Iraq page 10

And so they should be. That video footage of U.S. soldiers being subjected to a humiliating public display and harsh interrogation -- possibly after beatings -- was disgusting. Iraqi soldiers should respect long-standing norms for treatment of prisoners of war . . .

But nothing George Bush says on the subject of Geneva Conventions and international legal standards is likely to convince anyone. He has unleashed the greatest onslaught against international law of any U.S. president in living memory. He has torn up arms-control agreements and worked to sabotage the International Criminal Court. In his campaign against terrorism, he has not only flouted the venerable Geneva accords but sought to deny suspects the benefits of the law he is sworn to uphold.

. . . U.S. interrogators are using borderline torture techniques against suspected terrorists. The toughest methods are used at Bagram air force base in Afghanistan and on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. There, "stress and duress" tactics include sleep deprivation, questioning under pain and subjecting the suspects to extremes of cold or heat.

More disturbingly, U.S. officials acknowledge that some terror suspects have been turned over to countries such as Pakistan and Jordan, which Washington's own annual human-rights reports accuse of practising torture. "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them," one official told The Washington Post. "We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." This despite the fact that the U.S. is a party, along with 131 other countries, to the 1987 convention against torture.

Mr. Bush insists on calling his counterterrorism campaign a war -- yet the hundreds of prisoners rounded up since September of 2001 are not accorded the status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Hundreds have been held, incognito and without charge, for more than a year. The U.S. government says they are "unlawful combatants," subject to no laws whatsoever because they are neither U.S. citizens nor held on U.S. soil. It says it can hold them for as long as it wants, with no access to lawyers or judicial oversight. Shamefully, U.S. courts appear to agree. . . .

This treatment of terrorism suspects falls far short of the standards Mr. Bush wants others to uphold. Here is the commitment the United States should make:

"We pledge to honour our obligations as a party to the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention Against Torture.

"Suspected terrorists captured by U.S. forces or agents outside U.S. territory will henceforth be treated either as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, or in accordance with the laws and judicial precedents of the United States. . . .

International Law and a War on Iraq - Security Council - Global Policy Forum: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/lawindex.htm

. . . The body of opinion considers the US-UK position to be contrary to international law and liable to undermine important principles of world order if an attack on Iraq takes place. . . .

Many links, including: . . .

. . . Law Unto Themselves (March 14, 2003)
It is the near-unanimous view of international lawyers that a military attack against Iraq under existing UN resolutions would be a violation of international law, despite claims to the contrary by the governments of the US and the UK. (Guardian)

War would be illegal Friday March 7, 2003

Letter to The Guardian

We are teachers of international law. On the basis of the information publicly available, there is no justification under international law for the use of military force against Iraq. The UN charter outlaws the use of force with only two exceptions: individual or collective self-defence in response to an armed attack and action authorised by the security council as a collective response to a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression. There are currently no grounds for a claim to use such force in self-defence. The doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence against an attack that might arise at some hypothetical future time has no basis in international law. Neither security council resolution 1441 nor any prior resolution authorises the proposed use of force in the present circumstances.

Before military action can lawfully be undertaken against Iraq, the security council must have indicated its clearly expressed assent. It has not yet done so. A vetoed resolution could provide no such assent. . . .

A decision to undertake military action in Iraq without proper security council authorisation will seriously undermine the international rule of law. Of course, even with that authorisation, serious questions would remain. A lawful war is not necessarily a just, prudent or humanitarian war.

Prof Ulf Bernitz, Dr Nicolas Espejo-Yaksic, Agnes Hurwitz, Prof Vaughan Lowe, Dr Ben Saul, Dr Katja Ziegler
University of Oxford
Prof James Crawford, Dr Susan Marks, Dr Roger O'Keefe
University of Cambridge
Prof Christine Chinkin, Dr Gerry Simpson, Deborah Cass
London School of Economics
Dr Matthew Craven
School of Oriental and African Studies
Prof Philippe Sands, Ralph Wilde
University College London
Prof Pierre-Marie Dupuy
University of Paris

Guardian Unlimited Special reports Special report Iraq:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/0,2759,423009,00.html Links to many reports, including: . . .

. . . No case for Iraq attack say lawyers
March 7: Tony Blair last night faced fresh pressure to abandon the threat of war against Iraq when 16 eminent academic lawyers warned him that the White House doctrine of "pre-emptive self-defence" has no justification under international law.

. . . A con trick for western liberals
March 7, Dan Plesch: The idea that we can invade Iraq to bring democracy and freedom is a confidence trick designed to draw western liberals into providing legitimacy for old-fashioned conquest.

The Globe and Mail: http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20030315/COIBBI15/TPComment/Columnists
Are Blair and Bush above laws?
By JOHN IBBITSON March 15, 2003

Members of Tony Blair's own Labour Party have declared that he should be charged with war crimes if he commits British forces to Iraq without an explicit mandate from the United Nations Security Council. And a group of antiwar lawyers has threatened to take the British Prime Minister to the new International Criminal Court, charging him with illegal use of force. . . .

First, neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Blair can be charged with war crimes for going to war against Iraq. War crimes are, by definition, illegal acts that take place while a war is under way. The mere act of going to war is not itself a crime.

However, there is both written and unwritten (customary) law concerning the illegal use of force. The written law is embedded in the United Nations Charter. The customary law accepts that the crime of waging aggressive war, which was invented for the purposes of the Nuremberg Trials, is still in force. . . .

So, Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush might, theoretically, be about to violate international law by their illegal use of force. But that allegation can never be proven, because no forum exists that could conceivably judge them. Neither has to worry about sharing a cell with Slobodan Milosevic or the ghost of Rudolph Hess.

AlterNet George Bush's Faith-based Foreign Policy: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15207

By Robert Higgs, AlterNet Feb 18, 2003

In public statements, President Bush has often avowed his personal religious faith, and from the beginning of his administration, he has sought to draw churches and other religious organizations into the orbit of the government's provision of goods and services – the so-called faith-based initiatives. . . .

Although the president has yet to announce formally that his foreign policy also relies heavily on faith, this reality has become increasingly clear . . .

When the administration released its "National Security Strategy" to Congress last summer, the grandiosity of the intentions expressed in the document stunned many observers – as Mises Institute historian Joseph Stromberg noted, "it must be read to be believed." The strategy amounts to an enormously presumptuous agenda for domination of the entire world, not only overweening in the vast scope of the specific ambitions enumerated but also brazen in the implicit assumption that the president of the United States and his lieutenants are morally entitled to run the planet.

. . . George Bush closes his introduction to the document by resorting to religious metaphor, referring to his foreign policy as "this great mission."

Well might we recall, however, that the crusaders of old went forth on their faith-inspired missions heavily armed and itching for a fight, and in those respects the Bush administration bears a startling resemblance to them. "As a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against . . . emerging threats before they are fully formed," the president declares in that same introduction. In disturbingly Orwellian rhetoric, he affirms that "the only path to peace and security is the path of action" – the path, that is, of launching unprovoked military attacks on other countries. . . .

The administration's faith in pre-emptive warfare currently expresses itself in the plan for military conquest of Iraq, a country that has not threatened the United States and does not possess the means to do so effectively in any event (in part because the United States has been waging low-level warfare and enforcing an economic embargo against it for some 12 years). The Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle coterie evidently has faith that the United States can conquer Iraq quickly and then turn it into a showcase of stable, flourishing democracy. The sheer preposterousness of this expectation suggests that it is fueled more by quasi-religious zealotry than by logic and evidence. . . .

If you suspect that the Iraqis lack the necessary parts to compose this visionary contraption, well, you just need to have faith. As St. Paul wrote to the Hebrews (11:1), "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" – a characterization that fits perfectly the administration's vertiginous conception of the post-conquest reconstruction of Iraq.

Finally, the Bush administration has faith that it can continue to drag the American people down the path of perpetual war for perpetual peace and endless nation building. Maybe it can: for the most part, the people certainly have rolled over and played patsy so far, especially if we judge by the actions of their pusillanimous representatives in Congress, who hastened to pass a resolution unconstitutionally delegating to the president their power to declare war against Iraq. . . .

I would like to believe that sooner or later the American people will resist, and resist strongly, the Bush administration's crusade for global domination in general and its present plan to conquer and reconstruct Iraq . . .

Robert Higgs is senior fellow in political economy at The Independent Institute in Oakland, where he edits its scholarly quarterly journal, The Independent Review. Among his books are "Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government" (Oxford University Press, 1987) and "Arms, Politics and the Economy" (Holmes and Meier, 1990).

News: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=380167 News Analysis: In God he trusts - how George Bush infused the White House with a religious spirit

Cabinet meetings start with prayers while speeches demonstrate the President's faith, but is all this adding to divisions with Europe? . . .

Almost half of the population attend church on a weekly basis – a higher proportion than before the Second World War – and 53 per cent say religion is very important in their lives, compared with just 16 per cent in Britain, 14 per cent in France and 13 per cent in Germany. . . .

Mr Bush's Christian fervour only confirms suspicions that the looming war with Iraq is indeed a "crusade" against Muslims, exactly as Osama bin Laden suggests. For world-weary Europe the presidential language evokes mirth and queasiness in equal measure. A European leader who spoke in such terms would be laughed off the stage. An American one who speaks this way only increases the fear that simplicities of faith, and a habit of seeing a hideously complicated world in a black-and-white, good or evil fashion, are a recipe for disaster. . . .

t r u t h o u t - U.S. Diplomat John Brady Kiesling Letter of Resignation, to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell:
http://truthout.org/docs_03/030103A.shtml

What follows is a letter of resignation written by John Brady Kiesling, a member of Bush's Foreign Service Corps and Political Counselor to the American embassy in Greece. Kiesling has been a diplomat for twenty years, a civil servant to four Presidents. The letter below, delivered to Secretary of State Colin Powell, is quite possibly the most eloquent statement of dissent thus far put forth regarding the issue of Iraq. The New York Times story which reports on this remarkable event can be found after Kiesling's letter.

t r u t h o u t | Letter
     U.S. Diplomat John Brady Kiesling
     Letter of Resignation, to:
     Secretary of State Colin L. Powell

ATHENS | Thursday 27 February 2003

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. . . .

until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.

The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.

The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?

We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead. . . .

I urge you to listen to America’s friends around the world. . . . When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet?

Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s ability to defend its interests.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. . . .

John Brady Kiesling

U.S. Diplomat Resigns, Protesting 'Our Fervent Pursuit of War':
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/middleeast/27NATI.html

Toronto Sun Columnist Eric Margolis: http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_mar16.html March 16, 2003
Is Tony Blair crazy, or just plain stupid? By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor

Could the war on Iraq turn nuclear?

Al-Ahram Weekly Opinion Can the war turn nuclear: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/629/op3.htm 13 - 19 March 2003
If war breaks out because of the Iraqi problem, a nuclear scenario cannot be excluded, writes Mohamed Sid-Ahmed . . .

One thing most American military strategists do agree on is that the invading US troops are unlikely to face stiff resistance because Saddam is hated by his people and his overthrow will be welcomed by most Iraqis. But if there is a lesson to be drawn from the attacks of 11 September 2001, it is that the surprise factor can render the most scientific and rational predictions meaningless. And yet, in making its case for war, the Bush administration discounts the surprise factor completely. . . .

Russian experts have come up with more realistic assessments, predicting three possible scenarios of how the war might develop. The first scenario posits a decisive victory by the US-led military coalition over Iraq's armed forces in four to six weeks. . . .

The second scenario predicts that combat operations will last between six and 12 weeks. . . .

The third scenario is the worst for the US and its allies. According to this prediction, military operations will last between three and six months, with fierce military resistance from Iraq's air force, intense street battles, heavy civilian casualties and considerable material damage. In this last scenario, Iraq will attack the armed forces of the US and its allies, targeting Israel in particular, with weapons of mass destruction, and successfully strike oil plants in the region. Iraq will, according to this third scenario, attack Turkey's bases and towns and carry out formidable acts of terror against regional -- and perhaps global -- facilities that are of interest to the US and Britain. Experts say the chances for this third scenario are about 10 per cent.

But what if this last, albeit least likely, scenario does come into play? How will Israel rear to an Iraqi attack? In 1991, Washington persuaded Israel not to retaliate when Saddam launched his Scud missiles against it. Today, it is questionable whether Bush will, like his father, ask Israel to exercise self-restraint or, indeed, whether Israel would be willing to comply if he does. So Israel, and its possible reaction to an Iraqi attack, is the wild card in a pack already heavily stacked against any prospect of regional stability in the foreseeable future. If a cornered Saddam, who has once before demonstrated that he considers Israel a legitimate target, fits out the missiles Washington insists he still possesses with chemical or biological warheads and launches them against Israel, there are fears that the latter will be tempted to retaliate by firing a nuclear weapon at Baghdad. According to John Pike, director of the independent think tank Global Security, if Saddam manages to kill only 50 or even 500 Israelis, Israel would probably not use its nuclear option. But in the event of "50 thousand casualties -- done deal!" An Israeli nuclear bomb, which could kill millions of Iraqis, might turn the attack on a single nation into a world war, he says, with some Muslim nations joining Iraq's side against a US-Israeli alliance. Such a development would, he adds, "shape the course of Mideast history for the rest of the millennium". . . .

American officials are talking openly of not limiting their regime change policy to Iraq, but of extending it to a number of Middle East countries including Iran, Syria, Libya and Lebanon. . . .

Impeach Bush

Impeach Bush Title Page (www.impeach-bush-now.org): http://www.impeach-bush-now.org/
Welcome to the home of the Impeach Bush Campaign

The nonpartisan national Campaign to Impeach Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld (CIBCAR) is led by Professor Francis Boyle at the University of Illinois. . . .

Boyle is internationally renowned for his defense of human rights and has been a legal consultant to countries fighting for independence. He is widely published and has also made television appearances on political programs such as “The O’Reilly Factor.” For a complete copy of his 1991 resolution to impeach George H.W. Bush, please visit the site
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RfIoPGB.html . . .

Francis Boyle Draft Impeachment Resolution Against George W. Bush:
http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle01172003.html

Vote To Impeach Bush: http://www.votetoimpeach.org/

George W. Bush Must Answer to the People

- adapted from Ramsey Clark's address to the half a million demonstrators at the January 18th National March on Washington to Stop the War on Iraq organized by International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism).

The U.S. Constitution provides the means for preventing George W. Bush from engaging in a war of aggression against Iraq, and from advancing a first strike potentially nuclear preemptive war. It's called impeachment. . . .

View the
Articles of Impeachment,
drafted by Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General during the Johnson Administration has drafted articles of impeachment setting forth high crimes and misdemeanors by President Bush and other civil officers of his administration. . . .

Impeach Bush - Links: http://www.impeachbush.tv/links.html Information, editorials and resources regarding the impeachment of Mr. George W. Bush.

Impeach bush impeachbushbumperstickers.com:
http://www.impeachbushbumperstickers.com/links.html

Language as a casualty of war

Language always one of war's first casualties From 'Iraqnophobia' to 'psy-ops' Me: http://foi.missouri.edu/polinfoprop/language.html

By David Olive
Columnist
The Toronto Star
March 23, 2003. War debases language, as George Orwell noted after his stint at the British Broadcasting Corp. in World War II.

Fifty-seven years ago, Orwell anticipated the obscurantist press briefings of Donald Rumsfeld, the brittle-tempered U.S. defence secretary, when he wrote: "When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs with no eyes behind them."

As the U.S.-led attack on Iraq began last week, it was soon apparent, as in past wars, the print pundits, TV anchors and correspondents in the field were all speaking the same lingo, spoon-fed to them by the Pentagon. . . .

Here's a look at some of this war's rhetorical flourishes:

Capitulators, n. The poorly trained, poorly paid front-line Iraqi soldiers the Pentagon is counting on to surrender early in the conflict. . . .

Coalition forces . . .

Decapitation strike . . .

Embed . . .

Human intelligence . . .

Iraqnophobia . . .

One-bullet regime . . .

Psy-ops . . .

Shock and awe, n. A swift, overwhelming attack that confuses and demoralizes the enemy into rapid submission, a coinage inspired by the Blitzkrieg strategy by which the Nazis quickly captured France and the Low Countries in 1940. . . .

Target of opportunity . . .

Tick-tock . . .

Weapons of mass terror, n. A propagandistic improvement over "weapons of mass destruction." Lately, too many experts have pointed out that only nukes are capable of widespread property damage, and there's scant evidence of an Iraqi nuclear capability.

So to invest Saddam's suspected arsenal of chemical and biological weapons with the same scare value as nukes, Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. deputy defence secretary, thought it best earlier this month to offer a more accurate definition. He said, "These so-called weapons of mass destruction might better be called `weapons of mass terror.'" . . .

White-list . . .

Return to FOI Center Main Page . . .

. . . The Freedom of Information Center at the Missouri School of Journalism: http://foi.missouri.edu/index.html

Ottawa Imam supports Jihad against USA forces in Iraq

Story - Search - canada.com network:

http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=3b9cb4f7-5c7c-4332-b082-9e9fed795a0f

By KATE JAIMET The Montreal Gazette April 07, 2003

Muslims across the Middle East should take up arms to expel U.S. troops from Iraq, the imam of the Ottawa mosque said Sunday.

"If I were there, I would fight with them," Gamal Solaiman said in an interview with CanWest News Service. "I would fight the Americans with my nails and teeth."

But the Ottawa religious leader said that terrorist attacks should not be conducted against Americans on U.S. soil. . . .

Solaiman made the comments in an interview after his appearance on yesterday's edition of the current affairs show Ottawa Inside Out.

On the air, Solaiman said he supports the call for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States -- a call issued by besieged Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and many Middle Eastern religious leaders. . . .

Ottawa imam backs jihad against U.S. Muslims should fight in Mideast, not on U.S. soil, Solaiman says:
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/story.asp?id={2BDC1975-EAA8-4C95-AF90-1BB05ECCD603}

NATIONAL POST:
http://www.nationalpost.com/utilities/story.html?id=F1B4C299-6E4D-4128-968A-C0D68261D02D

'I sincerely apologize': Ottawa imam Remarks 'misunderstood': Coderre had planned probe of comments calling for holy war

April 08, 2003

OTTAWA - An apology was issued last night by Gamal Solaiman, the Ottawa imam who called on Muslims across the Middle East to take up arms in a holy war against American troops in Iraq, after Denis Coderre, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, said he intended to conduct an ''investigation'' into his inflammatory comments.

Mr. Solaiman issued the apology after a furor erupted both on Parliament Hill and across the country among religious and political leaders who demanded he retract his statements. . . .

. . . late last night, an ammended apology was issued on the same letterhead. Instead of "I deeply and sincerely apologize for my comments and the hurt which it may have caused," it now reads: "I deeply regret and sincerely apologize for my misunderstood * comments and the hurt which it may have caused."

By adding the word "misunderstood," the imam appears to suggest the media misunderstood his remarks, although he clearly stated he supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's call for a jihad, or holy war. . . .

* In other words (of the Imam), he is blaming the media for misunderstanding his comments. The media did not misunderstand his comments at all; they reported them honestly and accurately. In other words, the Imam offers no apology at all.

Go Home. ___ Go up to Directory about Iraq war

You can e-mail me at waynerp@sympatico.ca

Iraq page 10 (Iraq10)

Cabinet meetings start with prayers while speeches demonstrate the President's faith, but is all this adding to divisions with Europe? . . .

George W. Bush Must Answer to the People

View the Articles of Impeachment, drafted by Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark

View the
Articles of Impeachment,
drafted by Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark