Iraqi oil, but instead of seeing the programme out and sending aid in return, they gave Saddam the money instead but with the caveat \"its to buy food with\" yeah right, he bought food, for himself, an kept the change. The UN and member states did nothing about that for 10 years. Yet as an individual if you decided to send a parcel of toys to an Iraqi hospital, you would be prosecuted by Tony - many people have been!
these countries may have broken many UN rules. But by invading Iraq, so have we.
We should be worried about a new arms race, but not necessarily from countries that the George and Tony have a bee in their bonnet about. What about Israel, in many ways they are as bonkers as the rest of the Arab world but have more than 100 nuclear warheads, they illegally occupy another country\'s territory, have slaughtered thousands of innocents and yet all this has been with american backing, and nobody has stood up and said hang on a minute this looks a bit dodgy.
