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Two children lie dead in a morgue after a missile
hit the market in Baghdad --our debt
dollars at work
Wounded Iraqi
Child
Wounded Iraqi Girl
Wounded Iraqi Young Man
Liberated Iraqi
Family
Iraqi Shi'ites might turn against U.S.-SCIRI
By Mariam Karouny
BEIRUT, March 24 (Reuters) - Opposition groups might turn
their guns on the United States if Washington behaved as an
occupying power in Iraq, a Lebanon-based official of Iraq's main
Shi'ite opposition organisation said on Monday.
Bush Flatly
Declares No Connection Between
Saddam and al Qaeda
During one of his rare press conferences,
President Bush admitted something which completely contradicts what we've
been hearing from him, most other politicians, and the mainstream media.
Not surprisingly, the media have completely ignored this; I couldn't find
a single article that mentions it in any news source, domestic or foreign.
The occasion was a press conference with UK
Prime Minister Tony Blair, which took place in the White House on 31
January 2003. Here's the key portion:
[Adam Boulton, Sky
News (London):] One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a
link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on
September the 11th?
THE PRESIDENT: I
can't make that claim.
THE PRIME
MINISTER: That answers your question.
the entire transcript on
the White House Website
propaganda from 26 Sept 2002:
"Making
the Case: White House Says it Has Evidence of Iraq-Al Qaeda Ties"
I thought I had a strong stomach - toughened by the minefields and foul
frontline hospitals of Angola, by the handiwork of the death squads in
Haiti and by the wholesale butchery of Rwanda. But I nearly lost my
breakfast last week at the Basrah Maternity and Children's Hospital in
southern Iraq.
 Dr
Amer, the hospital's director, had invited me into a room in which were
displayed colour photographs of what, in cold medical language, are called
"congenital anomalies", but what you and I would better understand as
horrific birth deformities. The images of these babies
were head-spinningly grotesque - and thank God they didn't bring out the
real thing, pickled in formaldehyde. At one point I had to grab hold of
the back of a chair to support my legs.
I won't spare you the details. You should know because - according to
the Iraqis
 and
in all likelihood the World Health Organisation, which is soon to publish
its findings on the spiralling birth defects in southern Iraq - we are
responsible for these obscenities.
During the Gulf war, Britain and the United States pounded the city and
its surroundings with 96,000 depleted-uranium shells. The wretched
creatures in the photographs - for they were scarcely human -
are the result, Dr Amer said.
He guided me past pictures of children born without eyes, without
brains. Another had arrived in the world with only half a head, nothing
above the eyes. Then there was a head with legs, babies without genitalia,
a little girl born with her brain outside her skull and the
whatever-it-was whose eyes were below the level of its nose.
 Then
the chair-grabbing moment - a photograph of what I can only describe
(inadequately) as a pair of buttocks with a face and two amphibian arms.
Mercifully, none of these babies survived for long.
Depleted uranium has an incubation period in humans of five years. In
the four years from 1991 (the end of the Gulf war) until 1994, the Basrah
Maternity Hospital saw 11 congenital anomalies. Last year there were 221.
 Then there is the alarming increase in cases of leukaemia among Basrah
babies lucky enough to have been born with the full complement of limbs
and features inthe right place. The hospital treated 15 children with leukaemia in 1993.
In 2000 it was 60. By the end of this year that figure again will be
topped. And so it will go on. Forever.
(Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.1 billion years. Total
disintegration occurs after 25 billion years, the age of the earth.)
And finally, this one is American, a legacy of an illegal and immoral
war, if there ever was a war that was legal or moral. This gallery of
horror is the beginning of the gathering of evidence for an International
War Crimes Tribunal.
What About the Iraqi
Death Toll?
by Derrick Z. Jackson
In
1991 Beth
Osborne Daponte, a
Middle East analyst in the Census Bureau's international division was
assigned to come up with an estimate of deaths to civilians in an invasion
of Iraq. ''Right now, it's just like it was in 1991,'' Daponte said by
telephone. ''People were sold on the idea of clean war.''
a decade ago Daponte
was nearly fired by the government for her estimates on the Iraqi civilian
death toll in the first Gulf War. She estimated that a total of 158,000
Iraqis were killed, with only 40,000 of them being soldiers in battle. Of
the estimated 158,000 deaths, Daponte concluded that nearly 40,000 of the
victims were women and 32,000 were children. After the Associated Press
ran the estimate in January 1992, Daponte was told by the Census Bureau
that she was going to be fired on the basis of issuing ''false
information,'' ''untrustworthiness,'' and ''unreliability.''
In Daponte's second
analysis, the number of women who died from health effects of the war went
down, to 16,500, but the number of children who died soared to 70,000. In
addition, 8,500 senior citizens died. If that number is anywhere close to
true, that means that far more Iraqi children died than Iraqi soldiers.
Then came ten years of unclean water, sanctions that
prevented repairs to the water purification systems and an estimated death
toll to children of 1 million. This has been a war on children and now the
firestorm is intended to burn more fiercely.
AFGHAN
MASSACRE: The Convoy of Death tells
of the horrific forced journey undertaken by thousands of
prisoners who surrendered to America's Afghan allies after the
siege of Kunduz.
Bundled into containers, the lucky ones were
shot within minutes. The rest suffered an appalling road trip
lasting up to four days, clawing at the skin of their fellow
prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from
open wounds.
Up to 3,000 now lie buried in a mass grave, but
this was NOT a simple matter of Afghans killing Afghans.
AFGHAN MASSACRE tells of how American Special
Forces took control of the operation, re-directed the containers
carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as
survivors were shot and buried.
And it details how the Pentagon lied to the
world in order to cover up its role in the greatest atrocity of
the entire Afghan War. This is the documentary they did not want
you to see.
AFGHAN MASSACRE was produced over ten months in
extremely dangerous circumstances: eyewitnesses were threatened
and subsequently killed, the film crew were forced into hiding and
our researcher was savagely beaten to within an inch of his life.
He was recently awarded the 2002 Rory Peck Award for Hard News,
The SONY Award and the film has been nominated for a Royal
Television Society Award for Current Affairs. The film the United
States authorities didn't want you to see: a compelling
investigation into the true human cost of our "war against
terror."
|
The worldwide update of
reported civilian casualties in the war on Iraq
GOP plan trims vets' benefits to fund tax cut
Find out how well the Bush warhawks support the
troops!
 Former
Marine whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg on the Iraq War (audio)
See
transcript
Bush
Doctrine of Preemption a Clone of the NAZI
Doctrine of National Self Defense Rejected at Nuremburg
By Kéllia Ramares
Online Journal Contributing Editor
While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of
the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if
necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively
against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our
people and our country . . .
-The
National Security Strategy of the United States of America
January 4, 2002-"We sentenced Nazi leaders to death for waging a war of
aggression," says International Law Professor Francis A. Boyle of the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. By contrast, Prof. Boyle wants
merely to impeach George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John
Ashcroft for their plans to invade Iraq and create a police state in
America.
Boyle
is offering his services as counsel, free of charge, to any member of the
House of Representatives willing to sponsor articles of
impeachment. He is experienced in this work, having
undertaken it in 1991 for the late Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-TX), in an
effort to stop the first Persian Gulf War. It takes only one member to
introduce articles of impeachment. Of course, it will take many more than
that to vote for impeachment, which will culminate in a trial in the
Senate. Boyle is confident that, once the articles are introduced, others,
including Republicans, will co-sponsor them. But we have to
convince our Representatives that impeachment is necessary for the country
and politically safe for them. This non-violent, constitutional process
may be our best way of stopping World War III and saving our civil rights.
Bush Cabal Repudiates Nuremberg Principles
We
don't have to wait for the devastation of Baghdad to impeach the Bush
cabal because they have already repudiated the Nuremberg Charter via the
so-called Bush Doctrine of preventive war and pre-emptive attack. "This
doctrine of pre-emptive warfare or pre-emptive attack was rejected
soundly in the Nuremberg Judgment, " Boyle says. "The Nuremberg
Judgment . . . rejected this Nazi doctrine of international law of alleged
self-defense." The Bush Doctrine, embodied in the
National Security Strategy document,
published on the White House web site, is appalling, Boyle says.
"It reads like a Nazi planning document prior to the Second World War."
Several examples of crimes that may make Bush and other
White House officials vulnerable to domestic prosecution and to
Nuremburg-style international trials:
-
CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATIONS: Military aggression
and conquest violate the constitutionally mandated role of U.S. armed
forces. (Article I, Section 8; Article IV, Section 4)
-
VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW (U.N. Charter;
Geneva Convention): Preemptive invasion without proof of an imminent
attack is an illegal act of military aggression. The Bush Administration
has never proved that an attack by Saddam on the U.S. or any other
country is imminent. The mission of the U.N. is to avert war, not to
rubberstamp invasions.
-
LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THE WORLD:
President Bush, Secretary of State Powell, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld,
and other officials have lied about the weapons capability of Iraq,
including nuclear, bio, and chemical arms (Iraq has no means to deliver
them); about connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda (which seeks to
overthrow Saddam); about Saddam's involvement in terrorism against the
U.S. (no evidence); about the U.S.'s intention to establish democracy in
Iraq. In his January 28 State of the Union address, Bush used a paranoid
fantasy scenario to justify war: "Imagine those 19 hijackers with other
weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein....".
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." --
Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials, April 18, 1946.
-
RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT: While Bush claims that
the war on Iraq is necessary for homeland security, the invasion will
result in terrorist retaliation against Americans at home and abroad.
While Bush expresses concern for Iraqi civilians, the U.S. plans for a
"shock and awe" campaign, with a massive missile attack on Baghdad, and
intends to use cluster bombs and landmines, which will kill and maim
thousands of civilians. The U.S. will also use depleted uranium, despite
the severe health problems it caused American soldiers and Iraqi
civilians in the last Persian Gulf War. The U.S.'s illegal coercive
techniques in the treatment of al-Qaeda prisoners, with some prisoners
sent to Egypt and other countries that use torture openly, places U.S.
soldiers who are captured at grave risk of torture.
-
SUBTERFUGE: U.S. intelligence sabotaged the
U.N. inspections in Iraq by withholding crucial information from the
inspectors about Saddam Hussein's arsenal -- evident in Powell's own
presentation before the U.N. Powell cited a graduate student's dossier
on Iraq published ten years ago as 'damning evidence' collected by the
British Secret Service. The U.N. is investigating the bugging, allegedly
by the U.S., of the offices and phone lines of U.N. delegations whose
support the Bush Administration sought for the invasion.
-
BRIBERY AND EXTORTION: The Bush Administration
bribed Turkey and other countries to get their support in the U.N. for
invading Iraq, and also threatened to withdraw foreign aid and impose
other penalties. (The $26 billion bribe failed to persuade the Turkish
parliament.)
-
AIDING AND ABETTING THE ENEMY: U.S. companies,
in deals negotiated in part with Rumsfeld's help, sold Iraq chemical,
bio (including Anthrax), and other weapons during the 1980s. While Vice
President Cheney served as CEO, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown &
Root did $73 million worth of business with Iraq between 1998 and 2000
and sold Iraq pulse generators, designed for oil drilling but which can
be used for nuclear detonations, despite the economic sanctions against
Iraq.
-
WAR PROFITEERING: According to the Wall Street
Journal (January 16, 2003), officials from the White House, State
Department, and Defense Department have met with execs from Halliburton,
ExxonMobil, and other oil firms to determine who will control Iraqi oil
after the war. Halliburton now has a multimillion-dollar contract to
rebuild Iraq's oil field after the war, and ExxonMobil has won a $47.8
million contract to supply gasoline, diesel fuel and motor oil to U.S.
and NATO forces.
International War Crimes Tribunal
United States War Crimes Against Iraq
Part One
The National Lawyers Guild state in their
information on "Know Your Rights" that "CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS CANNOT BE
SUSPENDED - EVEN DURING A STATE OF EMERGENCY OR WARTIME - AND THEY HAVE
NOT BEEN SUSPENDED BY THE 'USA PATRIOT ACT' OR OTHER RECENT LEGISLATION."
"When the
government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people
fear the government, you have tyranny."
- Thomas Jefferson
"All that is
necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"
- Edmund Burke |
