Media Complicit in Bushco's War Crimes could face Tribunals?

Researching stuff, one thing of course can lead to so many others.

Researching what happened in and around Fallujah in April 2004 and November 2004 I came across this article from Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches describing Operation Vigilant Resolve - of which more will sometime soon appear in the Research Forum.

But also extremely interesting in this and other contexts is this attached comment from 'garda - editor, www.worldproutassembly.org:

<snip>

On December 3, 2003, three members of the mass media in Rwanda were convicted for “incitement to genocide, conspiracy, and crimes against humanity, extermination and persecution” by the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR), which was held in Arusha, Tanzania. Ferdinand Nahimana, founder of Radio Television des Mille Collines, was sentenced to life in prison. Hassan Ngeze, chief editor of the ‘Kanguara’ newspaper was also sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide which left nearly one million people dead. Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, another member of Radio Television des Mille Collines, was sentenced to 35 years in prison. All three were found to have played a major role in preparing the people for genocide.

On April 25, 1994, Nahimana said in a radio interview that the “war of media, words, newspapers and radio stations” were a complement to bullets. The judge, when sentencing him, said: “You were fully aware of the power of words, and you used the radio –- the medium of communication with the widest public reach –- to disseminate hatred and violence …. Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians.” The judge further told Nahimana: “You were a known academic, a professor of history at the national university of Rwanda and you used the radio to disseminate hatred and violence…. Instead of using the media to promote human rights, you used it to attack and destroy human rights.”

In sentencing the editor, Mr. Ngeze, to life imprisonment, the judge told him that while he agreed Ngeze had rescued several Tutsi, he told him, “Your power to save was more than matched by your power to kill. You poisoned the minds of your readers, and by words and deeds caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians.” Ngeze used his magazine, Kangura, “to instill hatred, promote fear and incite genocide.”

To Barayagwiza, the assistant editor at RTML, the judge said that he “violated the most fundamental human right, the right to life.”

ICTR Prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow, from Gambia, said in reaction to the verdict:

The tribunal has established an international precedent that those who use media to target a racial or ethnic group for destruction will face justice…. Much remains to be done, but this tribunal is well on its way to completing its mission of trailing those who bear the greatest responsibility for genocide.

everything in regard to the International Court and Iraq? Couldn't they monkey it around to cover not on them and the troops but their corporate press enablers?

A good share of "opting out" was by executive order, which over road the Congress. The president has no such power. Now if only more congress critters would find and reinstall their spines, we could see War Crime and Crime against Humanity trials for quite a few years.

...but failing that then International Law, with or without the ICC, still applies...

"American Servicemembers' Protection Act of 2002"

Which among other things:

(a) AUTHORITY- The President is authorized to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person described in subsection (b) who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.

Which means the President could have the Marines storm the Hague to recover US personnel from the ICC.

You can read all the bullshit here:

http://www.jura.uni-muenchen.de/einrichtungen/ls/simma/Dokumente%20Andreas/ASPA.htm

and that's a law i would love to see limbaugh roasted on.

at least one other Axis propagandist were convicted and jailed for aiding and abetting the crimes of aggressive war committed by the Hitler and Tojo regimes.

Hannity and Rush take note, and Ms. Miller and Mr. Sulzberger, you should also be on notice.

Rwanda.

IIRC in Rwanda the people on the radio were inciting people to go out and kill as many Tutsis as they could, and they would report where they were gathered.

A bit different than our situation.

It makes no difference whether the weapons were machetes or F-16 strikes. If the war was illegal -- and it was in both cases -- those who advocated for it, knowing that innocent non-combatants would die, are equally guilty of genocide and war crimes.

No essential difference.

relaying government propaganda and being active in an act of genocide.

Bush was going to invade Iraq no matter what the media said, but in the case of Rwanda the media played an active role in the genocide.

The veneer of civilization that is smeared across people like some cheap paint these masses that can operate within. They have this thing called electronic mass communication realm but they and it knows little of equitable justice. There are many cultures with multitudes of different customs some religious some just safety measures to insure peace during domestic commerce and exchange. Even some of the basic tenants of so called civilization are being trashed with the religious zealotry that is running rampant across the globe. Yet mostly it seems to all to matter little in the big picture.

If I were just a plain gambling man and could get that consolation prize for guessing one of very root causes of it all, my number one choice or guess would be personal responsibility and ownership of ones personal actions and decisions. It is no accident some organizations feel the need misinform the public at all times to bring about conflict in which they operate.

Without the power to project and spew propaganda (capture others attention) many of these warrior organizations would dry up and blow away. They just seem like symptoms though, the root of the problems could be within ourselves. The understanding of how we operate within ourselves and our ability to let or not our emotions run our logical selves could be the key (and a closely guarded secret for all and by all)

Yet as we all tend to fail to realize our own innate ability to hate and blame the others for hating just like the hypocrites we all. We also come to excuse "It's not my fault".

It's not hard to understand the man's or a women's hate for a tyrant who is starving out their family but if them starving people knew the parameters in which the tyrant had to operate they could change things. The ability to change the situation would be much more keen than the power of the raw emotion rage brings. The ability to let go of the emotion and work around people that want to get in the way is the leap I am working on.

Dahr Jamail's work in relation to the April 2004 Fallujah massacre, referred to in this earlier DU thread (on the Bush-Blair 'Bomb al-Jazeera Memo'), providing evidence of highly-organized war crimes or crimes against humanity.

A paragraph quoted read:

"A doctor working in a temporary emergency clinic in Fallujah during April’s siege posed a question on Democracy Now!, which he repeated:

'When you see a child five years old with no head what can you say? When you see a child with no brain just an open cavity what can you say? When you see a mother just hold her infant with no head and the shells are all over her body?'42

The doctor’s question is a good one: in April of 2004, as a city was invaded and its residents were fleeing, hiding, or being massacred, there was considerable public awareness in the United States of human beings whose bodies had been mutilated in Iraq, thanks to our news media. But among thousands of references to mutilation in that month alone, we have yet to find one related to anything that happened after March 31st. Feckless, such a search denies that mutilation is something that happens to Blackwater-hired mercs and other professional, American killers, not to Iraqi babies with misplaced heads. So, today, we pose the Iraqi doctor’s question once again, this time looking backward: when you saw an Iraqi baby feeling for her shell-splattered head, what did you say? If you’re the New York Times, you said, well, nothing;43 if you’re Paul Bremer, you said vigilant resolve."

- where note 42 refers to this April 13th 2004 Democracy Now! story (now archived at Pacifica Radio) (see also contemporaneous Democracy Now! stories here (April 12th) and here (April 13th 2004));

- and note 43 reads:

(43) This would be incomplete without elaboration. Of the 55 articles in the New York Times covering Fallujah between April 1 and May 11, 2004, there was a lone article devoted to the matter of the US attack on a civilian population. In that article — “War Reports from Civilians Stir Up Iraqis Against US,” written by Christine Hauser and published on April 14, 2004 — a truism from Human Rights Watch (“one needs to verify the information directly”) is used to make the point that “the chaos of battle complicates the task of those seeking the truth.” The complication wasn’t one that the article or even the newspaper thereafter cared much to deal with. In the article, General John Abizaid was summoned as an expert witness: “the Arab press, in particular Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, are portraying actions as purposely targeting civilians and we absolutely do not do that. I think everyone knows that.” As the title of the article perhaps indicates, the news was not so much that atrocities were occurring as it was that alleged atrocities may impede the war effort. “ accounts of the American offensive on Falluja, mounted after the ambush and mutilation of American security contractors here, are the ones many Arabs in the region are hearing.” It cannot be said, however, the language of international law was lost on the New York Times. On April 7th, Marlise Simons reported that “Iraqis meet with War Crimes Trial Experts.” But there she discussed prospects for bringing Saddam to trial, rather than his (disappointed) US masters, who at that moment were embarking on the earliest stage of a massacre. On April 8th, the Geneva Conventions were cited, but so to explain their inapplicability to the situation at hand. On the 9th, US generals used the New York Times to assure readers that US forces in Fallujah have been “judicious in the use of force.” In case these messages did not get through, the New York Times reported that Fallujans “have changed the landscape of the war dramatically since the ambush and killing last week of four security guards in Falluja,” suggesting that there is no longer a clear distinction to be drawn between fighters and civilians in Fallujah: “you never know which are going to come up and kill you” (“Under Falluja Sun, Gun Fire and a GrimTask: Wait it out,” John Kifner, Apil 19, 2004) and “the big problem now is that friendlies, civilians and bad guys are all mixed together” (“A Full Range of Technology is Appled to Bomb Falluja,” Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, April 30, 2004). Indeed, if the same standards are applied to Fallujans as were applied to the four North Carolina men who died in Fallujah on March 31st, not some, but every Fallujan subject to vigilante resolve was civilian.

(Link added). The article refers to many MSM stories inciting this violence in Fallujah, and to oh so few reporting what really happened.