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White House ‘buried British intelligence on Iraq WMDs’

August 6, 2008

The Times, August 6, 2008

George W Bush and Tony Blair

(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Tony Blair and George Bush both saw intelligence contradicting the rationale for invading Iraq, a new book claims

Tim Reid in Washington and Sam Coates in London

MI6 told Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq that a high-placed Iraqi source said that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence was passed to the US but was buried by the White House, according to a new book.

The book claimed that the former Prime Minister sent a top British spy to the Middle East in 2003 — three months before the invasion — to dig up enough intelligence to avoid war but that President Bush and Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, dismissed any claims or possible evidence that would stop military action.

In The Way of the World, the Pulitzer prize-winning author Ron Suskind also claimed that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a backdated, handwritten letter purportedly from the head of Iraqi Intelligence to Saddam. The letter, which came to light nine months after the invasion, was meant to demonstrate a link between the Baathist regime and al-Qaeda.

The forgery, adamantly denied by the White House, was passed to a British journalist in Baghdad and written about as if genuine by The Sunday Telegraph on December 14, 2003. The article received significant attention in the US and provided the White House with a new rationale for the invasion, Suskind claimed. The White House called the allegation absurd.

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Suskind said that at the beginning of 2003 MI6 sent one of its top agents, Michael Shipster, to the region. Mr Shipster held secret meetings in Jordan with Tahir Jalil Habbush, the head of Iraqi Intelligence. The meetings were confirmed by Nigel Inkster, former assistant director of MI6.

Mr Inkster also confirmed that Mr Shipster was told by Mr Habbush that there were no illicit weapons in Iraq. Mr Inkster refused to comment last night.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of British Intelligence, was also interviewed by Suskind. The author said that Sir Richard confirmed the Shipster meetings and report. He added that he asked why Mr Blair had not acted on the intelligence.

Sir Richard was quoted as saying that the mission was an eleventh-hour “attempt to try, as it were, I’d say, to diffuse \ the whole situation”. He added: “The problem was the Cheney crowd was in too much of a hurry, really. Bush never resisted them quite strongly enough.”

Suskind wrote that Sir Richard flew to Washington in February 2003 to present the Habbush report to George Tenet, then the Director of the CIA. The report stated that according to Mr Habbush, Saddam had ended his nuclear programme in 1991 — the same year that he destroyed his chemical weapons programme — and ended his biological weapons programme in 1996. These assertions turned out to be true.

Mr Tenet briefed Mr Bush and Condoleezza Rice, at the time his National Security Adviser.

Suskind wrote: “The White House then buried the Habbush report. They instructed the British that they were no longer interested in keeping the channel open.”

Rob Richer, a former CIA officer in the Near East division, told Suskind: “The Brits wanted to avoid war — which was what was driving them. Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq from the very first days he was in office.”

Mr Habbush was put on the White House’s list of most-wanted Iraqis but according to Suskind he was paid by the CIA in October 2003 to write the forged letter to Saddam, dated July 1, 2001, saying that the putative September 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had trained for his mission in Iraq. This was the letter publicised in The Sunday Telegraph.

Of the forgery allegation, Mr Tenet said: “There was no such order from the White House to me or, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone from the CIA ever involved in any such effort.” Of Mr Habbush, Mr Tenet said that the claims in the book were a complete fabrication. He said that Mr Habbush had “failed to persuade” the British that he had “anything new to offer by way of intelligence”.

Delving deep

— Ron Suskind was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000

— His serialised stories, following a religious student from a blighted inner-city school to the Ivy League Brown University, won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1995

— His 2004 book The Price of Loyalty penetrated the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration

— Excepts of his last book, The One Percent Doctrine, were published last month in Time magazine

Source: www.ronsuskind.com

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Author Claims White House Knew Iraq Had No WMD

August 6, 2008

Journalist Ron Suskind says Bush ordered forgery linking Saddam, al-Qaeda

Published on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 by MSNBC
by Bob Considine

WASHINGTON – President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to to manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, an explosive new book claims.0805 01 1 2

The charge is made in “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, released today.

Suskind says he spoke on the record with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, his book relates, Bush decided to invade Iraq three months later – with the forged letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam bolstering the U.S. rationale to go into war.

“It was a dark day for the CIA,” Suskind told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira on Tuesday. “It was the kind of thing where [the CIA] said, ‘Look, this is not our charge. We’re not here to carry forth a political mandate – which is clearly what this was – to solve a political problem in America.’ And it was a cause of great grievance inside of the agency.”

The author writes that Bush’s action is “one of the greatest lies in modern American political history” and suggests it is a crime of greater impact than Watergate. But the White House is denying the allegations, calling the book “absurd” and charging that Suskind practices “gutter journalism.”

Former CIA director George Tenet also released a statement in which he ridicules the credibility of Suskind’s sources and calls the White House’s supposed directive to forge the document as “a complete fabrication.”

But Suskind stands by his work. “It’s not off the record,” he says. “It’s on the record. It’s in the book and people can read it for themselves.”

Prelude to war
Suskind reports that the head of Iraqi intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush, met secretly with British intelligence in Jordan in the early days of 2003. In weekly meetings with Michael Shipster, the British director of Iraqi operations, Habbush conveyed that Iraq had no active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs and no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

When Tenet was informed of the findings in early February, he said, “They’re not going to like this downtown,” Suskind wrote, meaning the White House. Suskind says that Bush’s reaction to the report was: “Why don’t they ask him to give us something we can use to help make our case?”

Suskind quotes Rob Richer, the CIA’s Near East division head, as saying that the White House simply ignored the Habbush report and informed British intelligence that they no longer wanted Habbush as an informant.

“Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq from the very first days he was in office. Nothing was going to stop that,” Richer is quoted in the book.

Suskind also writes that Habbush was “resettled” in Jordan with help from the CIA and was paid $5 million in hush money.

Vieira questioned Suskind’s contentions, pointing out that a number of intelligence figures eventually wrote Habbush off as unreliable.

“No, that’s not exactly the way it worked,” Suskind countered. “In the book, you’ll see people who are involved and talking about the debate, and it was quite a fierce debate at the highest levels of the government: ‘Is Habbush reliable? What’s he saying? How can we check it?’

“And a lot of people, at the end of the day, said it was hard for him to prove the negative, that what he said was no weapons were actually not there. That’s hard to do.”

The letter
On page 371 of “The Way of the World,” Suskind describes the White House’s concoction of a forged letter purportedly from the hand of Habbush to Saddam Hussein to justify the United States’ decision to go to war.

Suskind writes: “The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operation link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, something the Vice President’s office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade.”

He continues: “A handwritten letter, with Habbush’s name on it, would be fashioned by CIA and then hand-carried by a CIA agent to Baghdad for dissemination.”

CIA officers Richer and John Maguire, who oversaw the Iraq Operations Group, are both on the record in Suskind’s book confirming the existence of the fake Habbush letter.

When asked by Vieira for further proof of the letter, Suskind said: “Well, the CIA folks involved in the book and others talk about George Tenet coming back from the White House with the assignment on White House stationery, and turning to the CIA operatives, who are professionals, and saying, ‘You may not like this, but here is our next mission.’

“And they carried it through step by step, all the way to the finish.”

The London Sunday Telegraph first published a story about the letter in December 2003, on the same day that Saddam Hussein was captured in Iraq. Reported as genuine, the letter made an immediate impact upon the media in terms of justifying the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Suskind relates how NBC reported the letter, with journalist Con Coughlin telling Tom Brokaw that the letter “is really concrete proof that al-Qaeda was working with Saddam.”

Suskind also quotes Alan Foley, head of WMD analysis for the CIA, as saying, “It is, in my opinion, true that the administration, for whatever reason, was determined to have a showdown with Iraq that predated this whole WMD stuff.”

In support of that theory, Foley says that Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, passed along information that Iraq had no WMD to a Lebanese journalist who served as an intermediary on behalf of the CIA in 2002.

That intelligence, Suskind writes, was dismissed as “disinformation.”

Suskind’s credentials

So why, Vieira asked, are Suskind’s sources finally speaking out now, more than five years after the war began?

“Well, you know, a lot of them have been walking around with this lump in their chest for a couple of years – five years now,” Suskind replied. “And because they’re essentially free – they’re not the original source – they said, ‘Look, why hide now? Let’s trust the truth.’ ”

Suskind said it took about seven months to get his storied “nailed.” “I’d done this sort of thing for a while, and the way it worked was there were off-the-record sources who played out the story, and then I went to people actually involved,” he told Vieira.

“They were freed up because they’re not the original source, if you will … to sort of talk about the context, what they felt, what they did [and] the people actually involved. And of course they’re all, through the book, on the record talking about how it all worked.”

Suskind, who reported for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000, won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1995 for stories of inner-city honors students in Washington, D.C. His reports spawned book-club favorite “A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League” in 1998.

Two stories Suskind wrote for Esquire in 2002 gave readers an inside account of the Bush White House. The second, which ran in the December 2002 issue, raised eyebrows as John DiIulio, the former head of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, described a presidency driven by politics over policy – “the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”

“The Price of Loyalty,” Suskind’s 2004 book on former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, said that the U.S. occupation of Iraq and subsequent overthrow of Saddam Hussein were planned in January 2001 – nine months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

His most recent book, 2006’s “The One Percent Doctrine,” also described the Bush administration’s willingness to let its post-Sept. 11 foreign policy be driven by suspicion over proof of weapons of mass destruction. It also claimed al-Qaeda leaders were plotting to attack the New York City subway system in 2003.

In “The Way of the World,” Suskind describes President Bush as “a guy who needs to make things personal” and someone who “doesn’t think in large strategic terms.” He also says the president has “always been a bit of a bully.”

HarperCollins Publishers is printing 500,000 copies of the book and HCP executive editor Tim Duggan was quoted in Monday’s Wall Street Journal as saying Suskind “wrote it as fast as possible and we’re publishing it as fast as possible because there is news in the book and we don’t want to sit on it.”

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive

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The Ticking Iraqi Clock

August 5, 2008

The Huffington Post, August 4, 2008 | 02:54 PM (EST)

John Bruhns

This underscores the genesis of this disaster when we forgot about Osama bin Laden and refocused the war on terror to Saddam Hussein who didn’t have WMDs, did not want war with us, and posed no threat to the United States. So while recognizing the success that the surge had from tactical military standpoint, I remain strongly opposed to the war.

I will never dismiss the falsehoods of why we went to Iraq as a moot point. Too many people have suffered and died for the sane and rational to have the cavalier opinion of “to hell with it, forget why we are there, we just need to win.”

I’ll leave that to the people who will forever buy the Bush mantra hook, line, and sinker. They can’t be reached and luckily they are in the lowest of the minority. Their main argument: we have to fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here. Really? Or is that just a way to legitimize sending another soldier or Marine back to Iraq for his fourth or fifth deployment? As if the Iraqi insurgents could possibly come “over here” in the masses to invade America — give me a break. We are fighting the Iraqis “over there” because we are in Iraq — plain and simple.

It’s crucial for us all understand the Iraqi insurgency has been disguised by the Bush Administration as AQI — Al Qaeda in Iraq . Catchy name isn’t it — and oh what a convenient excuse to keep the war going. Let’s justify the last 5+ years of death and destruction by lumping the violent reaction of the Iraqi people to an occupation of their land into the same category as those who orchestrated and carried out 9/11.

This very same crowd living in a “fools paradise” continuously attempt to latch onto some illusion that this tragic episode in American/Iraqi history was a colossal failure that falls on the back of U.S. intelligence agencies. Come on, Bush was going in regardless of what the CIA told him.

Now the latest propaganda being formulated by those in a perpetual state of denial is that the Bush Administration initiated this war and occupation as philanthropists for the Iraqi people. Explain that philanthropy to the 4.5 million Iraqi refugees, the families of the uncountable number of dead Iraqi civilians, and the U.S. troops who had to bear witness to it and died in the process.

The same Iraqi government elected by its people who President Bush proclaims such compassion for are asking us to set a timeline to leave. Why is the blatantly obvious impossible for the average warmonger to grasp? The reality is that their numbskulls deny them the humility to admit it.

I’m well aware that this sounds irresponsible. But if the Iraqis want to do it “John Wayne” style from here on out — why should we interfere? After all, according to the Iraqi government they are just so close to standing up so we can stand down. Sound familiar?

We have tried so many military strategies in Iraq in an effort to clean up President Bush’s mess. The only road we haven’t explored is the road home. Just something to think about.

As an Iraq veteran it’s very hard for me to grip the strong possibility that the troop surge in Iraq was all for naught. So recently I have been focusing on the successes of the surge in Iraq without political or ideological blinders. I recently wrote a piece to touch on a different angle than my usual argument that the war is unjustified and illegal in the eyes of millions of Americans and the world community. However, this was all based on a hypothetical scenario that we actually had a compelling reason to invade and occupy Iraq in the first place.

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Iraq’s antiquities looted

August 3, 2008

Uruknet.info, July 31, 2008

DAUD SALMAN, The Institute for War & Peace Reporting

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BAGHDAD — To most, the scenes of looting and wanton destruction of Iraq’s archaeological treasures that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003 are just a distant memory.

But unfortunately, the country continues to lose its priceless artifacts on a daily basis as a result of theft, illegal excavations and trespassing.

The government estimates that there are around 10,000 archaeological sites in the country. Most of them are located in central Iraq, an area badly hit by the chaos and lawlessness that has gripped the country over the last several years.

While some of the best-known Mesopotamian sites, such as Ur near modern-day Nasiriyah, are well-protected, many others are completely unguarded.

Qais Rashid Hussein, director general of excavations and inspection at the Ministry of Archaeology and Tourism, said there are only 1,200 troops available to protect all of Iraq’s historic treasures. That has created “a huge problem” that has left antiquities vulnerable to gangs and smugglers, he said.

Treasure hunters illegally excavate the sites for valuable items that are then traded on the black market and often smuggled out of the country.

Margarete van Ess, director of Oriental Science at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin, estimated that illegal excavation in Iraq has caused $10 billion worth of damage in recent years.

“Many of the sites are far from town centers and cities and are under the control of tribes,” she said, making them vulnerable to looters.

Former President Saddam Hussein’s regime maintained tight control over most of the country’s archaeological sites and imposed stiff penalties on those caught looting. Those convicted of stealing antiquities faced 15 years in prison, and, in some cases, the death penalty. While many of those laws remain on the books, they are rarely enforced today.

Ancient coins, seals and other gold, silver and bronze pieces can be purchased on the black market in Iraq for as little as $10. But the same item offered for sale in Syria or Jordan can fetch thousands of dollars.

“A (Sumerian) cylinder seal can be bought for less than $100, and gold coins for even less (in Baghdad),” said Said Mahmood, a 52-year-old antiquities collector. “(However) the same cylinder seal can be sold for more than $2,000 outside of Iraq.” Last month, the Iraqi government announced that it was launching a concerted effort to reclaim about 15,000 artifacts believed stolen during the looting on the Baghdad Museum in 2003.

Already, Jordan has returned about 2,000 stolen items, some dating back to 7,000 B.C. In April, Syria turned over around 700 pieces, including gold coins and jewelry, which were seized by Syrian customs officials.

But even as the government reclaims stolen items, additional artifacts are being looted from unguarded sites. Sometimes, ignorance or neglect is behind the damage being done to Iraq’s ancient past.

Last year, officials with the antiquities ministry discovered that a new housing project was about to be built on top of a priceless archeological site; in Baghdad, a similar site was being used as a garbage dump until authorities intervened.

Khalid Sultan, a Baghdad-based archaeology expert, said both the Iraqi government and the international community need to do more to protect the country’s past.

“The destruction of Iraqi antiquities after the 2003 war has been enormous,” he said. “We need a massive effort from the international community to return the stolen pieces and to help us to protect the remaining archaeological sites.”

Daud Salman is a reporter in Iraq who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Readers may write to the author at the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, 48 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8LT, U.K.; Web site: http://www.iwpr.net. For information about IWPR’s funding, please go to http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?top—supporters.html.

(c) 2008, The Institute for War & Peace Reporting

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

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A QUESTION OF NOMENCLATURE

August 2, 2008

Malcolm Lagauche, August 2 – 4, 2008

baghdadbob23.jpg
Nobody laughs at Baghdad Bob any more

Saturday-Monday, August 2-4, 2008

When I began to work at Radio Netherlands in its English section in 1981 as a broadcaster/interviewer/news writer, I received training from a master, Hans Kramer. He quickly turned my American delivery into a more international style.

His tips on interviewing have lasted with me for almost three decades: never ask a question that can be answered by “yes,” or “no:” never make a statement, only ask questions: except for your first and last questions, never have any written down: and others.
When he discussed news writing, he stressed the virtues of brevity and accuracy. Then he stated, “And never use the word ‘terrorist.’ One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.”

At the time, I rarely wrote news that would border on this issue, but the statement remained with me. Today, however, the word “terrorist” is bandied about with frequency: mostly in the wrong context.

In Iraq, a resistance is in full swing. The resistance is being conducted against an occupying force, therefore, every time the word “terrorist” is used by U.S. administration officials, or by Iraqi stooges, the word is in error.

Some news agencies have softened the word by calling the resistance an “insurgency.” Again, this is false. An insurgency is an uprising against a legal entity. The current Iraqi government is illegal and those in the real government have been murdered or are in prison. Therefore, the resistance fighters in Iraq are definitely not part of an insurgency.

Let’s look at occupied France of World War II. The resistance was trying to make things difficult for the German occupiers. After the war, they were considered heroes by the U.S. who, to this day, have not failed to consistently remind France that it was American troops who helped liberate the country as well.

If we use the same logic, how can the U.S. be considered liberators of Iraq? In reality, they are the same occupiers as were the Germans of France in World War II. The only difference is that Germany did not destroy as much of France as the U.S. has in Iraq.

Therefore, the Iraqi resistance fighters are the heroes. They are trying to oust an occupying force.

The U.S. media have things backwards because they use the same terminology as the administration. They mention the “bad guys” when discussing the resistance and most U.S. citizens have fallen in line. A simple method of portraying the truth is by merely reversing the words of “bad guys” to “good guys.” This 180-degree change would then be indicative of a more truthful look at current Iraq.

Iraq has been resisting since 1991, but it was not until U.S. troops were on its soil that the resistance took on its current form. The first Gulf War killed about 250,000 Iraqis, but the killing did not stop with the 1991 cease-fire. From March 1991 to March 2003, about two million Iraqis were given a premature grave because of the illegal embargo placed on it.

Most people do not remember the bogus “no-fly zones” set up by the U.S. During the embargo years, about 850 Iraqis were killed by the antics of U.S. pilots flying over Iraq, with a few thousand more injured.

During the those years, a few proclamations were floated to the Iraqi government. One, in particular, said that if Saddam Hussein signed the document, the embargo would be lifted and he would be re-packaged by the U.S. as a man of peace, similar to the transition of Col. Ghadaffi from a terrorist to a “good Arab.”

The document called for Iraq to hand over its oil production to the U.S. and allow a few huge U.S. military bases to be constructed in the country. Saddam and associates refused to sign. In mentioning this approach to him, as well as other occurrences in Iraq at the time, Saddam Hussein stated, “Iraq has been put in a situation in which it has to choose between sacrifice and slavery.”

Today’s Iraq is in the same quandary. Some collaborators have chosen slavery. They do not realize that by cooperating with the U.S. occupier, the country’s fate has been sealed for decades.

The resistance has taken the sacrifice route. The members have sacrificed their own careers and family ties to ensure that Iraq does not fall into total slavery.

When Saddam Hussein stated that “the mother of all battles has begun” on January 17, 1991, he was ridiculed. He knew his military would not be able to fare well against the U.S., but it was a stance that someone had to take in fighting imperialism. He also knew that this was only the beginning of a long struggle that could last for years or decades.

From January 17, 1991, to April 9, 2003, Iraq resisted, but not in a way that was greatly visible. It lost many people with little loss of life for the opposition.

On April 8, 2003, the Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Sahaff was giving his daily report to the world. He was known as Baghdad Bob and held a worldwide audience because of his colorful statements in English and Arabic.

Sahaff was telling the audience how the U.S. troops were going to be bogged down in Iraq. One reporter shouted, “Look, the Americans are already in Baghdad.” Sahaff turned around to see a U.S. tank about 200 meters in the distance. He took the microphone and said:

Do not be hasty because your disappointments will be huge … You will reap nothing from this aggressive war, which you launched on Iraq, except for disgrace and defeat … We will embroil them, confuse them, and keep them in the quagmire … They cannot just enter a country of 26 million people and lay besiege to them. They are the ones who will find themselves under siege.

He walked away, never again to be seen in public.

For the next few months, websites sprung up laughing at Sahaff and his last statement in particular. T-shirts and coffee mugs were made mocking his statement.

Sahaff went to the U.S. authorities and they laughed at him, not taking him prisoner. This, in essence, was a statement meaning, “You’re not even worth capturing.”

A few months later, while being interviewed in the U.A.E., where he relocated, a reporter asked Sahaff about his last statement. At the time, the resistance was in its formative stages, but not as active as today. Sahaff refused to take back the statement and said, “Let history speak about this matter.”

Today, the resistance is solid and every day we read or hear about another plan to placate the Iraqis. Plans change, but the effectiveness of the resistance does not.

Today, when one looks back at Sahaff’s statement, nobody seems to be laughing anymore.

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Correspondence exchanged with the International Criminal Court in The Hague

August 1, 2008
By Robert Thompson | Axis of Logic, July 31, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page

To Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor, International Criminal Court

Dear Mr Moreno-Ocampo,

For over fifty years I have been a lawyer (now in retirement), and during that time I have had practical hands-on experience of international law at the highest level and criminal law (among other disciplines) at all levels. My experience has also caused me in many fields to work under two very different judicial systems, namely that in operation in England and Wales and that applied in France.

I was greatly upset to hear on the radio that you had decided to seek an arrest warrant against Mr Omar el-Basheer, the current President of Sudan, for his alleged personal responsibility for crimes committed in Darfour, but that you had no desire to initiate proceedings against either Mr George Walker Bush, the current President of the United States of America, or Mr Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, for their admitted personal responsibility for crimes affecting Iraq.

To an experienced lawyer such as I am this seems an extraordinary attitude on your part, since it would seem normal to act first in cases where the accused person admits (and even boasts of) extremely serious breaches of the Nuremberg Principles, as well as provisions of certain Geneva Conventions.

It also seems to me that there is a difference of scale in the offences which either apply or could apply to the facts. The thousands of victims of repression in Darfour are much fewer in number than the victims of the actions of Mr Bush and Mr Blair (and many of those to whom they gave orders) when they decided to wage war against the people of Iraq and subsequently to occupy that country.

It seems to me that you, as Chief Prosecutor at the I.C.C., have an absolute duty to pursue those who admit that they have acted in ways which are so seriously in breach of international criminal law.

If you take the trouble to re-read the Nuremberg Principles, you will find in Principle VI extremely clear definitions of Crimes against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, and Principle VII adds that complicity in any one or more of these crimes set out in Principle VI is also a crime under international law.

If you consider these simply definitions, it seems impossible for you not to draw the conclusion that these two men (and many of their advisers and servants) are clearly guilty of Crimes against Peace and also appear to have been complicit in both War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.

A summary of these three forms of criminality under Principle VI can be made as follows:

a) Crimes against Peace, in that they planned, prepared, initiated and waged a war of aggression against Iraq in direct violation of the international agreement set out in clearly worded United Nations Security Council Resolutions;

b) War Crimes, in that they were party to the ill-treatment and deportation of civilians, and prisoners of war, such as those who were sent to Guantanamo Bay from Afghanistan and elsewhere, and also in the destruction of cities, towns and villages in Iraq (there have also been the use of torture on prisoners);

c) Crimes against Humanity, in that they were involved in the murder and extermination of civilians (as in Fallujah) and the deportation of civilians to Guantanamo Bay.

Under Principle VII things look even worse for both men, since they have been complicit in many crimes committed in many countries including those already mentioned.

I have limited myself in this letter to specific crimes committed in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan, but similar points can be made concerning both men (and their advisers and servants) regarding other lands, particularly the Lebanon and Palestine, under Principle VII, for having provided the aggressors with vast quantities of arms knowing full well that they would be used for unjustified aggression.

The obvious question is therefore why you do not immediately seek arrest warrants against Mr George Walker Bush and Mr Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (and some of the others suggested above). The fact that the United States of America refuses to recognise the I.C.C. should not prevent your so doing, since these people could be arrested if and when they might dare to enter any country which does recognise the Court.

I would be very happy to hear from you, but I do not intend holding my breath while waiting, since your decision to act against Mr Omar el-Basheer seems to be a sign both of shocking partiality against such a man while failing to act against much worse offenders and of an unwillingness to act against persons for the sole reason that they are powerful.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Thompson

Avocat Honoraire au Barreau de Boulogne-sur-Mer

22 rue de l’Eglise

62990 RIMBOVAL

FRANCE

-o-o-o-

Reply received:

Our reference: OTP-CR-302/08

The Hague, 28 July 2008

Dear Sir, Madam,

The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court acknowledges receipt of your documents/letter.

This communication has been duly entered in the Correspondence Register of the Office. We will give consideration to this communication, as appropriate, in accordance with the provisions of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

As soon as a decision is reached, we will inform you, in writing, and provide you with reasons for this decision.

Yours sincerely,

Head of Information & Evidence Unit

Office of the Prosecutor

-o-o-o-

Further letter from Robert Thompson:

Rimboval, 31st July 2008

Your reference : OTP-CR-302/08

Dear Sirs,

I thank you for your letter of 28th July 2008, and note the situation, and I await with interest receiving the decision which will be taken on the subject of the crimes committed by the person whom I named – i.e. Mr George Walker Bush and Mr Anthony Charles Lynton Blair – under the terms of Principles VI and VII of the Nuremberg Principles.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Thompson

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Military censorship of the war in Iraq

July 31, 2008

By Naomi Spencer | WSWS, 31 July 2008

Five years of bloody US occupation have seen numerous crimes against humanity unfold in Iraq. Millions of Iraqi civilians have been killed and wounded, with millions more made into refugees. Ancient, once-vibrant cities have been destroyed by air raids and chemical weapons. Thousands of Iraqis have imprisoned by the US military in barbaric conditions, and in many cases tortured. In carrying out the occupation, more than 4,400 military personnel—most of them American—have died and tens of thousands have been wounded.

Little reflection of these realities is to be found, however, in the US media, particularly in visual form. Censorship by the military—and self-censorship by media outlets—is part of an effort by the ruling elite to sanitize the war and keep the American public in the dark about its real nature.

As highlighted in a July 26 piece in the New York Times, titled “4,000 U.S. Deaths, and a Handful of Images,” very few photographs of the occupation have trickled out from the military-embedded journalists and been released by the American media. The military and Bush administration have imposed rules barring photos of flag-draped caskets, as well as documentation of battlefield casualties in which faces, ranks, or other identifiers are visible.

The Times notes, “Even memorial services for killed soldiers, once routinely open, are increasingly off limits. Detainees were widely photographed in the early years of the war, but the Department of Defense, citing prisoners’ rights, has recently stopped that practice as well.” Journalists have also been forbidden from releasing images showing what the military deems to be sensitive information—anything from an image of American weaponry to the aftermath of an insurgent strike.

Journalists interviewed by the Times said that even tighter rules imposed last year, requiring written permission from wounded soldiers before their images could be used, were nearly impossible to satisfy in the case of seriously wounded and dying soldiers.

“While embed restrictions do permit photographs of dead soldiers to be published once family members have been notified,” the Times commented, “in practice, the military has exacted retribution on the rare occasions that such images have appeared.”

Clearly, none of these restrictions have anything to do with “prisoners’ rights” or respect for the families of fallen soldiers. To the contrary, the military’s intent is to obscure from the American people the hellish reality in which prisoners and US soldiers alike have found themselves. Indeed, while employing typical military jargon and doublespeak, Defense Department officials make no secret of the subject: free and easy access to photographs, print journalism, and first-hand accounts of the war are a “vulnerability” for US imperialism because it fuels antiwar sentiment in the population and within the military.

Continued . . .

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Forget the Surge — Violence Is Down in Iraq Because Ethnic Cleansing Was Brutally Effective

July 30, 2008

By Juan Cole, JuanCole.com. Alternet, July 29, 2008.

The bloodbath in Baghdad has resulted in fewer ethnically mixed neighborhoods, leading to the recent drop in violence.

Editor’s note: John McCain’s latest stumble in discussing Iraq — in which he muddled the timeline of the so-called “surge” — was treated by most of the press as an unfortunate gaffe, rather than further proof that the aspiring commander in chief does not know what he’s talking about when it comes to the war and occupation. (One CNN report actually ran the headline: “McCain Broadens Definition of the Surge.”) Meanwhile, the Republican nominee’s recent attacks on Barack Obama for failing to admit the success of the “surge” was widely reported by the same members of the media, whose dominant and uncritical narrative has long been that, as McCain and Bush contend, the “surge” has been an unqualified success. “Why can’t Obama bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics thought that it would?” a USA Today editorial asked last week.

In the article below, Juan Cole takes a closer look at the “surge,” weighing the troop increase alongside the numerous other contributing factors to the decline in violence. At the same time, he reminds us that, regardless of the relative decrease in bloodshed — and what may be behind it — the country is still a frightfully unstable place for Iraqis. “Most American commentators are so focused on the relative fall in casualties that they do not stop to consider how high the rates of violence remain,” he writes. Few people would consider Afghanistan, where last year an average of 550 people were killed per month, a safe place. Yet, “that is about the rate recently (in Iraq), according to official statistics.” — AlterNet War on Iraq editor Liliana Segura

***

I want to weigh in as a social historian of Iraq on the controversy over whether the “surge” “worked.” The New York Times reports:

Mr. McCain bristled in an interview with the CBS Evening News on (July 22) when asked about Mr. Obama’s contention that while the added troops had helped reduce violence in Iraq, other factors had helped, including the Sunni Awakening movement, in which thousands of Sunnis were enlisted to patrol neighborhoods and fight the insurgency, and the Iraqi government’s crackdown on Shiite militias.

“I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened,” Mr. McCain told Katie Couric, noting that the Awakening movement began in Anbar Province when a Sunni sheik teamed up with Sean MacFarland, a colonel who commanded an Army brigade there.

“Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others,” Mr. McCain said. “And it began the Anbar Awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.”

The Obama campaign was quick to note that the Anbar Awakening began in the fall of 2006, several months before President Bush even announced the troop escalation strategy, which became known as the surge.

And Democrats noted that the sheik who helped form the Awakening, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, was assassinated in September 2007, after the troop escalation began.

But several foreign policy analysts said that if Mr. McCain got the chronology wrong, his broader point — that the troop escalation was crucial for the Awakening movement to succeed and spread — was right. “I would say McCain is three-quarters right in this debate,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The problem with this debate is that it has few Iraqis in it.

It is also open to charges of logical fallacy. The only evidence presented for the thesis that the “surge” “worked” is that Iraqi deaths from political violence have declined in recent months from all-time highs in the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007. (That apocalyptic violence was set off by the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra in February 2006, which helped provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war.) What few political achievements are attributed to the troop escalation are too laughable to command real respect.

Proponents are awfully hard to pin down on what the “surge” consisted of or when it began. It seems to me to refer to the troop escalation that began in February 2007. But now the technique of bribing Sunni Arab former insurgents to fight radical Sunni vigilantes is being rolled into the “surge” by politicians such as McCain. But attempts to pay off the Sunnis to quiet down began months before the troop escalation and had a dramatic effect in al-Anbar Province long before any extra U.S. troops were sent to al-Anbar (nor were very many extra troops ever sent there). I will disallow it. The “surge” is the troop escalation that began in the winter of 2007. The bribing of insurgents to come into the cold could have been pursued without a significant troop escalation, and was.

Aside from defining what proponents mean by the “surge,” all kinds of things are claimed for it that are not in evidence. The assertion depends on a possible logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. If event X comes after event Y, it is natural to suspect that Y caused X. But it would often be a false assumption. Thus, actress Sharon Stone alleged that the recent earthquake in China was caused by China’s crackdown on Tibetan protesters. That is just superstition, and callous superstition at that. It is a good illustration, however, of the very logical fallacy to which I am referring.

For the first six months of the troop escalation, high rates of violence continued unabated. That is suspicious. What exactly were U.S. troops doing differently from September than they were doing in May, such that there was such a big change? The answer to that question is simply not clear. Note that the troop escalation only brought U.S. force strength up to what it had been in late 2005. In a country of 27 million, 30,000 extra U.S. troops are highly unlikely to have had a really major impact, when they had not before.

Continued . . .

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End the Occupation of Iraq — and Afghanistan

July 30, 2008

Published on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
by Marjorie Cohn

So far, Bush’s plan to maintain a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq has been stymied by resistance from the Iraqi government. Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawal of American troops has evidently been joined by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Bush has mentioned a “time horizon,” and John McCain has waffled. Yet Obama favors leaving between 35,000 and 80,000 U.S. occupation troops there indefinitely to train Iraqi security forces and carry out “counter-insurgency operations.” That would not end the occupation. We must call for bringing home — not redeploying — all U.S. troops and mercenaries, closing all U.S. military bases, and relinquishing all efforts to control Iraqi oil.

In light of stepped up violence in Afghanistan, and for political reasons — following Obama’s lead — Bush will be moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. Although the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was as illegal as the invasion of Iraq, many Americans see it as a justifiable response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the casualties in that war have been lower than those in Iraq — so far. Practically no one in the United States is currently questioning the legality or propriety of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. The cover of Time magazine calls it “The Right War.”

The U.N. Charter provides that all member states must settle their international disputes by peaceful means, and no nation can use military force except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. After the 9/11 attacks, the Council passed two resolutions, neither of which authorized the use of military force in Afghanistan. Resolutions 1368 and 1373 condemned the September 11 attacks, and ordered the freezing of assets; the criminalizing of terrorist activity; the prevention of the commission of and support for terrorist attacks; the taking of necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist activity, including the sharing of information; and urged ratification and enforcement of the international conventions against terrorism.

The invasion of Afghanistan was not legitimate self-defense under article 51 of the Charter because the attacks on September 11 were criminal attacks, not “armed attacks” by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the United States. In fact, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, there was not an imminent threat of an armed attack on the United States after September 11, or Bush would not have waited three weeks before initiating his October 2001 bombing campaign. The necessity for self-defense must be “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” This classic principle of self-defense in international law has been affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the U.N. General Assembly.

Bush’s justification for attacking Afghanistan was that it was harboring Osama bin Laden and training terrorists. Iranians could have made the same argument to attack the United States after they overthrew the vicious Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and he was given safe haven in the United States. The people in Latin American countries whose dictators were trained in torture techniques at the School of the Americas could likewise have attacked the torture training facility in Ft. Benning, Georgia under that specious rationale.

Those who conspired to hijack airplanes and kill thousands of people on 9/11 are guilty of crimes against humanity. They must be identified and brought to justice in accordance with the law. But retaliation by invading Afghanistan is not the answer and will only lead to the deaths of more of our troops and Afghanis.

The hatred that fueled 19 people to blow themselves up and take 3,000 innocents with them has its genesis in a history of the U.S. government’s exploitation of people in oil-rich nations around the world. Bush accused the terrorists of targeting our freedom and democracy. But it was not the Statue of Liberty that was destroyed. It was the World Trade Center — symbol of the U.S.-led global economic system, and the Pentagon — heart of the U.S. military, that took the hits. Those who committed these heinous crimes were attacking American foreign policy. That policy has resulted in the deaths of two million Iraqis — from both Bill Clinton’s punishing sanctions and George W. Bush’s war. It has led to uncritical support of Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestinian lands; and it has stationed more than 700 U.S. military bases in foreign countries.

Conspicuously absent from the national discourse is a political analysis of why the tragedy of 9/11 occurred and a comprehensive strategy to overhaul U.S. foreign policy to inoculate us from the wrath of those who despise American imperialism. The “Global War on Terror” has been uncritically accepted by most in this country. But terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. You cannot declare war on a tactic. The way to combat terrorism is by identifying and targeting its root causes, including poverty, lack of education, and foreign occupation.

There are already 60,000 foreign troops, including 36,000 Americans, in Afghanistan. Large increases in U.S. troops during the past year have failed to stabilize the situation there. Most American forces operate in the eastern part of the country; yet by July 2008, attacks there were up by 40 percent. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor for Jimmy Carter, is skeptical that the answer for Afghanistan is more troops. He warns that the United States will, like the Soviet Union, be seen as the invader, especially as we conduct military operations “with little regard for civilian casualties.” Brzezinski advocates Europeans bribing Afghan farmers not to cultivate poppies for heroin, as well as the bribery of tribal warlords to isolate al-Qaeda from a Taliban that is “not a united force, not a world-oriented terrorist movement, but a real Afghan phenomenon.”

We might heed Canada’s warning that a broader mission, under the auspices of the United Nations instead of NATO, would be more effective. Our policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan should emphasize economic assistance for reconstruction, development and education, not for more weapons. The United States must refrain from further Predator missile strikes in Pakistan, and pursue diplomacy, not occupation.

Nor should we be threatening war against Iran, which would also be illegal and result in an unmitigated disaster. The U.N. Charter forbids any country to use, or threaten to use, military force against another country except in self-defense or when the Security Council has given its blessing. In spite of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency’s conclusion that there is no evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons, the White House, Congress, and Israel have continued to rattle the sabers in Iran’s direction. Nevertheless, the antiwar movement has so far fended off passage of HR 362 in the House of Representatives, a bill which is tantamount to a call for a naval blockade against Iran — considered an act of war under international law. Credit goes to United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, Peace Action, and dozens of other organizations that pressured Congress to think twice before taking that dangerous step.

We should pursue diplomacy, not war, with Iran; end the U.S. occupation of Iraq; and withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.

Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and her new book, Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (co-authored with Kathleen Gilberd), will be published this winter. Her articles are archived at http://www.marjoriecohn.com.

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A new consensus on Iraq

July 29, 2008

Eric Ruder looks at the factors driving the seeming convergence of Barack Obama, the Bush administration and other players when it comes to Iraq–and what policy they are actually converging around.

Socialist Worker, July 25, 2008

IS THE end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq within sight?

In late July, newspaper headlines announced that the Bush administration and Iraqi officials had agreed on a “general time horizon for meeting aspirational goals” for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The fuzzy phraseology allows the Bush administration to deny that it had agreed to a “timetable” for withdrawal–something it has repeatedly denounced as “irresponsible” when advocated by Democrats.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama, who has promised to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq by late 2010 if he becomes president, captured the world’s attention with a whirlwind tour that took him to Baghdad for meetings with Iraqi politicians and U.S. military leaders.

Shortly before he arrived, an interview with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Germany’s Der Spiegel made headlines because Maliki basically endorsed Obama’s 2010 timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops–and made the pointed remark that “he who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.”

The sudden convergence of Obama, Maliki and the Bush administration on Iraq left Republican presidential candidate John McCain out in the cold. For months, he has attacked Obama for failing to understand what’s at stake in Iraq with his 16-month withdrawal proposal. But suddenly, McCain looks like the one who’s out of step–with the heads of state in both the U.S. and Iraq.

As news of Maliki’s praise of Obama sunk in, McCain stuck to his script. “The fact is, if we had done what Senator Obama wanted to do, we would have lost,” McCain said. “And we would have faced a wider war. And we would have had greater problems in Afghanistan and the entire region. And Iran would have increased their influence.”

That perfectly describes the situation that already exists–as a direct product of the U.S. war on Iraq.

At the same time, McCain might be trying to change direction. “If there is any fixed position in John McCain’s policy agenda, it’s that we must never, ever, set a timetable for leaving Iraq,” observed the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman. “So it was a surprise to hear him say Monday [July 21], when asked if our troops might depart in the next two years, ‘Oh, I think they could be largely withdrawn, as I’ve said.'”

Continued . . .

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