According to a news release by the UN News Service, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan “had reiterated his well-known position that the military action against Iraq was not in conformity with the UN Charter” in a BBC interview.

When repeatedly asked if the war is “illegal,” Mr. Annan finally answered: “Yes… I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal.”

A UN spokesman, Mr. Fred Eckhard said that this had been Annan’s longstanding view. “He has over the past more than a year used the words ‘not in conformity with the Charter’ to describe his view of the Iraq war and of course one of his purposes in establishing the UN panel on change was to look at the question of preventive war and try to bring that in conformity with the Charter principles, which do not promote preventive war,” Mr. Eckhard said.

The report also quoted Annan as saying he hopes “we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time.” He noted that such action needed UN approval and a much broader support of the international community.

I’m sure Bush and his minions would say, “What international community?”

What else should we expect? It is after all the same administration that refuses to recognize the UN’s International Criminal Court and pressured its allies–including the Philippines0–not to subject US citizens in those countries to the ICC.

Later, it claimed that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with bin Laden’s al Qaeda. Thus, with a little help from its friends in the so-called “coalition of the willing”–to which Philippine President Arroyo enthusiastically dragged her nation–US invaded Iraq and killed around 12,000 Iraqi civilians and a thousand of its own soldiers.

What preceded these is a century of US aggression–I’m beginning the count here with the US invasion of the Philippines in mind) all over the world. When it was attacked in September 2001, it then went on a rampage of attacks against its perceived enemies, instead of reviewing its policy in dealing with other nations.

Three years after the terror in New York, is the US and the world safer as a result of its reaction to that attack?

Recent news in the Asia Pacific region say otherwise.

I remember the long hours we had to endure inside the freezing, tension-filled newsroom as we awaited Angelo’s fate, just about a month ago. Looking back, I could only imagine now the agony his family felt. More vividly, I could still remember the smiles on our faces when we finally saw Angelo looking shaken but alive on our television screens.

Weeks after Angelo’s release, Middle East special envoy Roy Cimatu has been reportedly looking into camps that may be safe for Filipino workers to work in. And now recently appointed OFW czar Noli de Castro has been “negotiating” with US ambassador Francis Ricciardone. The US is apparently alarmed that there are no more Filipino truck drivers who are willing to risk their lives to bring the soldiers their goods.

After lambasting our country’s efforts to save the life of one overseas Filipino worker, America is now patting our backs, urging us to send our people to work for them.

Meanwhile, the miserable unemployed demand the lifting of the ban, insisting they would rather die in Iraq than for their families to die of hunger.

In a job fair held in Manila yesterday, one computer science graduate applied for a job as a fast food crew.

Now I know what the word desperate really means. For a minute there I wanted to puke.

Before the US-led invasion of Iraq, President Arroyo kept on paying lip service to the UN. In the end however, she joined the so-called “coalition of the willing,” which went to war in Iraq without UN sanction.

The abduction and threatened beheading of Angelo de la Cruz gave the President a way to get out of Iraq by citing national interest amid heckling from its so-called allies, especially by the US. It was a chance to make up for a wrong decision of dragging the Philippines into a war that was later proven to be unjustified as it based on lies about Iraq’s non-existent WMDs and supposed links to Al-Qaeda.

Pulling out of Iraq could have also given Arroyo a chance to shed her image as Bush’s little drummer girl in Asia, and instead repackage herself a true leader of a sovereign nation.

So what if the US kicked us out of the coalition? Who wants to remain in a group of warfreaks that has lost its credibility? It wouldn’t matter much even if they are now using the legitimacy of the very institution that they ignored when they attacked Iraq.

Should the government push though with this plan, it would further expose the president’s character as a shrewd politician who would do anything that serves her own political interest. When she decided to pull out our troups to save de la Cruz, the people seemed to have deliberately ignored the fact that she did that to save her political career.

Should the government push though with this plan, it would prove that “national interest” and “sovereignty” were the farthest from her mind when she made the controversial decision.

A return to Iraq would just agains show the world Arroyo’s subservience to Bush, her hegemonist master.

The Filipino Youth for Peace issued this open letter to Australian Prime Minister John Howard in response to his government’s verbal attacks against us. The group said:

Mr. Howard, you accuse the Filipino people of weakness for the way they responded to the hostage crisis. May we take the liberty to tell you that it is those who see no course for themselves other than to unflinchingly hug the tails of imperial mass murderers who are the real weaklings. It is they who, above all, risk the lives of their countrymen for a war that is not worth the life of even a louse, much less that of an innocent human being.

You need not look to the Philippines to find weakness, Mr. Howard. You need only look in the mirror.