WAR CRIMES

From John Pilger of ZNet.org, a call to try our leaders from America and Britain who perpetrated this war as war criminals:

"To initiate a war of aggression," said the judges in the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi leadership, "is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." In stating this guiding principle of international law, the judges specifically rejected German arguments of the "necessity" for pre-emptive attacks against other countries...

Nothing Bush and Blair, their cluster-bombing boys and their media court do now will change the truth of their great crime in Iraq. It is a matter of record, understood by the majority of humanity, if not by those who claim to speak for "us". As Denis Halliday said of the Anglo-American embargo against Iraq, it will "slaughter them in the history books". It was Halliday who, as assistant secretary general of the United Nations, set up the "oil for food" programme in Iraq in 1996 and quickly realised that the UN had become an instrument of "a genocidal attack on a whole society". He resigned in protest, as did his successor, Hans von Sponeck, who described "the wanton and shaming punishment of a nation...

There is something especially disgusting about the lurid propaganda coming from these PR-trained British officers, who have not a clue about Iraq and its people. They describe the liberation they are bringing from "the world's worst tyranny", as if anything, including death by cluster bomb or dysentery, is better than "life under Saddam". The inconvenient truth is that, according to Unicef, the Ba'athists built the most modern health service in the Middle East...

Why are the British yet to explain why their troops have to put on protective suits to recover dead and wounded in vehicles hit by American "friendly fire"? The reason is that the Americans are using solid uranium coated on missiles and tank shells. When I was in southern Iraq, doctors estimated a sevenfold increase in cancers in areas where depleted uranium was used by the Americans and British in the 1991 war. Under the subsequent embargo, Iraq, unlike Kuwait, has been denied equipment with which to clean up its contaminated battlefields. The hospitals in Basra have wards overflowing with children with cancers of a variety not seen before 1991. They have no painkillers; they are fortunate if they have aspirin.

Why are the British yet to explain why their troops have to put on protective suits to recover dead and wounded in vehicles hit by American "friendly fire"? The reason is that the Americans are using solid uranium coated on missiles and tank shells. When I was in southern Iraq, doctors estimated a sevenfold increase in cancers in areas where depleted uranium was used by the Americans and British in the 1991 war. Under the subsequent embargo, Iraq, unlike Kuwait, has been denied equipment with which to clean up its contaminated battlefields. The hospitals in Basra have wards overflowing with children with cancers of a variety not seen before 1991. They have no painkillers; they are fortunate if they have aspirin.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

First, there is President Bush declaring major combat is over in Iraq, and that he wants to turn the attention of the American people to his domestic agenda and tax cuts. Then, on the same day, we have Rumsfeld declaring major combat is over in Afghanistan.

However, competing for the above declaration in headlines by Bush is the injury of seven U.S. marines in Falluja by a tossed grenade, then the return fire on the Iraqi people with no casualty reports. In Afghanistan, on April 25, one U.S. serviceman was killed and several wounded in an attack near the Pakistani border. A second U.S. serviceman died from the same attack the next day.

The Taliban is regrouping in certain areas of Afghanistan, and reconstruction efforts have not kept pace with the needs of that country.

With the hatred of Americans growing in Falluja and elsewhere in Iraq, and armed resistance returning in Afghanistan, a Vietnam-like quagmire in both countries is all the more apparent. No wonder Rumsfeld and Bush would like us to turn our attention to the domestic agenda. Even a sour economy is better news than this mess.

TWO MORE KILLED BY AMERICAN TROOPS IN FALLUJA PROTEST

Two more shot and killed by American troops in Falluja during an anti-American protest today, according to Reuters:

"Rumsfeld pledged during an unannounced visit to Iraq on Wednesday that his troops would leave as soon as possible, but fresh bloodshed erupted at an anti-American protest.

Even as Rumsfeld savored victory in the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, a leading Arabic newspaper published what it said was a letter from the ousted Iraqi leader in which he urged Iraqis to throw out U.S. and British forces.

In Washington, the White House said General Tommy Franks, who headed the U.S. war effort, had told President Bush that major combat operations were over. This did not signal a formal end to hostilities, spokesman Ari Fleischer said. Residents of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) outside the capital where 13 people were killed in a rally late on Monday night, said U.S. troops shot dead two more people and wounded 18 during a demonstration on Wednesday.

U.S. Major Michael Marti told Reuters that members of a convoy returned fire after shots were fired at them from a crowd outside a U.S. command post. He said soldiers counted "potentially" two injured Iraqis.

The bloodshed in Falluja provided a grim backdrop for the visit by Rumsfeld, who recorded a radio and television message saying U.S. troops had no intention of taking over Iraq.

"Let me be clear: Iraq belongs to you," said Rumsfeld, speaking three weeks after U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad.

"We do not want to run it ... Our goal is to restore stability and security so that you can form...a government of your choosing," he said.

Rumsfeld returned to Kuwait later in the day.

Also on Wednesday, leaders of Iraq's once-exiled political parties met in Baghdad for the first time.

A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress (INC), Zaab Sethna, said the meeting would discuss a call for a national conference by late May to appoint an interim Iraqi authority."

What is Morality?

A conversation with my father:

"We don't really know the truth as to what happened there (in Fallujah) today", my father said. "People who want us dead hide among innocent people and from there, shoot at us."

"That may be true," I said, "but this still doesn't provide us with impunity for our actions. In the purest sense of the term, our presence there, our reasons for being there, are immoral, self-serving and selfish, therefore, we are having to fire on unarmed civilians to protect our immoral goals."

Dictionary from Encarta: The meaning of moral: 2. derived from personal conscience: based on what somebody’s conscience suggests is right or wrong, rather than on what the law says should be done.

THE MURDER OF JOURNALISTS IN IRAQ?

Robert Fisk, from CounterPunch, asks this question: "Did the U.S. murder journalists?

"At the time, General Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry Division, told a lie: he said that sniper fire had been directed at the tank--on the Joumhouriyah Bridge over the Tigris river--and that the fire had ended "after the tank had fired" at the Palestine Hotel. I was between the tank and the hotel when the shell was fired. There was no sniper fire--nor any rocket-propelled grenade fire, as the American officer claimed--at the time. French television footage of the tank, running for minutes before the attack, shows the same thing. The soundtrack--until the blinding, repulsive golden flash from the tank barrel--is silent."

A ROCK OR A GRENADE

Is this the policy of the military, to fire on civilians without question, before it is known wether a rock or grenade has been tossed? From ABCnews.com:

"There were a lot of people who were armed and who were throwing rocks. How is a U.S. soldier to tell the difference between a rock and a grenade?"

PROTEST TURNS VIOLENT: 13 IRAQIS DEAD, 75 WOUNDED

I've reprinted part of the article on today's killing of ten Iraqi citizens by the U.S. military in the town of Fallujah, during what began as a peaceful protest (from ABCnews.com):

"U.S. officials said U.S. soldiers in the town of Fallujah, about 30 miles west of Baghdad, fired into the crowd after people shot at them with automatic rifles. U.S. estimates of the dead varied from seven to 10.
But demonstrators and witnesses insisted the crowd was unarmed and that most of the protesters were students between the ages of 5 and 20. Falluja hospital director Ahmed Ghanim al Ali said 13 people had been killed and at least 75 wounded in the late night incident.

Col. Arnold Bray of the 82nd Airborne Division, however, disputed reports that all the demonstrators were unarmed. "Ask them which kind of schoolboys carry AK-47s," he told The Associated Press.

Bray said at least seven Iraqis were hit by gunfire, but he could not confirm the reported deaths.

The 82nd Airborne has one battalion spread out around Fallujah, and a company of 150 was inside a school that serves as its headquarters when the incident took place, soldiers said.

In an interview with Reuters, Lt. Christopher Hart said between 100 and 200 chanting people approached his men, who opened fire after two gunmen with combat rifles appeared from behind the crowd on a motorcycle and started shooting.

Some people in the crowd then also fired at the troops, he said. He put the death toll at between seven and 10.

Residents said the late night demonstrations on Monday were conducted by students of a local school attempting to get U.S. troops to vacate the premises so classes could resume early this morning.

It was the third reported fatal shooting involving U.S. troops and Iraqi protesters in the past two weeks, underscoring the problems facing soldiers whose training focuses more on combat operation than crowd control.

The incidents, widely reported by Arab news media groups, have served to fuel growing resentment of the U.S. military presence in Iraq only weeks after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite channel, interviewed a Fallujah resident who argued that suicide attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq were now unavoidable.

WAR CRIMES

Not sure what chance in hell they have, but I'm glad a few have summoned their courage to call attention to the war crimes committed by this country, against the citizens of Iraq (from ABC News online) What is infuriating to me about this article, is that the U.S. would try to deny to these Iraqi citizens, one of our most cherished rights, a day in court:

"Ten Iraqi civilians are planning to file a complaint in a Belgian court accusing US General Tommy Franks and other US military officers of committing war crimes in Iraq, newspaper The Washington Times reports.

"The complaint will be filed stating that unknown American personnel are directly responsible for committing war crimes in Iraq," Jan Fermon, a Brussels-based lawyer representing the Iraqis, told the newspaper.

The complaint, to be filed in about two weeks, accuses US soldiers of firing on an ambulance, attacking a civilian bus, killing scores of civilians by bombing a Baghdad market place, and failing to prevent looting of hospitals.

"On some of these questions there is an issue of command responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground, and that responsibility ends with General Franks and those who are under him in the US lines of command," Mr Fermon said.

The complaint will ask a judge to decide whether indictments should be issued under Belgium's controversial 1993 law.

The law allows Belgian courts to judge suspects accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, regardless of where the alleged acts were committed or the nationality of the accused or the victims.

The newspaper report US administration officials reacted angrily.

"There will be diplomatic consequences" if the complaint is taken up in a Belgian court, an administration official was quoted as saying.

The report says Belgian doctors working in Iraq during the war met Iraqi citizens who said they were victims of war crimes committed by coalition forces.

The doctors urged them to submit their complaints to the Belgian court.

The Belgian Parliament in early April restricted the scope of the law.

Under the passed amendments, the Belgian Government can refer certain cases brought under the law to the courts in the defendant's country of origin.

Some 30 current or former political leaders are facing legal action under the law, including Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and former US president George Bush."