LATEST NEWS FROM PERDANA GLOBAL PEACE ORGANISATION

from the U.N. OBSERVER & International Report.

http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=3443&blz=1
2007-04-29 |

To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the International Chemical Weapons Convention which entered into force on 29 April 1997, eight European associations of friendship and solidarity with the people of Vietnam have adopted the Public Appeal of International Lawyers concerning the Responsibility of the United States towards Vietnam (see attachment), and have committed themselves to circulating it widely throughout the world.

The people and environment of Vietnam were subjected by the United States to chemical warfare on a massive scale during the period from 1961 to 1971. The tragic consequences persist to this day and will continue for generations to come. Although the Chemical Weapons Convention was not in force at the time, it is indisputable that the United States has a moral obligation to ameliorate the human and ecological catastrophe it inflicted during its war of aggression against Vietnam.

It is obvious that genuine peace cannot be established if war crimes are forgotten or ignored, as emphasized by the Paris Conference on Agent Orange in Vietnam whose delegates affirmed “our demand for a world of humanity, solidarity and collective vigilance in which catastrophes such as that inflicted upon Vietnam have been eliminated” (Public Appeal of the Paris Conference, 12 March 2005).

We therefore urge all those who agree with that demand to join us in adopting and spreading awareness of the Public Appeal of International Lawyers concerning the Responsibility of the United States towards Vietnam.

Signed by:

Belgium: Association Belgique Vietnam
France: Association d’amitie franco-vietnamienne
Germany: Freundschaftsgesellschaft Vietnam
Italy: Associazione Nazionale Italia-Vietnam
Spain: Instituto de Cultura hispano-vietnamita
Sweden: Levande Framtid
Switzerland: Association Suisse Vietnam
United Kingdom: Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society

PUBLIC APPEAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAWYERS CONCERNING
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE UNITED STATES TOWARD VIETNAM
FOR THE SPRAYINGS OF AGENT ORANGE/DIOXIN

In view of the following facts:

During a period of ten years, to prevent the forest and undergrowth from concealing the hiding places and deployment of the adversary, to destroy harvests, and to incite the rural population to flee the countryside, the United States Air Force sprayed 72 million litres of herbicides on a total area of nearly two million hectares of forest and rice fields. These herbicides included 41,635,000 litres of “Agent Orange” which contained dioxin, a substance one million times more toxic than the most powerful natural poison known at the time, and whose harmful effects are such that, during the Second World War, President Roosevelt prohibited the U.S. Army from using it, and concerning which U.S. Senator Nelson in August 1970 declared in Congress: “It is not impossible that our country has dropped a delayed-action bomb that will reverberate on the affected populations with consequences that will only be possible to evaluate in a distant future.”

Highly stable, dioxin tends to remain in the environment. The concentrations are extremely important in soils, in sediments as well as in animal fodder, thus contaminating the food chain. Seventeen years after the spraying of defoliants stopped, they were still found in fruits and vegetables cultivated in soils contaminated during the conflict. The “Stellman Report” estimated the number of potential or “silent” victims to be 4,800,000, not counting victims poisoned later, due to the processes of the food chain. The victims - past, present and future - thus number in the millions. It is indisputable that the families of Agent Orange victims have experienced an abnormally high number of stillbirths; children suffering from malformations and monstrous deformities, and that the second and third generations have not been spared. Even people who are not visibly injured are suffering from dermatological and psychiatric problems.

Considering that the Congress of the United States in 1991 passed the “Agent Orange Act”, authorizing a commission to study the issue;
that after recognizing the fact that the danger posed by dioxin had been underestimated ten years earlier, it declares that the substance was “a hormonal deregulator which has serious effects on the reproduction system of the foetus during its development, on the brain and on the immune system”;
that in 1966 the U.S. National Institute of Health established a link between exposure to Agent Orange and “ten diseases (sarcoma, lymphoma, leukaemia, Hodgkin’s disease, cancers of the respiratory tract and prostate, multiple myelomas, type 2 diabetes, delayed-onset cutaneous porphyria, acute and subacute neuropathic diseases).

Taking into account the terrible ecological consequences of the sprayings: 43% of cultivated areas were poisoned; 60% of the hevea plantations and 36% of the mangrove forests were destroyed, the restoration of which will require more than one hundred years; water resources were polluted on a massive scale and the entire food chain was poisoned for many decades. Finally, 6250 square kilometres of land in southern Vietnam remain unsuitable for agriculture.

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Considering that the U.S. Constitution makes it impossible to hold the government responsible for acts of war perpetrated by the U.S. forces, 70,000 U.S. veterans affected by Agent Orange, and later their organizations, in 1979 initiated legal proceedings to demand compensation from the firms that had manufactured the “Agent orange”; and also considering that the firms preferred to settle the lawsuit by paying 180 million dollars into a fund for compensation to ex-serviceman suffering from dioxin.

Considering that, on 31 January 2004, the Association of Victims of Vietnam and five individually named victims also initiated legal proceedings in the United States against the manufacturing firms. That lawsuit was rejected by the courts, but is currently under appeal.

Considering that in January 2006, a South Korean court issued a judgment of liability against the firms Dow Chemical and Monsanto, and ordered them to compensate 6800 South Korean victims.

Considering, however, that these legal actions can benefit only those in whose names they are conducted, and by extension to a “class action”, but do not provide for any compensation to Vietnam per se, for the total accumulated damage resulting from turning entire areas into deserts for an unknown length of time, or for the moral offence and the social costs to the State for current and future births involving malformations or serious illness.

That, under article 21 of the Paris Accord, the United States declared that it “will contribute to erase the wounds of the war and to the reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam”, but now states that its commitment was limited.

That the United States asserted, in particular, that the Geneva Protocol only prohibited the use of asphyxiating gases and “similar” substances, and that the herbicides could not be classified as “similar”.

That, however, preliminary documents of the Geneva Protocol as well as the interpretations of the U.S. authorities of that time show that the aim of the text was to forbid the use of any kind of gases and that the U.N. General Assembly confirmed this interpretation in its resolution 2603 A (XXIV) of 16 December 1969, in which it declares that it is contrary to the generally accepted rules of international law as they are stated in the Protocol signed in Geneva on 17 June 1925, to use in international wars : a) all chemical agents of war… due to their direct toxic effects on humans, animals or plants.

That if, in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States, Australia, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands maintained a narrow interpretation of the Protocol, namely that it did not apply to defoliants, herbicides, or to anti-riot gases such as teargas.

It remains that when the United States ratified the Protocol on 10 April 1975, it declared that it renounced first use of herbicides and anti-riot gas in time of war, except:

- with regard to herbicides,

“Under regulations applicable to their domestic use, for control of vegetation within US bases and installations or around their immediate defensive perimeters”;

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In other words, the U.S.A. did not dispute the fact that herbicides are chemical weapons nor the illegality of their employment in the event of war. It should also be noted that, upon submitting its documents of ratification, the U.S.A. included reservations that were in no way related to the definition of chemical weapon:

- for the Geneva Protocol of 1925
” The protocol will cease to be obligatory for the Government of the United States with regard to the use of asphyxiating, toxic and other gases, and to all liquids, materials or machines similar to those mentioned in the Protocol.” (April 10, 1975)

- for the Convention of Paris of 1993
” … provided that with regard to the appendix on the implementation of the Convention and its verification, any sample taken in the United States within the framework of the Convention shall for the purpose of analysis be transported to a laboratory located outside of the territory of the United States.” (April 25, 1997)

In any event, since whatever is used in war against an adversary in order to inflict injury or damage, whether upon humans or only upon materials, that which is used is by definition a weapon- if not by nature, then by intent. And if that which is used is a chemical, it is a chemical weapon.

But especially and in any case, those who cause injury have a duty to rectify the damaging consequences.

By the mere fact of having sent C123 planes to spray defoliants on the forests of a foreign country in violation of its territorial integrity, and in so doing having caused damage and destruction contrary to the Humanitarian Law, whatever the modus operandi constitutes an illegal act by which the United States has made itself responsible for the consequences and is obligated to rectify them.

Laurence BOISSON DE CHAZOURNES, Professor
University of Geneva (Switzerland)

Francis A. BOYLE, Professor of International Law
University of Illinois (United States)

Robert CHARVIN, Professor of International Law,
Former dean of the university faculty, Nice (France)

Eric DAVID, Professor of International Law
Free University of Brussels (Belgium)

Robert DOSSOU, Professor of International Law,
Former government minister, Cotonou (B?nin)

V.R. KRISHINA YIER, Former justice of India’s Supreme Court,
President of the Indian Association of Jurists

Norman PAECH, Professor of International Public Law,
Member of the Bundestag, Berlin (Germany)

1 December 2006

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Petition concerning the responsibility of the United States toward Vietnam for the totality of the damage caused by Agent Orange/dioxin

In reference to the expert opinion of several leading authorities on international law from various nations of the world, we the undersigned support their appeal to the United States to rectify or provide thorough compensation for the injuries inflicted upon generations of the Vietnamese people, which have resulted from the spraying of toxic substances on Vietnam by the U.S. Air Force.

Initial endorsers
For the International Association of Democratic Jurists: Jitendra Sharma, President (India); Jeanne Mirer, Secretary-General (USA); Juan Roigt Plans, Treasurer (Catalonia); Clea Carpi da Rocca, President of the Association of American Continental Jurists (Brazil); Josif Gavril Chiuzbaian, President of the Union of Romanian Jurists; Ibrahm Essemlali, Secretary-General of the Union of Arab Lawyers; Roland Weyl (France); vice-presidents Mohamed Bentoumi (Algeria), Josip Geron (Bulgaria), Akhtar Hussain (Pakistan), Fabio Marcelli (Italy), Osamu Niikura (Japan); adjutant secretaries-general Jan Fermon (Belgium), Ferriol (Cuba), Raji Sourani (Palestine), Dao Uc (Vietnam), Lee Wok (South Korea). For Droit-Solidarit? (France): Sophie Thonon, President; Niri Albala, Jamil Banabdallah, Wassim Benhassine, Raplh Benarrosh, Marcel Berge, Jean Jacques Dulong, Elsa Galaup, Ourida Gherab, Fran?ois Kaldor, Raymond M?rat, Monique Picard-Weyl, Adeline et Olivier Prouteau, Jean Veyssi?re, France Weyl.

Nordic News Network
Levande Framtid
Contact: Al Burke, tel. 08-731 9200,
Internet: http://www.nnn.se/vietnam/environ.htm

Plans for Al-Adhamiyah confirm that the US occupation and its puppets in Iraq can build nothing but open-air prisons. It will fail

No military strategy can impose on the Iraqi people an occupation it overwhelmingly refuses. Its resistance is national and continues

What kind of government walls-in its own people? One desperate and illegitimate, tied to the fate of a defeated occupation

The latest US ploy to subjugate Baghdad ā€” exemplified in plans to wall-in the district of Al-Adhamiyah ā€” reveals in clarity the Great Lie of the US-led occupation of Iraq. This is nothing more than the implementation of apartheid and sectarianism by a foreign military police state, aimed to break the will of Iraqis who refuse to cede their country, its resources and future to foreign powers and their local lackeys.

Neither this tactic nor others will defeat the heroic resistance of the Iraqi people, which is borne both of situation and history, culture and progress. Sectarianism and apartheid cannot break the geopolitical unity of Iraq, which is a historical, social, economic and cultural reality.

The writing is already on the wall: the US-led occupation is bankrupt, morally, politically, economically and militarily; Malikiā€™s puppet government exposed as the desperate, mercenary, sectarian, seditious, incompetent, corrupt and backward cabal that it is.

Apartheid, not protection
While US troops and contractors work in haste by night, and under military cover, to wall-in ā€œselectedā€ neighbourhoods in Baghdad, Maliki says one thing and his advisors another. Confronted by the ignominy of the similarity between the barricades his government shunts the Iraqi people behind and the vast Zionist offensive fortification splitting occupied Palestine, Maliki backtracked, saying there are ā€œother ways to protectā€ Baghdad.

But these walls ā€” vast concrete blocks that the US occupation is manufacturing at a rate of 2000 per week ā€” continue to be constructed and have nothing to do with protection and everything to do with instituting a sectarian division of Baghdad ahead of plans to divide the whole of Iraq along sectarian lines.

By plain logic, when the occupation builds barriers in Iraq it imposes the existence of sectarian or ethnic differences. This sectarianism was brought with the US occupation and is a keystone of its strategy. That Baghdad and Iraq continue to be united in the heart of the population is a defeat for the occupation. Walls are imposed to break this unity, while at the same time they are proof of the failure and despair of the occupation and its puppets.

Not only immoral, but illegal under international law
The option of general imprisonment is not a new strategy, nor limited to Al-Adhamiyah. Al-Dawra, Al-Ghazaliyah, Al-Amiriya, Al-Amel and Al-Adl ā€” all in Baghdad ā€” are among 10-30 other Baghdad neighbourhoods slated to be sealed to the outside world, joining Tel Afar, Fallujah, Al-Qaim, Haditha, Samarra, Hit, Al-Khalidiyah, Yathreb and Al-Ratba as besieged ā€œgated communitiesā€, leaving hundreds of thousands of people under de facto house arrest and whole cities, towns and districts in de facto solitary confinement.

ā€œPublic orderā€ and the exigencies of ā€œsecurityā€ cannot be used as justification for ghettoising whole neighbourhoods, towns and cities when the US-led invasion of Iraq was illegal, the subsequent occupation illegal, the puppet government but a furtherance of those illegalities, and current US military tactics but an attempt to quash the legal resistance of Iraqis to colonialism, occupation and aggression in violation of their right to self-determination.

International humanitarian and human rights law prohibits collective punishment, mass civilian imprisonment, and grave violations of rights to freedom of movement. Occupying powers are also prohibited from engineering demographic changes in occupied countries under the laws of war. Forcible division of the population of Iraq ā€” whether nationally or locally ā€” is a war crime.

Plans for Al-Adhamiyah reveal other more nefarious aims common to plans to wall-in other Baghdad communities: Al-Adhamiyah is a historic bastion of culture, science, progress, and resistance to colonialism and imperialism. It is a centre of the national sentiment from which has emerged a sustained popular resistance to occupation. Walling-in Al-Adhamiyah is prelude to a wave of assassinations, mass violations of human rights, and political ethnic cleansing.

Stop the walls; stop the occupation!
Despite four years of brutal military aggression, the United States refuses to understand that by definition the Iraqi resistance is the entire Iraqi population resisting occupation. This desperate bid to create ghettos that can be cleansed of that legal resistance is assured to fail, short of complete annihilation of the entire resisting national population.

With polls reporting that over 80 per cent of Iraqis refuse the occupation, the US and its sectarian puppets will have to pacify, imprison or kill over 18 million Iraqis to succeed. Americaā€™s destiny in Iraq is thus a destiny of being rejected. The US occupation should accept its defeat and get out.

Every past attempt to ghettoise, wall-in or collectively imprison a population ā€” from Warsaw to Vietnam and Algeria, through South Africa and occupied Palestine ā€” has failed morally and militarily. US plans for Al-Adhamiyah, and indeed the entirety of Iraq, will likewise end up in the rubbish bin of history.

We call on people of integrity and conscience ā€” workers, lawyers, parliamentarians, syndicates, activists, militants and practitioners ā€” to raise their voices in protest, disgust and action:

Stop the military funding.
Stop the walls.
Stop the torture.
Stop the rapes.
Stop the assassinations.
Stop the plunder.
Stop the lies.
Stop the impunity.
Stop the illegalities.
Stop the occupation.
Recognise the resistance!
The BRussells Tribunal Committee
http://brusselstribunal.org

Please circulate this statement widely.

For information contact: info@brusselstribunal.org

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn’t Fit

ARAB STRATEGY FORUM:

Political Systems in the Arab World in 2020:
Moving Towards Reform and Development

by Professor Francis A. Boyle
13 December 2004
Dubai, U.A.E.

IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE COMPASSIONATE, THE MERCIFUL

Your Royal Highnesses, Distinguished Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.

The demand by the Bush Jr. administration and its Zionist neo-conservative operatives for democratization in the Arab world is a joke and a fraud that is designed to pressure, undermine, and destabilize Arab governments and states at the behest of the genocidal Israeli apartheid regime, and to pursue America’s continuing campaign for outright military control and domination of the Gulf oil and gas resources that the United States government launched in direct reaction to the Arab oil embargo of the West in 1973. For over the past three decades American foreign policy toward the entire Middle East has been determined by oil and Israel, in that order.

The United States government will seek direct military control and domination of the hydrocarbon resources of the Arab and Muslim world until there is no oil and gas left for them to steal, using Israel as its regional “policeman” towards that end. Oil and Israel were behind both the Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. wars against Iraq. And now Bush Jr. is threatening to attack Syria, Lebanon, and Iran in conjunction with the genocidal apartheid regime in Israel. As the oil and gas in the Arab and Muslim world proceed to run out, the United States and Israel will become even more predatory, aggressive, destructive, and genocidal toward Arab and Muslim states and peoples.

The Bush Jr. administration and its Zionist neo-conservative operatives could not care less about democracy in the Arab world. In fact, Bush Jr. and his Neo-Cons are all trying very hard to build a Police State in the United States of America that we lawyers are vigorously opposing. What the Bush Jr. administration and its Zionist neo-conservative operatives really want in the Arab world are quisling dictators who will do their dirty work for them and the genocidal Israeli apartheid regime against the wishes and prayers of the Arab people for democracy, human rights, the rule of law, constitutionalism, as well as for the liberation of Palestine and Al Quds.

Those will be the predominant facts and trends that the Arab world will have to confront between now and 2020. It was not my assignment here today to advise Arab states and the Arab people how to counteract this anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda by the United States and Israel. But certainly the sacred Koran and the divinely inspired teachings of the Prophet Mohammed - May Peace and Blessings Be Upon Him! - shall guide you and protect you during this most difficult period in the history of the Arab Nation, the Arab People, Arab States, and Islam.

Shukhran.

END.

(c) Copyright 2004 by Francis A. Boyle. All rights reserved.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited
site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain
steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional
freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration
seem to be taking them all

Naomi Wolf

Tuesday April 24 2007

The Guardian
Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of
the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they
had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days,
democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial
law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and
TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits
on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you
look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint
for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has
been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less
terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and
arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that
closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to
take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are
willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been
initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time
even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree -
domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much
about our rights or our system of government - the task of being
aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’
ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and
professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the
founders put in place, even as they are being systematically
dismantled. Because we don’t learn much about European history, the
setting up of a department of “homeland” security - remember who else
was keen on the word “homeland” - didn’t raise the alarm bells it
might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his
administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open
society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable -
as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that
it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism.
I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and
other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the
events we see unfolding in the US.

The 10 steps are:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of
national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the
USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to
debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were
told we were now on a “war footing”; we were in a “global war”
against a “global caliphate” intending to “wipe out civilisation”.
There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits
on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln
declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of
Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as
Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented:
all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing
back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and
without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the
battlefield. “This time,” Fein says, “there will be no defined end.”

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an
old trick. It can, like Hitler’s invocation of a communist threat to
the nation’s security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin
academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among
other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of
February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the
Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended
state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the
National Socialist evocation of the “global conspiracy of world
Jewry”, on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of
course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey
the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain -
which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in
America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security
threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are
potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of
course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our
freedoms.

2. Create a gulag

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a
prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the
American detention centre at Guantanamo Bay to be situated in legal
“outer space”) - where torture takes place.

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as
outsiders: troublemakers, spies, “enemies of the people” or
“criminals”. Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison
system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the
prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition
members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and
sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy
crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to
the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard
practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy
uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantanamo in
Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial
and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly
has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced
they would issue no information about the secret CIA “black site”
prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people
who have been seized off the street.

Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more
secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand
accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people,
innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are
aware of and those we can’t investigate adequately.

But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve
only scary brown people with whom they don’t generally identify. It
was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the
anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemoller, who had been seized as a political
prisoner: “First they came for the Jews.” Most Americans don’t
understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantanamo
set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny
prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift.
Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the
Nazis, too, set up the People’s Court, which also bypassed the
judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in
isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and
were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became
a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon
the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a “fascist shift” want to close
down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young
men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian
countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent
rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially
important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and
so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America’s security
contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work
that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts
worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security
work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these
contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing
prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under
Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US
administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune
from prosecution.

Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane
Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed
hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The
investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard
who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a
natural disaster that underlay that episode
- but the administration’s endless war on terror means ongoing scope
for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis
and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in
identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the
votes in Florida in
2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a
need for “public order” on the next election day. Say there are
protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not
rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station
“to restore public order”.

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In Mussolini’s Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in
communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on
ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The
Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under
surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being
watched.

In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the
New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens’
phones, read their emails and follow international financial
transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too,
could be under state scrutiny.

In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about
“national security”; the true function is to keep citizens docile and
inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens’ groups

The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and
harass citizens’ groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena,
whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found
itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while
churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal
under US tax law, have been left alone.

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union
reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental
and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon
database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings,
rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500
“suspicious incidents”. The equally secret Counterintelligence Field
Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been
gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in
peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track “potential
terrorist threats” as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A
little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights
protests as “terrorism”. So the definition of “terrorist” slowly
expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D.
Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote
China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe
pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being
arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society
there is a “list” of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are
targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get
off the list.

In 2004, America’s Transportation Security Administration confirmed
that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security
searches, or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found
themselves on the list - Two middle-aged women peace activists in San
Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela’s
government - after Venezuela’s president had criticised Bush; and
thousands of ordinary US citizens.

Professor Walter F. Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is
one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author
of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated
former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But
on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark,
“because I was on the Terrorist Watch list”.

“Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from
flying because of that,” asked the airline employee.

“I explained,” said Murphy, “that I had not so marched but had, in
September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on
the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of
the constitution.”

“That’ll do it,” the man said.

Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution -
Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of “enemy of
the people” tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.

James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo who
was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by
the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has
been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly
identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken
into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation
against him, he is still on the list.

It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on
the list, you can’t get off.

7. Target key individuals

Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they
don’t toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state
universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph
Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile’s
Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in
punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift
punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not
“coordinate”, in Goebbels’ term, ideologically. Since civil servants
are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given
regime, they are also a group that fascists typically “coordinate”
early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional
Civil Service was passed on April 7, 1933.

Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure
on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who
have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the
Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer
who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration
official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees
pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to
boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that
“waterboarding is torture” was stripped of the security clearance she
needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what
looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the
civil service in April 1933, attorneys were “coordinated” too, a step
that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s,
Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the
70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be
dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass
them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they
arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists
are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San
Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over
video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a
criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he
threatened “critical infrastructure” when he and a TV producer were
filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written
a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph
C. Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the
country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had
acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was
outed as a CIA spy
- a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the
US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in
an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented
multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or
threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters
and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to
the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera,
they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the
BBC’s Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed,
including ITN’s Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated
Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken
to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the
evidence against their staffers.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news
and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified
documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to
attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged
papers.

You won’t have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not
possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have
pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What
you already have is a White House directing a stream of false
information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to
sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it’s not the lies
that count but the muddying. When citizens can’t tell real news from
fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason

Cast dissent as “treason” and criticism as “espionage’. Every closing
society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly
criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of
“spy” and “traitor”. When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York
Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times’
leaking of classified information “disgraceful”, while Republicans in
Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing
commentators and news outlets kept up the “treason” drumbeat. Some
commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one
penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack
represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show
trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason;
Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind
Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked,
during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were
arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up
to five months, and “beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and
threatened with death”, according to the historian Myra MacPherson.
After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, dissidents were “enemies of the people”.
National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy
“November traitors”.

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise
that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly,
passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the
power to call any US citizen an “enemy combatant”. He has the power
to define what “enemy combatant” means. The president can also
delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to
define “enemy combatant” any way he or she wants and then seize
Americans accordingly.

Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be
completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the
power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow,
or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy
brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while
awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers
psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why
Stalin’s gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantanamo, in every
satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at
Guantanamo, is all isolation cells.)

We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal
rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the
Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways
to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. “Enemy combatant”
is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done.
“We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model -
you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad,
so we’re going to hold you,” says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to
believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a
certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of
opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes
quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV
and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn’t real
dissent. There just isn’t freedom. If you look at history, just
before those arrests is where we are now.

10. Suspend the rule of law

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president
new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national
emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare -
he can send Michigan’s militia to enforce a state of emergency that
he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state’s
governor and its citizens.

Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears’s meltdown and the
question of who fathered Anna Nicole’s baby, the New York Times
editorialised about this shift: “A disturbing recent phenomenon in
Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American
democracy have been passed in the dead of night … Beyond actual
insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic
police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak,
terrorist attack or any ‘other condition’.”

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act -
which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the
military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick
Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial
law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system
of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a
monarch’s soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind
of concentration of militias’ power over American people in the hands
of an oppressive executive or faction.

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total
closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini’s march on Rome or
Hitler’s roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are
too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for
any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy
could be closed down by a process of erosion.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the
profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things
look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest
festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the
movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is
always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are
skating, ships are sailing: “dogs go on with their doggy life … How
everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster.”

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet
shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being
fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us
unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and
free press do their work today in a context in which we are “at war”
in a “long war” - a war without end, on a battlefield described as
the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US
citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or
long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of
all these still-free-looking institutions - and this foundation can
give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome,
we have to think about the “what ifs”.

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God
forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency.
History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to
maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the
gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered
by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any
executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict
rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation
and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with
treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller
with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would
the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they
would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the
tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for
Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the
detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists
at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives
trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new
group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate
collection of people needs everybody’s help, including that of
Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure
on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by
real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the “what ifs”. For if we keep
going down this road, the “end of America” could come for each of us
in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a
different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is
how it was before
- and this is the way it is now.

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and
judiciary, in the same hands … is the definition of tyranny,” wrote
James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road;
we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the
banner the founders asked us to carry.

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited

by Francis Boyle

(ref:CounterPunch - November 18, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org)

The Dems Are Caving on Gonzales

War Criminal as Attorney General?

As White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales originated, authorized, approved, and aided and abetted grave breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949 (e.g., torture and Gitmo kangaroo courts), which are serious war crimes. In other words, Gonzales is a prima facie war criminal. He must be prosecuted under the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

For example, article 129 of the Third Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War provides in relevant part with respect to prima facie U.S. war criminals such as Gonzales: “Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such graves breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts.”

To the same effect is article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting Civilians in wartime. This obligation to prosecute Gonzales applies to every High Contracting Party to the Geneva Conventions, which means almost every state in the world, including the United States of America–still “the land of the free, and the home of the brave” despite incumbent US Attorney General John Ashcroft, another prima facie war criminal. And there is no statute of limitations for the commission of such serious war crimes. No wonder the Bush Jr administration has done everything humanly possible to sabotage the International Criminal Court.

The same conclusions can be reached by the application of the Pentagon’s own U.S. Department of the Army Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare, which, by its own terms, also applies to civilian government officials such as Gonzales involved in ordering or aiding and abetting or conspiring to commit war crimes

Despite the pusillanimous predilections of Senator Leahy, the U.S. Senate must reject his nomination. As a prima facie war criminal, Gonzales is not fit to be Attorney General of the United States of America. Should Gonzales travel around the world in that capacity, then human rights lawyers around the world will attempt to get him prosecuted wherever he might go along the lines of what they did to General Pinochet in London. Like pirates, war criminals are “hostes humani generis”–the enemies of all humankind. A fitting description for Bush Jr and his gang of war criminals.

[Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of “Foundations of World Order,” (Duke University Press), “The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence,” and “Palestine, Palestinians and International Law,” (Clarity Press). ]

By
Professor Francis A. Boyle
20 April 2007
Not surprisingly, the newly released January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Imperial Law–otherwise known as the self-styled American Journal of International Law but founded and still operated by U. S. State and War Departmentsā€™ apparatchiks and their professorial fellow-travelers–just published an article by Harvard Law Schoolā€™s recently retired Bemis Professor of International Law Detlev Vagts (who only taught me the required course on Legal Accounting) arguing in favor of the Pentagonā€™s Kangaroo Courts System on Guantanamo despite the fact that they have been soundly condemned by every human rights organization and every human rights official and leader in the entire world as well as by the United States Supreme Court itself in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006). I am not going to bother to recite here all the grievous deficiencies of the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts under International Law and U.S. Constitutional Law. But suffice it to say that the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts constitute war crimes under the Laws of War, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and even the U. S. Armyā€™s own Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare (1956). Field Manual 27-10 was drafted for the Pentagon by my Laws of War teacher Richard R. Baxter, who was generally recognized as the worldā€™s leading expert on that subject, which is precisely why I voluntarily chose to study International Law with him and his long-time collaborator Louis B. Sohn, and not with the bean-counter Vagts. For the entire post-World War II generation of international law students at Harvard Law School, Louis Sohn shall always be our real Bemis Professor of International Law and never the False Pretender to that Throne known as Detlev Vagts.
Since those student days I have personally appeared pro bono publico in five U.S. military courts-martial proceedings involving warfare that were organized in accordance with the Pentagonā€™s Uniform Code of Military Justice (U.C.M.J.)–which still does not apply to the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts despite the ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court in Hamdan that the U.C.M.J. should be applied in Guantanamo–on behalf of five U. S. military personnel who each acted as matters of courage, integrity, principle, and conscience at great risk to their freedom:
1. U. S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jeff Paterson, the first U. S. military resister to President Bush Sr.ā€™s genocidal war against Iraq;
2. Army Captain Doctor Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, the highest ranking U. S. commissioned officer to be court-martialed for refusing to participate in President Bush Sr.ā€™s genocidal war against Iraq;
3. Captain Lawrence Rockwood, who was court-martialed by the U. S. Army for trying to stop torture in Haiti after the Clinton administration had illegally invaded that country in 1994;
4. Army Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, the first U. S. military resister to be court-martialed for refusing to participate in President Bush Jr.ā€™s war of aggression against Iraq; and
5. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, the first U. S. commissioned officer to be court-martialed for his refusal to participate in President Bush Jr.ā€™s war of aggression against Iraq.
As I can attest from my direct personal involvement, each and every one of these five courts-martial under the U.C.M.J. were Stalinist show-trials produced and directed by the Pentagon that predictably and readily degenerated into travesties of justice. These five U.C.M.J. courts-martial involving warfare each proved correct the old adage attributed to Groucho Marx that military justice is to justice as military music is to music. By comparison, the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts will not even be run in accordance with the U.C.M.J. despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan that they should be.
Whenever they are up and running the Gitmo Courts will constitute Stalinist Show Trials as well as Kangaroo Courts, and their preliminary proceedings have already proven them to be Travesties of Justice. Even worse yet, fully-functioning Stalinist Gitmo Kangaroo Courts will quickly become conveyor-belts of death for alleged and already tortured terrorist suspects along the lines of the Texas execution chamber operated by George Bush Jr. when he was the ā€œgovernorā€ of that state and tortured to death 152 victims by means of lethal injection. But today under the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, executing persons detained as a result of armed conflict without a fair trial before a regularly constituted court constitutes a grave war crime. To be sure, under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution Professor Vagts has the freedom to advocate war crimes so long as he does not participate in their commission, or incite them, or aid and abet them. But precisely where is that line to be drawn for law professors?
In this regard, the Harvard Law School Faculty currently has at least five professors who have advocated torture and war crimes:
1. Vagts himself, who supported abusing the then recently captured President of Iraq Saddam Hussein despite his being publicly acknowledged to be a Prisoner of War by the Bush Jr. administration itself and thus absolutely protected by the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Convention against Torture;
2. the infamous Alan Dershowitz, a self-incriminated war criminal in his own right. Dersh publicly acknowledged being a member of a Mossad Committee for approving the murder and assassination of Palestinians, which violates the Geneva Conventions and is thus a grave war crime;
3. the Con Law non-entity known as Richard Parker;
4. Another one of my teachers, Waco Phil Heymann. Previously Waco Phil had been Deputy to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, the Butcheress of Waco. Reno ordered the Waco Massacre, while Heymann orchestrated its cover-up and thus earned his well-deserved sobriquet of Waco Phil. All those incinerated women and children!
5. The war criminal Jack Goldsmith who while working as a lawyer for the Bush Jr. administration at both the Pentagon and later its Department of In-Justice did much of the legal spade-work designing, justifying and approving the hideous human rights atrocities that the Bush Jr. administration has inflicted on everyone after 9/11. Goldsmith and his co-felon legal colleague from the Bush Jr. administration Professor John Yoo–now desecrating Berkeleyā€™s Law School where my friend and colleague the late, great Dean Frank Newman had taught Human Rights–are functionally analogous to Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt, who justified every hideous atrocity that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on anyone.
Despite my best efforts to prevent it, the Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans hired the war criminal Goldsmith right out of the Bush Jr. administration knowing full well that he was up to his eyeballs in the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts, torture, war crimes, enforced disappearances, murder, kidnapping, and crimes against humanity, at a minimum. And when Goldsmithā€™s proverbial ā€œsmoking-gunā€ Department of In-Justice Memorandum was published by the Washington Post, Harvard Law Schoolā€™s Dean Elena Kagan contemptuously boasted in response about how ā€œproudā€ she was to have hired this notorious war criminal. Previously Kagan had also publicly bragged that the future of International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School would be in the ā€œgood handsā€ of their resident war criminal Goldsmith. How tragically true! The Neo-Conservative Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans deliberately set out to hire this Neo-Nazi legal architect of the Bush Jr. administrationā€™s bogus and nefarious ā€œwar against terrorismā€ because they fully support it together with all its essential accouterments of torture, kangaroo courts, war crimes, murder, kidnapping, enforced disappearances, crimes against humanity, and Nuremburg crimes against peace.
By contrast, after the terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in alleged revenge for the Waco Massacre and Cover-up by Janet Reno and Waco Phil Heymann, to the best of my recollection I do not remember that the Neo-Conservative Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans advocated kangaroo courts, torture, war crimes, and racist profiling for Americaā€™s White Judeo-Christian Males. Yet after 9/11 the fundamentally White Racist Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans have no problem with inflicting torture, kangaroo courts, war crimes, and racist profiling upon Muslims/Arabs/Asians of Color, which is exactly why they hired the war criminal Goldsmith to teach such criminal practices to their own law students and thus someday turn them into racist U. S. governmental war criminals in their own right. This is because for the most part the Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans have always been viscerally bigoted and racist against Muslims/Arabs/Asians and other People of Color since at least when I first matriculated there in September of 1971.
The Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans are no longer fit to educate Lawyers, Members of the Bar, and Officers of the Court. They are a sick joke and a demented fraud. Groucho Marx would have had a field day with them: Harvard is to Law School as Torture is to Law. The Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans torture the Law. Do not send your children or students to Harvard Law School where they will grow up to become racist war criminals! Harvard Law School is a Neo-Con cesspool.

The assassination of Iraqi academics continues unabated.

Dr. Khalid al-Naid
When we were celebrating Easter, the following sad message arrived in the BRussells Tribunal mailbox, sent by Dr. Saad Jawad, professor of political science at Baghdad University, head of Iraq’s University Professors Association, and member of our Advisory Committee.

This is in memory of the brutal assassination of Dr. Khalid al-Naid, Dean Assistant, Medical College, al-Nahrain University

With great sadness and sorrow and on behalf of Khalid’s family, Iā€™m writing to inform you of his murder by militias on Thursday 29th March 2007, twelve hours after he arrived from Australia.
He arrived in Baghdad on the evening of Wednesday 28th and could not go to see his wife and newly born son Tariq who was born when he was with you in Australia.
The next day he went to the Nahrain Medical school to report his return and do some paper work. His wife and newborn son were supposed to come from their grandfatherā€™s house across sectarian city divides to see him.
He only stayed in the Medical School for 3 hrs and left with a colleague. He was picked at the gate and taken by the Militia which controls the area of the Medical School. His body was dumped few kilometres away with five bullets in his head and neck.
I am his cousin and Godfather. His wifeā€™s son and the rest of the family would like the world to know how cruel and lawless Iraq has become. Scientist are a prime target and Khalid was threatened with death a year or so ago but he always said: ā€œI have harmed no one, and never believed the cruelty of a civil war.ā€
His marriage was a mixed one and his priorities in life revolved around his scientific work.
Khalid’s father, the late Prof Hamdi was the Dean of Baghdad Medical School and my Mentor. We would like to have any additional information from you relating to his latest work as we plan to write to scientific and other news organisations on the realities in today’s Iraq. It is entirely up to yourselves if you feel you would like to report this murder to the Scientific press in Australia.
May god bless Khalid and give his wife Manal and his son Tariq the strength to carry on .

Another horrendous murder, another Iraqi intellectualā€™s life wasted.

Prof Dr Majid Naser Husien al-Ma’amoori
We keep on receiving messages from Iraqi professors who report the killings of colleagues:

Dear Dirk,

I am sorry to bother you again. I know it is sad news but I have no other choice because you are the only organization to document the assassinations of Iraqi academics.

Prof Dr Majid Naser Husien al-Ma’amoori was killed just outside Veterinary College, Baghdad University on 17 Feb 2007.

Kind regards

Dr. Ali

Professor Dr Tala Al-Jalili and Professor Jaffer Hasan Sadiq
On April 16 we received the following message from Dr. Ismail Kaidar Jalili, Chair and Secretary General of National Association of British Arabs (NABA):

Weā€™d like to report the assassination of 2 academics in Mosul today Monday 16th April 2007
2:37
The assassination of Professor Dr Tala Al-Jalili, Dean of Faculty of Political Sciences in Mosul University this morning Monday 16th April 2007 in front of his faculty at AL-Majmou’a Al-Thaqafiya, east (left) bank of Mosul.
12:14
The assassination of Jaffer Hasan Sadiq, Professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Mosul University in front of his house in Al-Kafaa’at district, north east of Mosul City.

The massacre of Iraqi intellectuals hasnā€™t stopped since the invasion of 2003. The number of assassinations has not decreased since the BRussells Tribunal started a campaign to save Iraqā€™s academics, in cooperation with the Spanish based CEOSI (CampaƱa Estatal contra la OcupaciĆ³n y por la SoberanĆ­a de Iraq). To the contrary. Since the beginning of 2006 more than 100 academics have been assassinated, according to our sources. And as the cases above show: an end of the killings is not in sight.

Brain drain and murder threaten Iraqā€™s academia.

Since the war began in 2003, hundreds of Iraqi academics have been kidnapped and/or murdered - and thousands more have fled for their lives (ā€¦). So far more than 470 academics have been killed. Buildings have been burnt and looted in what appears to be a random spree of violence aimed at Iraqi academia.

The Iraqi minister of education has said that 296 members of education staff were killed in 2005 alone. According to the UN office for humanitarian affairs 180 teachers have been killed since 2006, up to 100 have been kidnapped and over 3,250 have fled the country. The BRussells Tribunalā€™s list of murdered Iraqi academics contains 302 names. Anyone who can help us in documenting the killings, the threats and forced emigration of Iraqi academics is welcome to write us: weā€™re not planning to give up monitoring, certainly not now, at a time when our solidarity is needed most.

Also yesterday we received a message from an Iraqi professor, who has been able to escape the Iraqi Armageddon:

Dear Mr. Dirk Adriaensens,

I am a female Iraqi academic forced to leave Iraq on 2 August 2006. On 17 July 2006 I was kidnapped, tortured and threatened to be killed with my daughter if didnā€™t leave Iraq within few days. I have a PhD in (omitted) and was a member of staff at (omitted), University of Technology in Baghdad, Iraq.

I had no time to contact the Iraqi Academic Association to report the incident because I hid when received the threat until I fled Iraq.

Thank you for your effort to document the assassinations and threats to Iraqi academics. The real situation in Iraq is much worse than anything mentioned in the news or any report. Not all the incidents were documented in your website. Personally, I knew many academics at University of Technology were threatened and forced to flee Iraq after the occupation and for one reason or another they might not have the time to report the threats to the Iraqi Academic Association. Among them Head of Control and Systems Eng. Dept., Prof Dr Ali Althamir, Spectrum specialist at Applied Sciences Dept., Dr Mohammad Radhi, a member of staff at Building and Construction Dept., Dr Ghanim Abdul Rahman and many others.

The Ministry of Displacement and Migration said that at least 30 per cent of the total numbers of professors, doctors, pharmacists and engineers in Iraq have fled to neighbouring countries like Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and United Arab States (UAE) but some have travelled to as far as the US, Canada, Australia and Britain. He noted that the numbers of academics fleeing the country or killed could be higher and the ministry has no latest figures.

The universities, which are directly linked to Iraq’s future, are on the verge of collapse.

The intimidation campaign against educational institutes persists. On 11 December 2006, a car bomb exploded in a car park of Al-Maā€™amoon College in Al-Iskan district in Baghdad, killing one person and injuring four. One student was killed and another 6 injured in a roadside bomb explosion on the same morning in front of the Al-Mustansiriya University.

The situation of total absence of law and security has also led to a worsening situation because of threats from inside the classrooms. Hassan Khalid Hayderi, 54, is a professor of mathematics at Basra University, 550km south of the capital, Baghdad. He and his family are leaving Iraq because he has received death threats from students demanding easy exams and better marks. ā€œThe situation is even worse for women teachers. You barely find them giving lessons because most of them either have fled the country or have been forced to leave the colleges. Today, they are suffering without a job to support their kids. The government isnā€™t doing anything to protect us. In the southern areas especially you depend on [local] tribes to give you the minimum of protection but with violence increasing, even tribal leaders are becoming useless. ”

Iraq’s education system in shambles.

Universities are not the only sector of Iraqi education that is collapsing. On 29 January 2007 an attack against a girlsā€™ school in Baghdad left five students dead and more than 20 injured.

Mohammed Abdul-Aziz, a statistician at the Ministry of Education, told IRIN that at least 110 children had been killed and 95 injured since 2005 in attacks on schools. These numbers do not include children killed or injured on their way to or from school.

The violence against education institutions and teachers has also prompted a sharp decline in school attendance. According to recent statistics from the Ministry of Education, only about 30 percent of Iraqā€™s 3.5 million school-aged children are currently attending classes, compared to 75 percent in the previous school year.

The International Medical Corps reports that populations of teachers in Baghdad have fallen by 80% and medical personnel seem to have left in disproportionate numbers.

The Iraq Index, compiled by the Brookings Institution in Washington, released on 16 April 2007, estimated that up to 40 percent of Iraq’s professionals have fled the country since 2003.

According to a report released last year by NGO Save the Children, 818,000 primary school-aged children, representing 22 percent of Iraqā€™s student population, were not attending school.

A joint study by the Iraqi Ministry of Education and the United Nations Childrenā€™s Fund (UNICEF) found that of those who do not attend school, 74 percent are female. Aid agencies estimate that thousands of Iraqi parents do not send their daughters to school for cultural reasons and because of the general insecurity in the country.

They add that schools and universities are likely to continue emptying throughout 2007 if there is no let up to current levels of violence and the displacement it causes.

The Occupation is responsible

Iraqi professors direct most of their ire towards the failed U.S. occupation. Dr. Bakaa, who was also president of Iraqā€™s second largest university, Al Mustansiriyah University, from 2003 to 2004, says he had received almost no additional funding for academic life since the occupation. Buildings destroyed during the first Gulf War were rebuilt in two months under Saddamā€™s regime, yet the Americans have repaired nothing, he said. When professors are threatened or killed, there is never any investigation.

ā€œIraqi professors are being killed by everyone, and nobody has told us if any killers have been caught. Nothing has been done,ā€ Dr. Saad Jawad says. ā€œOne U.S. soldier was kidnapped and Baghdad is on full alert, but the killing of an Iraqi professor? Nothing happens.ā€

The incident on Tuesday 14 November, when paramilitary gunmen in the uniforms of Iraqi National Police commandos raided a building belonging to the Ministry of Education in Baghdadā€™s Karrada district and arrested around 100 members of staff from two departments and around 50 visitors, in broad daylight, 1km from the Green Zone, exposed the extent of the danger facing educators, and particularly those in higher education. An unknown number of those arrested was later found killed, and again, there was no investigation. Again, there was ample evidence of involvement of Iraqi official bodies, creating chaos and mayhem instead of establishing security. It is equally clear that US authorities in Iraq have no interest in carrying out an investigation or restraining the killers.

Who is eliminating Iraqā€™s middle class?

Nor the Iraqi puppet government, nor the Iraqi police, nor the US occupation forces can guarantee security, education, healthcare, electricity or any other basic needs. To the contrary: there are plenty of indications that the US and UK can be held responsible for many of the ā€œterroristā€ activities, and involvement in death squads activities.

A. MILITIAS. Long before the invasion, the US and its allies were involved in the training and arming of tens of thousands of militias and anti-Iraq collaborators. The most conspicuous of these militia groups are:

1. The Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by Ahmed Chalabi.

2. The Iraqi National Accord (INA) led by Iyad Allawi, the U.S./Britain most preferred ā€˜strongmanā€™.

Both groups constitute of Iraqi expatriates (including ex-Baā€™athists), trained and armed by the U.S. and Britain.

3. The Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Daā€™awa/SCIRI religious ‘parties’ led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Nuri al-Maliki. This group constitutes of thousands of Iraqi expatriates and illegal Iranian immigrants expelled from Iraq in the 1980ā€™s. The group is trained and heavily armed by Iran and the U.S.

4. The Kurdish militia (the Peshmerga) led by warlords were trained and armed by the U.S. and Israel.

There is also the Sadr movement (known as the Mehdi Army), led by Muqtada al-Sadr. The movement has been accused of many crimes and sectarian killings since the Sadr movement entered the political process.

Since the invasion, each militia group has mutated into several groups of death squads and criminal gangs such as the Wolf Brigade, the Karar Brigade, the Falcon Brigade, the Amarah Brigade, the Muthana Brigade, the Defenders of Kadhimiyah, and the special police commandos. They are armed and financed by the U.S. and its allies, and fully integrated into the Occupation. Each group is carefully used by the occupying forces for terrorising the Iraqi civilian population in a campaign designed to erode the civilian populationā€™s support for the Iraqi Resistance against the Occupation. U.S. military sources have openly admitted that the population, where support for the Resistance is high, ā€œis paying no price for the support it is giving to the [Resistance] ā€¦ We have to change that equationā€, (Newsweek, 14 January 2004). In other words, Iraqis civilians are deliberately targeted for rejecting the Occupation, writes Ghali Hassan.

B. BRITISH TERRORISTS IN IRAQ. An article in the Sunday Telegraph points towards evidence that a secretive and elite unit of the British army is actively engaged in recruiting and training Iraqi insurgents and terrorists as double agents. It is led by Lt. Col. Gordon Kerr, heading the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), a large counter-terrorism force made up of unnamed “existing assets” from the glory days in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. And America’s covert soldiers are right there with them, working side-by-side with their British comrades in the aptly named “Task Force Black,” the UK’s Sunday Telegraph reports.

This confirms what many have speculated for a long time, that Britain and the US are deeply involved in bombings and attacks inside Iraq which are subsequently attributed either to Sunni insurgents or shadowy terrorist cells such as “Al Qaeda in Iraq”. Conclusion: there is clear evidence British special forces are recruiting, training terrorists to heighten ethnic tensions. An elite SAS wing with bloody past in Northern Ireland operates with immunity and provides advanced explosives [22]. Some attacks are being blamed on Iranians.

C. FACILITIES PROTECTION SERVICES. There is also the claim of Iraq’s interior minister Jawad al-Bolani, speaking to a small group of reporters in Baghdad on October 12 2006, who blamed the Facilities Protection Service, or FPS, a massive but unregulated government guard force whose numbers he put at about 150,000. “Whenever we capture someone, we rarely find anyone is an employee of the government ministries,” Bolani said. ā€œWhen they are, they’ve turned out to be mostly from the FPS, with very few individual, actual incidents involving anyone from the Ministry of Interior or Ministry of Defense.” Private US and UK security firms are closely allied to Mr. Bremerā€™s ā€˜Facilities Protection Serviceā€™ programme in Iraq. Newsweek (24.04.06) suggested 146,000 belong to this ā€˜securityā€™ force. The former Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, associated the FPS with the endemic ā€˜death squadsā€™ operating inside the police forces, which are hastening the disintegration of Iraq So definitely these mercenaries are involved in covert operations.

D. SPECIAL POLICE COMMANDOS. According to Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, the ā€œspecial police commandosā€ are being used throughout Iraq and have been conducting criminal assassinations known as the ā€œSalvador optionā€ with the full knowledge of U.S. forces. There is ample evidence of that in the articles on the BRussells Tribunal website and in the articles of Max Fuller. According to an article recently published in New York Times Magazine, in September 2004 Counsellor to the US Ambassador for Iraqi Security Forces James Steele was assigned to work with a new elite Iraqi counter-insurgency unit known as the Special Police Commandos, formed under the operational control of Iraqā€™s Interior Ministry. From 1984 to 1986 then Col. Steele had led the US Military Advisory Group in El Salvador, where he was responsible for developing special operating forces at brigade level during the height of the conflict (ā€¦) The Police Commandos are in large part the brainchild of another US counter-insurgency veteran, Steven Casteel, a former top DEA man who has been acting as the senior advisor in the Ministry of the Interior. Casteel was involved in the hunt for Colombiaā€™s notorious cocaine baron Pablo Escobar, during which the DEA collaborated with a paramilitary organization known as Los Pepes, which later transformed itself into the AUC, an umbrella organization covering all of Colombiaā€™s paramilitary death squads.

Conclusion

All these actors help to destroy the Republic of Iraq, kill and expel its people, annihilate its middle class, all this with the active support of the US occupation.

So instead of bringing stability to Iraq, the US occupation is doing everything it possibly can to create chaos and terror, to incite civil war and sectarian strife, in order to defeat the National Popular Resistance and to break the aspirations of the Iraqi people to live in a sovereign state and decide its own future.

Consequently the only possible road to a solution is the total and immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraqi soil. US forces must negotiate an immediate withdrawal with the Iraqi resistance. The peace movement has to understand that these demands are crucial to achieve a peaceful solution. Then, and only then can the elimination and exodus of Iraqā€™s academics and Iraqā€™s middle class be stopped.

In the meantime people can still support the BRussells Tribunal campaign by signing the Petition to save Iraqā€™s academics: http://www.petitiononline.com/Iraqacad/petition.html. 10.000 persons already endorsed the petition.

We urge Iraqi academics to distribute the questionnaires to be completed by affected families d send them to info@brusselstribunal.org.

Academics of Western universities can show their solidarity by developing initiatives to help their exiled Iraqi colleagues.

More resources and information about the Iraqi Academics’ killing fields can be found at http://www.brusselstribunal.org/AcademicsResources.htm

Dirk Adriaensens, member of the BRussells Tribunal executive committee (18 April 2007)

Source: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Academics170407.htm

Testimony of Professor of International Law
Francis A. Boyle , of the University of Illinois,
in the case of United States vs. Lt. Ehren K. Watada.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Okay. Mr. Seitz, the trial counselor has completed their witness list and has shown us their video footage for my consideration. Are you prepared at this time to call your first witness?

Mr. Seitz: Yes. At this time, we’ll call Professor Francis Boyle.

Q. Prior to today, have you ever testified in any other judicial
proceedings?

Francis A. Boyle (FAB): Well, in terms of military proceedings, the court-martial proceedings of Marine Corps Corporal Jeff Paterson; then Captain Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, the Army; Captain Lawrence Rockwood, 10th Mountain Division; Staff Sergeant Camillo Mejia. And then I testified many times in state and federal court, and also in foreign countries.

Q: And have you on those occasions been qualified as an expert
witness?

FAB: Yes. In international law and especially the laws of war. The Field Manual 27-10, the man who drafted this for the United States Army, Professor Richard R. Baxter, was my teacher on the laws of war at Harvard Law School. And I was his top student while I was there.

Q: Are you knowledgeable about the United States’ obligations under
international law?

FAB: Yes. I’ve studied and written about them repeatedly during the last 28 years as a professor.

Q: And in what manner does international law determine how and when
the United States may wage war against another country?

FAB: Well, Mr. Seitz, it’s not just international law, it’s the U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10. Professor Baxter, who drafted this for the Army, incorporated international law directly into 27-10. And all the rules are here. I’m not going to go through them all.

But, basically, as drafted by Professor Baxter, 27-10 includes the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles, as well as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals. Again, this was published by the Army as of 1956. It was supplemented once. But it is still valid and binding on troops in the field, including Lieutenant Watada.

Q: What kinds of requirements must be met before the United States can enter into a war?

FAB: Well, again, the Law of Land Warfare does have a fairly extensive section on it. But there would be two basic requirements, to boil it down in a nutshell and not get into all of it, relevant here.

One, warfare would have to be authorized by the United States Congress, pursuant to the War Powers Clause of the Constitution.

And then, secondly, unless the United States itself is attacked militarily, or its troops, it would have to be authorized by the United Nations Security Council.

Otherwise, aggressive warfare would be a Nuremberg crime against peace. And that is stated quite clearly in the Law of Land Warfare. … So what Professor Baxter did in the Law of Land Warfare for the Army, he simply incorporated the Nuremberg Charter and Principles directly into the Law of Land Warfare 27-10, including its notion of a crime against peace. And you can read it right in there. It is clearly listed as an international crime.

Q: Did the United States comply with the appropriate procedures to
obtain authorization before it invaded Iraq in 2003?

Captain Kuecker: Colonel Keith, just for the record, at this point, I don’t think any of this testimony would be relevant to the actual charges against Lieutenant Watada. It’s a nonjusticiable question, the question of whether to employ forces, based on a ruling that the witness was a witness to in Huet-Vaughn. The Court clearly said that it’s a political question whether to employ troops and is nonjusticiable in this forum.

Also, being ordered to go to Iraq in the year 2006 is a separate issue as opposed to going after Iraq is a sovereign country, is a separate issue as opposed to what did or did not happen in 2003.

Mr. Seitz: We can certainly argue the relevance if you want to. I understand there’s an objection being made. Given the nature of these charges, particularly the missing movement charge, an order was given to a soldier to engage in some conduct, to participate in an action which could subject him to sanctions under any of the authorities which we’ve provided you exhibits of, or to which Professor Boyle has alluded. Then that individual has not only the right, but an obligation to question those orders and to determine for himself or herself whether, in carrying out those orders, he or she would be compelled to do something which is a violation of law, not just international law, but international law as incorporated, as Professor Boyle has indicated, into domestic law and into rules of engagement for the United States Army.

So it isn’t as simple as saying that just because you’re given an order, that you have to abide by it. There is an obligation which is legally recognized at various different levels — and we’ve given you some authorities for that — which requires soldiers to make that determination for themselves. And that really is the relevance.

In addition, in this case, we have a number of statements which you’ve seen which are attributed to Lieutenant Watada which are alleged to be contemptuous or disloyal or disrespectful. It’s our contention and certainly will be our contention at trial that those statements, if true, and if accurate commentaries as to what took place with respect to this particular war, cannot be punishable. They are absolutely protected. And they constitute political commentary, which is absolutely protected, because, in fact, among other reasons, they are true. And so, for that purpose, we seek to offer evidence to demonstrate that what Lieutenant Watada had to say about the war in Iraq was not contemptuous, it was not disloyal. It was, in fact, an accurate commentary on the history of how this war began and how it’s evolved.

And to say that we’re in a different position in 2006 than we were in 2003 is also an interesting issue we’d be happy to join at trial with counsel. In our view, the situation is far more serious, worse, knowing now what we know today than what we knew back in 2003.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Okay. Continue, please.

Q: So, Professor Boyle, my last question to you was, basically, in connection with the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, did the United States go through the proper processes and meet its obligations before it engaged in that kind of military action?

FAB: Unfortunately, the Bush administration did not. There was no authorization for the United Nations Security Council for the United States to wage war against Iraq. And that made it a crime against peace, which is in paragraph 498 of the Field Manual.

“Any person, whether a member of the armed forces or a civilian, who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment. Such offenses in connection with war comprise … crimes against peace.”

Professor Baxter incorporated that directly out of the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles.

Second, with respect to Congressional authorization, there was a War Powers Resolution adopted by Congress pursuant to the War Powers Resolution. But, unfortunately, the Bush administration procured that authorization from Congress by means of fraud. First, they lied to Congress that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And, second, they lied to Congress that Iraq had connections with the terrible tragedy of September 11th. Neither were true at the time, and this has been proven by everything in the public record since then.

This, in my opinion, as a professor that taught criminal law, constitutes a conspiracy to defraud the United States government, which is a felony.

Q: Does the fact that Congress was induced to authorize the military exercise which led to the invasion of Iraq, does that act as a substitute for obtaining consent or approval from the United Nations?

FAB: No. There are two sources of approval you have to get: Both the Security Council and Congress. Congress has no authority to authorize a crime against peace or war of aggression.

And here I would compare what the Bush, Junior, administration, did to the Bush, Senior, administration. The Bush, Senior, administration first obtained authorization from the Security Council, and then, second, obtained authorization from the United States Congress, to enforce that Security Council resolution.

The Bush, Junior, administration tried to get authorization from the Security Council and failed. I regret to say the President did not even follow his father’s precedent.

Q: You heard a little discussion a minute ago about events that have ensued since 2003, and here we are in 2006. Do you have any opinions with respect to the conduct of the war which would raise issues pertaining to whether or not the United States is conducting that war in conformity with its obligations under international and domestic law?

FAB: Right. Well, under the Field Manual, the same paragraph 498, also using the same language that I won’t bother to repeat, says: “Such offenses in connection with war comprise, B, crimes against humanity, and, C, war crimes.” Those are the three classic Nuremberg crimes, again, which Professor Baxter directly incorporated into Field Manual 27-10.

And certainly, based on my analysis of the situation since the war started, regretfully, we have seen war crimes committed in Iraq, for example, the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, which, in my opinion, the primary responsibility for this goes to the very top of the chain of command. This was authorized certainly by the Secretary of Defense and straight on down through the top. And, yet, so far, the only soldiers to have been prosecuted are lower-level individuals. And the chain of command, from Lieutenant General Sanchez straight on up, has escaped any responsibility at all.

We also have the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. If you were to use a cluster bomb on a tank formation or troops or something like that, in my opinion, there really is nothing illegal about that. But if you use a cluster bomb in a city with substantial civilian presence, I think that does not comply with the laws of war.

There’s also the use of depleted uranium, which violates the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which is also found in the Field Manual. It’s a war crime. And the depleted uranium is not only poisoning Iraqis, it is poisoning our own troops.

And this goes back, actually, to Gulf War I. There is extensive documentation on this by Major Doug Rokke, who undertook the DU investigation for the Pentagon in Gulf War I and, a very conscientious soldier, contracted Gulf War Syndrome himself.

Shock and awe to start the war — of course, that was the Air Force, not the Army — again, a war crime. The wanton devastation of a city, town, or village is a Nuremberg war crime.

So, there are others that we can talk about, but I think those are the four major categories I would look at. You have others: murders, rapes, et cetera. You know, it seems to me the military authorities are attempting to deal with those.

But the top of the chain of command either has authorized or has certainly not dealt with those other major crimes that I see.

Q: You have mentioned several times the Nuremberg Judgment. How is that applicable … how does that become enforceable in the context in which we’re dealing with soldiers, and Lieutenant Watada in particular, in this period of time?

FAB: Yes. The United States government set up the Nuremberg Tribunal. It was our idea.

The Nuremberg Charter is an executive agreement concluded by the President in his authority as Commander in Chief of U.S. forces. You can find it in statutes at large.

The Nuremberg Judgment is reported in Federal Rules Decisions. It is a valid, binding decision that applies in U.S. federal courts. It’s not a foreign decision, but it is a decision that flows from the President’s authority as Commander in Chief.

And, finally, of course, Judge Baxter incorporated the principles of the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles right here in Field Manual 27-10. He did not attempt to write a scholarly treatise or anything, but he distilled the essence of the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as the Tokyo proceedings, and put them in 27-10, which is still valid and binding in the field 50 years later, today. And it remains substantially the same except for one revision that has not changed any of the principles I’m discussing here today.

Q: And also, similarly, with respect to the Geneva conventions, which has been mentioned at various different times, how do the Geneva conventions become applicable to the factual situation in which we find ourselves in this case?

FAB: Yes, the four Geneva conventions of 1949, are treaties to which the Senate has given its advice and consent. They are the supreme law of the land under Article VI of the United States Constitution. And, once again, they are incorporated in haec verba, in those words precisely, right here in the Law of Land Warfare, where Judge Baxter put them, with some commentary, where necessary, where the exact words needed to be supplemented by further practice. But they are right there in the Field Manual. You can read the references and citations.

So, again, it’s made very clear that all members of United States armed forces, especially the Army, is bound by the Geneva conventions.

Q: And are you aware of any recent decisions in which the United States Supreme Court has emphasized the applicability of the Geneva conventions?

FAB: Yes. United States versus Hamdan, that just came down this summer. As you know, the President is not a lawyer. But, unfortunately, he got very terrible, I would say criminal, legal advice from his White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales at that time, and his Attorney General, John Ashcroft — Gonzales is now the new Attorney General — that the Geneva conventions did not apply to his so-called war on terrorism.

This advice that he received from these political appointees directly contradicted the advice that was given to him by the professional military lawyers, the JAG lawyers, at the highest level, who were all of the position that the Geneva conventions must be applied by United States armed forces. It also directly contradicted advice that the President was given by the professional international lawyers at the State Department that the Geneva conventions should apply.

Indeed, then Secretary of State Colin Powell, who, as you know, had been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent a memo directly to the President, argued to the President that the Geneva conventions should be applied, must be applied.

Unfortunately, he listened to these political appointees, and we had the torture scandal at Guantanamo, which, due to the major general there, acting pursuant to orders of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, then went to Iraq to “Gitmo-ize” Iraq. And then, unfortunately, we have the torture scandal in Iraq.

It is my personal opinion that if these orders had not been given by Secretary of Defense and presumably with the approval of the President, none of this scandal would have happened.

The Army’s current manual for interrogation of prisoners of war is impeccable. It was drawn up by professional JAG Corps lawyers. I have reviewed it. It’s perfect. There’s nothing wrong with it. And if not for these orders that were given, the Army, following standard operating procedure, would have applied the currently existing manual and none of this gross, widespread torture would have happened.

Obviously, in wartime, abuses happen, but it would have been sporadic and I think immediately repressed. But here we had wholesale torture. And that was Major General Miller, who was in Guantanimo, then went to Iraq, and with the consent of Lieutenant General Sanchez, proceeded to “Gitmo-ize,” as he put it, Iraq. And that was the origin of the torture scandal in Iraq.

Torture is a grave breach of the Geneva conventions. It’s a serious war crime. Moreover, the International Committee of the Red Cross that has supervisory jurisdiction over the Geneva conventions determined that the torture, since it appeared to be widespread and systematic in Guantanamo, Iraq, and, as you know, it also unfortunately, gravitated to Afghanistan, the Gitmo practices, since it was widespread and systematic, constituted a crime against humanity. When you have war crimes that are widespread or systematic, they become more serious. They become crimes against humanity.

And that, too, is found in paragraph 498 of the Field Manual, paragraph B. Such offenses in connection with war comprise crimes against humanity.

Again, Professor Baxter took that directly from the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Let me interrupt you for a second. Because I’m struggling with the connection between what we’ve just discussed in terms of Geneva convention and Guantanimo and those war crimes that you have discussed, that you have alleged have occurred and how that relates to Lieutenant Watada and his refusal to deploy.

FAB: Colonel, let me do clarify the chain of events here.

That is, before the terrible tragedy of September 11, the Army had an interrogation manual which I had read and reviewed and was impeccable. There was no problems at all. It was drawn up by professional JAG Corps lawyers at the highest level, everything you would expect from JAG Corps lawyers, and no problems at all.

Then, acting pursuant to the advice of Alberto Gonzales and John Ashcroft, and rejecting the advice of Colin Powell and the JAG Corps lawyers, the President determined not to apply the Geneva conventions to al-Qaeda or Taliban. That decision, then, not to apply the Geneva conventions was implemented on Guantanimo under Major General Miller.

Then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his deputies instructed General Miller to go to Iraq, and, as he put it, to “Gitmo-ize” Iraq, to apply the same type of abusive and violative procedures in Iraq, that were applied in Guantanimo.

Again, I think if not for these orders, the Army would have followed the basic interrogation manual and I don’t believe any of these abuses would have occurred. There would have been abuses, but not widespread, systematic, as we have seen in — regretfully, in the news media coming out of Abu Ghraib.

Lt. Colonel Keith: But that chain of events would have changed nothing for Lieutenant Watada in his decision not to deploy. I mean, is that what I’m — is that what I understand?

FAB: Well, in the charge on missing movement, it says (reading): “Any person subject to this chapter who, through neglect or design, misses the movement of a ship, aircraft, or movement with which he is required in the course of duty to move shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

So it raises the question, what is the course of Lieutenant Watada’s duty under these circumstances of widespread crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes? And, in any event, under Mullaney versus Wilbur, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lieutenant Watada had a duty to participate in this war that is based on crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Let me ask you one question, and that’s, if we’re discussing, for sake of argument, a declared war that’s been declared legally through Congress and through all of those provisions that you discussed with me earlier, is it still possible, then, to have war crimes occur during those legal wars?

FAB: Yes. That is correct, Colonel.

Lt. Colonel Keith: So the fact that there are war crimes, in your opinion, occurring in this war, what relevance does that have to Lieutenant Watada’s decision not to deploy, and the fact that, from your perspective, this war is illegal and unjust to begin with?

In other words, I’m trying to distill your argument to the basic pieces of it. Which is, I believe, the fact that you believe that this war is unjust or illegal in that, from the beginning, there was no authorization legally to enter into it. All of the remaining arguments in terms of war crimes, what happened at Abu Ghraib, what’s been going on in Guantanimo, et cetera, are really ancillary to the fact that you’re saying this war was illegal to begin it; correct? I mean, is there any more to it?

FAB: They’re cumulative, all three grounds. That is, under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, a soldier has a right to absent himself or herself from committing international crimes. Indeed, under certain circumstances, you have an obligation.

That was decided at the Tokyo tribunal, in dealing with high-level military officials and government officials. But it did establish that those in command, not civilians, but those in command, have a right, if not a duty, to absent themselves from committing international crimes, meaning crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Lt. Colonel Keith: In this circumstance, if we argue that, from your perspective, the war is illegal, does the addition of war crimes or the addition of further crimes that were conducted in the engagements of this war make it — add anything to Lieutenant Watada’s decision?

FAB: Definitely, yes.

Lt. Colonel Keith: In other words, does it make it worse for him to have made that decision not to go? Does it make it easier for him to have made that decision not to go?

FAB: I think it would make it easier, Colonel, in the sense that he would be commanding troops in the field, and he would have a special obligation as a commander to make sure that none of his troops committed war crimes. And if they did commit war crimes, in this situation of pervasive, I would say, regretfully, war crimes going on here, he could be held criminally accountable for war crimes committed by his own troops.

That, too, is found in the Law of Land Warfare.

Lt. Colonel Keith: But that is true for every circumstance of war when in combat; correct?

FAB: Any commander, yes.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Regardless of the war, he is held responsible –

FAB: That is correct.

Lt. Colonel Keith: — for the commitment of his troops in their — in their execution of their duties; correct?

FAB: That is correct. And, unfortunately, if — in a situation like this war, where you have, I would say, pervasive war crimes, it really raises the question of the right, if not the obligation, of Lieutenant Watada to say, “I don’t want to participate in this.”

And the authority for that really goes to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, where that tribunal was set up by General MacArthur. And we tried the Japanese war criminals ourselves. It was not like Nuremberg. That rule, that commanders, both military and civilian, have an obligation to prevent war crimes.

Lt. Colonel Keith: But, again, I’m trying to understand your argument. You mentioned “pervasive war crimes” several times in terms of the prosecution of this war. Those — those war crimes are independent actions, are they not? Or are you indicating that just the fact that had Lieutenant Watada decided to deploy to this conflict, anything he did during that conflict would be considered a war crime? Is that the line of reasoning I understand you to be saying?

FAB: No, I’m not saying anything he did. The — the problem here –

Lt. Colonel Keith: So is it possible for him to have deployed and not committed a war crime in this circumstance?

FAB: Well, the problem here is that we have people at the very top of the chain of command, up to and including the Secretary of Defense, authorizing war crimes. So it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for Lieutenant Watada not to be committing war crimes.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Would it be possible for him to have deployed in this circumstance and not commit war crimes?

FAB: Under the circumstances of this war, if he had deployed, he would be facilitating a Nuremberg crime against peace for sure.

Lt. Colonel Keith: So just in the — just in the sheer fact that he deployed, he would be committing a war crime?

FAB: He would be facilitating a Nuremberg crime against peace.

Lt. Colonel Keith: So currently, everyone in theater, by this argument, by this reasoning, if you will, everyone in theater, in your opinion, who has deployed in support of this operation has committed a war crime just by the sheer nature of their deployment?

FAB: No, I’m not saying that.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Then I –

FAB: It depends on the extent of your knowledge, judgment, and experience.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Okay.

FAB: And in the case of Lieutenant Watada, as I understand it — I’ve only talked to him once before coming here — he made a very extensive study of the facts and the law involved here. And the more you know and the higher your rank, the more your responsibility.

So I’m not saying that everyone over there at all is. Again, we’re dealing with questions of criminal intent here. They have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. And I’m certainly not saying everyone over there is facilitating a Nuremberg crime against peace.

But certainly that’s the way Lieutenant Watada saw it, based on his knowledge, judgment, experience, and study. And I agree with his conclusions.

But, again, it goes to his intent and his knowledge.

Lt. Colonel Keith: So in that line, then, it is possible for a soldier to have deployed in this conflict and not commit a war crime?

FAB: It is possible if that soldier had not studied anything at all about the origins of the law.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Well, if they were ignorant of the origins of the conflict, in your opinion, is it possible that they could have deployed, could be there currently, and not have committed a war crime?

FAB: If they had not studied any of the law or any of the facts and simply showed up, I’m not saying they are war criminals themselves, no.

Again, I still practice criminal law. I’m not saying any member here of U.S. armed forces. Nuremberg established also, there is no such principle as collective guilt. Every question of guilt or innocence under war crimes is individual. So each soldier would have to be looked at in accordance with his knowledge, judgment, and experience about what was going on.

I suspect that the vast majority of U.S. armed forces might conclude that there are no problems with deployment. I don’t know. I haven’t talked to them.

But certainly in the case of Lieutenant Watada, he is an officer. He had an obligation to inform himself. He was commanding, was going to be commanding troops in the field. He did study. He did research the facts and the law. And he reached these conclusions. And he is held accountable to what he knows.

And, again, paragraph 501 of the Field Manual makes that clear.

(Reading):

“Such responsibility arises directly when acts in question have been committed. The commander is also responsible if he has actual knowledge
– or should have knowledge through reports received by him or through other means — that troops or other persons subject to his control are about to commit or have committed a war crime,” et cetera, et cetera.

So, clearly, in this case, Lieutenant Watada had knowledge. He had gone out, he had done his job as a conscientious officer, he had studied the facts and the law, and he had reached the conclusions that he did.

There might be other officers who haven’t engaged in the type of study that Lieutenant Watada did. I’m not expressing any opinion about that.

Lt. Colonel Keith: And had they not, would they therefore not be guilty of war crimes?

FAB: Well, they’re not here and I’m not expressing an opinion about them one way or the other.

But certainly in the case of Lieutenant Watada, he had studied. And so his knowledge is higher. And as a commander, you’re charged with the knowledge that you have.

Lt. Colonel Keith: But in the case of another lieutenant, would it be possible that they would, then, therefore be absolved of guilt for a war crime had they not studied and done the things that Lieutenant Watada had done?

FAB: Unfortunately, that wasn’t what happened with General Yamashita in World War II.

General Yamashita was the commandant of the Philippines. And troops subject to his control committed atrocities against United States armed forces. There was no evidence that he had authorized it, or approved it, or anything else. Indeed, apparently, he had issued instructions that this shouldn’t happen. Nevertheless, he was tried by a U.S. military tribunal and sentenced to death.

And he petitioned for a writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court denied the writ of certiorari on the grounds that commanders must know — if a commander knows or should know that troops or others subject to his control either commit or are about to commit war crimes and fail to do anything about it, they are responsible.

And General Yamashita was hanged.

And that principle of law was directly incorporated into U.S. Field Manual 27-10 by Professor Baxter.

Mr. Seitz: I have no further questions of this witness. Thank you.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Trial counsel?

Cross-Examination by Captain Kuecker:

Q: You commented on your previous proceedings, the Huet-Vaughn case, the Paterson case, and Mejia.

Was your role the same in each one of those? Can you describe briefly what your role was as an expert witness.

FAB: Yeah. I was an expert witness, and I was not paid. And I have
not been paid for my appearance here today.

Q: Did you — Was your focus the same as it is here today, or did you comment on other aspects? What was the focus of your testimony?

FAB: Well, I covered much of the same ground here today in
Huet-Vaughn, Paterson.

In the court-martial of Captain Rockwood at Fort Drum, we dealt primarily with the laws of belligerent occupation that were applicable in Haiti. So that was somewhat more technical — it didn’t get into the origins of the war of Haiti. We dealt with the laws of belligerent occupation.

Q: But all of them were with regard to criminal court-martial procedures –

FAB: Yes.

Q: You say the — the current mission in Iraq is illegal.

Why hasn’t Congress or some other agent, body, taken — Why does Congress continue to fund it if it’s illegal?

FAB: Actually, in today’s “New York Times,” Senator Warner, the chair
of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a Republican, said that, in his opinion, Congress is going to have to reexamine the War Powers Resolution authorization it has given.

Q: But there is an authorization right now on the table that Congress is operating under?

FAB: Right. And I’ve already pointed out, and here I agree with Lieutenant Watada, that was procured by fraud. The Bush administration lied about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and lied about Iraq’s nonexistent connection with Afghanistan and September 11th.

Q: In spite of all that, Congress continues to fund the mission?

FAB: Well, when you have troops in the field fighting and dying, of course you’re going to pay for them.

Q: Who in Congress is stating the same rationale as you are with regard to –

FAB: Congressman John Conyers. And I believe Mr. Seitz is or will introduce the report prepared by his staff. He’s the senior ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

And they have produced a comprehensive report. I read the report, the first version, as of December. I haven’t read the current version. It just came out last week. I was on vacation.

And I’ve been consulting with Congressman Conyers’ office on many of these points, and providing him advice and information.

Q: And has — have any bills gone in front of Congress with regard to that?

FAB: I — you know, I can’t recall.

Q: How about in the courts, has this issue been raised and had any success in the courts? Federal court?

FAB: Not that I’m aware of right now, no.

Q: And with regard to the Huet-Vaughn case that you testified in, isn’t it true that the court there — and that’s the Court of Appeals for the armed forces — stated that it’s a nonjusticiable question whether to deploy troops or not, that’s a political question, not for the courts?

FAB: I don’t recall that, no.

The issue was — In the Army Review Board, actually, they agreed with her civilian attorney position that she was denied due process of law. And I was there. I regret to say, it was — it was sort of a kangaroo court proceeding. Her defense was completely shut down. And the Army Review Board did agree.

Then the Court of Military Appeals reversed on the grounds that, on their reading of the record, they felt she had been given due process of law. There might have been some ancillary comments on the rest of it. But the real issue was, was she afforded due process of law at the court-martial proceedings.

Q: From that case, Huet-Vaughn here, finally, to the extent that Captain Huet-Vaughn intended to contest the legality of the decision to employ military forces to the Persian Gulf, the evidence was irrelevant, because it pertained to a nonjusticiable political question, citing U.S. Supreme Court, Flast v. Cohen, political questions not justiciable by federal courts. Another appellant court, the decision to — whether to employ United States troops is not a judicial function.

It also goes on:

“We finally turn to the military judge’s instruction that quitting one’s unit because of one’s conscience, religion, personal philosophies, ethical or professional considerations is not a defense.”

FAB: Well, you know, finally, at the end of the day, that’s what they ruled. But the essence of it was whether or not she was afforded due process of law at the court-martial itself. And her complete defense was totally shut down. She was not afforded the opportunity to have any witnesses on her behalf on substantive issues. I was on the stand for about 30 seconds, answered one question, and was thrown off by the military judge. Now, if you think that’s fair, I think you might be living in the wrong country. But that’s my opinion.

Q: Lieutenant Watada getting on a plane and going to Iraq, that’s facilitating a war crime, just that alone?

FAB: If he went to Iraq to facilitate a Nuremberg crime against peace, yes.

Q: Any — any evidence that you have heard that he would be required to do that?

FAB: To do what?

Q: To facilitate a Nuremberg-type offense?

FAB: Well, my understanding is that he was going to be commanding
troops, that it was a Stryker Brigade here.

Q: So anyone who deployed with a Stryker Brigade would be facilitating
a war crime?

FAB: I didn’t say that at all. But certainly that was the conclusion that Lieutenant Watada reached, based on his study of both the facts and the law.

Q: And you said earlier that somebody who is well read, has studied the origins of the conflict, who would deploy over there, that alone could be a facilitator or a war crime in itself, by being there?

FAB: I didn’t say that. What I said was that based on his study of both the facts and the law, he concluded that he had a right to absent himself from committing a Nuremberg crime against peace. And I agree with him.

Q: Okay. So, in his mind, he would have been required to do a specific act over there that would have been a Nuremberg crime?

FAB: The war itself is a crime against peace. In addition, again, the Field Manual makes it clear there are three different types of crimes
here: crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

And my understanding — again, I only spoke with Lieutenant Watada once
– was, the objection to deploying was not participating in a crime against peace.

Second was, again, you have a chain of command here at the highest levels who apparently have either authorized or approved pervasive war crimes.

Q: Let me ask it this way, then. I think I understand.

Let’s take a hypothetical where Lieutenant Watada, based on his study of the conflict in Iraq, says, “No. It’s unlawful. I can’t go.”

Me, on the other hand, I study, study the same works, and I come to a different conclusion.

Is it your position that the military should allow Lieutenant Watada to stay here and not deploy, whereas I would have to deploy, if we just came to different conclusions?

FAB: The Nuremberg Judgment made it quite clear that where a soldier knows to a moral certainty, as he sees it, that an order is illegal, he has to disobey that order.

Q: And that’s subjective for each individual service member?

FAB: Yes. It’s subjective.

Q: Good order and discipline is important for the military, of course. Do you agree with that? It’s a hallmark condition of –

FAB: Sure. My — my father, after Pearl Harbor, enlisted in the Marine Corps. He invaded Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa.

Q: So Congress and the country as a whole has a vested interest in
maintaining good order and discipline within the ranks of the military?

FAB: Yes.

Q: Based on your philosophy, where one soldier’s subjective mind can say something’s illegal, so that soldier doesn’t go, you don’t think that would affect the good order and discipline of a unit where –

FAB: A soldier has an obligation to disobey illegal orders. That’s very clear from Winthrop and Little v. Barreme, decided by the United States Supreme Court. And you’ll find it in Field Manual 27-10.

Q: With regard to the Nuremberg defense that you talked about with regard to the obligation to refuse an illegal order, doesn’t that — again, to Huet-Vaughn, doesn’t that apply to individual acts committed in wartime? It does not apply to government’s decision to wage war? It’s directly from the case.

FAB: That’s not what the Field Manual provides. The Field Manual provides quite clearly that the decision to wage war itself must follow both Constitutional procedures in Congress and authorization from the Security Council when — if the United States government itself is not attacked.

Now, if Iraq had actually attacked the United States militarily, that would be a different story. But Iraq never attacked us. We attacked Iraq. And that made it a crime against peace under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles.

And Lieutenant Watada, then, was correct to say, “I don’t want to have anything to do with a crime against peace.”

Q: Isn’t there a legal argument where the U.N. resolution from back in 1990 was still ongoing?

FAB: Even the Bush administration didn’t accept that argument. And that is why, finally, they tried to get a second Security Council resolution at the beginning of 2003, and failed.

Q: Isn’t it — isn’t it true that Iraq was in breach, material breach, and there even was a U.N. resolution on that, they were in material breach of that initial resolution?

FAB: That was for the Security Council to decide, not any state.

They did not authorize the use of military force in that resolution.

If you study Security Council resolutions authorizing use of force — which, by the way, President Bush, Senior, did get. I ask the question, if President Bush, Senior, got authorization for war from the Security Council, why didn’t President Bush, Junior?

And the answer is, he couldn’t get it. The President Bush, Senior, resolution authorized the U.S. government to use all necessary means to enforce that — to expel Iraq from Kuwait.

The Bush, Junior, administration tried to get a similar authorization, and failed. They tried twice, and failed.

Q: That initial resolution said, “And to restore international peace and security to the area.”

FAB: It — that resolution was limited to expelling Iraq from Kuwait, which the Bush, Senior, administration did.

And, indeed, at that point, the question was, under Bush, Senior, should the United States government go all the way to Baghdad and depose Saddam Hussein? And President Bush, Senior, said publicly, “I did not have authorization from the Security Council to do that, and so I did not do it.”

And Bush, Junior, did not have authorization, either, none.

Q: But the 1990 resolution says, legally, he had — though there might be a political reason not to at the time, in 1991 or whatever, but it was a political reason. He had the legal basis for doing it based on that 1990 resolution?

FAB: Well, he’s contradicted by his own father. President Bush, Senior, specifically said that, “That Security Council resolution gave me no authority to send U.S. armed forces to Baghdad.”

Q: I just –

FAB: It was limited.

Q: I just read to you the authority.

FAB: Right. To expel Iraq from Kuwait. That’s it.

Q: And to restore international peace and security to the area.

FAB: Right. With respect to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Captain Kuecker: I have nothing further. Thanks.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Two quick questions, Professor.

One, who has the authority to declare this war illegal?

FAB: Well, of course, the International Court of Justice could do so.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Who in the United States has the authority?

FAB: A United States federal court could do so as well. Or the U.S. Supreme Court could do so as well.

Lt. Colonel Keith: To declare the war illegal?

FAB: Yes, they could.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Had weapons of mass destruction existed and/or the tie to 9/11 been founded between Iraq and the 9/11 event, would that change your professional opinion on the conduct of this war and the legality of this war?

FAB: No. Because at the time in August of 2002 when the Bush, Junior, administration was making these allegations, I was involved in public debates and interviews, even with lawyers on the other side, pointing out, one, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and anyone who had studied the situation knew that –

Lt. Colonel Keith: I understand. But I’m saying –

FAB: — and, two –

Lt. Colonel Keith: — had there been –

FAB: Well, there weren’t.

Lt. Colonel Keith: — weapons of mass destruction.

FAB: Well, that -

Lt. Colonel Keith: I’m asking, in your professional opinion –

FAB: Well, there –

Lt. Colonel Keith: — had there been weapons of mass destruction and/or a tie to 9/11, would that change your opinion in terms of the prosecution of the war, in terms of the legality of the war?

FAB: It would all go back to the authorization of the Security Council, which was not there, and also authorization by Congress. And Congress, was lied to on both accounts, by weapons of mass destruction and by the tie-in to 9/11.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Okay.

FAB: And, by the way, those –

Lt. Colonel Keith: Congress did authorize action, you allege –

FAB: They -

Lt. Colonel Keith: — with bad information.

FAB: They were defrauded; right.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Had 9/11 been tied to the Saddam Hussein regime and Congress authorized action, as they did, and a soldier such as Lieutenant Watada deployed in the early days of 1993 or the early — early — I’m sorry, not ‘97 — 2003, excuse me –

FAB: I understand your question; right.

Lt. Colonel Keith: — would that change — would that change the prospect for you, in your mind –

FAB: Right. There was still –

Lt. Colonel Keith: — as a student of the law –

FAB: There was still no authorization from the Security Council.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Okay.

FAB: Which made it a crime against peace.

And, again, compare what happened here with what President Bush, Senior, did, where he did get first authorization from the Security Council and then authorization from the United States Congress.

Lt. Colonel Keith: No, I understand that.

So your point — your perspective is still that even independent of that, if weapons of mass destruction had, in fact, been found or there had been a tie to 9/11, it still would be unlawful in that the U.N. hadn’t resolved to do anything about it?

FAB: The U.N. had refused twice to give President Bush, Junior, authorization to use military force against Iraq. Twice.

He tried, and he failed twice.

Lt. Colonel Keith: Okay.

Redirect Examination by Mr. Seitz:

Q: First of all, if in fact there had been a tie-in between Iraq and the attack on the United States in 9/11, wouldn’t that have justified the United States then, on grounds of self-defense, to have unilaterally attacked Iraq?

FAB: Well, that’s a far more complicated question.

Q: No, I understand.

But I’m asking, I’m saying to you, again, hypothetically, if it had been shown that Iraq was involved in an attack on the United States, that would have been a sufficient basis for the United States, if it could demonstrate that, to take unilateral action on its own?

FAB: The United States would have a right, under the Constitution and Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, to defend itself with necessary and proportionate means.

Q: Okay.

And, secondly, if in fact there had been a determination that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction that were threatening the United States and/or any other countries, in that situation, at least hypothetically, the United Nations might have been in a different position to act than what subsequently transpired; isn’t that also true?

A. Well, there it’s useful to compare it to the Cuban Missile Crisis, where Cuba actually had weapons of mass destruction targeted on the United States, unlike Iraq. And on missiles.

And President Kennedy refused the advice of his top advisors to attack Cuba. And he also refused to invoke Article 51, because Cuba had not attacked the United States.

So if, under those terrible circumstances, myself having lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and remembering it quite well, President Kennedy did not attack Cuba, I don’t understand what the legal basis was at all for President Bush, Junior, to have attacked Iraq, even if they had some weapons of mass destruction. He should have gone to the Security Council, which he did twice, and gotten authorization, which he twice failed to do.

Q: Now, going back to your last colloquy with Captain Kuecker, I want to just ask you, you would agree, a decision for an individual soldier under the legal authorities that you’ve cited is a subjective decision that has to be made individually based upon what that soldier knows?

That’s what you said; correct?

FAB: That is correct. And that’s true for all criminal law.

Q: But that subjective decision which goes to intent and state of mind, that occurs within an objective factual situation such as the one we have here, where you have stated that there is a problem under international law with respect to the initiation of this war. And within that objective context, Lieutenant Watada has decided that’s something that he cannot participate in?

FAB: That is correct as well.

Indeed, I — I certainly wouldn’t be here if I did not believe that the facts and the law back up what — the conclusions that Lieutenant Watada, who is not a lawyer, reached of his own accord.

Q: So, with respect to some other military action which has been properly authorized, if in that context some individual soldier subjectively decides for himself or herself not to participate, as Captain Kuecker correctly pointed out, that would be a problem for discipline and good order in the military, which could properly be prosecuted; isn’t that fair to say?

FAB: That’s correct.

Q. Thank you.

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Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (Voice)
217-244-1478 (Fax)
(personal comments only)

________________________________

From: keighley [mailto:keighley@telus.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 12:09 PM
To: Boyle, Francis; ‘Ahmad Munawar’
Cc: Wirduna@perdana.org.my; hidayah@perdana.org.my; markk@clubzone.com; ‘Zarina Abu Bakar’; mukhrizm@mac.com; nik@perdana.org.my; matthias@skzcchambers.com; chang.matthias@hotmail.com
Subject: Our Fraternal Thanks - Another Request - World Peace Forum, Vancouver

April 17, 2007

Dear Dr. Boyle and Perdana Global Peace Organization Folks:

Re Our Fraternal Thanks - Another Request - World Peace Forum,
Vancouver

Thank you again for your quick and positive response last week. We had a very successful session on Saturday at which the delegates renewed their commitment to help build the global peace movement. We are putting together a summary of the Saturday’s proceedings and we will send you copies when completed.

Following my introduction and summarizing of the process leading to our Forum and outlining some of the options to be considered for moving forward we screened Dr. Boyle’s June 22nd talk at the Perdana Forum last year to set the international scene within in which we work. As I expected, it was very well received! So much so that B.C. Labour Against the War would like to use it on their upcoming province wide tour to build their organization and labour’s commitment to peace and anti-war activities. B.C. Labour Against the War was an outgrowth of the World Peace Forum and is chaired by Bill Saunders, President of the Vancouver and District Labour Council, Western Canada’s largest and most progressive Labour Council. Mable Elmore, one of our Board members, is a key organizer within BCLAW and is Co-Chair of Stopwar.ca, Greater Vancouver’s broad based peace/anti-war coalition. BCLAW have rallied a significant base of key trade union officers and activists around Greater Vancouver and are committed to building the peace/anti-war profile within our provincial labour movement as well as working to inspire similar mobilizing efforts across Canada. May we have your permission to use the video across the province and indeed across Canada, of course with the appropriate attribution to Dr. Boyle and Perdana?

I also photocopied and distributed some Perdana documents, including the Kuala Lumpur Declaration, and highlighted the work you are doing, so I expect you will already be getting hits on your website as a result.

Let us build on our accidental discovery of each other. I look forward to your response.

In solidarity,

Jef Keighley,

Chair - World Peace Forum Society

604 469-0346

The latest edition of the American Journal of Imperial Law has an article by Harvard Law School’s Bemis Professor of International Law Detlev Vagts endorsing the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts despite the fact that they have been condemned by every human rights organization in the world as well as by the United States Supreme Court in Hamdan. I am not going to bother to repeat here all the grievous deficiencies of the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts under international law and US Constitutional Law. But I have been personally involved in five court-martials under the Uniform Code of Military Justice over the years involving war: USMC Jeff Paterson, the first military resistor to Gulf War I by Bush Sr; Captain Dr. Yolanda Huett-Vaughn, the highest ranking officer to be court-martialled for refusing to participate in Bush Sr’s Gulf War I; Capt Lawrence Rockwood, court-martialed by the Army for trying to stop torture in Haiti; Staff Sgt Camilo Mejia, the first military resistor to Bush Jr’s war against Iraq; and now Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to be court-martialled for refusing to participate in Bush Jr’s war against Iraq. See my forthcoming Protesting Power: War, Resistance and Law (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc). As i can attest from my personal experience, everyone of these court-martials under the UCMJ have been Stalinist show-trials by the military. These five UCMJ court-martials involving war prove the old adage attributed to Groucho Marx that military justice is to justice as military music is to music. And the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts are not even run in accordance with the UCMJ despite the fact that the US Supreme Court in Hamdan ruled that they should be. Whenever they are up and running the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts will constitute Stalinist Show Trials as well as Kangaroo Courts. And the fact that the Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School has publicly endorsed the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts despite Hamdan proves that Harvard has a Kangaroo Law School:Harvard Kangaroo Law School. Along with the 4 torture mongerers on the HKLS Faculty: Dersh;Parker;Goldsmith and Waco Phil Heymann. And their 2 certifiable war criminals: Dersh and Goldsmith. And the Dean of the Harvard Kangaroo Law School Kagan who boasted in the Washington Post that she is “so proud” to have hired their war criminal Goldsmith. And in the Boston Globe Kagan boasted that the “future of international legal studies” at Harvard Kangaroo Law School is in the “good hands” of their war criminal Goldsmith.

The Harvard Kangaroo Law School Faculty and Deans are no longer fit to educate Lawyers, Members of the Bar, and Officers of the Court. They are a joke and a fraud. Groucho Marx would have a field day with them: Harvard is to Law Schools what Kangaroos and Torture are to Law.

Francis A. Boyle
former Chair, HLS Fund Campaign for Greater Illinois

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (Voice)
217-244-1478 (Fax)

* ALERT - from Stop War on Iran

Join Ramsey Clark, Howard Zinn, George Galloway, Dennis Halliday, Harold Pinter, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Tony Benn, Lynne Stewart, David Swanson and thousands more in an international campaign to Stop War on Iran.

* Sign the Petition - http://stopwaroniran.org/petition.shtml
* Donate to help with organizing expenses - http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml
* Sign up for updates - http://stopwaroniran.org/contact.shtml

As this is written, the Bush Administration, with no visible opposition from the Democratically controlled Congress, is massing warships and attack aircraft and stepping up covert operations in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.

Guerrilla cells, backed by the U.S., are entering Iran from Pakistan, engaging in sabotage, car bombings, kidnappings, and attacks on civilians. (see http://stopwaroniran.blogspot.com/2007/04/us-backing-terrorist-attacks-against.html).

Seymour Hersh has reported that U.S. Special Operation Forces are already operating inside Iran in preparation for a possible attack. Hersh says that current and former officials told him that one of the options being considered by the Bush administration called ā€˜for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as B61-11, against underground nuclear sitesā€™.

Hersh writes, “Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Naval forces are involved in the largest naval exercises in the Persian Gulf since the invasion of Iraq. Two immense aircraft carriers, the USS Eisenhower and the USS Stennis, are steaming off the coast of Iran, each one accompanied by a carrier strike group. According to the Associated Press, “Each carrier hosts an air wing of F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft, S-3 Viking anti-submarine and refuelers, and E-2C Hawkeye airborne command-and-control craft. Also taking part were guided-missile destroyers USS Anzio, USS Ramage, USS Oā€™Kane, USS Mason, USS Preble and USS Nitze; and minesweepers USS Scout, USS Gladiator and USS Ardent.”

Al Jazeera reports, “American military domination of the Middle East is maintained by a vast network of military bases throughout the region. The US military in case of war has the capacity to crush Iran by round-the-clock bombing using cruise missiles and hundreds of warplanes.”

Russian intelligence reports that “the US armed forces in the Gulf have virtually completed preparations for a missile and bomb strike against the territory of Iran.”

Help Stop another war in the Middle East

It is clear that we cannot rely on politicians of either party to stop a new war against Iran. The only force that will stop an attack is a massive international grassroots movement of opposition.

In the Spring of 2006, activists from across the globe signed on to the initial call from Stop War on Iran (http://stopwaroniran.org/statement.shtml) saying, “We urge an immediate end to Washington’s campaign of sanctions, hostility, and falsehood against the people of Iran. We oppose any new U.S. aggression against Iran. We need funds for human needs, not endless war for empire.”

Since that time, Stop War on Iran activists and organizers have held teach-ins and forums across the U.S. We have marched in antiwar demonstrations with Stop War on Iran placards and banners. We participated in the Encampment to Stop the War in Washington DC (see photos at http://encampmenttostopthewar.blogspot.com/2007/03/encampment-to-stop-war-photos.html). We have distributed thousands of Stop War on Iran broadsheets and collected tens of thousands of petition signatures.

But we must do more and we need your help to do it. Here’s how you can help:

* Sign the petition, located at http://stopwaroniran.org/petition.shtml.

* Download the petition from http://stopwaroniran.org/petition.pdf. Take copies to your school, workplace, union hall, church or mosque, community center, etc.

* Help get the word out. Pass the word along to your email lists.

* Donate - Help us with the enormous expenses of organizing meetings and rallies, printing leaflets, placards, and banners, and producing educational material. You can donate online at http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml.

Stop War On Iran - 55 West 17th St, 5C, New York, NY 10011