sisyphusshrugged | so we can get back to debating that whole "is" thing

Richard Perle, one of the major planners of our current middle east adventure, acknowledges for the edification of our pro-adventure friends that the administration knew the war was against international law but decided not to let a taint of legality spoil an otherwise beautiful crime

In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

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 Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

Of course, perfect symmetry would require him to say that his god personally instructed him to do it, but we can't have everything.