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“…The Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives…”
Article 48, 1977 addition to the Geneva Conventions, Part IV</span>

On Oct. 8, U.S. fighter bombers carried out what the Pentagon called a “precision strike” against “terrorist leaders” in Falluja, a sprawling city of 300,000 west of Baghdad. For the past two months Falluja has been the target of a bombing campaign. According to the New York Times, the attack wounded 17 people, nine of whom were women and children. The victims were apparently from a wedding party that had just dispersed.

The Times went on to quote a “senior Pentagon official” who said, “We know what the strike was supposed to hit and we hit it. If a wedding party was going on, well, it was in concert with a meeting of a top Zarqawi lieutenant.” Zarqawi is a Jordanian who has claimed credit for numerous roadside bombings and assassinations in Iraq.

But according to Article 50 of the Geneva Conventions, “The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character.”

In short, the attack violated the Conventions, and the “Pentagon official” — most likely Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz — should be arrested and tried for violating international law. Since the attack constituted a “grave breach” of the Geneva Conventions, the official could also be charged under the 1996 U.S. War Crimes Act.

In the same article, the Times also quoted a “senior Bush administration official” as saying that the bombing was helpful for exploiting “fault lines” in Falluja, and that it would push the “citizenry” of Falluja to deny sanctuary and assistance to the insurgents, adding “that’s a good thing.”

The “official” might, indeed, think it was “a good thing,” but it also violated Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions, which states: “The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack.”

A “Pentagon official” also told the Times: “If there are civilians dying in connection with these attacks, and with the destruction, the locals at some point have to make a decision. Do they want to harbor the insurgents and suffer the consequences that come with that?”

In other words, terrify the civilian population into cooperating, a strategy that Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions explicitly forbids: “Acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population, are prohibited.”

The violations of the Convention are not limited to the bombing campaigns. The Washington Post recently revealed that the Bush administration allowed the CIA to transfer Iraqi combatants out of the country - a violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions - and to hide them from the Red Cross - a violation of Article 63 of the Geneva Conventions.

According to an FBI report, FBI agents visiting Abu Ghraib Prison, witnessed hooded and chained Iraqi prisoners being slapped by U.S. soldiers, who told the agents it was a sleep depravation technique. The agents also saw prisoners held naked in tiny isolation cells. The Defense Department readily admits it uses loud music, painful restraints, and a semi-drowning technique called “water boarding,” to “soften up” prisoners for interrogation.

All of the above behavior breaks numerous parts of the Convention. Article 85 of the Geneva Conventions, for instance, says that, “Sleeping quarters shall be sufficiently spacious and well ventilated.” Article 90 of the Geneva Conventions instructs that, “The clothing supplied by the Detaining Power to internees and the outward marking placed on their clothing shall not be ignominious or expose them to ridicule.” Article 117 of the Geneva Conventions says, “Imprisonment in premises without daylight, and in general, all forms of cruelty without exception are prohibited.”

Besides transgressions of Geneva, the agents also witnessed violations of several other international treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory.

Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

The UN Convention Against Torture prohibits, “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession,” adding “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever… may be invoked as a justification for torture.”

On Oct. 27, Theo van Boven, UN director of reports on torture, expressed “serious concern” over “allegations of attempts to circumvent the absolute nature of the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill treatment in the name of countering terrorism, particularly in relationship to interrogation and conditions of detention of prisoners.” While he did not charge the U.S. by name, there is no argument about to whom he was referring.

The Bush administration likes to invoke the so-called changed nature of the post-9/11 world as the attacks created new conditions that render the Conventions obsolete, somehow trumping U.S. adherence to international law. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales dismisses the Geneva Conventions as “quaint,” and the U.S. Justice Department wrote up memos giving the CIA the right to violate both international laws and the U.S. War Crimes Act.

But systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions by the U.S. hardly started with 9/11. Indeed, they are characteristic of virtually every conflict the U.S. has been involved in since the end of World War II. The following are just a few examples:

* According to a 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning series by Associated Press, it was the official policy of the U.S. military to fire on South Korean civilians during the Korean War. U.S. bombing also obliterated virtually every civilian target in North Korea.

* In Vietnam, civilians living in “free fire zones”—most of the country—were considered valid targets, and civilians were overwhelmingly the victims of bombing during the Indochina war. Then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger instructed the U.S. Air Force to bomb “anything that moved” in Cambodia. From 1967 to 1970, the “Phoenix Program” assassinated some 60,000 to 70,000 civilians in South Vietnam. A U.S. Congressional study found that the Program “appears to have violated the 1948 Geneva Conventions for the protection of civilians.”

* Bombing attacks in the first Gulf War and the Kosovo War systematically targeted power plants and grids, railway stations, refineries, communication networks, sewerage treatment facilities, and water purification plants, in spite of Article 54 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits attacking any objectives “indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.”

One could even make a case that the use of hundreds of tons of Depleted Uranium Ammunition (DUA) in Kosovo and the two Gulf wars constitutes a war crime. The Conventions clearly require the victorious party to assume responsibility for the conquered civilian population and to clean up the chaos of war. DUA has poisoned water supplies in Iraq, parts of Kuwait, and Yugoslavia, and birth defects and cancer incidences are far higher in areas where DUA was used. The U.S., however, claims that DUA poses no potential health risks, and therefore it doesn’t have to remove the low-level radioactive debris.

It is not only a record Americans should be ashamed of; it is one that should make us afraid. The Geneva Conventions and other international laws were not drawn up by bleeding heart liberals, nor were they designed to protect weaker nations. They were a response to the enormous numbers of civilian casualties inflicted by World War II, and as a practical way to shield everyone’s armed forces from humiliation, torture and death at the hands of an adversary.

If we are cavalier or dismissive about international law, it will encourage others to be so as well. The most likely victims of that policy will be we civilians, as well as our own uniformed forces. If we torture prisoners and hide them from the eyes of organizations like the Red Cross, why shouldn’t others do the same to our soldiers and civilians?

In a recent commentary in the Financial Times, Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, wrote: “The struggle against terrorism cannot be legitimate if it undermines basic values shared by humanity. The right to life and protection against murder, torture and degrading treatment must be at the heart of the actions of those engaged in this struggle. The struggle will lose credibility if it is used to justify acts otherwise considered unacceptable, such as the killing of people not participating in hostilities.”

Apart from the inhumanity our actions engender, as an entirely practical matter, to do anything less than Kellenberger suggests is to place our own people in harm’s way.



Do you know enough to justify going to war with Iraq?

1. Q: What percentage of the world's population does the U.S. have? A: 6%
2. Q: What percentage of the world's wealth does the U.S. have? A: 50%
3. Q: Which country has the largest oil reserves? A: Saudi Arabia
4. Q: Which country has the second largest oil reserves? A: Iraq
5. Q: How much is spent on military budgets a year worldwide? A: $900+ billion
6. Q: How much of this is spent by the U.S.? A:50%
7. Q: What percent of US military spending would ensure the essentials of life to everyone in the world, according to the UN? A: 10% (that's about$40 billion, the amount of funding initially requested to fund the US retaliatory attack on Afghanistan).

8. Q: How many people have died in wars since World War II? A: 86 million
9. Q: How long has Iraq had chemical and biological weapons? A: Since the early 1980's.

10. Q: Did Iraq develop these chemical and biological weapons on their own? A: No, the materials and technology were supplied by the US government, along with Britan and private corporations.

11. Q: Did the US government condemn the Iraqi use of gas warfare against Iran? A: No

12. Q: How many people did Saddam Hussein kill using gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988? A: 5,000

13. Q: How many western countries condemned this action at the time? A:0
14. Q: How many gallons of agent Orange did America use in Vietnam? A:17million.
15. Q: Are there any proven links between Iraq and September 11th terrorist attack? A: No

16. Q: What is the estimated number of civilian casualties in the First Gulf War? A: 35,000

17. Q: How many casualties did the Iraqi military inflict on the western forces during the Gulf War ? A: 0

18. Q: How many retreating Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by U.S. tanks with ploughs mounted on the front? A: 6,000

19. Q: How many tons of depleted uranium were left in Iraq and Kuwait after the Gulf War? A: 40 tons

20. Q: What according to the UN was the increase in cancer rates in Iraq between 1991 and 1994? A: 700%

21. Q: How much of Iraq's military capacity did America claim it had destroyed in 1991? A: 80%

22. Q: Is there any proof that Iraq plans to use its weapons for anything other than deterrence and self defense? A: No

23. Q: Did Iraq present more of a threat to world peace before the current conflict than 10 years ago? A: No

24. Q: How many civilian deaths has the Pentagon predicted in the event of an attack
on Iraq in 2002/3? A: 10,000

25. Q: What percentage of these will be children? A:Over 50%
26. Q: How many years has the U.S. engaged in air strikes on Iraq? A: 11years

27. Q: Was the U.S and the UK at war with Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? A: No

28. Q: How many pounds of explosives were dropped on Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? A: 20 million

29. Q: How many years ago was UN Resolution 661 introduced, imposing strict sanctions on Iraq's imports and exports? A: 12 years

30. Q: What was the child death rate in Iraq in 1989 (per 1,000 births)? A: 38
31. Q: What was the estimated child death rate in Iraq in 1999 (per 1,000 births)? A: 131 (that's an increase of 345%)

32. Q: How many Iraqis are estimated to have died by October 1999 as a result of UN sanctions? A: 1.5 million

33. Q: How many Iraqi children are estimated to have died due to sanctions since 1997? A: 750,000

34. Q: Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq? A:No
35. Q: How many inspections were there in November and December 1998? A:300
36. Q: How many of these inspections had problems? A:5
37. Q: Were the weapons inspectors allowed entry to the Ba'ath Party HQ? A: Yes
38. Q: Who said that by December 1998, "Iraq had in fact, been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history." A: Scott Ritter, UNSCOM chief.#

39. Q: In 1998 how much of Iraq's post 1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction did the UN weapons inspectors claim to have discovered and dismantled? A: 90%

40. Q: Was Iraq willing to allow the weapons inspectors back in? A:Yes
41. Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992? A: Over 65
42. Q: How many UN resolutions on Israel did America veto between 1972 and 1990? A: 30+

44. Q: How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons? A: 8
45. Q:How many nuclear warheads has Iraq got? A: 0
46. Q: How many nuclear warheads has the US got? A: over 10,000
47. Q: Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons? A: the US
48. Q: How many nuclear warheads does Israel have? A: Over 400
49. Q: Who said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"? A: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

posted by kwacky at 5:40 pm