Archive for the ‘War Criminals’ Category
Monday Mayhem: 133 Killed, 283 Wounded in Iraq
Coordinated bombing attacks resumed today. At least ten blasts were seen in the capital alone, and a pair of rare explosions occurred far south in Basra. Both Sunni and Shi’ites targeted in them. Overall, at least 133 people were killed and 283 more were wounded, but the figures are likely to rise. Some of the dead and wounded were Iranian pilgrims. Twelve policemen were killed and four were wounded during a raid in Anbar province. Security forces were trying to liberate policemen who had been kidnapped two days ago. It is unclear how many of the casualties were victims or security forces. Five of the kidnapping victims had been discovered dead yesterday. A political candidate was kidnapped in Rawa today. In better news, three abductees from Karbala were released. In Baghdad, a bomb at a Shabb marketplace left 14 dead and 24 wounded. A blast in Jisr Diyala killed two people and wounded 34. In Shoala, two people were killed and 16 more were wounded in an explosion at a market. A bomb in Ilam killed two people and wounded 15 more. Two people were killed and 11 more were wounded in Kamaliya. In Zaafaraniya, a blast wounded seven people. Five people were wounded in Kadhimiya when a bomb exploded in a garage near Aden Square. A blast in al-Shurta al-Rabeaa wounded 10 people. Three people were wounded in an explosion in Saba Bour. At least 26 more were killed in the attacks and another 29 were wounded. http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2013/05/20/monday-mayhem-116-killed-240-wounded-in-iraq/#.UZtzr5-ELjI.email
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Bush’s Legacy Ought to be on Trial
George W. Bush presided over an international network of torture chambers and, with the help of a compliant Congress and press, launched a war of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. However, instead of the bloody details of his time in office being recounted at a war crimes tribunal, the former president has been able to bank on his imperial privilege – and a network of rich corporate donors that he made richer while in office – to tell his version of history at a library in Texas being opened in his name. Kill a few, they call you a murderer. Kill tens of thousands, they give you $500 million for a granite vanity project and a glossy 30-page supplement in the local paper. http://original.antiwar.com/jodie-evans/2013/04/24/bushs-legacy-ought-to-be-on-trial/
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The High Crime of Torture
Confirmation by the Constitution Project nearly a decade late that the George W. Bush administration and the U.S. military and ‘intelligence’ services committed acts of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere appears a Rorschach test for the ‘sentiments’ of the American people. However, sentiments aside, formal indictments of culpable officials on war crimes charges and the start of impeachment proceedings against current President Barack Obama are the only relevant responses to the report. Torture is a crime under laws to which the U.S. is signatory. And with his war on Iraq George W. Bush and his administration murdered, or caused the premature deaths of, more than a million people and substantially destroyed a modern nation state. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/19/the-crime-of-torture/
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A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran
I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care. I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34353.htm#.UUm9_YC4QM0.email
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Iraq After Ten Years
by Paul Craig Roberts. It is a sick joke that the United States government brought freedom and democracy to Iraq. What the Washington war criminals brought was death and the destruction of a country. The U.S. population, for the most part, seems quite at ease with the gratuitous destruction of Iraq and all that it entails: children without parents, wives without husbands, birth defects from “depleted” uranium, unsafe water, a country without hope mired in sectarian violence. Washington’s puppet state governments in the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Japan seem equally pleased with the victory–over what? What threat did the victory defeat? There was no threat. Weapons of mass destruction was a propaganda hoax. Mushroom clouds over American cities was fantasy propaganda. How ignorant do populations have to be to fall for such totally transparent propaganda? Is there no intelligence anywhere in the Western world? http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/03/18/iraq-after-ten-years-paul-craig-roberts/
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The Neo-Conservative War Criminals in Our Midst
At the Nuremberg Trials of the defeated Germans after World War II, the U.S. government established the principle that naked aggression–the American way in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen–is a war crime. Therefore, there is a very strong precedent for the State Department to round up those neoconservatives who are fomenting more war crimes. But don’t expect it to happen. Today, war criminals run the State Department and the entire U.S. Government. They are elected to the presidency, the House, and the Senate, and appointed to the federal courts as judges. American soldiers, such as Bradley Manning, who behave as the State Department expects German soldiers to have behaved, are not honored, but are thrown into dungeons and tortured while a court marshall case is concocted against them. Hypocrisy is Washington’s hallmark, and all but the most delusional are now accustomed to their rulers speaking one way and behaving in the opposite. It is now part of the American character to regard ourselves as members of the “virtuous nation,” “the indispensable people,” while our rulers commit war crimes around the globe. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/08/01/the-neoconservative-war-criminals-in-our-midst-2/
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Blair, War, Olympic Deals, and a Glimpse of Another Britain
For this reason, Coe’s mention of “reconciliation” is profane, as if there were an equivalence between an invading superpower and its victims. His letter exemplifies the London Olympics’ razor-wired, PR-and-money-fueled totalitarian state within a state, which you enter, appropriately, through a Westfield mega shopping mall. How dare you complain about the missiles on the roof of your flats, hectored a magistrate to 86 residents of London’s East End. How dare any of you protest at the “ZIL car lanes,” reminiscent of Moscow in the Soviet era, for Olympic apparatchiks and the boys from Dow and Coke. With the media in charge of Olympics excitement, as it was for Shock and Awe in Iraq in 2003, now enter the man who played a starring role in making both spectacles possible. http://original.antiwar.com/pilger/2012/07/22/blair-war-olympic-deals-and-a-glimpse-of-another-britain/
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Tony Blair is a Pariah in His Own Land
He was arsenic in the party’s bloodstream for a reason so self-evident that it doesn’t much matter what Chilcot concludes. Everyone, or almost everyone, knows it all anyway: that he struck the deal with Bush long before he admits; that it was mendacious drivel to claim Jacques Chirac refused to countenance a second UN resolution “under any circumstances”; that the intelligence was cynically stripped of all caveats for political purposes; and that, in terms of foreign policy catastrophe, Iraq makes Suez seem a trifling diplomatic gaffe on a par with mis-seating the Panamanian ambassador at a banquet. Call it an atrocious strategic misjudgment, a dementedly misguided Neocon experiment, a war crime or whatever, it is perfectly well understood in these child-like terms: Mr Blair did a truly terrible thing, with unspeakably terrible consequences for the people of Iraq, the troops killed and maimed in prosecuting his folly. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-norman/matthew-norman-dont-forget-why-tony-blair-is-a-pariah-in-his-own-land-7953427.html
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Former Head Of Star Wars Program Says Cheney Main 9/11 Suspect
The former head of the Star Wars missile defense program under Presidents Ford and Carter has gone public to say that the official version of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory and his main suspect for the architect of the attack is Vice President Dick Cheney. http://shiftfrequency.com/laura-tyco-former-head-of-star-wars-program-says-cheney-main-911-suspect/
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The European Atrocity You Never Heard About
Between 1945 and 1950, Europe witnessed the largest episode of forced migration, and perhaps the single greatest movement of population, in human history. Between 12 million and 14 million German-speaking civilians—the overwhelming majority of whom were women, old people, and children under 16—were forcibly ejected from their places of birth in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and what are today the western districts of Poland. As The New York Times noted in December 1945, the number of people the Allies proposed to transfer in just a few months was about the same as the total number of all the immigrants admitted to the United States since the beginning of the 20th century. They were deposited among the ruins of Allied-occupied Germany to fend for themselves as best they could. The number who died as a result of starvation, disease, beatings, or outright execution is unknown, but conservative estimates suggest that at least 500,000 people lost their lives in the course of the operation. http://chronicle.com/article/The-European-Atrocity-You/132123/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
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Colin Powell: Another War Criminal Cashes In
One could be forgiven for thinking there’s anything honorable or honest about Colin Powell. For more than two decades now the Washington media has portrayed the former Secretary of State as something of a real life action hero, a reluctant warrior whose greatest fault – should they deign to mention any – was just being too darn loyal to a guy named George and his buddy Dick. What you might have missed is that Powell is a war criminal in his own right, one who in more than four decades of “public service” helped kill people from Vietnam to Panama to Iraq who never posed a threat to America. But don’t just take some anti-war activists’ word for it: Powell will proudly tell you as much, so long as he can make a buck from doing it in a book. http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9698-colin-powell-another-war-criminal-cashes-in
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Tony Blair Heckled During College Speech in Maine
A handful of protesters briefly interrupted a Maine college graduation speech by British Prime Minister Tony Blair calling for world unity. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MAINE_COMMENCEMENT_TONY_BLAIR?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-05-20-15-05-24
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War Tribunal Finds Bush, Cheney Guilty of War Crimes
Former US President George W Bush, his Vice-President Dick Cheney and six other members of his administration have been found guilty of war crimes by a tribunal in Malaysia. Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five of their legal advisers were tried in their absence and convicted on Saturday. Victims of torture told a panel of five judges in Kuala Lumpur of their suffering at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/13
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How America Went Rogue: What We Need to Know About the Government’s Shadow Wars
Covert operations are nothing new in American history, but it could be argued that during the past decade they have moved from being a relatively minor arrow in the national security quiver to being the cutting edge of American power. Drone strikes, electronic surveillance and stealth engagements by military units such as the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), as well as dependence on private corporations, mercenary armies and terrorist groups, are now arguably more common as tools of US foreign policy than conventional warfare or diplomacy. But these tools lend themselves to rogue operations that create peril for the United States when they blow back on us. And they often make the United States deeply unpopular. http://www.alternet.org/world/155000
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War Porn: The New Safe Sex
Like porn, war porn cannot exist without being based on a lie – a crude representation. But unlike porn, war porn is the real thing; unlike crude, cheap snuff movies, people in war porn actually die – in droves. http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NC30Ak02.html
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Selling War From 1917 to 2012
The Espionage Act suppressed dissent so that the one per cent of 1917 could continue making a killing on the war in Europe. Today, a militarised police force that has authorised spying on Americans is doing the same thing: containing unrest at home while the 1 per cent continues to make a killing. And they are making a killing without much regard for the laws that the police enforce. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/2012325104534414953.html
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From Indochina to Afghanistan, Why America’s Crimes Continue
There will be total legal and moral immunity granted to the people in Washington who have crafted and perpetuated the bloody war policies in Afghanistan. Like Henry Kissinger, who drew up plans for the terrorist bombing in Cambodia, these people will live long lives of fame and fortune and esteem without fear of being held accountable for killing innumerable innocents. Second, we can expect the legacy of the war in Afghanistan to be that it was largely a mistake, despite the best intentions of Washington. The “mistake” part, though, will be framed in terms of the costs borne by America, not by our victims. Robert Bales will not be remembered, nor will the names of those he slaughtered in cold blood. The number of U.S. casualties will be known, but certainly not those of Afghans. http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2012/03/22/from-indochina-to-afghanistan-why-americas-crimes-continue/
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To Avoid Being Locked Up in Canada Cheney Stays Locked Up at Home
Earlier this week former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, the dominant, hands-on operative in the two-term presidency of George W. Bush, cancelled a speaking engagement in Toronto on April 24. Through a spokesperson Cheney indicated he was frightened to return to Canada after his experience last September 26 at the Vancouver Club. After promoting his book to a small local audience Cheney spent several hours hiding out in the posh venue trying to outwait several hundred citizen jurists, some of whom were planning to attempt a citizens’ arrest of the credibly-accused war criminal right on the spot. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/03/15/to-avoid-being-locked-up-in-canada-cheney-stays-locked-up-at-home/
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President Obama and His Key Advisors are a Gang of War Criminals
In international relations and international law, the same applies. Under the Nuremberg Principles, later incorporated into the United Nations Charter, to which the United States is a signatory, the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, which is defined as a war started against another nation that does not pose an imminent threat of attack on the aggressor nation or nations, is the highest of war crimes, for which the perpetrators are liable for the death penalty. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of those above acts is an equally serious capital crime. How then to explain the casual way that civilian and military leaders of the U.S. and Israel are talking openly about plans and threats to attack Iran? The simple fact is that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, and his top generals and cabinet officers, are committing a war crime every time they threaten Iran with attack. The president is also committing a crime of conspiracy when he sends his generals to Israel, which is also committing the crime of threatening to attack Iran and planning to attack Iran. This is because by discussing options for an attack, or by providing Israel with the weapons and delivery systems it would need for such an attack, as the U.S. is doing by sending Israel super large bunker-buster bombs and bomb-capable aircraft, they are furthering that conspiracy. What is absolutely stunning is that this massive criminality at the highest levels of the U.S. government is going on totally unchallenged by the U.S. mainstream media. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30676.htm
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Jack Murtha and the Ghosts of Haditha
It is not the aim of this writer to defend the late congressman’s record in Pennsylvania, nor try to minimize his flaws and transgressions in other areas — he loved shoveling the pork into his district, especially into defense contracting businesses that directly benefited himself and his family, for example. By any other measure, he was one of hundreds of politicians on Capitol Hill today who have contributed to an overall atmosphere of institutionalized cronyism and hubris, the massive “feeding at the trough” that has eroded public confidence and paralyzed the federal budget process. That said, Murtha was a tough advocate for veterans and had come out early and strong against the war in Iraq, a war that the majority of veterans today say was a mistake. He maintained from the beginning that he raised the specter of Haditha because he felt Washington had unnecessarily created the conditions that led to the killings in the first place, and that a cover-up was engaged in order to hide the devastating truth. http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2012/01/23/jack-murtha-and-the-ghosts-of-haditha/
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The Real Legacy of the War in Iraq: Impunity
The fact that innocent men, women, and children were murdered is not special and in fact has become too dampened an event for it to really be the legacy of the war. The legacy of the war is that the crimes of America – and Americans – are excused. The criminals who prosecuted the war, from George W. Bush to Staff Sgt. Wuterich, remain unscathed despite the carnage they wrought. http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2012/01/05/the-real-legacy-of-the-war-in-iraq-impunity/
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The Wormwood Express: American War Crime Rolls On
I had much to say about the recent terror bombings in Baghdad, which were framed almost universally in the American media as the result of the withdrawal of the steadying, beneficent hand of the U.S. military. For example, the New York Times spoke of “a country reeling from political and sectarian turmoil that erupted after the departure of the American military.” It is hard to fathom the level of moral blindness — not to mention the wilful ignorance — required to write such a statement. To pretend to oneself, much less the rest of the world, that political and sectarian strife has only now “erupted” in Iraq, out of the blue, or more likely, due to the inherent savagery of those poor primitives we liberated — think what a pathetic, self-deluded wretch you would have to be to hold such an belief. Think what it must be like to lose so much of your humanity and to have your intellect so stunted and diminished. Yet this is the viewpoint of the overwhelming majority of the American political and media elite. No causal connection is made between the unprovoked invasion by U.S. forces and the “eruption” of violence and political chaos in the conquered, broken, blood-soaked land. http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2203-the-wormwood-express-american-war-crime-rolls-on.html
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Bush, Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes
The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal found the former heads of state guilty after a four-day hearing. A seven-member panel chaired by former Malaysian Federal Court judge Abdul Kadir Sulaiman presided over the trial. The five panel tribunal unanimously decided that the former U.S. and British leaders had committed crimes against peace and humanity, and also violated international law when they ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The prosecutors at the hearing ruled that the invasion of Iraq was a flagrant abuse of law, and act of aggression which amounted to a mass murder of the Iraqi people. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211548.html
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War Criminal: Attack Imminent if Congress Cuts Defense
The Empire’s war budget will continue to grow under either wing of the two-party perpetual monopoly. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46077
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Obama Bans War Criminals, Except Our Own
By executive order on Aug. 4, President Barack Obama refused entry to the United States of war criminals and human-rights violators. He ignored, as he often does, the deeply documented factual evidence of war crimes committed by the Bush-Cheney administration along with grim proof that the Obama administration also violates our anti-torture laws and the U.N. Convention Against Torture we signed. Take, for example, right now under Obama, “The CIA Secret Sites in Somalia.” In what will be an historic 108-page report, “Getting Away with Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees,” Human Rights Watch is further accelerating the rising insistence here on accountability from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA director George Tenet for having not only authorized these war crimes, but also failing “to act to stop mistreatment, or punish those responsible after they became aware of serious abuses. http://www.stardem.com/opinion/article_57630da5-5773-5965-84b6-b457903837a7.html
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NATO War Crimes: Depleted Uranium Found in Libya by Scientists
War crimes and crimes against humanity have been and continue to be committed in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya by NATO. Amongst these crimes, the Atlantic Alliance has been using depleted uranium against Libya, specifically civilians and civilian infrastructure. http://www.infowars.com/nato-war-crimes-depleted-uranium-found-in-libya-by-scientists/
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The Falling Bottom Line
Children are taught it and adults repeat it. In the Western world, “religion” is the knee-jerk response as to why wars in the distant past were fought. It’s any easy way to explain away complex issues. By drawing God into conflicts that are entirely man made, initiators of the violence absolve themselves of all responsibility. http://www.lewrockwell.com/celente/celente68.1.html
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Rumsfeldia
Rumsfeld these days – a man who very likely met the criteria of both criminal and war criminal long before his second stint at the Pentagon – brings to mind nothing more than a brutal and blood-thirsty version of Portlandia. The world in which Rumsfeld operates is one of his own creating, a fantastical place where he poses, ever so sincerely, and weaves tales that defy the widely recorded facts. Ironically, Rumsfeldia also defies the down-home, common-sense wisdom with which Rumsfeld self-associates at every turn. There is a way that empires make their wars against weak yet desirable states, and the way always includes egotistical can-do’ers and yes-men, carefully framed and made-up “intelligence” and a story about “why the [easy, quick, short-term and safe] war is necessary for the continuation of life as we know it” for the bread-eating and circus-attending public. http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski263.html
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The Shame Of Being An American
The United States government has overestimated the amount of shame that it and American citizens can live down. On February 15 “the indispensable people” had to suffer the hypocrisy of the U.S. Secretary of State delivering a speech about America’s commitment to Internet freedom while the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) brought unconstitutional action against Twitter to reveal any connection between WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, the American hero who, in keeping with the U.S. Military Code, exposed U.S. government war crimes and who is being held in punishing conditions not permitted by the U.S. Constitution. The corrupt U.S. government is trying to create a “conspiracy” case against Julian Assange in order to punish him for revealing U.S. government documents that prove beyond every doubt the mendacity of the U.S. government. This is pretty bad, but it pales in comparison to the implications revealed on February 15 in the British newspaper, The Guardian. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27492.htm
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WeAreChange Confronts Dick Cheney
The testimony of Norman Mineta before the 9/11 Commission leaves compelling questions about former Vice President Dick Cheney’s actions on the day of 9/11. Then Transportation Secretary Mineta witnessed Cheney refuse to contradict an apparent stand down order as an aide warned of something incoming at the Pentagon. Cheney has given conflicting reports about what time he entered the PEOC bunker. Mineta later confirmed his suppressed 9/11 Commission testimony and refuted Cheney’s account of arriving later. Yesterday, WeAreChange.org confronted Cheney about these questions, which he refused to address. http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2011/02/wearechange-confronts-dick-cheney-on.html
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George Bush Issued Travel Warning by Human Rights Organizations
Former president vulnerable to ‘torture’ prosecution, says U.S. group after Swiss trip cancelled amid protest and arrest threats. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/07/george-bush-issued-travel-warning
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Zionist Sock Puppet Tony Blair Praises Mubarak as ‘Immensely Courageous and a Force for Good’
The former prime minister, now an envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, praised Mubarak over his role in the negotiations and said the West was right to back him despite his authoritarian regime because he had maintained peace with Israel. But that view is likely to anger many Egyptians who believe they have had to endure decades of dictatorship because the U.S. put Israel’s interests ahead of their freedom. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/02/tony-blair-mubarak-courageous-force-for-good-egypt/print
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After Half-Hearted Apology on Iraq, Blair Urges Attack on Iran
Blair insisted the Iranians “disagree fundamentally with our way of life” and that they had to be answered with military force of arms. He added that it was time for America and Britain to “get our heads out of the sand” and attack Iran. It suggests then that Blair’s “regrets” don’t imply a lesson learned, as his case for war with Iran, which he seems just as eager to start as the war with Iraq, is based on many of the same false allegations and mindless jingoism. http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/21/after-half-hearted-apology-on-iraq-blair-urges-attack-on-iran/
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From War Profiteer to For-Profit War
If one giant outfit gives for-profit war-making (rather than war profiteering) its full modern meaning, it’s Lockheed Martin. If you don’t believe me, just check out William Hartung’s latest piece “Is Lockheed Martin Shadowing You?” The giant for-profit war-making corporations are to this century what the robber barons were to the nineteenth century. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/12
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The Shaming of America
As usual, the Arabs knew. They knew all about the mass torture, the promiscuous shooting of civilians, the outrageous use of air power against family homes, the vicious American and British mercenaries, the cemeteries of the innocent dead. All of Iraq knew. Because they were the victims. Only we could pretend we did not know. Only we in the West could counter every claim, every allegation against the Americans or British with some worthy general – the ghastly US military spokesman Mark Kimmitt and the awful chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Peter Pace, come to mind – to ring-fence us with lies. Find a man who’d been tortured and you’d be told it was terrorist propaganda; discover a house full of children killed by an American air strike and that, too, would be terrorist propaganda, or “collateral damage”, or a simple phrase: “We have nothing on that.” http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-shaming-of-america-2115111.html
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One of History’s Greatest Crimes
On impact, DU munitions penetrate deeply and aerosolize into a fine spray, polluting surrounding air, water and soil. It’s microscopic, sub-microscopic, and permanent. Spread over vast areas as radioactive atmospheric dust, its contamination causes virtually all known illnesses and diseases from severe headaches, muscle pain and general fatigue, to major birth defects, infections, depression, cardiovascular disease, and many types of cancers. It also causes permanent disability and death. Over the past two decades in Iraq alone, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tons have been used, irradiating the entire country, some areas more than others. In his October 2009 presentation to the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia International Conference to Criminalize War, Azzawi accused America and Britain of: “subject(ing) the whole nation of Iraq for two decades to torture and slow death through the intentional use of radioactive weapons and the sanctions. The continuous and intentional use of (these) weapons is a crime against humanity due to its undifferentiating harmful health effects on civilians in contaminated areas tens of years to come after the military engagements.” Radiation, in fact, is permanent, affecting unborn generations like living ones. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rep/one-of-historys-greatest-crime.html
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On Gaza and Chutzpah
The UN probe into the Israeli massacre in high seas concluded yesterday that Israeli forces violated international law and showed ‘incredible violence’ when they raided a flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. The UN fact finding mission also argues that Israel’s naval blockade of the Palestinian territory was unlawful because of the humanitarian crisis there, and described the military raid on the flotilla as ‘brutal and disproportionate.’ According to the UN probe, there is “clear evidence to support prosecutions” against Israel for “willfull killing” and “torture”. http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-on-gaza-and-chutzpah.html
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Obama at the UN: The Arrogant Voice of Imperialism
President Barack Obama used his speech at the United Nations General Assembly Thursday to defend U.S. wars and state terror abroad and to proclaim that the economic crisis has been resolved thanks to his Wall Street bailout. The U.S. president received a noticeably tepid response from the assembled UN delegates. While in his first address to the body last year, he was able to pose as a fresh alternative to the crimes carried out by the Bush administration, by now it has become clear to most on the international stage that his administration’s policies are largely in continuity with those of its predecessor. In its tone and its content, the Obama speech was the authentic and arrogant voice of U.S. imperialism. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/unob-s24.shtml
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A Modest Proposal
Clearly the United States Constitution was not tough enough to stop a corrupt and pliable Congress from enabling executive creep so I would like to submit a modest proposal for a new Constitutional Amendment. As there are already 27 amendments it would be number 28. Amendment 28 will require that the decision for going to war be restored to the people of the United States and will also provide a breathing period before enacting such a declaration, making more difficult possible government manipulation of a Gulf of Tonkin “they attacked us” type situation. http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/09/08/a-modest-proposal/
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Israel’s Shameless Mouthpiece
In yet another revealing speech, this time delivered at a symposium at IDC University in Herzliya, Tony Blair has exposed himself for what he truly is; not a “peace envoy” by any stretch of the imagination but a shameless mouthpiece for the State of Israel. Just days before direct negotiations are due to take place in the Middle East, in which he is supposed to be taking a neutral stance representing the Quartet (UN, EU, Russia and the USA), Blair has taken it upon himself to set aside any pretence of impartiality and reaffirm his “passion” for Israel. He has taken on the role of Israel’s defence attorney to plead with the world to try to empathise with Israel and to understand Israel’s point of view when it commits atrocities, human rights abuses and breaches of international law. http://uruknet.com/?p=m69284&hd=&size=1&l=e
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WikiLeaks and War Crimes
Four months before WikiLeaks rocketed to international notoriety, the Robin Hoods of the Internet quietly published a confidential CIA document labeled “NOFORN” (for “no foreign nationals”)—meaning that it should not be shared even with US allies. That’s because the March “Red Cell Special Memorandum” was a call to arms for a propaganda war to influence public opinion in allied nations. The CIA report describes a crisis in European support for the Afghanistan war, noting that 80 percent of German and French citizens are against increasing their countries’ military involvement. The report suggests that “Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the [International Security Assistance Force] role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory.” http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/123-123/2774-wikileaks-and-war-crimes
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Blood Money
Sometimes a topic simply will not go away. These weeks, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, Q.C., former Prime Minister, alleged potential war criminal, surreal Middle East Peace Envoy – who led an administration who shared responsibility for, if not quite rivers of blood, bloodied market places, mosques, squares, homes, humans, hospitals, beyond counting – just keeps coming back and back. http://uruknet.com/?p=m69058&hd=&size=1&l=e
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Who Benefits From the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Conspiracy theories, often ascribed to proverbial right-wingers, are not only the hallmark of right-wingers. The ruling class in the West does not shun using different types of conspiratorial vocabulary whose prime purpose is to demonize and criminalize the political foe. In addition, the liberal system resorts frequently to conspiracy theories in order to justify its military interventions. Months before the invasion of Iraq, many American politicians, including the media had in all seriousness ranted about the “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.” It soon turned out that the Iraqis had no such weapons, which was later conceded by the very same politicians. http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Sunic-Afghanistan.html
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Tony Blair Must Be Prosecuted
Tony Blair must be prosecuted, not indulged like his mentor Peter Mandelson. Both have produced self-serving memoirs for which they have been paid fortunes. Blair’s will appear next month and earn him £4.6 million. Now consider Britain’s Proceeds of Crime Act. Blair conspired in and executed an unprovoked war of aggression against a defenseless country, which the Nuremberg judges in 1946 described as the “paramount war crime.” This has caused, according to scholarly studies, the deaths of more than a million people, a figure that exceeds the Fordham University estimate of deaths in the Rwandan genocide. http://original.antiwar.com/pilger/2010/08/04/tony-blair-must-be-prosecuted/
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U.S. Treasury Running on Fumes
The White House is screaming like a stuck pig. WikiLeaks’ release of the Afghan War Documents “puts the lives of our soldiers and our coalition partners at risk.” What nonsense. Obama’s war puts the lives of American soldiers at risk, and the craven puppet state behavior of “our partners” in serving as U.S. mercenaries is what puts their troops at risk. Keep in mind that it was someone in the U.S. military that leaked the documents to WikiLeaks. This means that there is a spark of rebellion within the Empire itself. And rightly so. The leaked documents show that the U.S. has committed numerous war crimes and that the U.S. government and military have lied through their teeth in order to cover up the failure of their policies. These are the revelations that Washington wants to keep secret. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26032.htm
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A Record of War Crimes
The tens of thousands of documents posted online by WikiLeaks Sunday have provided a detailed and searing indictment of a criminal colonial war that the Obama administration has made its own. In its sheer volume—92,000 documents, 200,000 pages—the so-called Afghan War Diary makes an incontrovertible case that for nearly nine years the US military has conducted a campaign of terror and deadly violence against the Afghan people. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/pers-j27.shtml
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How Franklin Roosevelt Lied America Into War
The President spoke of the Nazi “book of world conquest” and declared there was a Nazi plan to treat the Latin American countries as they had treated the Balkans. Then Canada and the United States would be strangled. Not a single serious bit of evidence in proof of these sensational allegations has ever been found, not even when the archives of the Nazi government were at the disposal of the victorious powers. One is left, therefore, with the inescapable conclusion that the promises to “keep America out of foreign wars” were a deliberate hoax on the American people, perpetrated for the purpose of insuring Roosevelt’s re-election and thereby enabling him to proceed with his plan of gradually edging the United States into war. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n6p19_Chamberlin.html
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Liz Cheney Wants to Keep America Safe
Dickie and Liz
Witch hunts and fishing expeditions were supposed to go out of fashion when young America passed a Constitution and incorporated a Bill of Rights. But that hasn’t stopped our more morally endowed elected (and self-appointed) leaders from pursuing them – for power, political retribution, or to win elections, all under the guise of making this country safe and “free,” blessed by God, and of course, indivisible. The latest Real American to take up this higher mission is Elizabeth Cheney, the self-possessed terror gumshoe and daughter of the man who says we don’t torture enough, bomb enough, or humiliate enough “bad guys” to meet the high tough-guy standards of this free and democratic nation. Liz ‘n’ Dick make a great team: their views and even affectations are virtually interchangeable. A doppelganger is quite useful on the demagogue circuit, especially when one’s heart (yes, he has one) needs a rest from God’s work from time to time. http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/03/08/liz-cheney-wants-to-keep-america-safe/
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Symphony of Lies
An administration filled with war criminals
Nothing the Bush regime ever uttered was the truth… here’s a sample. http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=10099
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The Carp of Truth: Jack Straw, Colin Powell and the Smoking Guns of War Crime
Britain’s “Chilcot Inquiry” into the origins of the invasion of Iraq has largely faded from the headlines, following Tony Blair’s bravura display of pious bluster before the panel of Establishment worthies last month. And in truth, it has been a rather toothless affair, with the already deferential worthies further constrained by the narrow confines placed upon their investigation by the government: chiefly, the cloak of secrecy wrapped around the many documents that detail the deceptions and manipulations of the Bush and Blair regimes as they schemed their way to war. http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1922-the-carp-of-truth-jack-straw-colin-powell-and-the-smoking-guns-of-war-crime.html
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Blair Slithers Off the Hook Again
During his interview — which was less of an interrogation and more like a cozy chat in an establishment gentlemen’s club — Blair used the opportunity to rail against Iran, giving the impression that were he still prime minister that’s where he would be heading next. Iran, he said, was a country linked up with terrorist groups. He also blamed Iranian interference for the coalition’s post-invasion failures. It must be said that all of the above is cosmetic to the nitty-gritty of the inquiry’s raison d’etre: to discover whether or not Britain was dragged into a war of aggression, which the prime minister knew was illegal under international law. http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5537.shtml
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Tony Blair Faces Iraq Inquiry
His face was stretched taut with nerves. His top lip appeared to be locked solid. As the Iraq inquiry’s chairman, Sir John Chilcot, told the world that this was not a trial, the witness’s hands opened a bottle of water, his hands visibly shaking. His face was stretched taut with nerves. His top lip appeared to be locked solid. As the Iraq inquiry’s chairman, Sir John Chilcot, told the world that this was not a trial, the witness’s hands opened a bottle of water, his hands visibly shaking. Tony Blair clasped both hands together in front of him to steady himself as Sir John expressed the hope that the inquiry could go about its business in an orderly way without disruption. A burly security guard sat in the room just in case. The former prime minister stared straight ahead, barely blinking. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24530.htm
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Remember the Illegal Destruction of Iraq?
Still, one can barely even imagine George Bush and Dick Cheney being hauled before an investigative body and forced, under oath, to testify publicly about what they did as a means of determining the legality or illegality of that war. Doing that would fundamentally conflict with two leading principles in American political life: (1) our highest political leaders must never be accountable for actions they take while in power; and (2) whether something they do is “illegal” — especially the starting of wars — is utterly irrelevant. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html
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Tony Blair Faces the Hot Seat
The world and its wife broadly agree that the Iraq war turned out to be a disaster on multiple fronts. Not only was it cooked up on false pretexts, it robbed the lives of over a million civilians, insurgents and military personnel. It has cost coalition countries up to one trillion dollars. It has also been judged illegal by the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan while a recent Dutch probe found that it had “no basis in international law.” This was a war of aggression equating to mass murder yet, until now, nobody has been made to pay. Indeed, the invasion’s main instigators US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have simply been allowed to stroll away from the carnage untarnished — Bush to semiretirement in Texas while Blair was rewarded with the post of the Middle East Quartet’s envoy. http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5509.shtml
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War Criminals: Arrest Warrants Requested
International arrest warrants have been requested for George W. Bush, Richard (Dick) Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales at the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands. Professor of Law Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champain, United States of America, has issued a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court against the above-mentioned for their practice of “extraordinary rendition” (forced disappearance of persons and subsequent torture) in Iraq and for criminal policy which constitutes Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute which set up the ICC. http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/25-01-2010/111844-war_criminals_bush-0
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