"Innocent until proven guilty" is such an important principle that we defend it with the right of trial by jury, fair legal representation and other safeguards. Our constitution protects the individual. Those kinds of safeguards are even more important relating to war, where the lives of many soldiers, and even more innocent civilians are on the line.
As in a regular criminal case, we should accept that there ought to be evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, that war is warranted before acting on it. Conviction should never be granted for perceived intent to commit crime or for evidence that some other crime was committed. And, so that no single person would have the power to take us into war, our constitution wisely provided that only congress, as a type of jury, should have power to take us to war. In a wild twist of logic that was side stepped by when the Iraq War began.
The Bush administration declared they had “bullet proof evidence” that Iraq had WMD’s and we should attack Iraq preemptively. Congress, as the virtual jury for war, accepted the administration statements without demanding to see for itself and gave permission for war. Years later, even though they may indeed exist, the weapons still have not been found. Any other jury would be considered grossly derelict of duty for condemning even one man to death without demanding to first see evidence themselves. It then devolved upon those who advocated peace to prove there were no W.M.D's; not unlike having to prove a man innocent only in this case literally tens of thousands of innocent people clearly lost their lives for an unproven crime.
