Pursued to the end of their days for War Crimes, Count On It!

just as with the Nazi hunters

------
Statement by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson
Chief U.S. Prosecutor
at the Nuremberg Tribunals

August 12, 1945
on War Trials Agreement; August 12, 1945

There are some things I would like to say, particularly to the American people, about the agreement we have just signed.
For the first time, four of the most powerful nations have agreed not only upon the principles of liability for war crimes of persecution, but also upon the principle of individual responsibility for the crime of attacking the international peace.

Repeatedly, nations have united in abstract declarations that the launching of aggressive war is illegal. They have condemned it by treaty. But now we have the concrete application of these abstractions in a way which ought to make clear to the world that those who lead their nations into aggressive war face individual accountability for such acts.
<snip>

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which
their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the
war, but that they started it. And we must not allow
ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war,
for our position is that no grievances or policies will
justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced
and condemned as an instrument of policy."
<snip>

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson
Chief U.S. Prosecutor
at the Nuremberg Tribunals
August 12, 1945

READ THE ENTIRE STATEMENT HERE:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jack02.htm

----------------

The Court at Nuremberg charged the Nazi War criminals with the aggressive invasion of Poland, considering it a war crime.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/NurembergIndictments.html

Indictments

Count One: Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War
This count helped address the crimes committed before the war began, showing a plan to commit crimes during the war.

Count Two: Waging Aggressive War, or "Crimes Against Peace"
Including “the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances.”
--------------------


the denial of water to Iraqi civilians = Article 14 war crime

http://www.casi.org.uk/briefings-new.html

Denial of Water to Iraqi Cities
Water supplies to Tall Afar, Samarra and Fallujah were cut off during US attacks during the past two months, affecting up to 750,000 civilians. This appears to form part of a deliberate US policy of denying water to the residents of cities under attack. If so, it has been adopted without a public debate, and without consulting Coalition partners. It is a serious breach of international humanitarian law, and is deepening Iraqi opposition to the United States, other coalition members, and the Iraqi government.

This briefing outlines the evidence for the denial of water to Iraqi civilians, discusses stated justifications for these tactics, and analyses some of the implications. It calls for the immediate cessation of this tactic, which causes severe and undue suffering to civilians under attack.

Read the full briefing: "DENIAL OF WATER TO IRAQI CITIES"

http://www.casi.org.uk/briefings-new.html
-----------------------------------
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904A.shtml

Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 09 November 2004

Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In his report to the State Department, Justice Jackson wrote: "No political or economic situation can justify" the crime of aggression. He also said: "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

Between 10,000 and 15,000 U.S. troops with warplanes and artillery have begun to invade the Iraqi city of Fallujah. To "soften up" the rebels, American forces dropped five 500-pound bombs on "insurgent targets." The Americans destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the center of town. They stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions.

The battle of Fallujah promises to be far more shocking and aweful than the bombardment of Baghdad that kicked off Operation "Iraqi Freedom" in April 2003. A senior Marine Corps surgeon warned that casualties will surpass any level seen since the Vietnam War.

There have already been 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths since Bush launched his first strike on Iraq 18 months ago - that is, above and beyond those killed by Saddam Hussein, sanctions, U.S. bombings, and disease, all put together, in the 15 months prior to the invasion.

A study published by the Lancet found that the risk of death by violence for Iraqi civilians is now 58 times higher than before Bush began to liberate them in April 2003.

Bush's war on Iraq is a war of aggression. "Aggression is the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations, as set out in this definition," according to General Assembly Resolution 3314, passed in the wake of Vietnam.


..more..
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U.N. Rights Boss Urges Falluja 'Abuses' Probe

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904A.shtml

GENEVA (Reuters) - Top United Nations (news - web sites) human rights official Louise Arbour called on Tuesday for investigation of alleged abuses in Falluja, Iraq (news - web sites), including disproportionate use of force and the targeting of civilians.

Those responsible for any violations -- U.S. and multinational forces, Iraqi government troops or insurgents -- should be brought to justice, the former U.N. war crimes prosecutor said in a statement.
----------------
excellent article by former NY Congresswoman,

Torture and Accountability

by ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050718&s=holtzman

<snip>

The War Crimes Act of 1996

No less a figure than Alberto Gonzales, then-White House counsel to George W. Bush and now US Attorney General, expressed deep concern about possible prosecutions under the War Crimes Act of 1996 for American mistreatment of Afghanistan war detainees.

<snip>
In a memo to President Bush, dated January 25, 2002, Gonzales urged that the United States opt out of the Geneva Conventions for the Afghanistan war--despite Secretary of State Colin Powell's objections. One of the two reasons he gave the President was that opting out "substantially reduces the likelihood of prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

<snip>
Plainly, both Gonzales and Ashcroft were so concerned about preventing War Crimes Act prosecutions that they were willing to assume the risks--including the likelihood of severe international criticism as well as the exposure of our own captured troops to mistreatment--of opting out of Geneva.

..more..
------
Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com
Could Bush administration officials be prosecuted for 'war crimes' as a result
of new measures used in the war on terror? The White House's top lawyer ...
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4999734/site/newsweek/

Crimes
First Bush Administration Found Guilty of War Crimes · Questioning the New Imperial
World Order: An International Court of Academics, Journalists, ...
www.thefourreasons.org/crimes.htm

War Crimes (washingtonpost.com)
Soldiers found to have committed war crimes were excused with noncriminal ...
The Bush administration refused to release these records to the human rights ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20986-2004Dec22.html

Tom Stephens and John Philo: The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney and Co.
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney and Co. By TOM STEPHENS and JOHN PHILO.
Dear Congressman Conyers:. We write to ask that you take the lead in efforts to ...
www.counterpunch.org/stephens05202004.html


Cluster Bombs: War Crimes of the Bush Administration.
by Paul Rockwell.
The formal war in Iraq has ended, and most of the big guns have fallen silent. ...
www.commondreams.org/views04/0126-04.htm

K&R

be fall and the new bosses need an excuse to bury them for good. E.g the Chinese take over and they want to get rid of every single member of the current Bush cabal.

Only the losers are every held accountable in this world.

Cause the victors are never held accountable.

but he is constantly dogged and there are countries he cannot visit.

we will just have to see

. . . that a Nuremburg awaits these malicous, sneaky, murderous bastards. They've gotten away with so much, with virtually no resistance. The Polish army, in 1939, fought way harder than we have.

We'll keep trying, though.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=6217

From Vietnam to Fallujah
by Fran Schor
September 13, 2004

<snip>
For those who have studied the historical record of the US prosecution of the war in Southeast Asia, neither the Republicans nor Democrats have confronted the full measure of those atrocities and what their legacy is especially in the war on Iraq. While most studies of the war in Southeast Asia acknowledge that 4 times the tonnage of bombs was dropped on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos than that used by the US in all theaters of operation during World War II, only a few, such as James William Gibson's The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam, analyze the full extent of such bombing. Not only were thousands of villages in Vietnam totally destroyed, but massive civilian deaths, numbering close to 3 million, resulted in large part from such indiscriminate bombing. Integral to the bombing strategy was the use of weapons that violated international law, such as napalm and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs. As a result of establishing free-fire zones where anything and everything could be attacked, including hospitals, US military operations led to the deliberate murder of mostly civilians.

While Rumsfeld and the Pentagon have touted the "clean" weapons used in Iraq, the fact is that aerial cluster bombs and free-fire zones have continued to be part of present day military operations. Villages throughout Iraq, from Hilla to Fallujah, have borne and are bearing US attacks that take a heavy civilian toll. Occasionally, criticisms of the type of ordnance used in Iraq found its way into the mainstream press, especially when left-over cluster bomblets looking like yellow food packages blow up in children's hands or depleted uranium weapons are dropped inadvertently on British soldiers. However, questions about the immorality of "shock and awe" bombing strategy have been buried deeper than any of the cluster bomblets.

In Vietnam, a primary ground war tactic was the "search and destroy" mission with its over-inflated body counts. As Christian Appy forcefully demonstrated in Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam, such tactics were guaranteed to produce atrocities. Any revealing personal account of the war in Vietnam, such as Ron Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July, underscores how those atrocities took their toll on civilians and US soldiers, like Kovic. Of course, certain high-profile atrocities, such as My Lai, achieved prominent media coverage (almost, however, a year after the incident.) Nonetheless, My Lai was seen either as an aberration and not part of murderous campaigns such as the Phoenix program with its thousands of assassinations or a result of a few bad apples, like a Lt. Calley, who nonetheless received minor punishment for his command of the massacre of hundreds of women and children. Moreover, as reported in Tom Engelhardt's The End of Victory Culture, "65% of Americans claimed not to be upset by the massacre" (224). Is it, therefore, not surprising that Noam Chomsky asserted during this period that the US had to undergo some sort of de- nazification in order to regain some moral sensitivity to what US war policy had produced in Vietnam..

..more..

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/092905.html

'Frog-Marching' Bush to the Hague
By Robert Parry
September 29, 2005


Federal authorities “frog-marched” Private Lynndie England in handcuffs and shackles off to prison to serve three years for her role in abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

The 22-year-old single mother from West Virginia joins a group of nine reservists punished for mistreating Iraqis, some of whom were stripped naked and forced to pose in mock sexual positions. England appeared in photos, pointing at a prisoner’s penis and holding a naked Iraqi by a leash.

While England’s punishment fits with George W. Bush’s pledge to prosecute military personnel for wrongdoing in Iraq, a larger question is whether low-ranking soldiers are becoming scapegoats for the bloody fiasco that Bush created when he ordered the invasion in defiance of international law. Pumped-up by Bush’s false claims linking Iraq to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S. soldiers charged into that Arab country with revenge on their minds.

In a healthy democracy, the debate might be less about imprisoning England and other “grunts” than whether Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other war architects should be “frog-marched” to the Hague for prosecution as war criminals.

<snip>
Wanton Death

But the cavalier treatment toward Iraqi lives can be traced back to the very start of the war. Determined to invade Iraq, Bush brushed aside international objections, prevented the completion of a United Nations search for alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and unleashed his “shock and awe” bombing campaign on March 19, 2003.

to repeat it."

Where he is long overdue.