Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, told the BBC the decision to take action in Iraq contravened the UN charter and should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally. Hence, he says the invasion was illegal.

Noam Chomsky writes about the US government trying to make the UN accept its wild decisions on invasions and other forms of terrorist operations, and mostly doesn't care about UN protests when it goes its own way without UN support, in his book "Rogue States":

World-famous MIT linguist Chomsky has long kept up a second career as a cogent voice of the hard left, excoriating American imperialism, critiquing blinkered journalists and attacking global economic injustice. Chomsky's new work, a collection of linked essays, comes in the wake of the Kosovo bombings and the recent riots in East Timor. Its sardonic title recalls the argument that America ought to defend the world against "rogue states" like Iraq and Libya. Chomsky contends that the U.S. (and, sometimes, its allies) has itself behaved as the biggest rogue state, ignoring international law and norms and acting only in the richest Americans' interests. Chapters cover the former Yugoslavia, East Timor, Cuba, and (a particularly powerful one) Third World debt. Chomsky includes accounts of havoc that the U.S. has wreaked (or helped wreak) in poor countries, from overturned elections to mass slaughterAfrom Guatemala in the 1950s to Sudan, Cuba, Mexico and Laos today. "Contempt for the rule of law," Chomsky contends, "is deeply rooted in U.S. practice and intellectual culture." Chomsky's research can bring home disturbing issues that the mainstream media miss (for example, that the Pentagon refuses to give up data that would make it easier to clear dangerous landmines from old wars around the world).

Dubya is due to speak at the UN General Assembly next week. It should be interesting.