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Desmond Tutu: Israeli shelling in Gaza may be war crime

September 16, 2008

· Archbishop wants inquiry into Beit Hanoun attack
· 18 family members killed in ‘reckless’ artillery salvo

Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem|The Guardian,Tuesday September 16 2008

Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel laureate, said yesterday there was a “possibility” Israel had committed a war crime when 18 Palestinians from a single family were killed by Israeli artillery shells in Gaza two years ago.

Tutu said the Israeli attack, which hit the Athamna family house, showed “a disproportionate and reckless disregard for Palestinian civilian life”.

The archbishop presented his comments in a final report to the UN Human Rights Council, which had sent him to Gaza to investigate the killings in Beit Hanoun in November 2006. For 18 months Israel did not grant the archbishop or his team a visa. They entered Gaza in May this year on a rare crossing from Egypt.

On the three-day visit, Tutu and his team visited the house, interviewed the survivors and met others in Gaza, including the senior Hamas figure and former prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh. At the time, Tutu said he wanted to travel to Israel to hear the Israeli account of events, but he was not permitted.

“In the absence of a well-founded explanation from the Israeli military – which is in sole possession of the relevant facts – the mission must conclude that there is a possibility that the shelling of Beit Hanoun constituted a war crime,” Tutu said in his report to the 47-member council.

Tutu also said that rockets fired by Palestinian militants into southern Israel should stop and should be investigated. “Those firing rockets on Israeli civilians are no less accountable than the Israeli military for their actions,” he said.

For the past three months a ceasefire between Israel and the militant groups in Gaza has been in place. It has significantly reduced the number of incidents and the death toll from the conflict there. Israel maintains a tough economic blockade on the territory, restricting imports and banning nearly all exports.

“It is not too late for an independent, impartial and transparent investigation of the shelling to be held,” Tutu said.

He said those responsible for firing the shells should be held accountable, whether the cause of the incident was a mistake or wilful.

After the incident, Israel’s military said the shelling into Beit Hanoun that day was a mistake and was the result of a “rare and severe failure in the artillery fire-control system” which created “incorrect range-findings”. It said the shells had been aimed 450 metres away from the edge of town. No legal action was taken against any officer. However, it is unclear why the artillery was fired so close to a residential area that morning and why shells continued to be fired after the first one hit the Athamna house.

Tutu also said he recommended that Israel pay adequate compensation to the victims “without delay”. His report said “reparation” should also be made to the town of Beit Hanoun itself, and suggested a memorial to the victims would also help the survivors. He suggested a physiotheraphy clinic as one possibility.

The survivors in the family remain bitter and most of the large extended family no longer live in the building. Since the shelling they have received no financial help, apart from a monthly stipend from the Palestinian Authority of £50 for each of the 18 dead.

Aharon Leshno-Yaar, Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, where the Human Rights Council was meeting, rejected Tutu’s report as “another regrettable product of the Human Rights Council”.

“It is regrettable that this mission took place at all,” he added.

Leshno-Yaar said the report gave de facto legitimacy to Hamas, the Islamist movement that won elections in 2006 and then seized full control of Gaza last year. “This does not serve the interests of Israel or the Palestinians or the cause of peace,” he said.

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Quagmire, Phase 2: The Invasion of Pakistan

September 15, 2008
Truthdig.com, Posted on Sep 11, 2008

By William Pfaff

The United States has just invaded Cambodia. The name of Cambodia this time is Pakistan, but otherwise it’s the same story as in Indochina in 1970.

An American army, deeply frustrated by its inability to defeat an anti-American insurgent movement despite years of struggle, decides that the key to victory lies in a neighboring country. In 1970, the problem was the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. Today it is Taliban and al-Qaida bases inside Pakistan, which the United States has been attacking from the air for some time, with controversial “collateral damage.”

George W. Bush has now authorized independent ground assaults on Taliban and al-Qaida targets in Pakistan’s Tribal Territories, without consultation with Pakistan authorities. These already have begun.

This follows a period of tension, with some armed clashes, between American and Pakistani military units, the latter defending “Pakistan’s national sovereignty.” Pakistan public opinion seems largely against “America’s war” being fought inside Pakistan.

Washington’s decision was made known just in time for the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that opened the first phase of the “war on terror,” after which “nothing could ever be the same.” We no doubt have now begun phase two.

The eventual outcome of the American intervention in Cambodia in 1970 was Communist overthrow of the American-sponsored military government in that country, followed by genocide. The future consequences in (nuclear-armed) Pakistan await.

There is every reason to think they may include civil protest and disorder in the country, political crisis, a major rise in the strength of Pakistan’s own Islamic fundamentalist movement and, conceivably, a small war between the United States and the Pakistan army, which is the central institution in the country, has a mind of its own and is not a negligible military force.

In Afghanistan, American and NATO forces have been complaining for many months that victory over the Taliban was impossible so long as there were secure Taliban bases in Pakistan’s largely inaccessible Tribal Territories.

Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, was told by his American allies to clean the Taliban out of the Territories or the U.S. Army and NATO would do it for him. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama made the same threat. John McCain concurred. Musharraf had been looking for a negotiated arrangement with the tribesmen.

Pakistan’s military intelligence services created the Taliban while they were collaborating with the CIA to form the mujahadeen that drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Many in the service still support the Taliban as a useful instrument against India, and to keep Afghanistan out of the hands of more dangerous enemies.

Musharraf was forced out of office. The U.S. brought in exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, expected to be cooperative. She was assassinated, presumably by Islamic extremists. Her widower has been elected to take her place and declares himself an enemy of terrorism. However, the United States has already taken the matter into its own hands.

In the Vietnamese case, the American military command held that it could win the war by invading Cambodia to cut the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail, along which supplies and arms for the Viet Cong Communist insurrection were being transported. The argument made was that cutting this route would starve the Viet Cong of supplies.

Initially, the unhappy Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, desperately trying to keep his country out of the Vietnam War, was persuaded to turn a blind eye to U.S. bombing of the trail. A military coup followed in 1970, installing an American puppet general. B-52 saturation bombing ensued, without the desired military effect, but killing many Cambodians.

The joint U.S. and South Vietnamese “incursion” to cut the trail came in April 1970; it simply pushed the supply operations deeper into Cambodia. Richard Nixon said he acted to prove that the United States was not “a second-rate power.” “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation acts like a pitiful helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

The native Cambodian Khmer Rouge subsequently defeated the American-backed military regime in Phnom Penh. Genocide followed, the “killing fields,” on which the United States turned its back, condemning the triumphant Vietnamese Communist government when it later invaded Cambodia to stop the killing.

Visit William Pfaff’s Web site at www.williampfaff.com.

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Bush secret order to send special forces into Pakistan

September 12, 2008

· White House seeks British backing

· Fear of escalating regional conflict

An observation overlooks the mountains on the Pakistan border

An observation post sits in the mountains over looking Speray on one side, and the Pakistan border on the other. Photograph: John D McHugh

A secret order issued by George Bush giving US special forces carte blanche to mount counter-terrorist operations inside Pakistani territory raised fears last night that escalating conflict was spreading from Afghanistan to Pakistan and could ignite a region-wide war.

The unprecedented executive order, signed by Bush in July after an intense internal administration debate, comes amid western concern that the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and its al-Qaida backers based in “safe havens” in western Pakistan’s tribal belt is being lost.

Following Bush’s decision, US navy Seals commandos, backed by attack helicopters, launched a ground raid into Pakistan last week which the US claimed killed about two dozen insurgents. Pakistani officials condemned the raid as illegal and said most of the dead were civilians. US and Nato commanders are anxious to halt infiltration across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border of insurgents and weapons blamed for casualties among coalition troops. The killing of a US soldier in eastern Afghanistan yesterday brought American losses in 2008 to 112, the deadliest year since the 2001 intervention. The move is regarded as unprecedented in terms of sending troops into a friendly, allied country.

But another American objective is the capture of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader held responsible for organising the 9/11 attacks. He and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are thought to be hiding in the tribal areas of north and south Waziristan.

Bush’s decision to extend the war into Pakistan, and his apparent hope of British backing, formed the background to a video conference call with Gordon Brown yesterday. “What’s happening on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan is something where we need to develop a new strategy,” Brown said before talking to Bush.

Brown said he would discuss the border issue with Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, who visits Britain next week.

Bush’s unusual move in personally calling the prime minister for an Afghan strategy discussion has led to speculation that the US president was trying to line up British support for the new policy, including the possible involvement of British special forces in future cross-border incursions.

Bush’s executive order is certain to cause strains with some Nato allies fearful that a spreading conflict could bring down Pakistan’s weak civilian government and spark a wider war. Last night there were indications of open disagreement.

James Appathurai, a Nato spokesman, said the alliance did not support cross-border attacks or deeper incursions in to Pakistani territory.

“The Nato policy, that is our mandate, ends at the border. There are no ground or air incursions by Nato forces into Pakistani territory,” he said.

Nato has 53,000 troops in Afghanistan, some of which are American. But the US maintains a separate combat force dedicated to battling al-Qaida and counter-terrorism in general. Nato defence ministers are due to discuss Afghanistan in London next week.

Last week’s raid, and a subsequent attack on Monday by a Predator drone firing Hellfire missiles, provoked protests across the board in Pakistan, with only Zardari among leading politicians refusing to publicly condemn it.

Pakistan’s armed forces chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said the army would defend the country’s sovereignty “at all costs”. He went on: “No external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan.”

He denied there was any agreement or understanding to the contrary. His comments were widely interpreted as a warning to Zardari not to submit to the American importunity. But his tough words also raised the prospect of clashes between US and Pakistani forces if American military incursions continue or escalate.

Until now, Washington has regarded Pakistan as a staunch ally in the “war on terror” that was launched in 2001. But the alliance has been weakened by last month’s forced resignation of the army strongman, former general Pervez Musharraf, and his replacement by Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower.

Polls suggest most Pakistanis favour ending all counter-terrorism cooperation with Washington, which is blamed for a rising civilian casualty toll in Afghanistan and in the tribal areas.

Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister, joined the chorus of condemnation yesterday. He reportedly told state media Kayani’s warning that unilateral US actions were undermining the fight against Islamist extremism represented the government’s position.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs, and Robert Gates, defence secretary, told Congress this week that victory in Afghanistan was by no means certain and the US needed to take the fight to the enemy inside Pakistan.

Mullen called for a “more comprehensive strategy” embracing both sides of the border. “Until we work more closely with the Pakistani government to eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming,” he said.

US and Pakistani forces have clashed by accident in the past during operations to root out militants, although sections of the Pakistani military and intelligence services are said to harbour deep resentment about perceived American interference.

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9/11 and the American Inquisition

September 11, 2008
Prof.  Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, September 11, 2008
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Today’s “Global War on Terrorism” is a modern form of inquisition. It has all the essential ingredients of the French and Spanish inquisitions.

Going after ” Islamic terrorists”, carrying out a Worldwide preemptive war to ” protect the Homeland” are used to justify a military agenda.

“The Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) is presented as a “Clash of Civilizations”, a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives.

The GWOT is the ideological backbone of the American Empire. It defines US military doctrine, including the preemptive use of nuclear weapons against the “state sponsors” of terrorism. 

The preemptive “defensive war” doctrine and the “war on terrorism” against Al Qaeda constitute essential building blocks of America’s National Security Strategy as formulated in early 2002. The objective is to present “preemptive military action” –meaning war as an act of “self-defense” against two categories of enemies, “rogue States” and “Islamic terrorists”, both of which are said to possess weapons of mass destruction.

The logic of the  “outside enemy” and the evildoer, responsible for civilian deaths, prevails over common sense. In the inner consciousness of Americans, the attacks of September 11, 2001 justify acts of war and conquest:

“As was demonstrated by the losses on September 11, 2001, mass civilian casualties is the specific objective of terrorists and these losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists acquired and used weapons of mass destruction.” (National Security Strategy, White House, Washington, 2002)

America’s Inquisition

The legitimacy of the inquisition is not questioned. The “Global War on Terrorism” justifies a mammoth defense budget at the expense of health and education. It requires “going after” the terrorists, using advanced weapons systems. It upholds a preemptive religious-like crusade against evil, which serves to obscure the real objectives of military action.

The lies underlying 9/11 are known and documented. The American people’s acceptance of this crusade against evil is not based on any rational understanding or analysis of events.

America’s inquisition is used to extend America’s sphere of influence and justify military intervention, as part of an international campaign against “Islamic terrorists”. Its ultimate objective, which is never mentioned in press reports,  is territorial conquest and control over strategic resources.

The GWOT dogma is enunciated and formulated by Washington’s neoconservative think tanks. It is carried out by the military-intelligence establishment. It is embodied in presidential speeches and press conferences:

“We’ve been warned there are evil people in this world. We’ve been warned so vividly. … And we’ll be alert. Your government is alert. The governors and mayors are alert that evil folks still lurk out there. As I said yesterday, people have declared war on America and they have made a terrible mistake. … My administration has a job to do and we’re going to do it. We will rid the world of the evil-doers,” (George W. Bush, CNN, September 16, 2001)

The objective of the “Global War on Terrorism” launched in September 2001 is to galvanize public support for a Worldwide campaign against heresy. In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a “just cause” for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds.

The Demonization of Muslims and the Battle for Oil

The US led war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region consists in gaining control over extensive reserves of oil and natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants also seek to gain control over oil and gas pipeline routes out of the region. (See table and maps below).

Muslim countries possess 66 percent of total oil reserves. (Michel Chossudovsky, The “Demonization” of Muslims and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, Jannuary 4, 2007). In contrast, the United States of America has barely 2 percent of total oil reserves. Iraq has five times more oil than the United States.

Demonization is applied to an enemy, which possesses more than 60 percent of the world’s oil reserves. “Axis of evil”, “rogue States”, “failed nations”, “Islamic terrorists”: demonization and vilification are the ideological pillars of America’s Inquisition. They serve as a casus belli for waging the battle for oil.

The Battle for Oil requires the demonization of those who possess the oil. The enemy is characterized as evil, with a view to justifying military action including the mass killing of civilians. (Ibid)

Historical Origins of the Inquisition

The objective is to sustain the illusion that “America is under attack” by Al Qaeda. Under the American inquisition, Washington has a self-proclaimed holy mandate to extirpate Islamic fundamentalism and “spread democracy” throughout the world.

“Going after Bin Laden” is part of a consensus. Fear and insecurity prevail over common sense. Despite the evidence, the White House, the State Department, the two Party system, cannot, in the minds of Americans, be held responsible for a criminal act resulting in the deaths of American civilians.

What we are dealing with is an outright and blind acceptance of the structures of power and political authority.

In this regard, the American Inquisition as an ideological construct, is, in many regards, similar to the inquisitorial social order prevailing in France and Spain during the Middle Ages. The inquisition, which started in France in the 12th century, was used as a justification for conquest and military intervention.

Continued . . .

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Olmert Indicted As Deputy Is Accused of War Crimes

September 11, 2008

JERUSALEM – The Israeli Attorney General has been urged to launch a criminal investigation into whether Shaul Mofaz, a leading prime ministerial candidate, ordered “war crimes” to be committed when he was the military’s chief of staff.

[On August 1 the Independent reported claims made in a book by two Israeli journalists that Shaul Mofaz in 2001 called for a death toll of 70 Palestinians a day. (Getty Images)]

On August 1 the Independent reported claims made in a book by two Israeli journalists that Shaul Mofaz in 2001 called for a death toll of 70 Palestinians a day. (Getty Images)

The Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, is the front-runner in the contest for the leadership of Kadima. Mr Mofaz, the Deputy Prime Minister, is his main rival.

David Kretzmer, emeritus professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that accounts of the briefing by Mr Mofaz give rise “to a grave suspicion” that he “committed serious offences, some of which at least, fall into the category of war crimes”.

The letter to the Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, refers to a book by two Israeli journalists, Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, which says that Mr Mofaz, after ensuring he was not being officially recorded, called for a Palestinian death toll of 70 per day.

Professor Kretzmer tells Mr Mazuz that one lesson of the corruption inquiry into Mr Olmert is that it is best to investigate candidates for high office before they reach it. “Otherwise the public is liable to be exposed once more to the disgrace of having police officers arrive at the Prime Minister’s official residence in order to interrogate him.”

Police have urged Mr Mazuz to indict Mr Olmert on two counts – that he funded personal trips abroad for himself and his family with money secured by the multiple billing of public organisations, and another arising out of claims by a US businessman, Morris Talansky, that he illegally used political donations for personal expenditure. It is up to Mr Mazuz to decide if Mr Olmert should be indicted.

The Shelah/Drucker book, Boomerang: The Failure Of Leadership In The Second Intifada, says that while Mr Mofaz’s alleged instruction caused disquiet among some senior officers, a Hebron district commander said that the subsequent fatal shooting of a Palestinian policeman was in accordance with the briefing.

Professor Kretzmer, who also holds a senior academic post at the University of Ulster, says that an order to kill people “by quota” is “not consistent with the norms of humanitarian law”, and that the test of proportionality is especially relevant in cases of military occupation, in which even the actions of armed groups do not “relieve the Army of its obligations to residents of the territory”.

The letter cites reports in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2001 and 2002 which, he says, raise suspicions that Mr Mofaz ordered officers to shoot at every armed Palestinian regardless of the threat posed to Israeli forces.

It points out that at the start of hostilities in 2000, Palestinian police in particular were armed by agreement with the Israeli government, that the military had insisted the conflict was with armed groups and not against the Palestinian Authority or people, and that the Geneva Conventions prohibited killing people not taking part in hostilities.

Noting that countries are obliged to investigate grave breaches of the conventions, he warns that if the Israeli authorities do not do so, “there is a fear that it may be carried out by the authorities of another country”.

Professor Kretzmer has been told his letter has been passed to “relevant persons” in the justice ministry who will read it. A ministry spokesman said this did not mean that it accepted there was a case against Mr Mofaz, or that an investigation would be launched, and it was normal that “any complaint or letter” was studied before a reply was drafted. There was no response from Mr Mofaz’s office.

In 2002, while Mr Mofaz was visiting Britain, the British lawyer Imran Khan, representing a group of Palestinians, presented the Director of Public Prosecutions with claims of other war crimes by Mr Mofaz, including targeted assassinations and the demolition of Palestinian homes. While Mr Khan claimed the DPP had passed the file to Scotland Yard’s “crimes against humanity” section, no action was taken before Mr Mofaz departed.

© 2008 The Independent

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Dennis Kucinich: Impeach President Bush now

September 11, 2008

Johanna Neuman | Los Angeles Times, Sept 10, 2008

One day before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Rep. Dennis Kucinich is presenting a petition to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with 50,000 signatures urging the impeachment of President Bush — adding to the 100,000 he has already filed.

Calling the Bush administration’s military response to 9/11 “errant retributive justice,” the Ohio Democrat called for a Commission on Truth and Reconciliation to “compel testimony and gather official documents” on why the Bush administration went to war in Iraq. In advance of a news conference today with grass-roots organizations lobbying Congress on the issue, Kucinich said:

Impeachment has been the first step in our efforts toward truth. The American people were lied to. We went to war based on lies. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. …

In the face of a destructive war against Iraq, preparations for war against Iran, the initiation of a cold war with Russia, the inevitable destruction of our domestic economy from the extraordinary cost of a great military buildup, and the gutting of civil liberties, the call for impeachment has been the only remedy. Millions of Americans recognize this.

Kucinich’s pitch comes one day before the nation mourns the death of 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11, and one day after Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington endorsed impeachment. McDermott visited Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before the war, earning him the nickname “Baghdad Jim.” Here’s what he said:

For the last two years I’ve struggled with the issue of whether the House should impeach a sitting president. Next to declaring war, impeachment is the gravest matter the House of Representatives must consider. I fully understand the gut-wrenching consequences such a national debate could precipitate. Yet there is one fact we cannot over look or escape: America cannot regain its moral leadership in the world if America cannot hold its leaders accountable for their actions at home.

With Bush leaving office in about four months, and a presidential election campaign in full swing, no one in Washington seriously expects the impeachment drive to succeed. Pelosi has repeatedly taken the issue off the table, saying voters expect Congress to work on economic issues, not spend its remaining months trying to push Bush from office early.

But David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, argued in a press release that impeachment is crucial to possible criminal trials against the president and Vice President Dick Cheney once they leave office.

When Cheney and Bush finally face trial in a criminal court, their first line of defense is likely to be, “We served the American people, whose representatives chose not to impeach us.” If on the other hand they are impeached even after having left office, the likelihood of prosecution and of successful prosecution will increase dramatically.

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Palin’s Wrongheaded View of God’s Plans

September 9, 2008

by Jacob G. Hornberger| Hornberger’s Blog, Sept 8, 2008

In an address to an Assembly of God Church in Alaska, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin suggested that church members pray “that our national leaders are sending [soldiers to Iraq] on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.”

It would be interesting to hear Palin explain her understanding of how God’s plans can possibly involve violations of His sacred commandments.

The commandment is simple: Thou shalt not murder. God did not provide exceptions to that prohibition, not even for agents of the CIA and the U.S. military.

Lest we forget: Neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States or threatened to do so. No matter how many contortions that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have engaged in (e.g., WMDs, the war on terrorism, 9/11, spreading democracy, UN resolutions, and radical Islam), the simple truth remains: The U.S. government attacked Iraq, not the other way around.

Thus, we should never forget: In the Iraq War, the United States is the aggressor nation and Iraq is the defending nation. That means that no agent of the U.S. government had any moral right to kill even one single Iraqi, much less the million or so that have been killed.

Some people calculate the wrongful Iraqi deaths only in terms of civilian deaths. They have it wrong. Since the U.S. government had no right to invade Iraq, U.S. agents, including those in the CIA and the military, had no moral right to kill any Iraqi, including Iraqis who were defending against the wrongful invasion and occupation of their country.

The standard neo-con religious position is that whatever the U.S. government does overseas against foreigners is right and moral as a matter of law because the government is operating as an agent of God and simply fulfilling His plans.

The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children killed by the pre-invasion sanctions? A million Iraqis killed in the invasion? Well, you see, those killings can’t be murder because it was the U.S. government that did the sanctioning and invading. It would only be murder if, say, the Russian government committed those acts. Since it’s the U.S. government that killed all those people, it’s all good and moral because it must be all part of God’s plan.

Moreover, keep in mind that in the neo-con mindset the U.S. government and the American people are one and the same. Since everyone knows that the American people are kind, caring, and charitable, that means that everything the U.S. government does, including kidnapping, renditioning, torturing, and sexually abusing people, is all good and moral. It’s all part of God’s plan, you know.

This attitude, of course, is what distinguishes Christian libertarians from Christian neo-cons. Christian libertarians adhere strictly to God’s commandments, refusing to draw an exception for agents of the U.S. government. Unlike them, we hold that murder is murder, even when committed by agents of the U.S. government. Since the U.S. government had no right to invade Iraq, it had no right to kill any Iraqis, much less a million of them. The same principle holds true with respect to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children killed by the pre-invasion sanctions. The same holds true for the murders, torture, and sex abuse committed by U.S. agents against Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.

Christian libertarians, unlike Christian neo-cons, do not conflate the American citizenry with the U.S. government. As such, we are capable of recognizing immorality and wrongdoing committed by the U.S. government and we are unafraid to take a stand against it. Unlike the neo-cons, we don’t try to excuse away evil and immorality by claiming that they must be part of God’s plan.

Indeed, unlike the Christian neo-cons we Christian libertarians don’t view the government as an agent of God but instead as simply a bunch of ordinary people who use government force to satisfy their self-interests, including the ever-growing lust for more power and more money.

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AFGHANISTAN: US-NATO Airstrikes Bring Higher Civilian Toll

September 9, 2008

Ali Gharib | Inter-Press Service, Sep 8, 2008


WASHINGTON, – Ramped-up U.S. and NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan are causing an increased civilian death toll, raising concerns about the fallout from civilian deaths on the war effort against the Taliban insurgency, according to a major new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released here Monday.

The 43-page report, “Troops in Contact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan”, warned that the cost in civilian casualties caused by the increase in bombings goes well beyond the loss of human life and could put the nearly seven-year U.S.-NATO war effort at risk.

“The harm caused by airstrikes is not limited to the immediate civilian casualties,” said the report, which also cited the destruction of homes and property and the displacement of their civilian occupants caused by the bombing.

“Civilian deaths from airstrikes act as a recruiting tool for the Taliban and risk fatally undermining the international effort to provide basic security to the people of Afghanistan,” said Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director of HRW.

Citing HRW statistics, an editorial in Saturday’s New York Times went further, asserting that civilian deaths caused by the stepped up bombing played into the hands of the Taliban and other insurgents: “America is fast losing the battle for hearts and minds, and unless the Pentagon comes up with a better strategy, the United States and its allies may well lose the war.”

Fuelling a growing controversy here, both the Times and the report said that the increase in air attacks — and the “collateral damage” they caused — was due in part to the relative lack of NATO and U.S. troops on the ground whose fire tends to be considerably more discriminating in their impact than aerial attacks.

Both the Pentagon and leading Democrats have been arguing for months for deploying at least 10,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan but have been unable to overcome resistance by military commanders in Iraq who, backed by President George W. Bush, are reluctant to draw down troop levels there below the current 144,000. U.S. ground forces are so stretched globally that deploying additional forces to Afghanistan must await further withdrawals from Iraq.

The increased level of bombing has come as a result of a stepped-up insurgency led by anti-government Taliban fighters and associated groups. Fighting in Afghanistan has intensified dramatically over the past year. At least 540 civilians have been killed in the conflict so far this year, a sharp increase over last year’s total. Casualties among the more than 60,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan have also risen sharply this year.

U.S. and NATO forces, according to the report, dropped 362 tonnes of munitions in Afghanistan during the first seven months of this year, including a flurry of bombings in June and July that, by itself, nearly equaled the total amount of bombs, by weight, dropped by the coalition forces on suspected enemy positions in all of 2006.

“[…] While attacks by the Taliban and other insurgent groups continue to account for the majority of civilian casualties,” said the report, “civilian deaths from U.S. and NATO airstrikes nearly tripled from 2006 to 2007 (from 116 to 321).”

That increase prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to demand changes in targeting tactics, including using smaller munitions, delaying attacks where civilians might be harmed, and turning over house-to-house searches to the Afghan National Army.

Those changes were adopted by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) with the result that, despite increased bombing during the first seven months of this year, fewer civilians (119) were killed compared to the same period in 2007.

But that figure does not include a controversial air strike Aug 22 on the village of Azizabad in western Afghanistan which, according to the Afghan government and a U.N. investigating team, killed 90 people, the vast majority of whom were women and children. The U.S. military, which carried out the attack, has insisted that 42 people were killed, 35 of them insurgents.

In some incidents, according to the report, U.S.-NATO air strikes may have violated the laws of war, particularly adherence to the principles of proportionality and the requirement that parties take all feasible precautions to prevent non-combatant casualties.

The report suggested that blame for civilian deaths can be focused fairly narrowly. While most foreign troops in Afghanistan operate under the banner of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a disproportionate number of civilian casualties resulted from air strikes called in by the nearly 20,000 U.S. troops who operate exclusively under U.S. command as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Their rules of engagement, including when they can call for air support, are less strict than NATO’s.

The most problematic engagements have come when insurgents take U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) by surprise, and the SOF call in air support. The military term, “troops in contact” (TIC), gave the HRW report its name.

In TIC situations, U.S. forces have often engaged insurgents who then retreat to nearby villages, taking up positions in homes and preventing their civilian residents from leaving.

Faced with a standoff, U.S. troops have called in rapid-response air support to bomb the homes from which they were taking hostile fire. That appears to have been what took place in Azizabad.

While condemning of Taliban “shielding” — using civilian human shields or putting civilians at unnecessary risk so that when hurt, the story can be used as propaganda — the report noted that this does not excuse U.S. forces from the laws of war and considerations of civilian populations.

The report outlined several incidents where questionable rapid-response bombings caused civilian deaths. In one of them, two anti-government fighters were seen entering a compound that was then hit with an airstrike that caused nine casualties.

The U.S. claimed to have killed the two insurgents, but a local Afghan authority denied the claim, and journalists at the scene found no evidence supporting it. Moreover, U.S. troops and local villagers said that U.S. forces had visited the home the day before and should have known that civilians were present.

“The available information about the attack — in particular evidence suggesting that U.S. forces knew the house was inhabited by civilians and that only two lightly armed fighters may have been present — raises serious concerns that the airstrikes violated the international humanitarian law prohibition against disproportionate attacks,” said the report.

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Revelations of an Abu Ghraib Interrogator

September 6, 2008

By Aaron Glantz | Inter-Press Service News

SAN FRANCISCO, Sep 4 – Few people have thought as much about the morality of the U.S. occupation of Iraq than Joshua Casteel, a former U.S. Army interrogator who served at Abu Ghraib prison in the wake of the detainee abuse scandal there.

Once a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and raised in an evangelical Christian home, Casteel became a conscientious objector while he was stationed at the prison.

It wasn’t the kind of abuse shown in the famous graphic images that made him feel morally compelled to leave the military — Casteel says that kind of behaviour had ceased by the time he showed up in June 2004 — but the experience of gleaning information speaking to the detainees in their own language.

Those experiences, and the spiritual awakening Casteel experienced inside the walls of the prison, are contained in “Letters from Abu Ghraib”, a compendium of e-mail messages he sent home from the prison, which was published last month by Iowa’s Essay Press.

The e-mails, compiled in a lean 118-page volume, are less concerned with the details of prison operations than their moral implications. By what right, the former interrogator asks, does one derive the authority to question prisoners as part of a military occupation?

It’s an important question to ask and timely too given the steady growth in the number of Iraqi prisoners in U.S. custody over the course of its occupation of Iraq. Pentagon statistics show the U.S. military now holds over 24,000 “security detainees” in Iraq — more than double the number incarcerated by Coalition at the time of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal four and a half years ago.

U.S. forces are holding nearly all of these persons indefinitely, without an arrest warrant, without charge, and with no right to any type of open legal proceedings. It’s perhaps a mark of the failure of the United States’ political and religious establishments that it falls to a U.S. Army Specialist like Joshua Casteel to wrestle with the moral difficulties of these massive imprisonments. “Letters from Abu Ghraib” shows how the ethical failures of their leaders affect soldiers on the ground.

When he first arrives at Abu Ghraib’s interrogation centre, Casteel tells his family he really loves his work. “I see my job much more as a Father Confessor than an interrogator,” he writes, “As a Confessor you cannot coerce a person to reveal that which they wish to hide. A Confessor’s aim is to help the one confessing to be sincere, to arrive at the kind of contrition that actually desires self-disclosure — and to that end, empathy and understanding go a long way.”

But Casteel, who prays daily and considers “keeping the liturgy with others and taking the Eucharist — Communion” to be “the most important part of the week,” begins to feel uncomfortable after just a few weeks on the ground.

“The weight of the job sometimes is more painfully present to me than at other times,” he writes a month into the deployment. He is uncomfortable “exploiting” prisoners for their “intelligence” value rather then interacting with them as fully equal human beings.

Making matters worse is that many of the detainees he interrogated turned out to be completely innocent.

“I was constantly being asked, ‘Why am I being held here? I want answers!'” Casteel told IPS. “But that was my job. We were supposed to be finding answers to our questions, but we kept being put into situations that were incredibly puzzling because talking to people was like trying to get blood from a turnip. They were the ones that had a greater justification for the need to have answers.”

Faced with such a dilemma, Casteel turns to an army chaplain for help. “We talked, I vexed and I summoned whatever strength we could conclude upon to go back to my interrogation…He prayed me back into combat,” Casteel writes. “I was no longer afraid to demand authority, to play upon certain weaknesses of my detainee, and to question in a most heated fashion — because ultimately, I thought, it would lead me to a more accurate assessment of the veracity of his statements.’

“I transgressed no lines of ‘proper conduct,’ but I certainly, and without hesitation, used a man’s anxieties, weaknesses and fears, and my particular place of power and dominance to assess him according to his word…And I even left with what I thought was a clearer picture of the man I was assessing — perhaps to his benefit. So, why did I feel like a complete failure?”

The answer to his question comes in October 2004, five months into his tour at Abu Ghraib.

“I had an interrogation with a 22-year-old Saudi Arabian who was very straightforward that he had come to Iraq to conduct jihad,” Casteel said. “We started having a conversation about religion and ethics and he told me that I was a very strange man who was a Christian but didn’t follow the teachings of Jesus to love my enemy and pray for the persecuted…I told him that I thought he was right and that there was a massive contradiction involved with me doing my job and being a Christian.”

“I wanted to have a conversation with him about ethics and the cycle of vengeance and how idiotic it was that his people said it was okay for him to come and kill me and my people told me it was okay to kill him,” he said in an interview. “Why is it that we can’t find a different path together?”

Since that type of conversation was not possible as a U.S. Army interrogator, Joshua Casteel filed an application for discharge as a conscientious objector. Much to his surprise, his command endorsed it, and offered to speed his transition out of the Army. He now hopes to serve as a bridge between conservative Christians and the antiwar left.

He hopes “Letters from Abu Ghraib” will “give conservative Christians an unfiltered picture of one Christian’s wrestling with violence and also help the secular world get a backstage pass to the way a conservative Christian operates.”

Since his discharge, Casteel converted to Catholicism, attracted by the Church’s tradition of “social teaching,” and has worked with other like-minded Catholics to push the Church play a more active role in bringing the war to an end.

He’s excited his book has been assigned to students at a number of Catholic high schools in the Midwest and the former interrogator has been invited to speak at religious schools from New Jersey to Colorado.

“Catholics are 30 percent of the military. They’re equally 30 percent of Congress,” he said. “The Vatican had a strong rebuke of the Iraq war but the Iraq war could not have happened were it not for Catholics. Christ has turned up in the people of Iraqi bodies and it’s Iraq that’s getting crucified and it’s largely Christian America that’s allowed to be prosperous in the midst of it.”

*IPS correspondent Aaron Glantz is author of the upcoming book “The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans”.

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The Bush Administration Is an Ongoing Criminal Conspiracy Under International Law and U.S. Domestic Law

September 4, 2008

by Prof. Francis A. Boyle
Global Research, September 2, 2008

Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference:

Planning for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals
Massachusetts Law School
September 13-14, 2008

Andover, Massachusetts

Since the impeachable installation of George W. Bush as President in January of 2001 by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Gang of Five, the peoples of the world have witnessed a government in the United States that has demonstrated little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, human rights, and the United States Constitution.

What the world has watched instead is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic legal orders by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian and Straussian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs. Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the Bush administration’s foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare (1956), all of which apply to President Bush himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.

Depending upon the substantive issues involved, those international crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offenses of crimes against peace: For example, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and perhaps their longstanding threatened wars of aggression against Iran and now Pakistan.  Their criminal responsibility also concerns Nuremberg crimes against humanity and war crimes as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and of the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare:  For example, torture at Guantanamo, Bhagram, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere; enforced disappearances, assassinations, murders, kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, “shock and awe,” depleted uranium, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, Fallujah, and the Gitmo kangaroo courts.

Furthermore, various members of the Bush administration have committed numerous inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offences that under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as paragraph 500 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 are international crimes in their own right:  planning and preparation—which they are currently doing today against Iran and Pakistan—solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting.

Finally, according to basic principles of international criminal law set forth in paragraph 501 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, all high level civilian officials and military officers in the U.S. government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their control (such as the C.I.A. or private contractors), committed or were about to commit international crimes and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of international crimes.

At the very top of America’s criminal chain-of-command are President Bush and Vice-President Cheney;  former U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld; Rumsfeld’s Deputy Paul Wolfowitz; Secretary of State Rice; former Director of National Intelligence Negroponte; National Security Advisor Hadley; his Deputy Elliot Abrams; former U.S. Attorneys General Ashcroft and Gonzales, criminally responsible for the torture campaign launched by the Bush Jr. administration; and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staffs along with the appropriate Regional Commanders-in-Chief, especially for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

These U.S. government officials and their immediate subordinates are responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10.  Today in international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law and U.S. domestic law because of its formulation and undertaking of serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany.

Of course the terrible irony of today’s situation is that six decades ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government participated in the prosecution, punishment and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous international crimes that the members of the Bush administration currently inflict upon people all over the world. To be sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any human being for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes, whether they be Bush Jr., Tony Blair, or Saddam Hussein.

As a consequence, American citizens possess the basic right under international law and United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by Bush administration officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism.  Today’s civil resisters are the sheriffs!  The Bush administration officials are the outlaws!

We American citizens must reaffirm our commitment to the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles by holding our government officials fully accountable under international law and U.S. domestic law for the commission of such grievous international and domestic crimes.  We must not permit any aspect of our foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged “war criminals” according to the U.S. government’s own official definitions of that term as set forth in the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Four Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations.  The American people must insist upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment, conviction, and long-term incarceration of all U.S. government officials guilty of such heinous international and domestic crimes.  If not so restrained, the Bush administration could very well precipitate a Third World War.

In this regard, during the course of an October 17, 2007 press conference, President Bush Jr. terrorized the entire world with the threat of World War III if he could not work his illegal will upon Iran.  It is my opinion that the Bush administration is fully prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons against Muslim and Arab states and peoples in order to break the taboo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  After the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001 the United States of America has vilified and demonized Muslims and Arabs almost to the same extent that America inflicted upon the Japanese and Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor.  As the Nazis had previously demonstrated with respect to the Jews, a government must first dehumanize and scapegoat a race of people before its citizens will tolerate if not approve their elimination: witness Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In post -9/11 America we are directly confronted with the prospect of a nuclear war of extermination conducted by our White Racist Judeo-Christian Power Elite against Peoples of Color in the Muslim and Arab worlds in order to steal their oil and gas.  The Crusades all over again.  But this time nuclear Armageddon stares all of humankind right in the face!

We American lawyers must be inspired by the stunning example set by those heroic Pakistani lawyers who led the successful struggle against the brutal Bush-supported Musharraf military dictatorship in Pakistan.  We American lawyers must now lead the fight against the Bush dictatorship and empire! This is our Nuremberg Moment!

Thank you.


Francis A. Boyle is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Francis A. Boyle

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