Military scholar Scott Ritter followed the judge’s statement with his own analysis. Ritter said:
What they [the U.S. military] did is carry out an illegal war of aggression. It’s a war crime. It’s not just a war crime, Judge Jackson from the Nuremberg trial period, lead prosecutor of the Nazi war criminals, asserted that the war of aggression is the ultimate war crime, because from this war of aggression all other crimes emanate. This is what we did. I don’t know why Americans are proud of this. This is an act of perfidy, a surprise attack, an undeclared act of aggression that had no foundation in justification. Again, to justify something like this, which is the equivalent of what we would say a preemptive act of self-defense, so there needs to be an imminent threat, an imminent threat, that can only be dealt with through this act of aggression.
Iran was in the process of negotiations that would resolve all of the issues that could be perceived as a threat. So, there is no imminent threat.
Moreover, we know that the sites that had been targeted—three nuclear sites: Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow—were empty, that these strikes would have zero impact on an Iranian nuclear program that had long since been evacuated from these sites and sent to other locations. It’s come out that this strike plan, which was done in cooperation with Israel, was something that had been planned more than a year ago and actually been practiced by the United States and Israel. So, this was a pre-planned strike against three designated sites that had no military value. So, this is purely an act of theater, and any military commander that puts American lives at risk to carry out an act of political theater should literally have their commissions revoked and be drummed out of the service. There was no justification for this.
As I have documented in past columns, Donald Trump likes to portray himself as an emperor, and now he is acting like one. Chuck Baldwin