IRAK WAR CRIMES

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A Forum Archive created to catalogue the War Crimes committed by various parties in the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

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DECLARATION OF THE JURY OF CONSCIENCE
WORLD TRIBUNAL ON IRAQ – ISTANBUL 23RD -27TH JUNE 2005
27th June 2005, Istanbul

In February 2003, weeks before an illegal war was initiated against Iraq, millions of people protested in the streets of the world. That call went unheeded. No international institution had the courage or conscience to stand up to the threat of aggression of the US and UK governments. No one could stop them. It is two years later now. Iraq has been invaded, occupied, and devastated. The attack on Iraq is an attack on justice, on liberty, on our safety, on our future, on us all. We, people of conscience, decided to stand up. We formed the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) to demand justice and a peaceful future.

The legitimacy of the World Tribunal on Iraq is located in the collective conscience of humanity. This, the Istanbul session of the WTI, is the culmination of a series of 20 hearings held in different cities of the world focusing on the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The conclusions of these sessions and/or inquiries held in Barcelona, Brussels, Copenhagen, Genoa, Hiroshima, Istanbul, Lisbon, London, Mumbai, New York, Östersund, Paris, Rome, Seoul, Stockholm, Tunis, various cities in Japan and Germany are appended to this Declaration in a separate volume.
We, the Jury of Conscience, from 10 different countries, met in Istanbul. We heard 54 testimonies from a Panel of Advocates and Witnesses who came from across the world, including from Iraq, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The World Tribunal on Iraq met in Istanbul from 24-26 June 2005. The principal objective of the WTI is to tell and disseminate the truth about the Iraq War, underscoring the accountability of those responsible and underlining the significance of justice for the Iraqi people.

I. Overview of Findings

1. The invasion and occupation of Iraq was and is illegal. The reasons given by the US and UK governments for the invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003 have proven to be false. Much evidence supports the conclusion that a major motive for the war was to control and dominate the Middle East and its vast reserves of oil as a part of the US drive for global hegemony.

2. Blatant falsehoods about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and a link between Al Qaeda terrorism and the Saddam Hussein régime were manufactured in order to create public support for a “preemptive” assault upon a sovereign independent nation.

3. Iraq has been under siege for years. The imposition of severe inhumane economic sanctions on 6 August 1990, the establishment of no-fly zones in the Northern and Southern parts of Iraq, and the concomitant bombing of the country were all aimed at degrading and weakening Iraq’s human and material resources and capacities in order to facilitate its subsequent invasion and occupation. In this enterprise the US and British leaderships had the benefit of a complicit UN Security Council.

4. In pursuit of their agenda of empire, the Bush and Blair governments blatantly ignored the massive opposition to the war expressed by millions of people around the world. They embarked upon one of the most unjust, immoral, and cowardly wars in history.

5. Established international political-legal mechanisms have failed to prevent this attack and to hold the perpetrators accountable. The impunity that the US government and its allies enjoy has created a serious international crisis that questions the import and significance of international law, of human rights covenants and of the ability of international institutions including the United Nations to address the crisis with any degree of authority or dignity.

6. The US/UK occupation of Iraq of the last 27 months has led to the destruction and devastation of the Iraqi state and society. Law and order have broken down, resulting in a pervasive lack of human security. The physical infrastructure is in shambles; the health care delivery system is in poor condition; the education system has virtually ceased to function; there is massive environmental and ecological devastation; and the cultural and archeological heritage of the Iraqi people has been desecrated.

7. The occupation has intentionally exacerbated ethnic, sectarian and religious divisions in Iraqi society, with the aim of undermining Iraq’s identity and integrity as a nation. This is in keeping with the familiar imperial policy of divide and rule. Moreover, it has facilitated rising levels of violence against women, increased gender oppression and reinforced patriarchy.

8. The imposition of the UN sanctions in 1990 caused untold suffering and thousands of deaths. The situation has worsened after the occupation. At least 100,000 civilians have been killed; 60,000 are being held in US custody in inhumane conditions, without charges; thousands have disappeared; and torture has become routine.

9. The illegal privatization, deregulation, and liberalization of the Iraqi economy by the occupation regime has coerced the country into becoming a client economy that is controlled by the IMF and the World Bank, both of which are integral to the Washington Consensus. The occupying forces have also acquired control over Iraq’s oil reserves.

10. Any law or institution created under the aegis of occupation is devoid of both legal and moral authority. The recently concluded election, the Constituent Assembly, the current government, and the drafting committee for the Constitution are therefore all illegitimate.

11. There is widespread opposition to the occupation. Political, social, and civil resistance through peaceful means is subjected to repression by the occupying forces. It is the occupation and its brutality that has provoked a strong armed resistance and certain acts of desperation. By the principles embodied in the UN Charter and in international law, the popular national resistance to the occupation is legitimate and justified. It deserves the support of people everywhere who care for justice and freedom.

II. Charges

On the basis of the preceding findings and recalling the Charter of the United Nations and other legal documents indicated in the appendix, the jury has established the following charges.

A. Against the Governments of the US and the UK

1. Planning, preparing, and waging the supreme crime of a war of aggression in contravention of the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles.

Evidence for this can be found in the leaked Downing Street Memo of 23rd July, 2002, in which it was revealed: “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” Intelligence was manufactured to willfully deceive the people of the US, the UK, and their elected representatives.

2. Targeting the civilian population of Iraq and civilian infrastructure by intentionally directing attacks upon civilians and hospitals, medical centers, residential neighborhoods, electricity stations, and water purification facilities. The complete destruction of the city of Falluja in itself constitutes a glaring example of such crimes.

3. Using disproportionate force and weapon systems with indiscriminate effects, such as cluster munitions, incendiary bombs, depleted uranium (DU), and chemical weapons. Detailed evidence was presented to the Tribunal by expert witnesses that leukemia had risen sharply in children under the age of five residing in those areas that had been targeted by DU weapons.

4. Using DU munitions in spite of all the warnings presented by scientists and war veterans on their devastating long-term effects on human beings and the environment. The US Administration, claiming lack of scientifically established proof of the harmful effects of DU, decided to risk the lives of millions for several generations rather than discontinue its use on account of the potential risks. This alone displays the Administration’s wanton disregard for human life. The Tribunal heard testimony concerning the current obstruction by the US Administration of the efforts of Iraqi universities to collect data and conduct research on the issue.

5. Failing to safeguard the lives of civilians during military activities and during the occupation period thereafter. This is evidenced, for example, by “shock and awe” bombing techniques and the conduct of occupying forces at checkpoints.

6. Actively creating conditions under which the status of Iraqi women has seriously been degraded, contrary to the repeated claims of the leaders of the coalition forces. Women’s freedom of movement has severely been limited, restricting their access to the public sphere, to education, livelihood, political and social engagement. Testimony was provided that sexual violence and sex trafficking have increased since the occupation of Iraq began.

7. Using deadly violence against peaceful protestors, including the April 2003 killing of more than a dozen peaceful protestors in Falluja.

8. Imposing punishments without charge or trial, including collective punishment, on the people of Iraq. Repeated testimonies pointed to “snatch and grab” operations, disappearances and assassinations.

9. Subjecting Iraqi soldiers and civilians to torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Degrading treatment includes subjecting Iraqi soldiers and civilians to acts of racial, ethnic, religious, and gender discrimination, as well as denying Iraqi soldiers Prisoner of War status as required by the Geneva Conventions. Abundant testimony was provided of unlawful arrests and detentions, without due process of law.

Well known and egregious examples of torture and cruel and inhuman treatment occurred in Abu Ghraib prison as well as in Mosul, Camp Bucca, and Basra. The employment of mercenaries and private contractors to carry out torture has served to undermine accountability.

10. Re-writing the laws of a country that has been illegally invaded and occupied, in violation of international covenants on the responsibilities of occupying powers, in order to amass illegal profits (through such measures as Order 39, signed by L. Paul Bremer III for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which allows foreign investors to buy and takeover Iraq’s state-owned enterprises and to repatriate 100 percent of their profits and assets at any point) and to control Iraq’s oil. Evidence was presented of a number of corporations that had profited from such transactions.

11. Willfully devastating the environment, contaminating it by depleted uranium (DU) weapons, combined with the plumes from burning oil wells, as well as huge oil spills, and destroying agricultural lands. Deliberately disrupting the water and waste removal systems, in a manner verging on biological-chemical warfare. Failing to prevent the looting and dispersal of radioactive material from nuclear sites. Extensive documentation is available on air and water pollution, land degradation, and radioactive pollution.

12. Failing to protect humanity’s rich archaeological and cultural heritage in Iraq by allowing the looting of museums and established historical sites and positioning military bases in culturally and archeologically sensitive locations. This took place despite prior warnings from UNESCO and Iraqi museum officials.

13. Obstructing the right to information, including the censoring of Iraqi media, such as newspapers (e.g., al-Hawza, al-Mashriq, and al-Mustaqila) and radio stations (Baghdad Radio), the shutting down of the Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera Television, targeting international journalists, imprisoning and killing academics, intellectuals and scientists.

14. Redefining torture in violation of international law, to allow use of torture and illegal detentions, including holding more than 500 people at Guantánamo Bay without charging them or allowing them any access to legal protection, and using “extraordinary renditions” to send people to be tortured in other countries known to commit human rights abuses and torture prisoners.

15. Committing a crime against peace by violating the will of the global anti-war movement. In an unprecedented display of public conscience millions of people across the world stood in opposition to the imminent attack on Iraq. The attack rendered them effectively voiceless. This amounts to a declaration by the US government and its allies to millions of people that their voices can be ignored, suppressed and silenced with complete impunity.

16. Engaging in policies to wage permanent war on sovereign nations. Syria and Iran have already been declared as potential targets. In declaring a “global war on terror,” the US government has given itself the exclusive right to use aggressive military force against any target of its choosing. Ethnic and religious hostilities are being fueled in different parts of the world. The US occupation of Iraq has further emboldened the Israeli occupation in Palestine and increased the repression of the Palestinian people. The focus on state security and the escalation of militarization has caused a serious deterioration of human security and civil rights across the world.

B. Against the Security Council of the United Nations

1. Failing to protect the Iraqi people against the crime of aggression.

2. Imposing harsh economic sanctions on Iraq, despite knowledge that sanctions were directly contributing to the massive loss of civilian lives and harming innocent civilians.

3. Allowing the United States and United Kingdom to carry out illegal bombings in the no-fly zones, using false pretenses of enforcing UN resolutions, and at no point allowing discussion in the Security Council of this violation, and thereby being complicit and responsible for loss of civilian life and destruction of Iraqi infrastructure.

4. Allowing the United States to dominate the United Nations and hold itself above any accountability by other member nations.

5. Failure to stop war crimes and crimes against humanity by the United States and its coalition partners in Iraq.

6. Failure to hold the United States and its coalition partners accountable for violations of international law during the invasion and occupation, giving official sanction to the occupation and therefore, both by acts of commission and acts of omission becoming a collaborator in an illegal occupation.

C. Against the Governments of the Coalition of the Willing

Collaborating in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, thus sharing responsibility in the crimes committed.


D. Against the Governments of Other Countries


Allowing the use of military bases and air space, and providing other logistical support, for the invasion and occupation, and hence being complicit in the crimes committed.

E. Against the Private Corporations which have won contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq and which have sued for and received “reparation awards” from the illegal occupation regime

Profiting from the war with complicity in the crimes described above, of invasion and occupation.

F. Against the Major Corporate Media

1. Disseminating the deliberate falsehoods spread by the governments of the US and the UK and failing to adequately investigate this misinformation, even in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. Among the corporate media houses that bear special responsibility for promoting the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, we name the New York Times, in particular their reporter Judith Miller, whose main source was on the payroll of the CIA. We also name Fox News, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, the BBC and ITN. This list also includes but is not limited to, The Express, The Sun, The Observer and Washington Post.

2. Failing to report the atrocities being committed against Iraqi people by the occupying forces, neglecting the duty to give privilege and dignity to voices of suffering and marginalizing the global voices for peace and justice.

3. Failing to report fairly on the ongoing occupation; silencing and discrediting dissenting voices and failing to adequately report on the full national costs and consequences of the invasion and occupation of Iraq; disseminating the propaganda of the occupation regime that seeks to justify the continuation of its presence in Iraq on false grounds.

4. Inciting an ideological climate of fear, racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia, which is then used to justify and legitimize violence perpetrated by the armies of the occupying regime.

5. Disseminating an ideology that glorifies masculinity and combat, while normalizing war as a policy choice.

6. Complicity in the waging of an aggressive war and perpetuating a regime of occupation that is widely regarded as guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

7. Enabling, through the validation and dissemination of disinformation, the fraudulent misappropriation of human and financial resources for an illegal war waged on false pretexts.

8. Promoting corporate-military perspectives on “security” which are counter-productive to the fundamental concerns and priorities of the global population and have seriously endangered civilian populations.

III. Recommendations

Recognizing the right of the Iraqi people to resist the illegal occupation of their country and to develop independent institutions, and affirming that the right to resist the occupation is the right to wage a struggle for self-determination, freedom, and independence as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, we the Jury of Conscience declare our solidarity with the people of Iraq.

We recommend:

1. The immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Coalition forces from Iraq.

2. That Coalition governments make war reparations and pay compensation to Iraq for the humanitarian, economic, ecological, and cultural devastation they have caused by their illegal invasion and occupation.

3. That all laws, contracts, treaties, and institutions established under occupation, which the Iraqi people deem inimical to their interests, be considered null and void.

4. That the Guantánamo Bay prison and all other offshore US military prisons be closed immediately, that the names of the prisoners be disclosed, that they receive POW status, and receive due process.

5. That there be an exhaustive investigation of those responsible for the crime of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq, beginning with George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, those in key decision-making positions in these countries and in the Coalition of the Willing, those in the military chain-of-command who master-minded the strategy for and carried out this criminal war, starting from the very top and going down; as well as personalities in Iraq who helped prepare this illegal invasion and supported the occupiers.

We list some of the most obvious names to be included in such investigation:

• prime ministers of the Coalition of the Willing, such as Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, Jose Maria Anzar of Spain, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, José Manuel Durão Barroso and Santana Lopes of Portugal, Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea, Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark;

• public officials such as Dick Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin L. Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Alberto Gonzales, L. Paul Bremer from the US, and Jack Straw, Geoffrey Hoon, John Reid, Adam Ingram from the UK;

• military commanders beginning with: Gen. Richard Myers, Gen. Tommy Franks, Gen. John P. Abizaid, Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, Gen. Thomas Metz, Gen. John R. Vines, Gen. George Casey from the US; Gen. Mike Jackson, Gen. John Kiszely, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, Gen. Peter Wall, Rear Admiral David Snelson, Gen. Robin Brims, Air Vice-Marshal Glenn Torpy from the UK; and chiefs of staff and commanding officers of all coalition countries with troops in Iraq.

• Iraqi collaborators such as Ahmed Chalabi, Iyad Allawi, Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, Gen. Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassem Mohan, among others.

6. That a process of accountability is initiated to hold those morally and personally responsible for their participation in this illegal war, such as journalists who deliberately lied, corporate media outlets that promoted racial, ethnic and religious hatred, and CEOs of multinational corporations that profited from this war;

7. That people throughout the world launch nonviolent actions against US and UK corporations that directly profit from this war. Examples of such corporations include Halliburton, Bechtel, The Carlyle Group, CACI Inc., Titan Corporation, Kellog, Brown and Root (subsidiary of Halliburton), DynCorp, Boeing, ExxonMobil, Texaco, British Petroleum. The following companies have sued Iraq and received “reparation awards”: Toys R Us, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Shell, Nestlé, Pepsi, Phillip Morris, Sheraton, Mobil. Such actions may take the form of direct actions such as shutting down their offices, consumer boycotts, and pressure on shareholders to divest.

8. That young people and soldiers act on conscientious objection and refuse to enlist and participate in an illegal war. Also, that countries provide conscientious objectors with political asylum.

9. That the international campaign for dismantling all US military bases abroad be reinforced.

10. That people around the world resist and reject any effort by any of their governments to provide material, logistical, or moral support to the occupation of Iraq.

We, the Jury of Conscience, hope that the scope and specificity of these recommendations will lay the groundwork for a world in which international institutions will be shaped and reshaped by the will of people and not by fear and self-interest, where journalists and intellectuals will not remain mute, where the will of the people of the world will be central, and human security will prevail over state security and corporate profits.

Arundhati Roy, India,
Spokesperson of the Jury of Conscience
Ahmet Öztürk, Turkey
Ayşe Erzan, Turkey
Chandra Muzaffar, Malaysia
David Krieger, USA
Eve Ensler, USA
François Houtart, Belgium
Jae-Bok Kim, South Korea
Mehmet Tarhan, Turkey
Miguel Angel De Los Santos Cruz, Mexico
Murat Belge, Turkey
Rela Mazali, Israel
Salaam Al Jobourie, Iraq
Taty Almeida, Argentina

International Law Appendix
Explanatory Note

This international law appendix is intended to back up the Jury Statement that rests its assessments primarily on a moral and political appraisal of the Iraq War. The Statement relies upon the extensive testimony given in written and oral form by international law experts who have a world-class scholarly reputation during the Istanbul Culminating Session of the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI). It also reflects the testimony and submissions on related issues of war crimes and the failure of the United Nations to protect Iraq against aggression.

The Jury of Conscience was not a body composed of jurists or international law experts. It did not hear arguments supporting the legality of the invasion of Iraq as would have been made before a judicial body under the authority of either the state or an international institution acting on behalf of the international community. The World Tribunal on Iraq throughout all of its session proceeded from a sense of moral and political outrage of concerned citizens from all over the world, with respect to the war. The Tribunal was not interested in a debate solely as to legality. The legal issues were relevant to the extent that they added weight to the moral and political purpose of the Tribunal, which was to expose the Iraq War as the crime it is, appealing to and drawing upon the deep bonds that link us all in our humanity. Therefore the Tribunal sought testimony and evidence to call into question the mantle of respectability thrown over the Iraq War by the aggressors, and the false impression disseminated by mainstream media, that the Iraq War was in any sense justified by political circumstances, moral considerations, or legal analysis.

The WTI is a worldwide process dedicated to reclaiming justice on behalf of the peoples of the world. It aims to record the severe wrongs, crimes, and violations that were committed in the process leading up to the aggression against Iraq, during the war, and throughout the ensuing occupation, continuing with unabated fury to this day. The role of international law is understood in light of these WTI goals.

The concerns of the WTI range much further than the demand for the implementation of international law, especially as much of this law currently serves the interests of wealth and power. Nevertheless, international law with respect to the use of force and recourse to war is important in relation to the work of the WTI. International law is useful for the WTI for the following reasons:

• International law grounds the political and moral demand for the criminal indictment and prosecution of those responsible for the Iraq War, and it clarifies the extent of criminal accountability as extending to corporate and media participation;

• International law rejects the dangerous imperialist claims of the United States and the United Kingdom to be exempt from international legal obligations.

In addition, the WTI makes use of international law to fulfill its mission:

• The WTI connects a call for global justice with the demand for the implementation of international law, but also for a rethinking of the premises and operations of international law so that it might be of greater relevance to the achievement of human security in the future;

• The WTI demands an interrogation as to why international institutions, particularly the United Nations, proved powerless against US unilateralism and aggression;

• The WTI insists that United Nations exercise its constitutional responsibility to protect its Members from aggression and illegal occupation;

• The WTI possesses the authority, as representing civil society, to declare and seek enforcement of international legal obligations when states and the United Nations fail to uphold international law in matters of war and peace.

It is important to distinguish:

• violations of international law, including the UN Charter, by a state; and

• crimes associated with these violation committed by political and military leaders, government officials, corporations and their officers, soldiers and private contractors, journalists and media personnel.

Legal Analysis

• International law consists of (1) international treaties, including the UN Charter [see list of documents]; (2) international customary law [especially in relation to the conduct of states in war]; (3) international criminal law [a sub-category of (1) resting on treaties and agreements among states, based on the framework of the Nuremberg Judgment in 1945, unanimously affirmed by the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Nuremberg Principles in 1946, Res. 95(I)].

• In the War on Iraq the three principles of customary international law have been violated: (1) Principle of Proportionality: force can only be used to attain permissible legal objectives, and then only to the extent required by ‘military necessity’; (2) Principle of Discrimination: force and weaponry can only be used if confined to military targets; indiscriminate weapons and tactics are prohibited; (3) Principle of Humanity: force must never be used to cause unnecessary suffering and maximum care must be taken to protect civilian society, including its cultural heritage.

• The War on Iraq violates the Nuremberg Principles that set forth the following essential guidelines (as formulated by the International Law Commission of the UN in 1950 in response to request from General Assembly):

Principle I

Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.

Principle II

The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act, which constitutes a crime under international law, does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III

The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Principle V

Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

Principle VI

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under; international law:

a) Crimes against peace:

i. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

ii. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

b) War crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

c) Crimes against humanity:

Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Principle VII

Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principles VI is a crime under international law.

Violations and Crimes:

I. The invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, together with the continuing occupation of Iraq, constitutes a violation of the core obligation of the United Nations Charter:

• resolving international conflicts by recourse to force or the threat of force is unconditionally prohibited by Article 2(4) of the Charter;

• the only exception to this probation is the right of states to act in self-defense against a prior armed attack as allowed by Article 51, but with the requirement that defending state report its claim to the Security Council;

• the claims of the US/UK Governments based on doctrines of ‘preemption’ or ‘preventive war’ have no standing in international law, and reliance on such specious arguments was in any event unsupported by facts; even if weapons of mass destruction had existed in Iraq it would not provide a legal justification for the invasion; nor would the claim that ‘regime change’ would liberate the Iraqi people from dictatorial rule violative of human rights;

• with respect to Iraq there existed no basis for claiming self-defense or acting on the basis of a Security Council authorization; the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation of the country constitutes a continuing aggression against a sovereign state and member of the UN in violation of international law;

• the cumulative effect of these violations is to create a strong factual and legal foundation for the indictment, prosecution, and punishment of the individuals responsible for planning, initiating, and waging a crime of aggression against Iraq.

II. Iraq War by the invading military forces, principally those of the United States and United Kingdom, and subsequent occupation, violated the law of war such as the Geneva Conventions on the Humanitarian Laws of War (1949), Additional Protocols to Geneva Conventions (1977) and Hague Conventions on the Laws of War (1899, 1907) in numerous respects, including the following:

• use of cluster bombs, napalm, depleted uranium;

• bombing of civilian targets and areas (e.g. markets, restaurants, media facilities, religious and cultural sites);

• intense and indiscriminate military operations against many cities and towns causing massive civilian casualties (e.g. Najaf, Falluja);

• repeated and systematic use of torture and degrading treatment of Iraqi civilian and military personnel detained in prison facilities or covertly transferred to foreign countries known for torture and severe prison conditions;

• overall failure to protect the civilian population and their property, cultural heritage (shootings at check points; house raids; lootings of museums and other cultural sites; refusal to assess extent of civilian death and damage) [see especially common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions imposing duty to take special measures to protect civilian population to the extent possible) (Also Geneva Convention IV specifies the obligations of the occupying power in Articles 47-78 );

• the cumulative effect of this pattern of flagrant and extensive violations of the laws of war is to create the foundation for the indictment, prosecution, and punishment of those individuals responsible, as policy makers, leaders, and as implementers at various levels of command;

• Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions reads: “The High Contracting Parties, including US/UK, undertake to respect and ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.” The American legal specialists in Office of the Legal Counsel in the White House, in the Justice Department, and Department of Defense who advised on the ‘legality’ of torture and other behavior that violates the law of war are priority targets for indictment and prosecution.

III. The occupation of Iraq has fragrantly violated The Right of Self-Determination of the People of Iraq:

• Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and of the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights (1966): “(1) All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”;

• It is evident that the occupation, by its decrees, practices, imposition of an interim government, managed elections, and administered constitution-making process has violated the right of self-determination of the Iraqi people, a fundamental element of international human rights law.
IV. The occupation of Iraq has included massive abuses of the Iraqi civilian population, including the widespread and pervasive reliance on torture, the practice of which is unconditionally prohibited by international law:

• Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (repeated in Article 7 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), including Article 4(2) that affirms there are no exceptions, even in conditions of war or emergency) and further confirmed by the widely ratified treaty—Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).

V. The United Nations has failed to uphold its obligations to protect sovereign states, especially its members, from violations of their legal rights to political independence and territorial integrity, passively allowing Iraq to be threatened and attacked for twelve years prior to the invasion of 2003:

• the UNSC maintained sanctions on Iraq that had a demonstrated
genocidal effect on the civilian population during the period 1991-2003;

• the UNSC refrained from censuring and preventing repeated air strikes within Iraq territory during the period 1991-2003;

• the UNSC refrained from censuring and preventing overt calls for the subversion and replacement of the Iraqi government, as well as the financing and training of exiles dedicated to armed struggle;

• the UNSC failed to condemn or act to prevent aggressive threats or the actual initiation and conduct of an aggressive war against Iraq in 2003, and has to a limited extent cooperated in the illegal occupation of Iraq since the invasion .

Conclusions

1. The Jury Statement is consistent with an objective understanding of international law, including the United Nations Charter.

2. Members of the United Nations and governments of sovereign states have legal obligations to uphold the Charter and act to ensure respect for the laws of war.

3. All three categories of Nuremberg Crimes are associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

4. The International Criminal Court should indict, prosecute, and punish the perpetrators and collaborators for this aggression against Iraq and the related international crimes arising from the subsequent occupation of the country.

5. The ICC should be supplemented by a specially constituted international tribunal with authority to indict, prosecute, and punish for crimes committed before 2002 when the ICC was established and to the extent that crimes associated with states not Parties to the ICC are not addressed.

6. The UNGA should be encouraged to implement international law with respect to the Iraq War and occupation.

7. National courts relying on universal jurisdiction should be urged to investigate and prosecute individuals associated with Nuremberg Crimes in Iraq.

8. Organs of civil society, including the WTI, should act to ensure that the recommendations and conclusions of the Jury Statement are promptly and fairly implemented.

Appendix: List of Legal Documents

• Hague Convention IV Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907)

• Protocol for the Prohibition of the use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods (1925)

• General Treaty (‘Pact of Paris’) for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy (1928)

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

• Geneva Conventions (I-IV) on International Humanitarian Law (1949)

• Nuremberg Principles Recognized in the Charter of the Tribunal and in the Nuremberg Judgment (1950)

• European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950)

• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)

• Convention on the Political Rights of Women (1953)

• Code of Conduct for the Armed Forces of the United States of America (1963)

• International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965)

• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966)

• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)

• American Convention on Human Rights (1969)

• Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Biological Weapons and Toxin Weapons (1972)

• Universal (or Algiers) Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (1976)

• Principles of Co-Operation in the Detection, Arrest, Extradition and Punishment of Persons Guilty of War Crimes or Crimes Against Humanity (1973)

• Protocol Additional (I-II) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (1977)

• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979)

• African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981)

• Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984)

• International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries (1989)

• Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)

• Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons (1992)

• Declaration for the Protection of War Victims (1993)

• Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998)

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http://www.brusselstribunal.org/
DECLARATION OF JURY OF CONSCIENCE
Istanbul 23-27 June 2005




In February 2003, weeks before an illegal war was initiated against Iraq, millions of people protested in the streets of the world. That call went unheeded. No international institution had the courage or conscience to stand up to the threat of aggression of the US and UK governments. No one could stop them. It is two years later now. Iraq has been invaded, occupied, and devastated. The attack on Iraq is an attack on justice, on liberty, on our safety, on our future, on us all. We, people of conscience, decided to stand up. We formed the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) to demand justice and a peaceful future.

The legitimacy of the World Tribunal on Iraq is located in the collective conscience of humanity. This, the Istanbul session of the WTI, is the culmination of a series of 20 hearings held in different cities of the world focusing on the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The conclusions of these sessions and/or inquiries held in Barcelona, Brussels, Copenhagen, Genoa, Hiroshima, Istanbul, Lisbon, London, Mumbai, New York, Östersund, Paris, Rome, Seoul, Stockholm, Tunis, various cities in Japan and Germany are appended to this Declaration in a separate volume.

We, the Jury of Conscience, from 10 different countries, met in Istanbul. We heard 54 testimonies from a Panel of Advocates and Witnesses who came from across the world, including from Iraq, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The World Tribunal on Iraq met in Istanbul from 24-26 June 2005. The principal objective of the WTI is to tell and disseminate the truth about the Iraq War, underscoring the accountability of those responsible and underlining the significance of justice for the Iraqi people.

FULL DECLARATION IN English, in Dutch, in Japanese, in Italian

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http://www.veteransforpeace.org/War_on_iraq_052503.htm
Published on Sunday, May 25, 2003 by the lndependent/UK

War on Iraq was Illegal, Say Top Lawyers
A panel of eminent experts will warn that UN authority has been 'seriously weakened' by conflict
by Severin Carrell and Robert Verkaik


The war on Iraq will be condemned as illegal by a panel of eminent international lawyers at a conference being organized by the actor Corin Redgrave.

The symposium, to be held next Sunday at the Young Vic theatre in London, will also hear senior legal experts allege that the conflict has seriously weakened the authority of the United Nations and potentially threatened global security.

The panelists include Professor Philippe Sands QC, a member of Cherie Booth's Matrix chambers, Professor Christine Chinkin, professor of international law at the London School of Economics, and Jan Kavan, the president of the UN General Assembly and former Czech foreign minister.

Another prominent speaker, Professor Burns Weston, a human rights lawyer at the University of Iowa in the US, fears that other countries might use the American decision to wage war illegally to justify their own unlawful wars. He is most concerned about India and Pakistan - two nuclear powers in dispute over Kashmir. "It is a very bad precedent for other countries that might seek, in their own lack of wisdom, to emulate the United States," he said.

The event, called "Liberation or War Crime" will be chaired by the former Radio 4 Today program presenter Sue MacGregor and is expected to attract other prominent figures, including the playwright David Hare, the Booker Prize-winning Indian writer Arundhati Roy and the former foreign secretary Robin Cook.

Prof Sands, one of 16 prominent international lawyers who earlier this year publicly warned Tony Blair that the war was illegal, said the conflict raised two major issues.

"First, did the Security Council authorize the use of force, and the answer to that is no. And [second] were we misled about the presence of weapons of mass destruction? Apparently, yes. These things are going to come back to haunt us," Prof Sands said.

Mr Redgrave, whose film roles include parts in Four Weddings and A Funeral, Enigma and In the Name of the Father, said one objective in staging and paying for the event was to investigate the damage caused by the war to international peace.

"Very early on, before the war began, it seemed that one of the main casualties of war was the whole fabric of international law and convention," he said. "It seemed to me there was a willingness, indeed a desire, on the part of America at least, to rend that fabric in a way that would almost make it irreparable."

The controversy over the legality of the war partly subsided on Thursday after the US supported an unexpectedly far-reaching resolution at the Security Council guaranteeing Iraq's independence and giving the UN a more powerful role in its reconstruction.

Although the resolution answered widespread concerns that the occupation of Iraq was also illegal - concerns shared by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith - British lawyers warned there were still serious worries over the legality of the coalition's conduct.

Peter Carter QC, chairman of the Bar Council's human rights committee, said coalition forces were in breach of UN Resolution 1325, which requires participants in a conflict to have particular regard to the rights of women.

Since the war, Mr Carter said, women feared more for their safety because of the frequent looting, chaos and unlawfulness. "Women must feel free to walk the streets and go about their business. It is true to say that Iraqi women during Saddam's rule experienced greater freedoms than in other Arab countries."

Prof Sands said the new UN resolution had, for the first time, cancelled all previous legal or contractual rights to Iraq's oil - giving the coalition freedom to sell the oil to whichever firm they wanted. This raised "far-reaching" questions about the rights of an occupier to control a country's natural resources.

'There was no threat. There was no resolution'

Professor Philippe Sands QC

Director of the Center on International Courts and Tribunals, University College London

The war was contrary to international law and it was contrary to international law whether or not they find weapons of mass destruction. The illegality was based on the absence of a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. I think that is the view of almost every independent commentator.

The claim by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith - that the war was legal because Saddam Hussein had failed to comply with UN resolutions dating back to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait - has received almost no support outside the UK or the United States from independent academic commentators.

Professor Robert Black QC

Professor of Scots law, Edinburgh University, and architect of the Lockerbie trial in The Hague

It's simple and straightforward. There are only two legal justifications for attacking another country: self-defense, or if the Security Council authorizes you to do so. It is perfectly plain that none of the Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq authorized armed intervention. It's possible to cobble together what looks like a legal argument, but the real test of any legal argument is whether a court would accept that argument. I challenged the Attorney General to say what he thought the odds were of the International Court of Justice in The Hague accepting his argument. In my view, the odds against were greater than 10 to 1.

Professor Sean Murphy

Associate professor of law at George Washington University, Washington DC

I think there's a real question to be raised about whether the US, UK and Australian coalition properly intervened in Iraq without Security Council authorization, and I think there are very sound reasons for saying that the intervention was not permitted. The US-UK legal justification, which is based on Security Council resolutions dating back to 1990-91, isn't credible. When you look closely at the resolutions and the practice of the Security Council, it's clear that the majority of members of the Security Council believed that further authorization was needed in March 2003 than, in fact, existed.

Professor Vaughan Lowe

Chichele Professor of Public International Law, All Souls College, Oxford

The new resolution provides a firm legal basis for the coalition occupation of Iraq. It gives the UN a role that is prominent on paper but which, in fact, is not at all powerful on the ground. The coalition practically has a free hand in 'promoting' reform and the formation of an interim administration ... The key question is how far the coalition may proceed with economic and political restructuring in Iraq before the election of a government by the Iraqi people. The resolution does not spell that out; nor does it fix any timetable for the return of power to the Iraqi people. Nor does it stipulate how the massive reconstruction costs of the program - and the benefits, in terms of commercial contracts - will be distributed.

Professor James Crawford

Whewell Professor of International Law, Jesus College, Cambridge

On the information available, none of the exceptions that permit the use of force applied. There was no UN Security Council authorization, and no imminent humanitarian catastrophe, and no imminent threat of the use of force by Iraq. I think it was unlawful in the beginning, and they haven't found anything since to make one change one's mind.

The earlier Security Council resolutions were related to the occupation of Kuwait, and that situation has completely changed. It's very contrived to treat Resolution 1441 as if it authorizes the use of force.

Professor Mary Kaldor

Professor of global governance, London School of Economics

Going back to the 1991 UN resolutions is the real weakness of their argument. It is an awfully long time ago, and it's as though this isn't a new war - as if it is the same war we fought in 1991. I think that it is an incredibly weak legal case. I don't think there's any way we can argue that the Iraq intervention was legitimate, and it's illegitimate for two reasons. There was no real case that the inspectors weren't dealing with the weapons of mass destruction. And, we're now seeing what a lot of people warned we would see: that this will be bad for [curbing] terrorism rather than good.

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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WORLD TRIBUNAL ON IRAQ DEMANDS BUSH AND BLAIR INDICTMENT AT INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
1 Aug 2005

Istanbul, Turkey - The Final Statement by the Jury of Conscience of the World Tribunal on Iraq calls for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict, prosecute, and punish the perpetrators and collaborators for the aggression against Iraq and the related international crimes arising from the subsequent occupation of the country. The statement lists the violations in international law committed during and after this war and also provides recommendations for the prevention of future illegal and illegitimate action.

The Statement relies upon the extensive testimony given in written and oral form by international law experts during the Culminating Session of the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) in Istanbul between 23-27 June 2005. It also reflects the testimony and submissions on related issues of war crimes and the failure of the United Nations to protect Iraq against aggression.

The Chair of the Jury of Consience in Istanbul, Arundhati Roy, said in India; "We, the Jury of Conscience, hope that the scope and specificity of these recommendations will lay the groundwork for a world whose future cannot be shaped by multi-national corporations and Heads of State in violation of the explicit and stated will of the people they claim to represent, where journalists and intellectuals will not remain mute, where human security will prevail over the drive for political, economic and cultural hegemony, the insatiable greed of the military-industrial complex and the quest for corporate profit.";

In the Istanbul session, members of the Jury of Conscience from 10 different countries heard the testimonies of 54 members comprising the Panel of Advocates who came from across the world, including Iraq, the United States and the United Kingdom. The session in Istanbul was the culminating session of commissions of inquiry and hearings held around the world over the past two years (1).


For more information and the full text of the Jury Statement please see home page
Or contact Tolga Temuge, international media co-ordinator, tolga.temuge@worldtribunal.org

Notes:
1. Sessions on different topics related to the war on Iraq were held in Barcelona, Brussels, Copenhagen, Genoa, Hiroshima, Istanbul, Lisbon, London, Mumbai, New York, Östersund, Paris, Rome, Seoul, Stockholm, Tunis, various cities in Japan and Germany.

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http://www.brusselstribunal.org/
BRussels Tribunal Reports

* Report of MHRI on Human Rights violations in Iraq (Nov. 2005)

* White Death: US occupation forces use WMD in Iraq (Nov.11 2005)

* Haditha: River Gate… to Hell (Nov. 06 2005)

* Al Qaim October Massacre: Indiscriminate Killing Zone (Nov. 05 2005)

* Iraqi Doctors Beaten and Arrested in Haditha Hospital (Oct. 30 2005)

* Constitution Referendum: Too Democratic to be American!! (Oct. 23 2005)

* Sectarian Cleansing Threatens Iraqi’s Future (Oct.22 2005)

* Letter to Amnesty International on the Iraqi Constitution (English-Spanish-Français-Nederlands-Deutsch) (Oct. 07 2005)

* The Story of a Declared Attack- Al Qaim Again - Families Besieged in Refugee Camps (Oct. 07 2005)

* the Salvador Option exposed: new evidence shows that bombs are being planted by British in Basra (Sept. 21 2005)
* The continuing urbicide in Iraq: stop the massacres in Tal Afar (Sept. 09 2005)

* Relevant articles about the draft of the " new Constitution" (Sept. 08 2005)

* What's happening to the Iraqi academics and intellectuals?

* Read the complete Downing Street Papers (PDF)

http://www.brusselstribunal.org/
Studies Center of Human Rights & Democracy Al- Fallujah

* Report of Fallujah crimes presented to UN Commission on Human Rights (March 25 2005) [PDF]

* Reports on the devastating effects of the US Assault of Fallujah (January 14 2005) :

Letter to Kofi Annan [PDF] - War Crimes committed by the US Army [PDF] - Situation of the Refugees [PDF]

* Iraqi National foundation Congress - Concluding statement [PDF] English and Arabic (May 20 2005)

* Articles from sources inside Iraq

* Relevant articles on the "Free Elections" of Jan. 30 2005

* Breaking reports and articles about Iraq

* Selected writings of members of the BRussells Tribunal

* Reflections on Fallujah

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http://tinyurl.com/c3k5h
Civilization, genocide style
“I think it would be a good idea” - Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought about Western civilization
by: Gabriele Zamparini on: 19th Nov, 05

Ann Clwyd is the Prime Minister Blair’s Human Rights Envoy in Iraq. On November 15th, 2005, interviewed by Jeremy Paxman at BBC 2 Newsnight, she said:

“We have been trying to train the Iraqis in human rights. We’ve set up conferences for the Iraqis on human rights with all the NGOs. We’ve been trying our very best to get human rights into the Iraqi psyche. We want to help them I think” (1)

When I first heard Ann Clwyd’s words, I thought I had missed something. So, I went on line and watched the programme again. No, I had not missed anything. The words were still there, as clear as they could be.

“And what of human rights?” asked novelist Haifa Zangana last April on the Guardian:

An estimated 60% of Iraqi families still depend completely on the monthly food ration. A recent UN human rights commission report says that malnutrition among Iraqi children under the age of five nearly doubled last year to 7.7%, and blamed the war for this deterioration. More than a quarter of Iraqi children do not get enough food to eat.

Four million Iraqis are still in exile, and more are joining their ranks. Many academics, scientists and consultants are leaving for the fear of assassination or kidnapping. According to the interior ministry, 5,000 Iraqis were kidnapped in the last 15 months. Roadside bombs, mortar assaults, shootings by US troops and suicide attacks are all part of daily life.

There are 17,000 prisoners, mostly under US control. Two new prisons have been built by US contractors to accommodate 4,000 new prisoners in the south. A recently published Human Rights Watch report documents the torture and ill-treatment of members of political and armed groups, the arbitrary arrest and torture of criminal suspects, and the torture of children held in adult facilities.

There are reports, too, of women being taken as hostages by US soldiers to persuade fugitive male relatives to surrender. Amnesty International has condemned this, reminding governments that "it is against international law to take civilians and use them as bargaining chips". The blockade of food and destruction of water reservoirs during the siege of Falluja was "used as a weapon of war", a UN expert said in a report to the organisation's human rights commission.

Banned weapons have been used in Iraq too, as the US military has been forced to admit, including the MK-77 incendiary bomb, a modern form of napalm. Britain is party to an international convention banning such weapons where they may cause harm to civilians and yet, during the assault on Falluja, British soldiers were placed under the command of a US military that has no such qualms. Reports have emerged of melted bodies in the city, a crime that has been met with silence not just by Tony Blair but also by Ann Clwyd, his human rights envoy to Iraq. (2)

Ann Clwyd’s words show once again that the racist and colonialist mentality, responsible for some among the most atrocious crimes against humanity, is still in power.

“I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes,” said Winston Churchill in 1919.

But these murderous weapons are still being used on civilians in our days. And with them more expensive and sophisticated ones, built with our money and coming from the minds of psychopaths in charge of our lives.

In 1920, Gertrude Bell wrote: “Mesopotamia is not a civilised state”.

I read this in the same article that celebrated her on Wednesday, March 12, 2003. This article ends with this paragraph:

The Iraq of Gertrude Bell had lasted 37 years. The Ba'ath finally seized power in 1968, built a prosperous despotism in the 1970s but destroyed itself and the country in hopeless military adventures in Iran in the 1980s and Kuwait in 1990. As of yesterday, Ba'athist Iraq had lasted 35 years. (3)

Is anything missing here?

Another liberal (sic!) voice wrote the following this past September:

In his Times piece, Vincent accused British forces of failing to teach Iraqi police democratic values. Vincent was wrong. There has been an effort to instill Western values in recruits. "We're trying to make these people accountable to the law, firstly," says Arnie Morgan, 51, a British police trainer from Armor Group, a firm that employs civilian policemen as advisers in Iraq. (4)

More than five hundred years ago, Christopher Columbus wrote about the new (sic!) world:

"[They] are so naïve and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...".

The much-celebrated “hero” continues:

"They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want".

In 1937, another hero (so many heroes!), wrote:

"I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place." (Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937)

In 1996, the liberal (sic!) Madeleine Albright – US Ambassador at the United Nations and soon to become Secretary of State under President Clinton – said about the half million children murdered by the UN sanctions against Iraq:

"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it." (5)

In 2003, a small man but a big vicious mass murderer, said:

“We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.” - US President George Bush, March 19, 2003

British historian and Holocaust denier David Irving

“was being held in an Austrian jail last night while state prosecutors there decided whether to bring charges against him for allegedly denying aspects of the Holocaust during a visit to the country 16 years ago.” (6)

At the same time, those who are NOW perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity are celebrated and honoured. We see them every day on TV, talking, lecturing, smiling, laughing, and even making jokes on football, right Mr. Blair?

Their hands are covered in blood and there is no water, there is no river or ocean able to clean them. No matter how powerful they are, the fancy parties they go, the elegant houses and the expensive dresses, no matter their smiles and the lies they hide behind. They are miserable gangsters, bloody war criminals, responsible for unspeakable atrocities. They belong to jail and deserve our deepest contempt.


NOTES

1) Audio of the interview available here http://s10.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0L2ZYHO7KUC1529AXE223XZ99C

2) Blair made a pledge to the Iraqis once. The suffering of my people must not be conveniently forgotten now by Haifa Zangana, The Guardian, April 22, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1466128,00.html

3) Miss Bell's lines in the sand, James Buchan on the extraordinary life of Gertrude Bell, The Guardian, 12 March 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,912266,00.html

4) Powerless. Iraq's troubled police bow to party and tribe, by David Axe, The Village Voice, 30 September 2005
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0540,axe,68424,6.html

5) Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? "

US Ambassador at the United Nations (soon to become Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it." CBS - "60 Minutes", May 12, 1996

6) Austria considers Holocaust denial charge for Irving, by Tony Paterson, The Independent, 18 November 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article327744.ece

(*) Gabriele Zamparini is an independent filmmaker and freelance writer living in London. He's the producer and director of the documentaries XXI CENTURY and The Peace! DVD and author of American Voices of Dissent (Paradigm Publishers).

source: The Cats Dream
http://thecatsdream.com/

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http://www.impeachblair.org/
ImpeachBlair.0rg


A group of MPs declared their intention to bring a motion of impeachment against the Prime Minister for High Crimes and Misdemeanours in relation to the invasion of Iraq. The charges are based on evidence presented in a report commissioned by Adam Price MP entitled A Case to Answer .

The report which is co-authored by academics Glen Rangwala and Dan Plesch presents evidence that the Prime Minister deliberately distorted the intelligence assessments available to him in order to deceive the public and Parliament over the case for war, and recommends that impeachment procedures are begun against the Prime Minister for this misconduct. In addition, the report maintains that the Prime Minister's actions have destroyed the British government's reputation for honesty around the world; it has damaged and discredited the intelligence services; it has undermined the constitution by weakening cabinet government and has made a mockery of Parliament as representative of the people.

Tony Blair has misled the people time and time again – this conduct cannot continue to go unchecked. The Members of Parliament backing this campaign believe it is their duty to do all they can to hold this Prime Minister to account in order to restore the people's faith in the democratic process.

Impeachment Motion - Conduct of the Prime Minister in relation to the war against Iraq

That a select committee of not more than 13 Members be appointed to investigate and to report to the House on the conduct of the Prime Minister in relation to the war against Iraq and in particular to consider;

(a) the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group that in March 2003 Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and had been essentially free of them since the mid 1990s

(b) the Prime Minister’s acknowledgement that he was wrong when in and before March 2003 he asserted that Iraq was then in possession of chemical or biological weapons or was then engaged in active efforts to develop nuclear weapons or was thereby a current or serious threat to the UK national interest or that possession of WMD then enabled Iraq to inflict real damage upon the region and the stability of the world

(c) the opinion of the Secretary General of the United Nations that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was unlawful

(d) whether there exist sufficient grounds to impeach the Rt Hon Tony Blair on charges of gross misconduct in his advocacy of the case for war against Iraq and in his conduct of policy in connection with that war.

That the Committee shall within 48 days of its appointment report to this House such resolutions, articles of impeachment or other recommendations as it shall think fit

Sign the Impeach Blair Petition Online
http://www.impeachblair.org/form.shtml

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http://www.peacerights.org/articles/194
Illegality of Preventive Attack and Unilateral Use of Force
by Phil Shiner

Peacerights; Visiting Professor; London Metropolitan University; and Fellow, London School of Economics

In this paper I wish to address three issues:

1. Whether the Iraq war was a "crime of aggression" (which is the "worst of crimes");

2. Whether the way in which the war was conducted involved the commission of "war crimes" and;

3. Whether the subsequent occupation of Iraq involved, and continues to involve, the commission of "war crimes", "crimes against humanity" and other illegal acts.

However, before addressing these themes, I wish to put these matters in the context of a changing international legal order.

There is no doubt that the world has changed post 9/11. And no doubt too that international law has been central to that change. Much of the debate about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the so-called "war on terror" revolves around questions of legality. It is plain that the neo-cons and Bush and Blair wish to restructure International law to make it weaker but more flexible, and less concerned with the peaceful resolution of disputes. Who can counter this fundamental challenge to all those who are concerned with peace, and that international law should underpin and support an absolute legal commitment by all member states that the use of force is, and should remain as, the option of last resort? It is my view that the War Tribunal on Iraq should have this fundamental ideological struggle in its sights. It can make those responsible for the Iraq war accountable, and it can be part of a global struggle in response to the Bush/Blair agenda on International law.

The Crime of Aggression

International Law is surprisingly clear and easy to understand on whether the Iraq war was lawful. First, war was abolished by the adoption of the UN Charter in 1947. Thereafter, contracting states entered into a compact. In return for giving up their right to wage war each vested the right to use force in the collective security provisions of chapter VII of the UN Charter. Second, Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter provides that:

"All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations".

This has been described by the International Court of Justice as a peremptory norm of International Law, from which states cannot derogate. Thus, the effect of articles 2 (3) and (4) is that the use of force can only be justified as expressly provided under the Charter, and only in situations where it is consistent with the UN's purposes. Third, there are two limited exceptions to the requirement not to use force. The first enshrined in Article 51, preserves states' rights to self-defence. As this was not an exception relied upon by the US or UK I need not dwell on it. The second is where the Security Council have authorised the use of force under Article 42 of the Charter. That is the only relevant debate here.

I can remind the Panel that a consensus of international lawyers did not accept that such an authorisation existed here, or that the UK and US were entitled to revive Resolution 678 (November 1990) from the start of the first Gulf War. The UK and US argued that the wording of Resolution 1441 (8 November 2002) allowed them to rely on Security Council Resolution 678 as they were entitled to interpret Iraq's behaviour post 1441 as constituting a further "material breach" of Resolution 678 (Article 1) in circumstances where Iraq had been given its "final opportunity" to disarm (Article 2) and was warned of the "serious consequences" of non-compliance (Article 13). This is referred to as the revival doctrine. Not surprisingly, that is not the way international law works post the UN Charter. If the Security Council wish to authorise force, they do so in clear terms, latterly using the phrase "all necessary means" or "all measures necessary"

One example of that consensus is a letter from 16 international law professors and teachers from the UK, which made headline news on March 7 2003. It warned that:

"Before military action can lawfully be undertaken against Iraq, the Security Council must have indicated its clearly expressed accent. It has not yet done so… A decision to undertake military action in Iraq without proper Security Council authorisation will seriously undermine the international rule of law."

What I have done is to footnote to this paper all the relevant legal material so that you, the jury, may be satisfied that this war did not have legal authorisation from the Security Council. The jury need to address the consequences of that? If there was no Security Council authorisation does it necessarily mean that the war was illegal? If it was illegal, was it automatically a "crime of aggression" and thus a "crime against peace?"

Professor Philippe Sands tackled this question head on during an interview last Thursday for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He said:

"…Most people now realise that the war on Iraq was illegal and under international law, an illegal war amounts to a crime of aggression"

Others have said the same. Here is the 18 March 2003 resignation letter of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Deputy Legal Advisor to the Foreign Office, who resigned because she did not believe the war with Iraq was legal:

"I cannot in conscience go along with the advice … which asserts the legitimacy of military action without such a [Security Council] Resolution, particularly since an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to a crime of aggression…"

Over the last weekend the controversy over the legality of the war, at least from the UK Government's perspective, has flared up again. This time the row focus on a number of leaked and secret memoranda between UK Government's members and top officials detailing what had been agreed between Tony Blair and President Bush and Condoleezza Rice as early as March 2002. In particular, the following needs some explanation, if the UK Government are to continue to protest they went into Iraq because of the threat of WMD, rather than for regime change:

"We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq. It is clear that Bush is grateful for your [Blair] support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was different from anything in the States. And you would not budge either in your insistence that, if we perused regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option."

Thus, we are dealing with the crime of aggression. And let us remind ourselves of the enormity of that crime. This is the opening speech of Mr Justice Robert Jackson at The Nuremburg Tribunal:

"It is not necessary among the ruins of this ancient and beautiful city with untold members of its civilian inhabitants still buried under its rubble, to argue the proposition that to start or wage an aggressive war has the moral qualities of the worst of crimes."

In his opening speech, he also described aggressive war as "the greatest menace of our time", and made it clear that if International Law "is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment." He also said:

"This trial represents mankind's desperate effort to apply the discipline of the law to statesmen who have used their powers of state to attack the foundations of the world's peace and commit aggressions against the right of their neighbors."

Accountability for the Crime of Aggression and Proportionality

But how can the actions of the US and the UK in committing the worst of crimes be made accountable to International Law, and specifically the International Criminal Court (ICC)? There are two routes that the ICC Prosecutor can take which would give him jurisdiction to examine the legality of the Iraq war notwithstanding that the US has de-ratified the ICC Statute, and that the ICC will not have jurisdiction over the "crime of aggression" until the necessary Elements of Crime have been agreed, which may not be for several years.

Here is how the first argument goes. If the coalition forces had used force against Iraq pursuant to Security Council Resolution that Resolution would have set the parameters of the authorisation both in dictating lawful military objectives, and over time. The authorisation would have been carefully targeted, using a phrase such as "all necessary measures" focused on the threat of WMD. Accordingly, decisions about military objectives, and thus crucially, in considering whether the use of force as exercised constituted "war crimes", and judgements as to whether the force used was proportionate to those objectives should have been taken within the framework of a Security Council authorisation tailored to eliminating the threat to international peace and security of Iraq's WMD. However, in the absence of such an authorisation, and with the Coalition's un-stated objectives of regime change coming into play, these crucial decisions about military objectives and proportionality became very different. It is arguable, for instance, that using a "bunker buster" bomb on a restaurant in a civilian residential area cannot be justified on the ground that Saddam Hussein was believed to be dining there. It is arguable also that, leaving aside the inherently indiscriminatory nature of cluster munitions, if the military objective pursued was the threat of WMD it is hard to see how their use in urban and residential locations could be justified or proportionate. Further, the British Armed Forces Minister, Adam Ingram, declared during an interview with the BBC that cluster weapons had been used against concentrations of military equipment and Iraqi troops in and around built-up areas around Basra, Iraq's second largest city. For the US, General Myers confirmed that cluster munitions were used against "many" military assets in populated areas.

These are important concerns which the ICC Prosecutor must address, and he has been urged to do so in a report from eight leading international law professors submitted to the ICC Prosecutor by Peacerights on 20 April 2004 following the London Tribunal which supports this inquiry. This is how the report summarised the Professors' concerns:

"d. Were methods of warfare or weapons systems used, or locations of attacks chosen, such that
…

* Impermissible military objectives were excluded, for example, those concerned with "regime change" rather than the elimination of any existing WMD;

* The proportionality requirement was at all times respected and in particular all feasible precautions were taken to avoid and in any event minimise incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects …"

The second route into the examination of the crime of aggression is through joint criminal enterprise and the context of any ICC investigation. Again, this is a matter already put to the ICC Prosecutor by the London Tribunal. The ICC has jurisdiction over individuals who are nationals of state parties and the UK ratified the ICC Statute on 4 October 2001. In addition to those who perpetrated the crimes, the ICC also has jurisdiction over those who may have ordered, solicited, induced, aided or abetted or otherwise assisted in their commission or attempted commission. So the relationship between the US and UK in the coalition does need to be determined, and questions answered as to the criminal responsibility of UK nationals of acts jointly committed with the US. In particular, did UK nationals have prior knowledge of any internationally wrongful acts? The Peacerights Report records that the panel had concluded:

"The evidence presented (that UK commanders were informed by the US of their military activities, and the selection of targets, and that they were concerned about the use of cluster bombs) suggests that the UK did have knowledge of the circumstances of the internationally wrongful act." (Para 3.8 )

This leads us to the prospect of senior members of the UK Government being criminally responsible before the ICC for the commission of international crimes through joint criminal activities with individuals from the US, and this takes us into the illegality of the war.

It seems clear that the US and UK Governments - and thus senior members of both as individuals - acted with a common purpose in waging aggressive war against Iraq.

In simple terms, it is not necessary here that the participation of UK nationals be an indispensable condition, or that the ICC Prosecutor needs to be satisfied that the attacks or incidents would not have occurred at all without their participation. Instead, the question is: were the UK nationals at least a cog in the wheel of events? The London Tribunal members answered this question in the affirmative.

Building on this, the concept of "joint criminal enterprise" is now well accepted in international criminal law and is particularly useful in examining issues of liability when one of the parties in the joint criminal enterprise goes beyond what was originally agreed, even if the other party did not have full knowledge of this, provided that the act was a necessary and foreseeable consequence of the agreed joint criminal enterprise. And of course, the joint criminal enterprise we are most concerned with here is that of waging aggressive war.

It does, however, need to be stressed as the London Tribunal did that, in examining these issues, in the context of aggressive war, it is not that the ICC would be attempting to actually hold any person accountable for that crime, as it must be recalled that the Elements of Crime have not yet been agreed. Instead, "it would merely be reaching the view that the criminal enterprise of waging aggressive war had been committed as a preliminary circumstance to the prosecution of criminal acts over which it may exercise jurisdiction - namely, Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes."

Other Issues of War Crimes and the Use of Force

In the above section I have touched upon issues concerning the use of an indiscriminate weapons system such as cluster munitions in residential areas; the risk that impermissible military objectives related not to the threat of WMD might have led to war crimes being committed because attacks were not justified (according to military objective) or were disproportionate; and lastly, the link between the "crime of aggression" and joint criminal enterprise. These are three very important issues that I would invite the Panel to examine in detail and consider whether to refer these matters to the ICC. There are others arising from the use of force (rather than the occupation which I deal with below). They all arise from the London Tribunal and thus, the Peacerights Report. I summarise them below with their references:

1. The use of UK bases for the launch of US air attacks involving cluster munitions, or otherwise (para 2.1.3).

2. Attacks on media outlets (paras 2.2.2, 2.2.3).

3. Attacks on civilians and civilian, not military, objectives (paras 2.2.4, 2.2.5 and 2.2.7).

4. Attacks, other than ones involving cluster munitions, which did not discriminate between civilians and combatants (para 2.2.5).

5. Deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and, in particular, electricity supplies (para 2.2.6).

I invite the Panel to explore seriously all the above.

The Illegality of the Occupation Policy

I do not intend to focus on whether the UN Security Council had the power to give the Coalition Forces the legal status of occupying powers, as it purported to do by Security Council Resolution 1483. Although we now see the use made of Security Council Resolutions to undermine and disengage fundamental Human Rights Protections, it seems that, on balance, on the narrow question - was the UN Security Council entitled to give de jure authority to the UK and US as occupying powers - the answer remains, it was.

Thus, the focus of this section is on the illegality of the policy and acts that took place in the occupation. I want to briefly explore two matters. Both involve US and UK troops. The first is deaths and torture in detention and the second, unlawful killings during policing operations.

Those here today will be aware of the abuses by US troops at Abu Ghraib Prison. Who could forget the outrageous photographs of prisoners on a leash, being attacked by dogs or sexually humiliated? But how many are aware of more widespread and similar abuses by US troops at other facilities including Mosul and Camp Bucca? And who knows how many other atrocities have been committed by US troops at other facilities. To make it clear that these are torture allegations I read below extracts from statements of two of my clients. First, an engineer aged 46;

"… I saw a young man of 14 years of age bleeding from his anus and lying on the floor. He was Kurdish and his name was Hama. I heard the soldiers talking to each other about this guy; they mentioned that the reason for this bleeding was inserting a metal object in his anus. I suspected that this was caused by a sexual assault but could not confirm it."

Second, the statement of an agricultural engineer;

"They have shown me in that room photos of certain people whom I knew and I was asked to make certain confessions against them. Once they placed a detainee on a chair in front of me and asked me to say certain words that indicated that I had confessed against him. They brought a man I knew who was fully dressed with a can of coke and some food in his hand, they pointed out that if I would confess I would be in pleasant status like that man. I insisted that I had nothing else to say and I was innocent. Then they advanced the chair I was sitting on very close to a wood fire that they lit which left burns on my leg (photographed)… They inserted some strange objects into my anus and asked me to take very humiliating positions while they messed with me and moved these objects in different directions. They were calling these positions some names, which I did not understand. They took many photos while I was in these positions, they were laughing and enjoying it. There was also a male and a female soldier who sat behind me; they were messing with each other. Their game was that the male soldier would aim at my injured and swollen leg with a piece of rock, as soon as he hit his target and I scream of pain she would reward him by letting him kiss her or fondle her. The stronger my pain was and the louder my scream was, the more he would get from her."

We know now of the US efforts to redefine torture and, in particular, the memorandum of 1 August 2002, from Jay S Bybee, head of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel in which he wrote;

"We conclude that for an act to constitute torture… it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure. Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions or even death."

We know also of the US interrogation techniques involving unusual methods designed not to leave marks. What we do not seem to fully appreciate is how closely UK interrogation techniques resemble those of the US. This is not rhetoric. I am acting in three cases where UK troops have tortured Iraqi civilians to death, ten other torture in detention cases and additionally for nine victims of abuse and torture at Camp Breadbasket. The statements of these victims makes it clear that like the US, members of the UK Armed Forces engaged in practices of sexual humiliation and systematic humiliation of male Muslims, routinely using women to sexually excite male detainees, devised games and routines to humiliate and disorient detainees, used methods of abuse designed not to leave marks, and, in fact, did everything we now know US troops did save for the use of bright lights and loud music. To make this explicit, I read an extract from one of my client's witness statements from a successful High Court case of 14 December 2004. His name is Kifah Taha al-Mutari. He gives evidence about the death in detention of his colleague, Baha Mousa, as well as the torture that he suffered which led to acute kidney failure. He says:

7. Baha appeared to have much worse ill treatment than the others. Two or more soldiers would beat him at a time whereas the rest of us were beaten by one soldier. Baha may have been punished more than the others in an act of revenge. Baha's father, who witnessed the arrest, had informed the officer in charge that he had seen the soldiers stealing money from the hotel. Baha received much more beating than myself and the other detainees. He was not able to stand up and the soldiers continued beating him even while he was on the floor. The soldiers used particular sharp jabbing movements into the area beneath the ribs, which was particularly painful.

8. We all had another hood put on top of the first hood. We were given water by it being poured over the hood so that we had to lick droplets that seeped through the hood. Freezing water was poured on to us and this was very painful as the temperatures in detention were 40 degrees plus. We were given one meal a day consisting of rice with extremely spicy soup, which we could not eat.


…

11. Soldiers took turns in abusing us, at night the number of soldiers increased, sometimes to eight at a time. We were prevented from sleeping throughout the three days as soldiers introduced the "names game". Soldiers would mention some English names of stars or players and request us to remember them, or we would be beaten severely.

12. One terrible game the soldiers played involved kickboxing. The soldiers would surround us and compete as to who could kick box one of us the furthest. The idea was to try and make us crash into the wall.

13. During the detention, Baha was taken into another room and he received more beatings in that room.

14. On the third night Baha was in a separate room and I could hear him moaning through the walls. He was saying that he was bleeding from his nose and that he was dying. I heard him say, "I am dying…blood…. blood…". I heard nothing further from him after that.

15. On the morning of the third night, the other detainees and I were woken up from the only two hours sleep we had been allowed in three days. One soldier asked us to dance like Michael Jackson.

Unfortunately, there is much more to come, and worse. In the Camp Breadbasket incident a Court Martial heard evidence to explain the background to the taking of 22 photographs, publicly available now, of abuse, and humiliation of Iraqi civilians. The UK Government's position was that the victims of the abuse could not be found, and that what happened was that a few "rogue soldiers" took too seriously the order to "work hard" some Iraqi looters inside a food depot. One man was photographed strung up on the forks of a forklift truck. The evidence to the Court Martial was that soldiers had been playing around, and had moved him out of the sun, and it all got out of hand.

Before the Court Martial concluded three victims asked my firm to act for them. Their evidence, which they wanted to put to the Court Martial, was compelling and put a completely different light on events. This included that the victims had lawful authority to be in the camp, that the abuse included torture, that women and sexual humiliation were involved, that officers were involved, and that the camp was being used as a detention centre. Further, the Iraqi photographed in the forklift truck had lawful authority to be at the camp and was being punished for refusing an order to sever the finger of a fellow Iraqi. When I tried to have the victims' evidence heard, the Court Martial decided to ignore it and the Attorney General threatened me with contempt of court proceedings if I attempted to alert the public and media as to what had happened.

Additionally, I have complained to the UK's Attorney General that there is clear evidence that the UK had a systematic torture policy, which requires investigation. The Attorney General has refused to recognise the importance of the issue and refused an investigation.

Both the US and UK Forces have been responsible for large numbers of civilians deaths whilst carrying out policing functions. It is important to emphasise that there is a different set of legal rules during an occupation, as compared to a war, and both the US and UK were bound by Geneva Convention IV which protects civilians. Further, both had legal powers of policing through Security Council Resolution 1483 and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The CPA passed a huge amount of legislation during the period 22 May 2003 and 28 June 2004 through 11 Regulations (R1-11), 97 Orders (O1-97), 14 Memoranda (M1-14) and 11 Public Notices (PN1-11). These included weapons control (M5, O3).

I have about thirty cases of deaths at the hands of UK troops during policing functions. The following points can be made:

1. The soldiers killed civilians, some in their homes, whilst operating under rules of engagement, which should have been changed from the war to the different circumstances of the occupation.

2. The soldiers appear not to have been trained in the basic elements of Iraqi civil society. For example, people were killed after the customary discharge of guns at funeral parties were mistaken for gun battles.

3. In virtually all cases the Commanding Officer concluded on the basis of the soldiers' evidence only that there had been no breach of the ROE, which remain secret.

4. That no soldier, let alone officer, has been charged with any of the detention incidents let alone these unlawful killing cases.

5. That there appears to be a large number of civilian deaths at the hands of UK troops during the period May 2003 to January 2004.

As for US troops' actions during the occupation much of what they have done is hidden from view because of the role of the media. I want to focus on events in Falluja to give some legal input before the witness evidence in tomorrow's fourth session. It seems from what we know that US troops engaged in acts of collective punishment towards the civilian population of Falluja from at least April 2004 onwards. Some of the few eyewitness accounts that exist are now emerging. One of the few reporters to reach the city is American Dahr Jamail of the Inter Press Service. He interviewed a doctor who had filmed the testimony of a 16-year-old girl:

"She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in her home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12-year-old brother and two sisters.

She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything. They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers whilst shouting at them, so they shot him dead."

Another report comes from an aid convoy headed by Doctor Salem Ismael. He was in Falluja in February 2005. As well as delivering aid he photographed the dead, including children, and interviewed remaining residents. He reports:

"The accounts I heard … will live with me forever. You may think you know what happened in Falluja, but the truth is worse than anything you could possibly have imagined."

Doctor Ismael relates the story of Hudda Fawzi Salam Issawi from Falluja:

"Five of us, including a 55-year-old neighbour, were trapped together in our house in Falluja when the siege began. On 9 November, American Marines came to our house. My father and the neighbour went to the door to meet them. We were not fighters. We thought we had nothing to fear. I ran into the kitchen to put on my veil, since men were going to enter our house and it would be wrong for them to see me with my hair uncovered. This saved my life. As my father and neighbour approached the door, the Americans opened fire on them. They died instantly. Me and my 13-year-old brother hid in the kitchen behind the fridge. The soldiers came into the house and caught my oldest sister. They beat her. Then they shot her. But they did not see me. Soon they left, but not before they had destroyed our furniture and stolen the money from my father's pocket."

Naomi Klein has also produced evidence about what she sees as the US Forces laying siege to Falluja "in retaliation for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater employees". She speaks of hundreds of civilians being killed during the siege in April 2004, and of a deliberate tactic of eliminating doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties previously.

All of the above acts are arguably "crimes against humanity" "defined by section 7 ICC Statute) as "murder" (Article 7 (1)(a)), "extermination" (Article 7 (1)(b)) or "other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health" (Article 7 (1)(k)). Further, they may be "war crimes" (defined by Article 8 of the ICC Statute) as a "wilful killing" (Article 8 (2)(a)(i)), "wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health" (Article 8 (2)(a)(iii)) or "intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities" (Article 8 (2)(b)(i)) or "intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such an attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated" (Article 8 (2)(b)(iv).

As for the latter, questions need to be addressed as to military objectives and proportionality. If the force used was "clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated" then it would be disproportionate and unlawful. However, it must be remembered that this was a lawful occupation authorised by Resolution 1483. In its recitals, this recognised "the specific authorities, responsibilities, and obligations under applicable international law of [both] states as occupying powers under unified command". The UK and US had to respect Geneva Convention IV. Thus decisions about military objectives and proportionality cannot be approached as if this were a time of war. But even if they could, it is hard to see how the US could possibly justify these acts, if proven. Further, liability does not stop with the US. I have already set out the arguments about joint criminal enterprise and thus the responsibility of the UK for the acts of the US. Legally, these arguments as to joint responsibility are enhanced during the occupation. Not only were both states acting under de jure authority as occupying powers but also they were also senior partners within the CPA and thus responsible for all the legislative and administrative functions I have noted above. Thus, a legal analysis of the issue of accountability for incidents such as these from Falluja, which may involve "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity", must begin by recognising, first, the lawful authority of the US and UK to both occupy and administer Iraq, and second, recognising the protection of civilians through international humanitarian law, specifically Geneva Convention IV, and international human rights law, especially the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the ECHR. It is also critically important to appreciate that any proper accountability is entirely dependant upon a lawful independent investigation being conducted. That is the importance of the protection given to the Right to Life (ECHR, Art2; IICPR Art 6) by the requirement to hold such an inquiry. For example, if states know at the outset that killings and torture during an occupation will be investigated independently then this knowledge should be reflected in improved training for Armed Forces and thus more Human Rights compliant behaviour. Further, the requirement for independence is not met by the military investigation. It is only when such an independent investigation unearths who is responsible that one gets to deal with questions as to who, if anyone, should be charged with "crimes against humanity" or "war crimes". Accordingly, one sees that it is pre-judging the issues arising from the incidents in Falluja to say that those responsible in a few incidents were acting within the rules of engagement and using proportionate force.

The US and UK should have been proceeding on the basis that a lawful approach to international humanitarian law and international human rights law relevant to the protection of civilians in an occupation would be expected of them and rigorously enforced by the international community through, for example, if appropriate, critical Resolutions of the Security Council. But it is not too late for accountability, and this Tribunal may be part of a future process that leads to it.

Conclusion

The Iraq war and occupation challenges us all to face the threat to international law by the actions of the US, UK and other members of the coalition. We must be resolute in our determination to make international law stronger and more concerned with peace. There must be accountability for the dreadful numbers of Iraqi civilian casualties in this aggressive war and bearing in mind the use of indiscriminate methods of attack. There cannot be impunity for the acts of torture in detention - and in some cases deaths - nor the wanton killing of civilians during the occupation. In so far as US and UK interrogation techniques violate Article 1 of UN Convention on Torture, it cannot be acceptable that there be impunity. Accountability - rather than impunity - rests on two building blocks:

1. That there be an independent investigation to establish who is responsible for what acts and how far up the chain of command should responsibility lie. That is the importance of the positive obligation of Article 3 of the ECHR, and thus the critical importance of UK cases that attempt to establish that the ECHR did apply during the occupation.

2. That the ICC Prosecutor fulfils its functions to make those responsible for these "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" accountable through principles of individual criminal liability. In decisions over the next few months as to how, if at all, to investigate and prosecute these matters, it is important that he recognise the fundamental duty he has to uphold the rule of law.


This paper was presented at the World Tribunal on Iraq, which met in Istanbul from 23 to 27 June 2005

[gilipolla]

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/index.php
News From Inside Iraq



Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself.

His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource and he is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr's dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On the radio, Dahr is a special correspondent for Flashpoints and reports for Democracy Now!, and numerous other stations around the globe.

Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.

[gilipolla]

http://www.irak.be/ned/index.htm



uruknet.info
اوروكنت.إنفو

informazione dall'iraq occupato
information from occupied iraq

http://www.uruknet.info/?l=e&p=-6&hd=0&size=1

[gilipolla]

Final Declaration

A military coalition has launched itself into an unbridled exploitation of the world’s resources and energy reserves. Fuelled by neo-conservatives, it has increased its attacks, practicing all forms of interference, from forcing changes in regimes to colonial-style expansionism. This coalition continually violates the principles of international law as they were established by the conference of the Hague and laid out in the San Francisco Charter.

This group masks its ambitions by intoxicating the media and by deceiving international organizations. It practices a double standard by unjustly accusing those who stand in their way of not respecting the rules whilst violating them themselves. The coalition betrays democratic ideals when claiming to serve them through military occupation.

To justify their thirst for conquest, they form terrorist groups with the aim of manipulating them, create pretexts for military action, propagate theories of an international Muslim plot and fuel conflicts between civilizations. They seize power for themselves and contribute to pushing humanity toward ruin and disorder.

To stop this process, we appeal to the well-intentioned permanent members of the UN Security Council. We ask them to enforce the respect of the sovereignty of nations, which forms the basis of international law and constitutes a precondition for the development of democracy in its genuine form. We deplore that France, initially opposed to the invasion of Irak, has joined the ranks of those who proffer menaces against new targets.

We salute the mediation of Russia who stands by the application of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and the presumption of innocence in international relations. We call upon the UN General Assembly to support Russia’s efforts in favor of the re-establishment of a multilateral dialogue; to support its strong stance against financing terrorism, double standards in international politics and the interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

On our behalf, we engage ourselves, similarly to that which has been done in Latin America, to continue to mobilize public opinion in order to combat hatred and propaganda and to reject all projects of global domination and exploitation.

It is time to unite and to ensure peace.

http://www.axisforpeace.net/article681.html

[gilipolla]

http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/corporatemedia.html
Corporate Media Ignores US Hypocrisy on War Crimes

By Peter Phillips

During the first week of December 03, US corporate media reported that American forensic teams are working to document some 41 mass graves in Iraq to support future war crime tribunals in that country. Broadly covered in the media, as well, was the conviction of General Stanislav Galic by a UN tribunal for war crimes committed by Bosnian Serb troops under his command during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992-94.

These stories show how corporate media likes to give the impression that the US government is working diligently to root out evil doers around the world and to build democracy and freedom. This theme is part of a core ideological message in support of our recent wars on Panama, Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Governmental spin transmitted by a willing US media establishes simplistic mythologies of good vs. evil often leaving out historical context, special transnational corporate interests, and prior strategic relationships with the dreaded evil ones.

The hypocrisy of US policy and corporate media complicity is evident in the coverage of Donald Rumsfeld's stop over in Mazar-e Sharif Afghanistan December 4 to meet with regional warlord and mass killer General Abdul Rashid Dostum and his rival General Ustad Atta Mohammed. Rumsfeld was there to finalize a deal with the warlords to begin the decommissioning of their military forces in exchange for millions of dollars in international aid and increased power in the central Afghan government.

Few people in the US know that General Abdul Rashid Dostum fought alongside the Russians in the 1980s, commanding a 20,000-man army. He switched sides in 1992 and joined the Mujahidin when they took power in Kabul. For over a decade, Dostum was a regional warlord in charge of six northern provinces, which he ran like a private fiefdom, making millions, by collecting taxes on regional trade and international drug sales. Forced into exile in Turkey by the Taliban in 1998, he came back into power as a military proxy of the US during the invasion of Afghanistan.

Charged with mass murder of prisoners of war in the mid-90s by the UN, Dostum is known to use torture and assassinations to retain power. Described by the Chicago Sun Times (10/21/01) as a "cruel and cunning warlord," he is reported to use tanks to rip apart political opponents or crush them to death. Dostum, a seventh grade dropout, likes to put up huge pictures of himself in the regions he controls, drinks Johnnie Walker Blue Label, and rides in an armor-plated black Cadillac.

A documentary entitled Massacre at Mazar released in 2002 by Scottish film producer, Jamie Doran, exposes how Dostum, in cooperation with U.S. special forces, was responsible for the torturing and deaths of approximately 3,000 Taliban prisoners-of-war in November of 2001. In Doran's documentary, two witnesses report on camera how they were forced to drive into the desert with hundreds of Taliban prisoners held in sealed cargo containers. Most of the prisoners suffocated to death in the vans and Dostum's soldiers shot the few prisoners left alive. One witness told the London Guardian that a US Special Forces vehicle was parked at the scene as bulldozers buried the dead. A soldier told Doran that U.S. troops masterminded a cover-up. He said the Americans ordered Dostum's people to get rid of the bodies before satellite pictures could be taken.

Dostum admits that a few hundred prisoners died, but asserts that it was a mistake or that they died from previous wounds. He has kept thousands of Taliban as prisoners-of-war since 2001 and continues to ransom them to their families for ten to twenty thousand dollars each.

Doran's documentary was shown widely in Europe, prompting an attempt by the UN to investigate, but Dostum has prevented any inspection by saying that he could not guarantee safety for forensic teams in the area.

During the recent meeting with Dostum, Donald Rumsfeld is quote as saying, "I spent many weeks in the Pentagon following closely your activities, I should say your successful activities." (Washington Post 12/5/03) The Post wrote how General Dostum was instrumental in routing Taliban forces from Northern Afghanistan in the early weeks of the war two years ago, but said nothing about General Dostum's brutal past. Nor has US broadcast media aired Doran's documentary.

It seems that the US government's interest in addressing mass graves and war crimes extends only to our opponents and that we tolerate such inhuman behavior among those who support our political agendas. The corporate media's complicity in this hypocrisy is a glaring example of the need for widespread media reform in the US.

Peter Phillips is Department Chair and Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored; a media research organization.

[gilipolla]

http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/covering_iraq/archives//000316.php#more
Covering Iraq

The Dark Cloud of Democracy
November 09, 2005
The Advocate

On September 29, 2005, shortly after 8 p.m., Amal Kadhum Swadi, and her youngest son Safa were arrested by U.S. forces in the Ghazaliya district of Baghdad on suspicion of planting an improvised explosive device.

They were just leaving their Baghdad home with other family members, and had opened their garage door to take out the family car, when the Swadi family were swarmed by multiple Humvees and numerous heavily armed U.S. Soldiers with weapons drawn.

Haloed by headlights and surrounded by agitated soldiers, mother and son were separated from each other and hidden from view of other family members behind a wall of troops and humvees. They were blindfolded and handcuffed tightly with the plastic zap straps and hoods that have become potent symbols of the dehumanization of Iraqis under occupation.

Ms. Swadi and Safa were made to squat on the highway’s dirt embankment while Zaid, her eldest son, was issued a handwritten receipt for his mother and brother. As Zaid yelled into the crowd of soldiers, trying to get response from his mother, Ms. Swadi and Safa were being packed into humvees for the trip to the Airport Detention Facility for further processing, leaving Zaid in a cloud of dust, clutching his receipt and trying to console his sobbing sister.

I first met Amal Swadi in Istanbul, at the culminating session of The World Tribunal on Iraq. Ms. Swadi was part of the Iraqi delegation invited to give testimony on their experiences of occupation; as a lawyer representing women held in Abu Ghraib and other U.S. and British detention facilities in Iraq, Ms. Swadi was there to speak on the degenerating state of human rights.

As I found out, Ms. Swadi is no stranger to the occupation, or the media covering it. As a lawyer willing to take on the mass of occupation, she is well known for her outspoken advocacy for those unfortunates caught in the machinery of occupation.

Amal Swadi is 52, and was accompanied to the Istanbul tribunal by her daughter, and eldest son Zaid, who is also a lawyer. At the events opening party, I was presented to Ms. Swadi and Zaid, whose love and respect for his mother were instantly apparent. He studied me closely as I was introduced, and when I put my hand out to shake his mother’s, he smiled and took it warmly.

Ms. Swadi, a humble religious woman, immediately forgave my lack of understanding of Islamic culture, and after a short conversation, agreed to be interviewed (the video of this interview will be available shortly).

Ms. Swadi’s involvement with investigations into female prisoners of the occupation started when she was told about a message the women detained in Abu Ghraib were trying to get to the resistance. The message, which had become public knowledge in the streets of Bagdad, was begging the resistance to attack Abu Ghraib with rockets, as the women held inside had given up hope, and could no longer bare the gross abuses and torture inflicted upon them daily. In Islam, as in Christianity, suicide is regarded as an ultimate sin, so these women were asking to be killed. Since then, Ms. Swadi has tirelessly worked for the recognition and release of these detainees (at the time I met her, she was representing nine of these shadow women).

Ms. Swadi told me of her visits to Abu Ghraib, and the difficulties she experienced in trying to gain access to the women held inside, including U.S. force’s outright denial of the women’s existence. When attempts to intimidate her did not work, dismissive guardsmen simply turned her away. When Ms. Swadi returned to Abu Ghraib for her second visit, she was accompanied by a determination cast in the previous sleepless night. Her resolve was eventually rewarded, and after waiting all day in one of the compound’s courtyards under the desert sun, without water or food, she was finally allowed access to her clients (six in total). Ms. Swadi told me the emotion of the experience was overwhelming, and she broke down and sobbed along with the first detainee presented.

Detainees were presented to her in a small, dark cement room that looked to be set up for interrogations. The women were escorted into the room through a heavy door behind a chair and desk. The guards accompanying her remained inches from these broken souls throughout the visits (it is referred to as being ‘in control’ of their subject).

The first detainee presented was a young woman in her 20’s. She was in poor condition, pale and gaunt, barely able to stand, and looked to be suffering from mental collapse. The woman stared at the floor, and when she did finally look up and see her visitor from the outside world, the two broke down.

During her brief interview, hindered not only by the woman’s captors who hovered only inches away at all times, but also by the woman’s fragile, quivering voice, Ms. Swadi learned how this woman’s young son and brother were killed in front of her during a raid on her home conducted by U.S. forces. She carried a crudely stitched wound the length of her forearm, which came from the bayonet of a soldier involved in the raid.

Since her arrest, the woman had been held naked in a small cement cell, without proper bedding or toilet. The woman spoke of rape and torture at the hands of her American and Iraqi captors. With Congress being presented with the images of Iraqi women forced to bare themselves as U.S. soldiers held guns to their heads, and with the Pentagon’s own acknowledgment of rape in their detention facilities, it is not hard to give credence to Ms. Swadi’s claims.

General Antonio Taguba, appointed to head the Pentagon’s investigation into Abu Ghraib torture and abuse allegations (which was restricted to investigation into members of the 800th Military Police Brigade), acknowledged that U.S. soldiers participated in rape at the prison. This acknowledgment came in the form of an inter-Pentagon memo in which General Taguba referred to images of American guards ‘having sex’ with female Iraqi detainees. Mr. Taguba’s choice of language when referring to rape is revealing, and further clarifies the Pentagon’s desensitized, casual attitude towards these crimes.

These images clearly depict violent sex crimes, with one congressman who was given access to these images collected by the Pentagon, stating that he believes the release will spark massive demonstrations and endanger Americans abroad (hardly the image of ‘consensual sex’ alluded to by Taguba).

General Taguba also reported that U.S. soldiers made videos of these violent sex crimes, a common practice amongst sex offenders, who often take trophies from their crimes to help them relive the event later (it is a practice that has aided greatly in the prosecuting of sex offences and will hopefully do the same in these cases). General Taguba has also acknowledged at least two pregnancies resulting from these sex crimes involving female detainees in Abu Ghraib.

With a recent attempt by the Senate to ban the Pentagon’s use of torture, and President Bush’s response of threatened veto of this bill, along with White House negotiations to exempt the CIA from any restraint with regards to torture, the image of a systematic use of torture becomes illuminated. For those already aware of the Phoenix Operation and the CIA’s past publication of torture manuals, this comes as no surprise.

On January 27, 1997, Baltimore Sun journalists Gary Cohn, Ginger Thompson, and Mark Matthews ran a story in their paper under the headline “Torture was taught by CIA”. The reporters relied heavily on two manuals printed by the CIA, and released under pressure from the Sun’s 1994 freedom of information challenge. The first manual, entitled KUBARAK Counterintelligence Interrogation- July 1963, along with the updated Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual-1983 Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual-1983, paint a picture of decades of CIA torture policy.

Although the Pentagon has maintained that these manuals were created only for educational purposes, in order to help U.S. troops identify torture facilities, the manuals themselves refute this position.

The 1963 manual states in the section entitled The Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources that “drugs (and the other aids discussed in this section) should not be used persistently to facilitate the interrogative debriefing that follows capitulation. Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation. Once this shift has been accomplished, coercive techniques should be abandoned both for moral reasons and because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive.”

The 1963 version also deals with the layout of ‘interrogation’ facilities, as noted in the Sun’s article. The manual states: “the electric current should be known in advance, so that transformers or other modifying devices will be on hand if needed.”

It is important to note that the updated 1983 manual first came to light publicly when it was recovered by resistance forces in Guatemala, who recovered it from U.S. backed military death squads in that country, who acquired this manual from the CIA School of the Americas training camp in Fort Benning, Georgia. It is also important to note that the U.S. embassy in neighboring Honduras has been generally accepted as the headquarters of CIA operations in Central America, with John Negroponte acting as ambassador during the bloody 1980’s (the same Negroponte apointed ambassador to Iraq when torture policy in Iraq first came to light).

These two manuals, and the visage of years of torture policy in Vietnam under the watchful eyes of the CIA, leave any argument of ‘rogue element’ responsibility for torture rather than systematic policy, totally unbelievable and impotent.

In the closing years of the U.S. occupation of Vietnam, and as it became more publicly obvious the U.S. was fighting those it claimed to protect (that in fact attacks on U.S. forces deep inside South Vietnam were being launched by the South Vietnamese themselves), the CIA launched a massive counter intelligence campaign aimed at targeting the South Vietnamese resistance, code named Phoenix.

With the Phoenix operation, the CIA started to compile lists of Vietnamese persons of interest. These lists were based on collected data and information gathered during subject ‘interviews’, and listed men, women and children as young as 15 and as old as 70.

This intelligence-gathering program was jointly run by US agents and those they recruited amongst the South Vietnamese forces. The administration of this program was eventually handed over completely to South Vietnamese forces, which kept no record of their victims; The CIA however, did, and by the end of official CIA involvement in Phoenix, over 20,000 Vietnamese listed had been tortured and murdered.

In 1971, Bart Osborn, a former CIA agent, told Congress "I never knew in the course of all those operations, any detainee to live through his interrogation. They all died. There was never any reasonable establishment of the fact that any one of those individuals was, in fact, cooperating with the VC, but they all died and the majority were either tortured to death or . . . thrown out of helicopters."

As Nick Schou reports, “Operation Phoenix detainees were tortured with electric shocks applied to their genitals, while women prisoners were typically raped, occasionally with foreign objects.” (hauntingly similar to claims of treatment of modern Iraqi detainees).

Mr. Schou also points out in his article: Operation Phoenix Rises from the Ashes of History, that the CIA is now employing the Saddam era Mukhabarat (Iraqi Secret Intelligence similar in scope to the CIA) to investigate resistance support. Mr. Schou relies on statements by Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counter-terrorism, to highlight what this means. Cannistraro was quoted in the Sunday Telegraph as saying "They’re clearly cooking up joint teams to do Phoenix-like things, like they did in Vietnam."

As an advocate for those held without charge or trial by an occupation rooted in illegality, and under the increasing scrutiny of a world skeptical of U.S. intentions in Iraq, Amal Swadi is a person of interest indeed.

Amal Swadi and her 17-year-old son Safa, were brought into the heart of the machinery of occupation for processing. Ms Swadi blindfold and shackles were removed and she was instructed by her interrogator to answer questions related to her person.

Ms. Swadi and Safa, were fingerprinted and made to undergo retinal scans. Her name, her husband’s name, and the names of her children were all documented. She was also asked her age, her address, and her occupation. Most alarming however was the collection of data on her religious status; apparently the U.S. military occupation felt it was pertinent to document if Ms. Swadi was Shia or Sunni.

What must be addressed is the motivation of U.S. occupational forces in recording individual’s religious affiliations in a country that is increasingly being divided along these very same religious lines, both in reality and by an oversimplified, blood frenzied corporate media intent on enflaming old rivalries. Why would U.S. forces be creating databases of information that could further pressurize this unstable situation (this also at a time of U.S. collusion with Saddam era secret police)?

During the years of heavy U.N. sanctions, most in Iraq depended upon government assistance to supplement their nutritional needs. This aid came in the form of food rations, and was facilitated through the issuance of ration cards. In order to receive a card, information was given and processed, but the question of religious affiliation was not included. Much like in Tito’s Yugoslavia, the secular Saddam era Iraq did not want religious distinction to become paramount. This lack of statistical data leaves in question population figures with regards to religious denomination continually referred to by occupational forces and parroted by the corporate media.

For Saddam Hussein, as it was for Tito, national identity was key to maintaining power, which simply meant stripping religion of any importance in public life. It was in fact this disregard for religion that made fundamentalist al-Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein bitter enemies.

The effect of this continual simplification of issues into Shia and Sunni has helped fuel a civil divide that is now being used as an excuse for occupation (Simply argued by both the British and U.S. occupational forces; if we leave they will kill each other).

It also hints of what was referred to as the 'Vietnamising of the war' in the later stages of that occupation. In an effort to reduce American casualties, the Pentagon trained native troops to do most of the heavy casualty fighting of occupation by fueling communist/capitalist phobias much in the same way religious difference is being highlighted now.

Although Ms. Swadi and Safa's stories end for the time being on the limited high note of release (after being 'tagged' and 'processed' like livestock, mother and son were released back into the general population without further harm), the experience forewarns the enormity of the human rights disaster being perpetrated against the civilian population of Iraq in the name of democracy. It also explains why this information remains a mystery to most Americans, as this arrest clearly demonstartes the tactics used by a corrupt occupation to intimidate any daring to stand up.

Although generally unreported, this physical and psychological genocide is well underway and is being carried out by a U.S. Administration and Pentagon learned in the powers of terrorism and civil divide. It is a leadership willing to rape, torture, and murder much in the same way the U.S. war machine did in Vietnam, and as in Vietnam (which saw over 4 million direct deaths and countless others who continue to die from the arbitrary use of the WMD Agent Orange), this current illegal and emboldened occupation will likely post similar genocidal tallies if not made to immediately account for its activities and be held responsible for these actions.

Andrew Stromotich is an independent journalist and founding member of Dropframe Communications.

Video interview of Ms. Swadi at the Istanbul WTI shot for Dropframe by Rana Al-Aioubi and Andrew Stromotich will be released soon at www.dropframe.ca

Posted by Andrew_Stromotich at November 9, 2005 06:26 PM

[gilipolla]

http://www.irak.be/ned/nieuws/biological_warfare.htm
Biological warfare and the people of Iraq

The only property of microorganisms that enables them to be used as biological weapons is their capacity to cause infectious disease. People may be deliberately exposed to pathogenic microorganisms in a variety of ways but it is the fact of exposure rather than the method of delivery that determines whether disease will result. Because the ability to cause infection is the defining aspect of a biological weapon, then any malevolent intervention that causes infection in the civilian population constitutes an attack with a biological weapon.

Microorganisms are necessary but not sufficient in the causation of infectious disease and other causal factors are required for infection to occur(1). Host resistance is an important factor in the chain of causation leading to clinical infection (2). Whether or not exposure to a microorganism causes disease depends on whether or not the exposed individual is susceptible or immune. Dietary deficiency of key vitamins and micro-nutrients increases susceptibility to a number of infectious agents and also increases the likelihood that infectious disease will result in severe illness and death. Vitamin A and zinc deficiency impair the ability of the immune system to fight infection and the ability of mucous membranes to resist infection.2,3 Indeed, the decline in infectious diseases in high income countries is more readily attributed to increased host resistance from better nutrition than to a reduction in the virulence of the relevant microorganisms. It follows that any malevolent intervention that impairs the ability of a civilian population to resist infection constitutes biological warfare.

In public health practice, prevention involves removing one or more of the components in the chain of causation leading to disease. From an epidemiological perspective, causation and prevention are two sides of the same coin (1). For this reason, a consideration of the actions that can prevent infectious disease from occurring after exposure to a biological agent can help to identify the other components in the causal chain. For example, following an attack with anthrax, spores can be washed off with soap and water and oral antibiotics can be given to prevent infection from developing (4). If an anthrax attack occurred in situations where antibiotics were unavailable then some cases of anthrax infection would be attributable to their absence. Consequently, any malevolent intervention that destroys a populations' ability to respond effectively to infectious diseases constitutes a biological attack.

These rather mundane scientific considerations have important implications for how biological warfare is defined in the context of the current conflict in Iraq. First, it implies that the Anglo-American bombing of water supplies, sanitation plants, and the power plants that are necessary for their functioning, constitutes a biological attack. Standard texts on biological weapons point out that three factors must be taken into account in selecting a biological agent for a biological attack: ease of manufacture, stability and lethality. Despite widespread public concern about the use of anthrax, smallpox and plague, all three are difficult to manufacture and disseminate. Anthrax requires sophisticated methods of manufacture and virulent stock is hard to find. The only confirmed sources of smallpox are in the US and Russia, and plague is both difficult to obtain and difficult to weaponize.4 On the other hand, the microbial agents that can cause devastating epidemics of diarrhea are ubiquitous, lethal and are readily disseminated by destroying the civilian sanitation infrastructure by bombing or otherwise destroying water sanitation and sewage disposal systems. These actions will ensure that food and water supplies to the civilian population will quickly become contaminated. Because the feces of infected persons will further contaminate the water supply and because there will be extensive person to person transmission this strategy has the potential to result in extensive, population wide and self propagating epidemics. The scope for civilian casualties with such an approach is massive in comparison with the use of agents such as anthrax for which there is no evidence of person to person transmission. Declassified documents from the American Defense Intelligence Agency show that during the 1991 Gulf War, the 'Allies' deliberately targeted Iraq's water supply. Twelve years later, half the water treatment plants are still out of action (5).

Second, the economic sanctions imposed by the Nations Security Council that have caused widespread dietary deficiencies throughout the civilian populations, seriously reducing the ability of the population to resist infection, constitutes a form of biological warfare. Microorganisms that pose little threat to those with intact immune systems can be highly lethal to those with impaired immunity as a result of micronutrient deficiency and malnutrition. For example, life threatening diarrhea can be caused by ubiquitous microbes such as E. Coli that reside in the gastro-intestinal tract and common respiratory viruses can cause highly lethal pneumonia. As a result of the sanctions against Iraq there has been a more than doubling of the infant and under five mortality rates, with most of the excess child deaths being due to diarrhea and pneumonia exacerbated by malnutrition.6 The imposition of economic sanctions in Iraq is as much a form of biological attack as was the distribution of anthrax in the US mail system.

Third, the destruction of the Iraqi populations' ability to respond to outbreaks of infectious disease by restricting the importation of essential medicines and medical equipment, by destroying the public health infrastructure and by overwhelming the capacity of the healthcare system to respond effectively constitutes a further biological attack.

Fourth, having destroyed Iraq's water and sanitation systems, leaving the civilian population highly vulnerable to major epidemics of infectious disease, the failure to restore the public health infrastructure and provide safe water supplies to homes and hospitals constitutes a biological attack. In this context, recent reports that reconstruction contracts may be awarded to the US company Bechtel are a particular cause for concern. In 1999, a Bechtel subsidiary took over the control of the public water system in Cochabamba in Bolivia and within weeks doubled and tripled the water rates for some of the poorest families in South America resulting in massive public demonstrations.7 Also, we must not forget that in the case of Afghanistan, despite the Bush administration's claim that 'the US will not walk away from the Afghan people,' the administration subsequently forgot to ask for any money for humanitarian and reconstruction costs in its 2003 budget. The full extent of civilian casualties resulting from the war on Iraq will become clear in the coming weeks and months. An effective humanitarian response must be mounted urgently to reduce the death toll from this appalling episode in the history of biological warfare.

References

1. Rothman KJ. Modern Epidemiology. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1986.

2. Stephensen CB. Vitamin A, infection and immune function. Annu Rev Nutr 2001;21:167-

192

3. Berger A. What does zinc do? BMJ 2002;325:1062

4. Levy BS, Sidel VW (eds) Terrorism and Public Health. ISBN 9-780195158342

5. Sengupta K. The Independent. Saturday April 19, 2003

6. Arnove A (ed). Iraq Under Siege: The deadly impact of sanctions and war. Pluto Press,

London 2003.

7. Palast G. New British Empire of the dammed. Observer. Sunday April 23, 2000

Ian Roberts

Professor of Public Health

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,

University of London WC1B 3DP

E-Mail: ian.roberts@LSHTM.ac.uk

[gilipolla]

http://www.irak.be/ned/archief/irak.htm
Iraqi scientific research, articles and pictures about the effects on the civilian population of the use of depleted uranium during the Gulfwar

Environmental Damages Resulted From Using Depleted Uranium Weaponry Against Iraq During 1991 Aggression by USA and its Allies - Ass. Prof. Dr. Souad N. Al-Azzawi - Head of Environmental Engineering Department for Graduate Studies College of Engineering - University of Baghdad (Powerpoint presentation)

Depleted uranium and cancer in Iraq - Lessons from Basrah Research Team (Powerpoint presentation)

Victims of war and sanctions in Southern Iraq (Powerpoint presentation)
The Evidence For Causal Association Between Exposure To Depleted Uranium And Malignancies Among Children In Basrah By Applying Epidemiological Criteria Of Causality

The effect of depleted uranium on the development of the eyes in Iraq (powerpoint presentation)

DEPLETED URANIUM AND HEALTH OF PEOPLE IN BASRAH: EPIDEMILOGICAL EVIDENCE - INCIDENCE AND PATTERN OF CONGENITAL ANOMALIES AMONG BIRTHS IN BASRAH DURING THE PERIOD 1990-2000

A. INCIDENCE AND PATTERN OF MALIGNANT DISEASES AMONG CHILDREN IN BASRAH WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO LEUKAMIAS DURING THE PERIOD 1990-1998.

B. INCIDENCE AND PATTERN OF CONGENITAL ANOMALIES AMONG BIRTHS IN BASRAH DURING THE PERIOD 1990-1998.
C. INCIDENCE AND PATTERN OF MALIGNANT DISEASES (EXCLUDING LEUKAEMIAS) DURING 1990-1997.

- Teratologie of aangeboren misvormingen (foto's) - pictures of congenital anomalies and malignacies among children- en meer misvormingen (more pictures of extreme deformities)

Selected Research Works on the Effect of DU on Man & Environment in Iraq - from the Conference on the Effect of the Use of Depleted Uranium Weaponary on Human and Environment in Iraq Published by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Republic of Iraq - March 26-27, 2002. From IDUST - International Depleted Uranium Study Team. IDUST is a Non-governmental Organization (NGO) of international researchers, activists and scientists dedicated to stopping the use of Depleted Uranium U-238 (DU) in military weapons by the year 2010, founded by Damacio A. Lopez, New Mexico, USA.

Proceedings of the Conference on the Effect of DU on Man & Environment in Iraq - Vol. I - Published by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Republic of Iraq - March 26-27, 2002.

speech of Beate Mittmann and Peter Priskil for the "Conference on the Effects of the Use of Depleted Uranium Weaponry on Human and Environment in Iraq" during 26th/27th of March 2002 in Baghdad. read more....

Websites over Depleted Uranium

Website over Depleted Uranium

Website over Depleted Uranium (2)

the Pandora project - UK

IDUST - International Depleted Uranium Study Team, USA. Click here... to have a look at their documents on DU.

Look at the Depleted Uranium pages of the International Action Center
Look at the DU pages of Traprock Peace Center
Mistery metal nightmare in Afghanistan (Dai Williams)

Artikels over Depleted Uranium

Tekst over de gevolgen van depleted uranium

Should war become obsolete (Joann Baker) 07/03/2003

Verslag van het symposium op 25 oktober 2000 - VERARMD URANIUM MAAKT ONZICHTBAAR VEEL SLACHTOFFERS

De meest schadelijke oorlog van de geschiedenis - Wapens met verarmd uranium, in Irak en in Joegoslavië

Dossier Het Navo-syndroom: tien jaar leugens over verarmd uranium
Michel Collon - Solidair 17-01-2001

Uranium “Er zit een gat in mijn hersenen maar het leger ontkent”
Solidair 21-02-2001

Verarmd uranium: De Navo en het leger willen ons doen zwijgen
Antoine Renard, Michel Collon - Solidair 24-01-2001

Dossier Uranium: het woord aan slachtoffers & experts Michel Collon - Solidair 28-03-2001

Dossier Uranium: deel 2 - Solidair 28-03-2001

Dossier Uranium: deel 3 - Solidair 28-03-2001

Dossier Uranium: info en actie - Solidair 28-03-2001

The use of DU against Iraq

Depleted Uranium and secret services in the UK

Militair Industrieel complex

Alliant Techsystems (ATK) - A Technology Leader in Aerospace and Defense
Starmet Products

[gilipolla]

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=17772&hd=0&size=1&l=x
White Phosphorous, Daisy cutters, Depleted Uranium, Thermobaric bombs, Clusterbombs, Napalm...The US uses WMD against civilians.

Dirk Adriaensens, coordinator SOS Iraq, Executive committee BRussells Tribunal
(12 Nov 2005)


"Injuries to everyone involved in war - civilians and troops of all sides - shown supreme contempt for international humanitarian law ever since WW2.

If this war shows one thing it is the need for the World to start to get control over the barbarity of the US military industrial complex. Criticisms of Saddam Hussein's record of atrocities fade into history as they are eclipsed by the industrialised killing that US Forces have spent billions of dollars perfecting."
(Dai Williams, April 06 2003)


The war on Iraq is an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. Many health workers, professionals and students the world over added their voices to the massive protest movement. They were of the opinion that, apart from providing health services, their task also includes the prevention of diseases, injuries, and death because of this unjust war.

Despite the global protests, war was unleashed on Iraq. The Belgian NGOs Medical Aid for the Third World (MATW) www.m3m.be in cooperation with S.O.S. Iraq ( www.irak.be ) had a Medical Team of two doctors in Baghdad, Dr. Geert Van Moorter and Dr. Colette Moulaert. They remained in Iraq during the bombings and the invasion to witness the American and British aggression. They coordinated with the Ministry of Health, the Iraqi Red Crescent and international institutions including the World Health Organization and Unicef.

Their report from April 3 2003, that I copied underneath, described the use of some terrible weapons used by the US forces. I sent this report at the time to Dai Williams, weapons expert, to analyze the descriptions given by Dr. Geert Van Moorter.

Dai Williams' answer, also copied underneath, includes a report from BBC reporter Adam Mynot (5 April 2003), who described civilian casualties with severe burns near Nasiriyah. "The Phosphorus turned the inside of his house white hot". Even Dai Williams couldn't believe then that White Phosphorus was used against civilians. But now we know the US aggressors DID use it.

The use of Napalm was reported by Martin Savidge from CNN as early as March 22 2003, so there's no need to be surprised.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/21/otsc.irq.savidge/ : "There is a lookout there, a hill referred to as Safwan Hill, on the Iraqi side of the border. It was filled with Iraqi intelligence gathering. From that vantage point, they could look out over all of northern Kuwait.

It is now estimated the hill was hit so badly by missiles, artillery and by the Air Force, that they shaved a couple of feet off it. And anything that was up there that was left after all the explosions was then hit with napalm. And that pretty much put an end to any Iraqi operations up on that hill."

The United Nations banned the use of napalm against civilians in 1980 after pictures of a naked wounded girl in Vietnam shocked the world. The United States, which didn't endorse the convention, is the only nation in the world still using napalm.

Here's the story.


Diary from Baghdad, April 3, 20 O'clock: Dr. Geert Van Moorter through satellite telephone

About the horrors of war, 100 km south of Baghdad

Dr. Bert de Belder (coordinator of Medical Aid For The Third World)


"I have two awful stories to tell", Geert immediately starts when I get him on the line. "Today we drove to Hilla, a small town near Babylon that was heavily bombed yesterday. One poor district was hit by 20 to 25 bombs. The hospital of Hilla received in the next half an hour 150 seriously injured patients. Dr. Mahmoud Al-Mukhtar said that the wounds were caused by clusterbombs. These are bombs that explode into many small bombs that again explode individually and cause enormous damage. Clusterbombs are banned by the International Laws on War, but Bush completely disregards these! In the hospital I have seen very many abrading situations. A family of eleven persons, of whom six are dead... A father who is left with one child; his wife and two sons are dead... Small children with amputated limbs..."


"My second story is even more horrible", warns Geert. "About a bus with civilians that was fired upon. Not the one in Najaf, which reached the news everywhere, but a case that according to me has not yet been covered by western media. Three days ago, In Al Sqifal, near Hilla, a passenger bus was fired upon from an American checkpoint, with ghastly results. According to witnesses the bus stopped on time and had, on orders of the American Military, turned back. Dr. Saad El-Fadoui, a 52 years old surgeon who still has studied in Scotland, was immediately on the place of incident from the hospital in Hilla. When he told me what he had seen there, he again became very emotional, three days after it had happened. 'The bodies were al carbonized, terribly mutilated, torn into pieces, he sighs. 'In and around the bus I saw dismembered heads, brains and intestines....' One wonders what a criminal weapon of mass destruction could have caused these horrors. Nobody had heard the sound of an explosion; on the bodies no traces of shrapnel were found. A journalist spoke of a heat-weapon with liquid cupper or something like that... Can the Americans be really that cruel? Dr. Saad El-Fadoui asked us repeatedly to do everything to help stop this horrible war of aggression.


Geert understands me poorly when I say something, the line is not always clear. "We are momentarily without electricity", he explains. "Large blocks in Baghdad are without electricity, last night the bombardment was very severe". Colette (Geert's college-doctor Dr. Collete Moulaert) saw from her hotel room, just behind the mosque in this neighborhood, two enormous fireballs coming down. I think that these are containerbombs of about 7-8 tons each that cause enormous vibrations. "I am shivering of the cold", Collete said, but this was the vibration caused by the bomb explosion.

"You should not believe verything what CNN and BBC are showing", Geert informs us. "That we were able to travel today up to Hilla (near Babylon, south of Kerbala) with a large group 'human shields', 100 km south-west of Baghdad, proves convincingly that the Iraqi capital is not being completely surrounded and besieged. Along the way we hardly saw Iraqi troop movements. On the 100 km route we didn't pass any Iraqi checkpoint, and hardly saw signs of war. There were groups of scattered houses, trees, even children playing with paper kites... One time we were told to take a side road because a colon of 20 to 30 Iraqi tanks had to pass. This again disproves the charges that the Iraqi army is using civilians as shield for military operations: our civilian vehicle was first sent safely to another road before the Iraqi army passed. On our way back the Americans and British were bombing the area. For our safety we had to take a new another road, but this was also nearly hit by a bomb, followed by a tick plume of smoke. This was frightening for a while, because we were not safely in our hotel, but in the open air.

http://www.irak.be/ned/missies/medicalMissionColetteGeert/report_04_04_2003.htm


=======


And here is Dai Williams' evaluation (06 April 2003) of the weaponry used. His recommendations for the international community still stand today.

(...) Please can you ask the Pentagon to explain why and how many Daisy cutters, fragmentation bombs and suspected uranium weapons it has used in the last week in the region around now in the outskirts of Baghdad? And please can you ask the UK Government whether it condones the use of Daisy cutters in populated areas with large numbers of civilians?

I have been investigating US guided weapons as an independent researcher for 2 years. My primary concern are the 23 suspected uranium weapon systems. But my investigations include similar weapons like thermobaric bombs, daisy cutters etc.

Full weapons identification requires inspection on site by trained and independent weapons analysts. This must be a high priority for the UN. Ex-military personnel, HALO or similar demining organisations may help. Serving military personnel will simply lie about more advanced, prototype or illegal weapons.

Less trained observers can partly narrow down suspected weapon systems from descriptions of their explosions and from injuries on victims.

The following reports were received yesterday from two Belgian Doctors in Baghdad.

Partial answers to their questions are as follows:


[INCIDENT 1 ] "I have two awful stories to tell", Geert immediately starts when I get him on the line. "Today we drove to Hilla, a small town near Babylon that was heavily bombed yesterday. One poor district was hit by 20 to 25 bombs. The hospital of Hilla received in the next half an hour 150 seriously injured patients. Dr. Mahmoud Al-Mukhtar said that the wounds were caused by clusterbombs. These are bombs that explode into many small bombs that again explode individually and cause enormous damage.
Clusterbombs are banned by the International Laws on War, but Bush completely disregards these! In the hospital I have seen very many abrading situations. A family of eleven persons, of whom six are dead. A father who is left with one child; his wife and two sons are dead. Small children with amputated limbs."

Incident 1:
is a clusterbomb description. These are already recognised as weapons of indiscriminate effect by the media.


[INCIDENT 2 ] "My second story is even more horrible", warns Geert. "About a bus with civilians that was fired upon. Not the one in Najaf, which reached the news everywhere, but a case that according to me has not yet been covered by western media. Three days ago, In Al Sqifal, near Hilla, a passenger bus was fired upon from an American checkpoint, with ghastly results. According to witnesses the bus stopped on time and had, on orders of the American Military, turned back. Dr. Saad El-Fadoui, a 52 years old surgeon who still has studied in Scotland, was immediately on the place of incident from the hospital in Hilla. When he told me what he had seen there, he again became very emotional, three days after it had happened. 'The bodies were al carbonized, terribly mutilated, torn into pieces, he sighs. 'In and around the bus I saw dismembered heads, brains and intestines...' One wonders what a criminal weapon of massdestruction could have caused these horrors. Nobody had heard the sound of an explosion; on the bodies no traces of shrapnel were found. A journalist spoke of a heat-weapon with liquid cupper or something like that.. Can the Americans be really that cruel? Dr. Saad El-Fadoui asked us repeatedly to do everything to help stop this horrible war of aggression.

Incident 2:
3 April, Al Sqifal, near Hilla 'The bodies were al carbonized, terribly mutilated, torn into pieces... One wonders what a criminal weapon of massdestruction could have caused these horrors. Nobody had heard the sound of an explosion; on the bodies no traces of shrapnel were found. A journalist spoke of a heat-weapon with liquid cupper or something like that...


The reference to a heat weapon with liquid copper sounds like a misquote of someone describing an anti tank weapon with a shaped charge warhead. (HEAT also stands for High Explosive AntiTank weapons).
Shaped charge warheads use a focussed explosive blast with a copper (or uranium) core that is melted by the blast and travels at very high velocity to cut through armour plating. "Heat" in the context may also be describing the obvious effects of an incendiary weapon.

If the weapon was fired from the check point (ground to ground) it must have been an anti-tank missile e.g. JAVELIN which uses a tandem shaped charge warhead. Recently purchased by UK forces I question whether JAVELIN warheads use a depleted uranium core like the prototype that DERA and the MOD made and tested in 1999 (refer MOD website). This would produce a far higher temperature (5000 degrees) blast than copper and may account for the characteristic severe burns on victims. "Carbonisation" was typical of uranium weapon victims on the highway of death in 1991.

Shaped charge weapons do not create shrapnel - they work by projecting a lance of burning molten metal, almost a plasma, into the target.

Similar effects would have been caused by the larger Hellfire or Maverick missiles though these are fired by planes or helicopters, not referred to in this report.

QUESTION: What weapon was used by US forces in this incident? Did it contain a Uranium warhead?


[INCIDENT 3] Geert understands me poorly when I say something, the line is not always clear. "We are momentarily without electricity", he explains. "Large blocks in Baghdad are without electricity, last night the bombardment was very severe. Colette (Geert's collegue-doctor Dr. Collette Moulaert) saw from her hotel room, just behind the mosque in this neighbourhood, two enormous fireballs coming down. I think that these are containerbombs of about 7-8 tons each that cause enormous vibrations. "I am shivering of the cold", Collette said, but this was the vibration caused by the bomb explosion.

Incident 3:
"Colette saw from her hotel room, just behind the mosque in this neighbourhood, two enormous fireballs coming down."
The only weapons that match this description are the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter bombs. Developed in Vietnam for clearing jungle into runways they created immense pressure (1000 lbs / sq inch) over a large area - lethal from 300 to 900 metres.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-82.htm

They literally mash and burn any human beings under the blast area causing extensive internal injuries, severe burns but no shrapnel wounds from the high pressure blast. Rather like high-blast napalm in effect but the bombs are 10-20 times larger.

The two doctors providing these reports are in Baghdad. Dirk Adriaensens, coordinator of SOS Iraq, their contact in Belgium, is on sos.irak@skynet.be .

Dr Bert De Belder, coordinator of Medical Aid for the Third World, can be reached at bert.debelder@intal.be


===


Incident 4
- is from a separate report from BBC reporter Adam Mynot yesterday (5 April) described civilian casualties with severe burns near Nasiriyah. "The Phosphorus turned the inside of his house white hot". This is the first reference I have heard to Phosphorus weapons in the current war.

A more likely alternative may have been a guided bomb with a uranium warhead e.g. GBU 31 or 32 (for increased penetration and incendiary effects). UK researchers located US patents for upgrading the 2000 lb BLU-109/B hard target warhead (used in the GBU-15, 24, 27 and 31 guided bombs) with a choice of tungsten or depleted uranium. See Appendix 2 of my summary "Hazards of Uranium weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq", October 2002 at http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u23.htm

and extracts at http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/pdfs/USpats.pdf

These mini (just under 1 ton) bunker busters were used extensively in the earlier Baghdad bombing. The explosions with intense fireballs at ground level and incandescent metal in their explosion plumes are highly suspected of using uranium warheads.

The existence and use of guided bombs and missiles with uranium warheads is vigorously denied by the UK MOD saying that the Pentagon have assured them that such weapons don't exist. I don't trust either statement. In addition to causing horrific burns on casualties near the fireball such weapons are likely to be causing hundreds, possibly up to 1500, tons of uranium oxide contamination in target regions of Iraq, especially in and around Baghdad.

===

It is really important that media reports question what kinds of weapons are being used by US (and UK) forces - especially when large numbers of casualties or fatalities are seen with unusual injuries e.g. the fire and blast effects described in the incidents above.

The civilian casualties cause most obvious outrage. But there are very few questions about, or reports of, the forms of mutilation and death inflicted on Iraqi troops. It is customary in times of war to demonise the enemy. But much of the Iraqi army are conscripts..

Injuries to everyone involved in war - civilians and troops of all sides - are very serious issues. After World War 2 there was sufficient horror for consensus about the Geneva Conventions. The US Military and arms industry have shown supreme contempt for international humanitarian law ever since WW2.

If this war shows one thing it is the need for the World to start to get control over the barbarity of the US military industrial context. Criticisms of Saddam Hussein's record of atrocities fade into history as they are eclipsed by the industrialised killing that US Forces have spent billions of dollars perfecting.

A new War Crimes Tribunal will be needed in Iraq as soon as hostilities cease - to inspect the targets and casualties of US weapon systems throughout Iraq. This will of course require a dramatic awakening of the UK Government and Conservative Opposition from the "war-trance" spell cast on them by Pentagon propaganda.

There will be one mighty reckoning to follow soon for the US and UK Governments (if and) when independent international observers are allowed into Iraq.

Dai Williams
Woking, Surrey
Dr Bert De Belder, coordinator of Medical Aid for the Third World, can be reached at bert.debelder@btinternet.com
01483-222017 07808-502785

http://www.irak.be/ned/missies/medicalMissionColetteGeert/weaponsUS.htm


It's time for the World community to wake up and charge the US with war crimes.

Dirk Adriaensens.

Courtesy and Copyright Dirk Adriaensens.

[gilipolla]

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/17/1515223
Thursday, November 17th, 2005
Pentagon Reverses Position and Admits U.S. Troops Used White Phosphorous Against Iraqis in Fallujah

The U.S. government has now admitted its troops used white phosphorous as an incendiary weapon against Iraqis during the assault on Fallujah a year ago. Chemical weapons experts say such attacks are in violation of international law banning the use of chemical weapons. We speak with columnist George Monbiot and the news director of RAI TV, the Italian TV network that produced the film "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre." [includes rush transcript] The U.S. government has now admitted its troops used white phosphorous as an incendiary weapon against Iraqis during the assault on Fallujah a year ago.

Chemical weapons experts say such attacks are in violation of international law banning the use of chemical weapons.

Peter Kaiser, of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said, "Chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."

White phosphorous is often compared to napalm because it combusts spontaneously when exposed to oxygen and can burn right through skin to the bone.

The Pentagon"s admission comes after a week of denials that it used white phosphorous as a weapon in Fallujah. While reporters have noted the use of white phosphorous since the war began, it only became a major story last Tuesday when Italian state broadcaster RAI TV aired the documentary "Fallujuah: The Hidden Massacre."

On that same day Democracy Now aired an excerpt of the documentary and interviewed Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, the director of the Pentagon's Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad. During our show Boylan denied the claims made in the documentary that white phosphorous was used as a weapon to target Iraqis.

* Lt. Col. Steve Boylan interviewed on Democracy Now, Nov. 8, 2005..

But the Pentagon was caught in a lie after it was revealed that an official Army publication called Field Artillery magazine had disclosed that the Army had in fact used white phosphorous as a weapon.

The magazine, in its March-April issue, reported "[White Phosphorous] proved to be an effective and versatile munition... [and] as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes."

The magazine went on to report "We fired "shake and bake" missions at the insurgents, using WP [White Phosphorous] to flush them out and HE [high explosives] to take them out."

On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, another Pentagon spokesperson, admitted on the BBC that white phosphorous was used as an offensive weapon to target insurgents.

* Lt. Col. Barry Venable interviewed on BBC.

The Pentagon has defended its use of white phosphorous by claiming it is a not chemical weapon and that it was only used against Iraqi insurgents, not civilians. However even this would have been illegall according to the Army's own rules of combat. In 1999 the Army published a handbook that read, "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."

An Iraqi human rights team has reportedly gone into Fallujah to investigate the use of white phosphorus as a weapon by U.S. forces.

* Maurizio Torrealta, News Editor for the Italian state broadcaster RAI and co-producer of the documentary "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre."
* George Monbiot, a columnist for the Guardian of London. He published an article titled "The US Used Chemical Weapons in Iraq - And Then Lied About It."

Note: We contacted Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col Barry Venable yesterday but he refused to come on the program.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

AMY GOODMAN: While reporters have noted the use of white phosphorus since the war began, it only became a major story last Tuesday when Italian state broadcaster, RAI TV, aired the documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. On that same day, Democracy Now! aired an excerpt of the documentary here in the United States and interviewed Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, the director of the Pentagon's Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad. During our broadcast, Boylan denied the claims made in the documentary that white phosphorus was used as a weapon to target Iraqis.

LT. COL. STEVE BOYLAN: I know of no cases where people were deliberately targeted by the use of white phosphorus. Again, I did not say white phosphorus was used for illumination. White phosphorus is used for obscuration, which white phosphorus produces a heavy thick smoke to shield us or them from view so that they cannot see what we are doing. It is used to destroy equipment, to destroy buildings. That is what white phosphorus shells are used for.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, speaking on Democracy Now! last Tuesday. But the Pentagon was caught in a lie after it was revealed that an official Army publication called Field Artillery magazine had disclosed the Army had, in fact, used white phosphorus as a weapon. The magazine in its March/April issue reported, quote, "White phosphorus proved to be an effective and versatile munition and a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes." The magazine went on to report, quote, "We fired ‘shake and bake’ missions at the insurgents using W.P. [white phosphorus] to flush them out and H.E. [high explosives] to take them out." On Tuesday, Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, another Pentagon spokesperson, admitted on the BBC that white phosphorus was used as an offensive weapon to target insurgents.

LT. COL. BARRY VENABLE: White phosphorus is a conventional munition. It's not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal. We use them primarily as obscurants, for smoke screens or for target marking in some cases. However, it is an incendiary weapon and may be used against enemy combatants.

BBC REPORTER: Can you confirm, then, that it was used as an offensive weapon against enemy troops during the siege of Fallujah?

LT. COL. BARRY VENABLE: Yes. It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.

BBC REPORTER: There are suggestions here that if used in that way, an incendiary weapon such as white phosphorus would be against the various conventions governing the use of weapons during war. You disagree?

LT. COL. BARRY VENABLE: Cite the conventions.

BBC REPORTER: The Chemical Weapons Convention.

LT. COL. BARRY VENABLE: Okay. Does it list white phosphorus as a chemical?

BBC REPORTER: No, it doesn't. But it says a chemical weapon can be any chemical which, through its chemical action, on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm.

LT. COL. BARRY VENABLE: But this isn't -- we're talking white phosphorus is an incendiary weapon, not a chemical weapon.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Pentagon spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, being interviewed on the BBC. The Pentagon has defended its use of white phosphorus by claiming it's not a chemical weapon and that it was only used against Iraqi insurgents, not civilians. However, even this would have been illegal according to the Army's own rules of combat. In 1999 the Army published a handbook that read, quote, "It's against the law of land warfare to employ W.P. against personnel targets." An Iraqi human rights team has reportedly gone into Fallujah to investigate the use of white phosphorus as a weapon by U.S. forces.

To discuss this controversy, we're joined by two guests. On the phone from Italy, Maurizio Torrealta. He’s News Editor for the Italian state broadcaster, RAI, co-producer of the documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. We're also joined from Britain by George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian of London. On Tuesday, he published an article entitled, "The U.S. Used Chemical Weapons in Iraq and Then Lied About It." We first go to Maurizio Torrealta. You did the documentary. Your response to the new statement of the Pentagon, following up on the Pentagon's denial when you were on the broadcast last week, saying they didn't use white phosphorus as a weapon against people in Fallujah.

MAURIZIO TORREALTA: Well, first of all, I want to say that any time any institution corrects itself, I think, is a great event. And I would like to see many more institutions that are able to admit their mistakes. Then, the correction is not complete, because the Pentagon said that they used white phosphorus as a weapon, but not on civilians. And unfortunately we got really hundreds of pictures of people that seemed to be killed by white phosphorus. And I think an investigation, a United Nation investigation, on that could really finally say the last word about how much has been used against civilian people.

And then there is another couple of questions that I have in my mind. First of all, since the news are something that wasn't unknown -- The Independent, The Guardian wrote about the use of white phosphorus, and a lot of Arabian website was -- they published information about that. And what make that became news right now? It is a question that I really can't answer. And I think we should discuss a little bit about this second question.

JUAN GONZALEZ: George Monbiot, I'd like to ask you, the Pentagon is trying to split hairs in terms of how it defines chemical weapons; your perspective on their attempt to get through their own contradictions on this?

GEORGE MONBIOT: The Chemical Weapons Convention could not be clearer. There are two kinds of chemicals listed under it: One is the scheduled chemicals, such as phosgene and mustard gas and VX gas which cannot be used under any circumstances; then there is all other toxic chemicals which may be used for purposes which do not depend on the use of their toxic properties. However, the moment you use one of those other chemicals for its toxic properties against human beings, you are in breach of the convention. And what we saw very clearly from that extract in Field Artillery magazine was that they were firing these munitions directly at the combatants in Fallujah in order to exert the toxic effects of those munitions upon those combatants to flush them out so they could then be killed. In doing so, the U.S. Army was acting in direct contravention of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It committed a war crime.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play an excerpt from the RAI TV documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. This part features an interview with Mohamad Tareq Al Deraji, a biologist from Fallujah who heads the Fallujah Center for Human Rights.

NARRATOR: Mohamad opens his PC and shows us images of a victim in Fallujah, a woman lying on the side, clothes intact, hiding a scorched body, a veil covering like a shroud a face melted by the heat.

MOHAMAD TAREQ AL DERAJI: In al-Askeri, I hear some witnesses say, ‘Here’s some bodies – here’s killing by the -- a man died from the [inaudible] burns.’

REPORTER: In what state did you find the dead?

MOHAMAD TAREQ AL DERAJI: Different type. Children, women, younger youth, older men. All different form of people. But many from them has killing and the dead, inside the chicken room or cooking room, some from them when he [inaudible]. There is some witnesses. He say when American attack some places, the big [in Arabic] – shower?

WOMAN: A shower of fire?

MOHAMAD TAREQ AL DERAJI: Yeah, shower, but different color [inaudible]. And after this, all the people in this place is dead.

REPORTER: Why was the bombing so severe?

MOHAMAD TAREQ AL DERAJI: In the April battle, American say we want to cut the people killing the foreign counters, American counters. After the battle in April, American -- he cannot enter the city, but he search about another reason. He found maybe a terrorist is a suitable reason. He continues to attack Fallujah between April and November. More than one hundred houses destroyed to kill Zarqawi and the assistant of Zarqawi.

AMY GOODMAN: That is Mohamad Tareq Al Deraji, a biologist from Fallujah, quoted in the documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. We'll get response when we come back. And I should also say we did call the Pentagon. We called the Lieutenant Colonel Venable and asked him to join us, who had stated the reversal of the military position on whether they used white phosphorus as a weapon against people in Fallujah. He was extremely angry, and he refused to come on the broadcast.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We're on the line with George Monbiot, author and columnist for The Guardian of London, wrote the piece, “U.S. Lied About Chemical Weapons in Iraq”; and Maurizio Torrealta, News Editor for the Italian television, RAI, co-producer of the film Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. We just saw this biologist from Fallujah speaking. Maurizio Torrealta, could you amplify on who he was and what he saw?

MAURIZIO TORREALTA: Yes. He is a member of a human rights organization in Fallujah. He tried a couple of times to be brought to the attention of the Western people what's happening in Fallujah. He visited Rome. And then he went to Strasbourg in the European Parliament, invited by organizations, some political organization and some European deputies. And we met in there, and he told us some information.

But what strikes me is the fact that it's been a year that he was speaking about such things, and just the recent days, I got a lot of letters that have been sent by organizations in Fallujah to the U.N., to Kofi Annan, denouncing the same thing, and nothing happened. And we had to put on video those horrible pictures, in order to have some kind of reaction. And the reaction came before from the society. The politicians didn’t really care less. So finally it break through. I mean, it became news. And after a year people knows what happened, knows, at least has some idea, of what happened in Fallujah. And really, as a journalist, I'm really scared by the impossibility that the people in Fallujah had, for years, to brought to the attention of all the media what really happened over there.

JUAN GONZALEZ: George Monbiot, your column also mentions that the Field Artillery article was not the first mention of the use of white phosphorus, that there was actually some reporting by an embedded reporter at the North County Times in Southern California as early as April 2004. Could you talk about that?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Yes. I'll coach you from what he said. He was an embedded reporter with the Marines during the siege of Fallujah, which, as you say, took place in April 2004. And his article goes as follows: “’Gun up,’ Millikin yelled, grabbing a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can and holding it over the tube. ‘Fire!’ Bogert yelled, as Millikin dropped it. The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call ‘shake and bake’ into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week.” Now, the key term there is into a cluster of buildings. In other words, again they were not using this white phosphorus for the purposes of illumination or for the purposes of smoke screening, both of which are legal uses of white phosphorus in war. They were using it as a weapon in order to flush the insurgents out of those buildings. Doing so is in breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in both that article and in the Field Artillery, they keep referring to this mixture called “shake and bake,” which is obviously a mixture of white phosphorus and explosives at the same time, so it's clearly meant to be used as an offensive weapon, no?

GEORGE MONBIOT: I believe it's a pun on some seasoning which you have in the United States which you put on a chicken before you put it in the oven. And the idea is that you shake them out of their hiding place and then you can bake them or kill them with high explosives, having shaken them out with your white phosphorus. The use of white phosphorus to do that is not legal.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to the documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre, which is the documentary that RAI Television, the Italian state broadcaster, did last week that Democracy Now! also broadcast. BBC then got this reversal from the military on whether they used white phosphorus as a weapon against people in Fallujah. And this goes to the testimony of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena who worked as a reporter in Iraq before she was kidnapped. She spoke to RAI TV after she was released.

GIULIANA SGRENA: [translated from Italian] Not only in Fallujah. I had heard stories from the inhabitants about the use of certain weapons like napalm in Baghdad during the battle at the airport in April 2003. And then I had collected just before going to interview the city refugees testimonies from other inhabitants in Fallujah about the use of guns and white phosphorus. In particular, some women had tried to enter their homes, and they had found a certain dust spread all over the house. The Americans themselves had told them to clean their houses with detergents, because that dust was very dangerous. In fact, they had some effect on their bodies, leading some very strange things. I would have liked to interview those persons, but unfortunately my kidnappers, who were said to be part of Fallujah's resistance, had forbidden me to tell what I have known about Fallujah by kidnapping me. This world cannot have witnessed this. It cannot have witnessed it, because it’s based on lies. The Americans have permitted only to embedded journalists to go to Fallujah.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Giuliana Sgrena. And now Jeff Englehart, who is a former U.S. soldier.

REPORTER: Were any chemical weapons used in Fallujah?

JEFF ENGLEHART: From the U.S. military, yeah, absolutely. White phosphorus. Possibly napalm may or may not have been used; I do not know. I do know that white phosphorus was used, which is definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, a chemical weapon.

REPORTER: Is he sure of it?

JEFF ENGLEHART: Yes. It happened.

REPORTER: How can he be certain?

JEFF ENGLEHART: Well, it comes across radio as a general transmission. When it happens like that, you hear it on the radio through -- we have speakers in our trucks -- speakers and then the transmission goes to the speakers, so it's audible. And as they'd say, “In five [inaudible], we're going drop some Whiskey Pete.” “Roger. Commence bombing.” I mean, it just comes across the radio, and like, when you hear “Whiskey Pete,” that's the military slang.

NARRATOR: Contrary to what was said by the U.S. State Department, white phosphorus was not used in the open field to illuminate enemy troops. For this, tracer was used. A rain of fire shot from U.S. helicopters on the city of Fallujah on the night of the 8th of November. [inaudible] will show you in this exceptional documentary, which proves that a chemical agent was used in a massive and indiscriminate way in districts of Fallujah. In the days that followed, U.S. satellite images showed Fallujah burned out and razed to the ground.

JEFF ENGLEHART: The gases from the warhead of the white phosphorus will disperse in a cloud. And when it makes contact with skin, then it's absolutely irreversible damage, burning flesh to the bone. It doesn't necessarily burn clothes, but it will burn the skin underneath clothes. And this is why protective masks do not help, because it will burn right through the mask, the rubber of the mask. It will manage to get inside your face. If you breathe it, it will blister your throat and your lungs until you suffocate, and then it will burn you from the inside. It basically reacts to skin, oxygen and water. The only way to stop the burning is with wet mud. But at that point, it's just impossible to stop.

REPORTER: Have you seen the effects of these weapons?

JEFF ENGLEHART: Yes. Burned. Burned bodies. I mean, it burned children, and it burned women. White phosphorus kills indiscriminately. It's a cloud that will within, in most cases, 150 meters of impact will disperse, and it will burn every human being or animal.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Jeff Englehart, who is a former U.S. soldier, speaking from Colorado. As we wrap up, Maurizio Torrealta of RAI, where he is being broadcast, the documentary Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. The response in Italy, not to mention the rest of the world, to this documentary?

MAURIZIO TORREALTA: The response in Italy is bizarre, because when we broadcast it, we had one day before, having some response, because then we had two days of strike. The newspaper were on strike. So there were a few newspaper that wrote about it, and then there was a silence for two days. And then again there was nothing, nothing for three or four days. But actually, now, yesterday and the day before, it was the first news on the first page. Why? Because it came from outside.

At that point, the news had been bounced in the United States, in England, and it became -- some information transformed themselves in news and now is the news. And now, yesterday was a major newsbreak of the major channel of the Italian television. So it has been a strange, very strange [inaudible]. The news really has been diffused, but didn't have a reaction right now.

It seemed like there are two different media that are fighting: One media which is based on the internet and which is based on the net and on streaming and has a different way to spread around; and the other media, the mainstream media, which is very slow, very much controlled, and doesn’t come out right away with information, only after it became something bigger. That is my impression, which is not – doesn’t make me happy at all.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And George Monbiot, this news is now beginning to spread on the corporate media here in the United States. But what's happening in Britain? Are you having similar battles between the corporate media and the internet?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Well, the corporate media has picked it up pretty well comprehensively, and they have messed it up pretty well comprehensively. The misreporting of this issue is second almost to none that I've ever come across before. They have managed to mix up the use of white phosphorus against military versus civilian targets. For example, repeatedly, I'm saying, in the media, that it's a war crime if it's used against civilians but not if it’s used against the military. The Chemical Weapons Convention does not mention the word civilian. It does not mention the word non-combatant. There is no distinction made. If you use white phosphorus as a weapon against human beings, that is a war crime. It doesn't matter whether those human beings are civilians. It doesn't matter whether they are military. It remains a war crime.

They've mixed up several other things, as well. And the result of this is that if we're not careful, we can see excuses made for the use of this weapon as a weapon of war. And the whole point of the Chemical Weapons Convention is to prevent that from recurring. If we look back to the first World War and saw how mustard gas and phosgene were used and saw in the subsequent commemorations of that war these lines and lines of men with their hands on each other's shoulders walking along, because they could not see, because they had been blinded by this gas or their lungs had been destroyed by this gas, the undermining of the Chemical Weapons Convention threatens to bring about the kind of gas warfare which we saw in the first World War and which we saw in the war between Iran and Iraq. It's absolutely essential that we get this story right and we make it completely impossible for states such as the United States or, indeed, any other, to use poison toxic chemicals as a weapon of war and to use it ever again.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, George Monbiot and Maurizio Torrealta, I want to thank you both very much for being with us. And I want to point out I don't think the military is confused, because when Lieutenant Colonel Boylan first on Democracy Now! denied the use of white phosphorus as a weapon, he said as a weapon against people. He didn't say insurgents or civilians. He said we didn't use it against people. So that's an interesting point, and I wish they had joined us today. George Monbiot of Tthe Guardian of London, and Maurizio Torrealta, News Editor for the Italian television, the state broadcaster, RAI, co-producer of the film Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre, thanks so much for joining us.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (888) 999-3877.

[gilipolla]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1647998,00.html
Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within war crimes

We now know the US also used thermobaric weapons in its assault on Falluja, where up to 50,000 civilians remained

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 22, 2005
The Guardian

The media couldn't have made a bigger pig's ear of the white phosphorus story. So, before moving on to the new revelations from Falluja, I would like to try to clear up the old ones. There is no hard evidence that white phosphorus was used against civilians. The claim was made in a documentary broadcast on the Italian network RAI, called Falluja: the Hidden Massacre. It claimed that the corpses in the pictures it ran "showed strange injuries, some burnt to the bone, others with skin hanging from their flesh ... The faces have literally melted away, just like other parts of the body. The clothes are strangely intact." These assertions were supported by a human-rights advocate who, it said, possessed "a biology degree".

I, too, possess a biology degree, and I am as well qualified to determine someone's cause of death as I am to perform open-heart surgery. So I asked Chris Milroy, professor of forensic pathology at the University of Sheffield, to watch the film. He reported that "nothing indicates to me that the bodies have been burnt". They had turned black and lost their skin "through decomposition". We don't yet know how these people died.

But there is hard evidence that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon against combatants in Falluja. As this column revealed last Tuesday, US infantry officers confessed that they had used it to flush out insurgents. A Pentagon spokesman told the BBC that white phosphorus "was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants". He claimed "it is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal." This denial has been accepted by most of the mainstream media. UN conventions, the Times said, "ban its use on civilian but not military targets". But the word "civilian" does not occur in the chemical weapons convention. The use of the toxic properties of a chemical as a weapon is illegal, whoever the target is.

The Pentagon argues that white phosphorus burns people, rather than poisoning them, and is covered only by the protocol on incendiary weapons, which the US has not signed. But white phosphorus is both incendiary and toxic. The gas it produces attacks the mucous membranes, the eyes and the lungs. As Peter Kaiser of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told the BBC last week: "If ... the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because ... any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."

The US army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book, published by the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence: "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."

Last night the blogger Gabriele Zamparini found a declassified document from the US department of defence, dated April 1991, and titled "Possible use of phosphorus chemical". "During the brutal crackdown that followed the Kurdish uprising," it alleges, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorus (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil ... and Dohuk provinces, Iraq. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships ... These reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly ... hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas." The Pentagon is in no doubt, in other words, that white phosphorus is an illegal chemical weapon.

The insurgents, of course, would be just as dead today if they were killed by other means. So does it matter if chemical weapons were mixed with other munitions? It does. Anyone who has seen those photos of the lines of blind veterans at the remembrance services for the first world war will surely understand the point of international law, and the dangers of undermining it.

But we shouldn't forget that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime. Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Falluja were illegal acts of aggression. Before attacking the city, the marines stopped men "of fighting age" from leaving. Many women and children stayed: the Guardian's correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left. The marines treated Falluja as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used "hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population".

I have been reading accounts of the assault published in the Marine Corps Gazette. The soldiers appear to have believed everything the US government told them. One article claims that "the absence of civilians meant the marines could employ blast weapons prior to entering houses that had become pillboxes, not homes". Another said that "there were less than 500 civilians remaining in the city". It continued: "The heroics [of the marines] will be the subject of many articles and books ... The real key to this tactical victory rested in the spirit of the warriors who courageously fought the battle. They deserve all of the credit for liberating Falluja."

But buried in this hogwash is a grave revelation. An assault weapon the marines were using had been armed with warheads containing "about 35% thermobaric novel explosive (NE) and 65% standard high explosive". They deployed it "to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms". It was used repeatedly: "The expenditure of explosives clearing houses was enormous."

The marines can scarcely deny that they know what these weapons do. An article published in the Gazette in 2000 details the effects of their use by the Russians in Grozny. Thermobaric, or "fuel-air" weapons, it says, form a cloud of volatile gases or finely powdered explosives. "This cloud is then ignited and the subsequent fireball sears the surrounding area while consuming the oxygen in this area. The lack of oxygen creates an enormous overpressure ... Personnel under the cloud are literally crushed to death. Outside the cloud area, the blast wave travels at some 3,000 metres per second ... As a result, a fuel-air explosive can have the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon without residual radiation ... Those personnel caught directly under the aerosol cloud will die from the flame or overpressure. For those on the periphery of the strike, the injuries can be severe. Burns, broken bones, contusions from flying debris and blindness may result. Further, the crushing injuries from the overpressure can create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal haemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets." It is hard to see how you could use these weapons in Falluja without killing civilians.

This looks to me like a convincing explanation of the damage done to Falluja, a city in which between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians might have been taking refuge. It could also explain the civilian casualties shown in the film. So the question has now widened: is there any crime the coalition forces have not committed in Iraq?

www.monbiot.com

[gilipolla]

OTHER USEFUL WEBSITES

WAR CRIMES
A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal
by Ramsey Clark and Others
http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-index.htm


War Crimes - Desert Storm, Shrub's World War and the destruction of International Law
http://www.oilempire.us/warcrime.html



Listed here are news stories about events in Iraq that are or can be considered war crimes. We have added Afghanastan related stories here too.
http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/iraq_war_crimes.html


HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Background on International Humanitarian Law, War Crimes and the War in Iraq
http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/12/ihl-qna.htm


WAR CRIMES
A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal
http://deoxy.org/wc/warcrime.htm


INDYMEDIA
Evidence of USUK war crimes in Fallujah
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/12/302593.html


INDYMEDIA
Fallujah Genocide. US War Crimes in Iraq. Photos
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/11/301382.html


War Crimes (Images)
www.albasrah.net
http://www.albasrah.net/images/war_crimes/


AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
USA: Pattern of brutality and cruelty -- war crimes at Abu Ghraib
http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGAMR510772004


GLOBAL RESEARCH.Ca
Iraq War Crimes: Disturbing Picture
Is this what Bush means when he says: "We the Civilized World"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BOU403A.html

GLOBAL RESEARCH.Ca
Criminalization of the State:
Bush & Co. Fear Prosecution in the International Criminal Court
by Marjorie Cohn
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/COH309B.html


U.S. War Crimes in Iraq:
A Prima Facie Case
Respectfully submitted to the International Criminal Court
by Paul Rockwell
Oakland, California
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/opin/pr_uswc.html


TALKLEFT
UN Watchdog: Abu Ghraib Abuses may be War Crimes
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/006791.html


INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
http://www.icc-cpi.int/home.html&l=en


ROME STATUTE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
http://www.un.org/law/icc/
http://www.un.org/law/icc/statute/99_corr/2.htm


ALJAZEERA
Lawyers' panel indicts Bush, Blair
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D8C1C363-308C-41F7-8B32-935312621768.htm


COMMON DREAMS
Belgium Gets War Crimes Cases Against Bush/Blair
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0619-09.htm

VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS (USA)
Voices in the Wilderness (VitW) was formed in 1996 to nonviolently challenge the economic warfare being waged by the US against the people of Iraq. Voices continues its work today, acting to end the US occupation of Iraq.
http://vitw.org/

[gilipolla]

http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2005/11/de-classified-report-from-us.htm
Monday, November 21, 2005
A De-Classified Report from the US Department of Defense calls WP “CHEMICAL WEAPONS”
by Gabriele Zamparini (*)

From a declassified document of the US Department of Defense:

REPORT CLASSIFIED

SUMMARY: IRAQ HAS POSSIBLY EMPLOYED PHOSPHOROUS CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST THE KURDISH POPULATION IN AREAS ALONG THE IRAQI-TURKISH-IRANIAN BORDERS. KURDISH RESISTANCE IS LOSING ITS STRUGGLE AGAINST SADDAM HUSSEIN'S FORCES. KURDISH REBELS AND REFUGEES' PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS AND PERCEPTIONS ARE PROVIDED.

(…) DURING THE BRUTAL CRACKDOWN THAT FOLLOWED THE KURDISH UPRISING, IRAQI FORCES LOYAL TO PRESIDENT SADDAM ((HUSSEIN)) MAY HAVE POSSIBLY USED WHITE PHOSPHOROUS (WP) CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST KURDISH REBELS AND THE POPULACE IN ERBIL (GEOCOORD:3412N/04401E) (VICINITY OF IRANIAN BORDER) AND DOHUK (GEOCOORD:3652N/04301E) (VICINITY OF IRAQI BORDER) PROVINCES, IRAQ.

THE WP CHEMICAL WAS DELIVERED BY ARTILLERY ROUNDS AND HELICOPTER GUNSHIPS

Nothing new! It's another application of our wonderful way to apply the principle of universality: When you do it's terrorism and crimes against humanity. When we do, it's exporting freedom and democracy.

NOTE: The declassified document has been published on the Russian website Mirror of the World (By: KamikazeToyota on: 20.11.2005). Thanks to Jouna Pyysalo for sending me the Mirror of the World's link.

(*) Gabriele Zamparini is an independent filmmaker and freelance writer living in London. He's the producer and director of the documentaries XXI CENTURY and The Peace! DVD and author of American Voices of Dissent (Paradigm Publishers). He can be reached at info@thecatsdream.com

posted by The Cat's Dream at 6:04 PM

[gilipolla]

US soldiers, seen here firing WP shells in America, often use the munition to provide smokescreens for soldiers, but it also has incendiary effects. Picture / Reuters

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355791
Iraq orders incendiary bomb probe

18.11.05
By Kim Sengupta

The Iraqi Government is to investigate the US military's use of white phosphorus shells during the battle of Fallujah - an inquiry that could reveal whether America breached a fundamental weapons treaty.

Iraq's acting Human Rights Minister Narmin Othman said a team would be dispatched to Fallujah to ascertain whether civilians had been killed or injured by the use of WP.

The use of WP against civilians as an incendiary weapon is prohibited.

The announcement came as British Defence Secretary John Reid faced mounting calls for an inquiry into both the use of WP by British forces as well as what Britain knew about its deployment by US troops.

The fresh controversy over last November's battle for Fallujah was sparked last week by the Italian broadcaster RAI, which claimed there were many civilian casualties.

Pentagon spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable said he would "not be surprised" if WP had been used by US forces elsewhere in Iraq.

The size or scale of the inquiry to be undertaken by the Iraqi Government is unclear.

An official with the Human Rights Ministry said that while it was also not known how long the inquiry would take "the people of Fallujah will be fully consulted".

The Pentagon said the use of incendiary weapons against military targets is not prohibited. However, protocol III of the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Weapons bans the use of such arms against civilians.

Perhaps of crucial importance to the investigators, the treaty restricts their use against military targets "inside a concentration of civilians" unless the target is separated.

Reid confirmed that British troops had used WP in Iraq, though he said the shells had only been used as smokescreens - which experts say it is its primary function.

Reid said the US's use of WP was a "matter for the US". However, last week he indicated he would raise the issues highlighted by RAI if presented with evidence.

British MPs called for an inquiry, saying they had previously been misled about the US's use of the napalm in Iraq. The US draws a distinction between traditional napalm and updated firebombs. However, experts say they are virtually identical.

Mike Gapes, Labour chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select committee, said: "There is an issue here about whether the chemical weapons convention should be strengthened to include this particular substance because it is defined as an incendiary not a chemical weapon, therefore it is excluded from certain definitions."

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell said: "A vital part of the effort in Iraq is to win hearts and minds. The use of this weapon may technically have been legal, but its effects are such that it will hand a propaganda victory to the insurgency."

So far, the fallout in the US over the revelation has been minimal. Should this change, it will add to the pressure on President George W. Bush, who is facing all-time low approval ratings.

Civilians were told to leave Fallujah before the US attacked.

Reports gathered from refugee camps and from an interview with an Iraqi doctor who remained in the city suggest that numerous civilians suffered burns and "melting skin".

Photographs show rows of bodies charred almost beyond recognition.

A LEGITIMATE OR INHUMAN WEAPON?

What is white phosphorus?

WP is a highly flammable incendiary material which ignites when exposed to oxygen, and will burn flesh until all available oxygen is used. WP produces a yellow flame and dense smoke. It is used as a smokescreen to conceal movement and illuminate a battlefield.

Is it a chemical weapon?

WP has thermal properties which burn, rather than chemical properties which attack the body's life systems. It does not fall under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. But Protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons bans its use as an incendiary weapon against civilian populations.

So what happened in Fallujah?

The first US position was that its military used WP as a smokescreen, and was therefore legitimate. The Pentagon said on Tuesday that US troops had used it as a weapon against insurgents. The argument focuses on whether those targeted were insurgents or civilians.

What does this mean in law?

Humanitarian law distinguishes between combatants and non-combatants. If WP was used against insurgents they qualify as combatants. The 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons (Protocol III) prohibits the use of incendiary weapons against civilians or military targets located within concentrations of civilians. The US has not signed protocol III.

Is there a legal recourse if civilians died?

If an Iraqi probe provides evidence that WP was used as a weapon on civilians, the 1977 First Protocol to the Geneva Conventions could be invoked. Any use of a weapon that causes "superfluous or unnecessary suffering" is outlawed. Breaches of the Geneva Conventions are handled by the UN.

Why has this taken so long to come out?

An Italian documentary accused the US of using white phosphorus in a "massive and indiscriminate way" against civilians at Fallujah. Witnesses in the US military's Field Artillery magazine described firing WP/high explosive "shake and bake" missions at insurgents.

- INDEPENDENT

[gilipolla]

Daryl Bradford Smith interviews Karen Parker

Humanitarian lawyer suing the American government for crimes against humanity.
http://iamthewitness.com/DarylBradfordSmithInterviewsParker.html

Charges include murdering medical personnel, attacking ambulances, and destroying hospitals in Fallujah.

All against the Geneva convention. Add to that depleted uranium and white phosphorus and it's looking like America is becoming worse than Nazi Germany.

Hear what Karen Parker, Esq. has to say.

Click the links below for the MP3 audio files

Hour_2, from Nov 21, 2005
http://iamthewitness.com/DarylBradfordSmithInterviewsParker.html

Click your right mouse and select download. Then play them, post them on your site, or burn them to CD and share with everyone who has ears.

[gilipolla]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,11816,1593832,00.html
RAF officer faces court martial over Iraq war

Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday October 17, 2005
The Guardian

An RAF officer faces a court martial for refusing to serve in Iraq on the grounds that the invasion of the country was illegal, defence officials said yesterday.

Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a medical officer serving at RAF Kinloss, in Morayshire, faces four counts of disobeying a lawful command under the 1955 Air Force Act.

He is the first British officer to face charges on these grounds and his prosecution is likely to add to growing unease among the military about the war in Iraq. He may face a jail sentence, though senior military officers, concerned about the effect of Iraq on the morale of British armed forces personnel, will not relish the prospect of a martyr and another focus of opposition to the war and invasion of Iraq.

The 37-year-old lieutenant, who was decorated for service in Afghanistan and Iraq, believes the invasion was illegal, defence sources said.

A key part of his case, according to reports yesterday, will be that under RAF law an officer is justified in refusing to obey commands if they are illegal. The Queen's commission requires armed forces officers to act according to "the rules and discipline of war". Defence sources suggested the officer also had a conscientious objection to the war.

Some reservists have refused to serve in Iraq, but this is the first time that a full-time officer has objected.

The case of Flt Lt Kendall-Smith, who has dual UK-New Zealand nationality, is now before the RAF's prosecuting authority. The Ministry of Defence said no date had been set for his court martial.

[gilipolla]

http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Andre+sprog/English/2005/11/22/171354.htm
Soldier’s parents join in libel case
22. nov. 2005 17.16 English

The parents of a Danish soldier killed in Iraq have joined forces with a group of people who are bringing an action for damages against the Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

The group is challenging the legitimacy of Denmark's involvement in the Iraqi war, and it will take up to 16 months before the attorney general will decide if the case will come to court.

The group feel their chances have been greatly enhanced with the announcement that the parents of the deceased soldier are backing them.