Article IV. Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished [Article III(e)], whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.” *emphasis added)
2. VIDEO: Michel Chossudovsky
It is important that the peace movement take cognizance of the fact that their own heads of State and heads of government, namely Biden, Starmer, Trudeau, Macron, Scholz, et. al. (see them smiling) are from a legal standpoint “complicit” (Genocide Convention), inasmuch as they are supportive of Israel’s atrocities committed against the People of Palestine.
“La classe politique criminalisée”.
It’s the “criminalization of politics”.
Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished [article III e], whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
This is a powerful instrument for the anti-war movement.
Confront your “responsible rulers” and “public officials”, not to mention the Big Money and financial institutions who are behind the war.
There is another dimension, The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC).
Since World War II, all U.S.-led wars have deliberately targeted civilians, which is a crime against humanity under The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), which consists in:
“….respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.” [Additional Protocol 1, Article 48]
Remember Fallujah, Iraq 2006
3. Partners in Crime
While the IDF is responsible for the conduct of the atrocities, the U.S. War Machine is a partner in crime. The conduct of the genocide has been planned for several years in consultation with the Pentagon and NATO.
Israel’s Secret Intelligence Memorandum
An official “secret” memorandum authored by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence “is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”, namely to a refugee camp in Egyptian territory. There are indications of Israel-Egypt negotiations as well as consultations with the U.S.
The 10-page document, dated Oct. 13, 2023, bears the logo of the Intelligence Ministry. …
It recommends a full population transfer as its preferred course of action. …
A man carrying the coffin of a dead child in Gaza City, on 24 November 20233 (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)
4. The genocide against Palestine is part of a broader war.
Israel is a de facto member of NATO and an ally of the U.S.
It is not Israel which is waging a war against Iran. The Pentagon calls the shots on behalf of US-NATO-Israel.
Israel has become an instrument of the Pentagon.
Netanyahu is a proxy. Israel does not act without the consent of US-NATO.
What Is Washington’s Unspoken Intent? Let Your Allies Do the Dirty Work for You?
Flash back to 2005: At the outset of Bush’s second term, Vice President Dick Cheney dropped a bombshell, hinting that Israel would, so to speak, be doing the dirty work for us (paraphrase) without US military involvement and without us putting pressure on them “to do it”.
“The Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards,”
Israel would not be able to act unilaterally against Iran, without a green light from the Pentagon which controls key components of Israel’s air defense system.
America’s NATO allies, most of which are members of the European Union, are also “doing the dirty work” for the Pentagon. This is abundantly clear in their actions in support of the Kiev regime.
5. US Central Command’s (USCENTCOM) Strategy of “Dual Containment”
In practice, a war on Iran were it to occur, would be a joint US-NATO-Israeli endeavor, coordinated by US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with America’s allies playing a key (subordinate) role.” (Quoted from my 2018 article)
The “War on Iran” has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since the mid-1990s under US Central Command’s (USCENTCOM) “‘Strategy of Dual Containment’ directed against the Rogue States of Iraq and Iran” formulated during the Clinton administration.
“First Iraq, then Iran”: The stockpiling and deployment of advanced weapons systems directed against Iran started in the immediate wake of the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq.
From the outset, these war plans were led by the US, in liaison with NATO and Israel. The objective of the war on Iran was carefully outlined by US Central Command in liaison with US Strategic Command:
“The broad national security interests and objectives expressed in the President’s National Security Strategy (NSS) and the Chairman’s National Military Strategy (NMS) form the foundation of the United States Central Command’s theater strategy. The NSS directs implementation of a strategy of dual containment of the rogue states of Iraq and Iran as long as those states pose a threat to U.S. interests, to other states in the region, and to their own citizens.
Dual containment is designed to maintain the balance of power in the region without depending on either Iraq or Iran. USCENTCOM’s theater strategy is interest-based and threat-focused. The purpose of U.S. engagement, as espoused in the NSS, is to protect the United States’ vital interest in the region – uninterrupted, secure U.S./Allied access to Gulf oil.” (USCENTCOM, 1995, emphasis added)
USCENTCOM’s statement confirms the criminal nature of Washington’s military agenda:
“dual containment of the rogue states”,
“protect the US’s vital interests in the region”
“Secure US / Allied access to Gulf Oil”, through military intervention
rather than bona fide “trade” with partner countries.
6. “United States’ Vital Interest in the Region – Uninterrupted, Secure U.S./Allied Access to Gulf Oil”
i. Iran: Third Largest Reserves of Oil Worldwide
Iran is not only second in terms of its gas reserves after Russia, it ranks third worldwide in relation to its oil reserves (12% of worldwide oil reserves) versus a meagre 4% for the U.S.
THAT IS WHY THEY WANT TO INVADE IRAN (USCENTCOM, 1995)
ii. Iran Reserves of Natural Gas
Iran ranks second after Russia. Russia, Iran and Qatar possess 54.1 percent of the world’s reserves of natural gas.
Russia, 24.3%,
Iran, 17.3%,
Qatar, 12.5 % (in partnership with Iran)
versus 5.3 % for the US.
iii. Taking Control of the Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Maritime Gas Corridor
Extending from the Egyptian border, Gaza and the Levant coastline, the unspoken objective is to take control and confiscate the maritime gas reserves.
In other words the US NSS hegemonic objective is to take control of Iran’s OIL and GAS Reserves. “It’s America’s Promised Land,”(which ironically are portrayed as a threat to the environment, i.e. CO2 and the fake global warming narrative).
Part II —which provides a timeline and history of US wars against Iran— will be published on my Substack in November 2024.
For Peace, Truth and Justice. In an era of media disinformation, our focus has been to center on the “unspoken truth” with carefully documented analysis.
In a speech on September 11, U.S. President Barack Obama charged that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s government “gassed to death” more than a thousand people in Damascus on August 21. “What kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose to look the other way?” Obama asked. “Our ideals and principles, as well as our national security, are at stake in Syria, along with our leadership of a world where we seek to ensure that the worst weapons will never be used.”
This was a bizarre statement from the leader of a country that historically has been the world’s biggest deployer of “worst weapons” against innocent civilians, and in blatant violation of international law and of any ideals or principles.
Since 1945, the United States has killed about 46 million people in other countries, most of them civilians, either directly or through proxy by its puppet regimes. Given this blood-stained record, Obama’s threat to punish Syrian President Al-Assad for allegedly gassing non-combatants is sickeningly hypocritical. By his criteria, he should bomb his own country, especially the Pentagon.
The grisly U.S. catalogue of war crimes includes 4.3 million people killed in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos during Washington’s war on all three countries (1962-1975); three million killed in Iraq; six million killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (by proxy); up to three million killed in East Pakistan (by proxy); 1.5 million killed in Angola and Mozambique (by proxy); one million killed in Latin America (by proxy); and 100,000 killed (so far) in Afghanistan.
On Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the U.S. dropped 20 million gallons of the deadly chemical herbicide Agent Orange. In Vietnam’s case, the aim was to destroy forests where Viet Cong guerrillas were hiding. Agent Orange damaged foliage extensively but obviously failed to stop the guerrillas who eventually won the war. What the chemical did accomplish was to kill hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians and destroy three generations of Vietnamese children (up to the present), many thousands of whom were and are born with serious mental disorders and physical deformities. Many babies were still-born or without brains, arms and legs.
I spent two years teaching in Vietnam and visited the Museum of American War Crimes in Ho Chi Minh City, where the aborted foetuses deformed by Agent Orange are displayed in glass jars. I will never forget that horrifying sight.
As U.K. journalist John Pilger informs us, “In 1970, the U.S. Senate reported: ‘The U.S. has dumped on Vietnam a quantity of toxic chemical (dioxin) amounting to six pounds per head of population.’ This was Operation Hades — the source of what Vietnamese doctors call a ‘cycle of foetal catastrophe.’ I have seen generations of children with their familiar, monstrous deformities. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, with his own blood-soaked war record, will remember them.” [Kerry fought in Vietnam].
The BBC reported on September 9: “The Vietnam War ended nearly 40 years ago, but the casualties continue as birth defects plague the country. There are claims that thousands of children continue to be born with horrific facial deformities due to the Agent Orange chemical sprayed by the United States. The Vietnamese call the disfigured youngsters ‘the children of Agent Orange.’ [The city of ] Da Nang in central Vietnam is thought to have the highest level of congenital deformity in the world.”
Vietnam estimates that 400,000 people were killed or maimed by Agent Orange and 500,000 children were born with birth defects due to it. According to the Vietnamese Red Cross, up to one million people are disabled or have health problems due to Agent Orange. The illnesses suffered by the Vietnamese include non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, several types of cancer, diabetes, soft tissue sarcoma, birth defects in children, spina bifida, and reproductive abnormalities.
Nguyen Pham, age 11 today, is a third generation Agent Orange victim. He is deaf, blind, and mute, and has been confined to bed for much of his life. The hands of Nguyen Van Dung, age 12, have to be tied “because he compulsively tears at his own face.”
The U.S. has refused to compensate Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos for the horrific atrocities caused by its massive spraying of Agent Orange.
The U.S. has committed similar crimes in Iraq with the extensive use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium bombs, which have condemned future generations in that country to frightful and hideous suffering. In March of this year, journalist Dahr Jamail reported from the city of Fallujah on the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq: “According to Dr. Samira Alani [a doctor in Fallujah], it’s common now in the city for newborns to come out with massive multiple systemic defects, immune problems, massive central nervous system problems, massive heart problems, skeletal disorders, babies being born with two heads, babies being born with half of their internal organs outside of their bodies, Cyclops babies literally with one eye — really, really, really horrific, nightmarish types of birth defects.”
According to Jamail, “The current rate of birth defects for the city of Fallujah has surpassed those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear attacks at the end of World War II.” Those attacks, of course, were also launched by the U.S. Jamail adds: “Dr. Alani actually visited with doctors in Japan, comparing statistics, and found that the amount of congenital malformations in Fallujah is 14 times greater than the rate measured in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in the aftermath of the U.S. nuclear bombings.
“Dr. Alani said these types of birth defects include some congenital malformations they don’t even have medical terms for, that some of the things they’re seeing they’ve never seen before. They’re not in any of the books or any of the scientific literature that they have access to. And she — lastly, to really give you an idea of the scope of the problem — said that this is happening now at a massive rate. And she said her being the only person cataloguing and registering cases… she said that she could probably safely estimate that the number of cases, as high as the rate that she’s seeing, could probably be doubled, because so many people are having their babies at home. ‘You know, most of these babies are being born dead, and then they’re not reporting it whatsoever. So, this is an ongoing crisis.
“’I mean, these are extremely hard to look at. They’re extremely hard to bear witness to. But it’s something that we all need to pay attention to because of the amount of depleted uranium used by the U.S. military during both of their brutal attacks on the city in 2004, as well as other toxic munitions like white phosphorus’.”
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, one of the main authors of a 2012 study of birth defects in Fallujah and a toxicologist at the University of Michigan, told The Independent newspaper (U.K.) in 2012 that there is “compelling evidence” to connect the number of birth defects to the military attacks on Basra and Fallujah. According to Savabieasfahani, there is a cancer and birth defect “epidemic” in Iraq which constitutes an “extraordinary public health emergency.”
Jamail points out that “International law is very clear about these types of weapons: Any weapon that is known to have a lasting negative impact on the civilian population in the general area where it is used is technically a banned or a highly restricted weapon. And in this case, these types of weapons should not be allowed to be used. As I reported back in 2004, when it came out that white phosphorus was indeed being used in Fallujah, that’s another restricted weapon where the Geneva Conventions state very clearly that, if there is any possibility of civilians being in the area where it is going to be used, it is not allowed to be used. The Geneva Conventions are very, very clear about this.”
The U.S. has treated Iraq’s concerns about depleted uranium’s effects with even more contempt than it has Vietnam’s concerns about Agent Orange. When questioned in 2003 about Iraq’s complaints about depleted uranium, Colonel James Naughton of the U.S. Army Material Command said in a Pentagon briefing: “They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them.”
______________________
Published in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, October 2013
Asad Ismi is the CCPA Monitor’s international affairs correspondent. He is an expert on U.S. foreign policy and has published more than a hundred articles on this subject. He is also author of the book Informed Dissent: Three Generals and the Vietnam War available from 10 booksellers on the internet.
Israel’s genocidal bombing of Palestinians in Gaza has (as of October 30) resulted in 8,306 deaths of civilians including more than 3,000 children . In the words of Canadian journalist Andrew Mitrovica
“This is not an onslaught. It is not an invasion. It is not even a war. It is a genocide.” …The monstrous plan is as plain as Netanyahu’s wretched character: Be done with Gaza by erasing Gaza.
Israel’s Operation “To Wipe Gaza off the Map” including the False Flag agenda was carefully coordinated with U.S. military and intelligence. It is part of a broader military agenda of US-NATO.
America’s unspoken military practice from World War II to the present consists in routinely targeting civilians, which constitutes a crime against humanity. Netanyahu is Washington’s proxy. Yet to be confirmed US Special Forces are now collaborating with the the Israeli military in their invasion of Gaza.
It should be understood that Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians in Gaza is part of a longstanding U.S. military strategy of killing civilians. America is in this regard fully supportive of its Israeli proxy.
In recent developments Israeli officials have justified its killing of civilians in Gaza by pointing to the bombing of the German city of Dresden (a civilian target) as well as many other German cities by the U.S. and Britain towards the end of World War II.
Dresden versus Gaza
Similarly, the U.S. applied the same strategy of targeting Japanese civilians with fire bombs towards the end of World War II.
America’s Strategy of Killing Civilians (1945- )
Since World War II, America’s military strategy has deliberately targeted civilians as well as “civilian objects” including hospitals, schools, churches, residential areas. The evidence is overwhelming.
While this practice is categorized as a crime against humanity, the United States has never been the object of prosecution by the international criminal court (ICC).
The history of US-led wars confirms that murdering millions of civilians is an integral part of America’s global war agenda.
During and since World War II , the United States has killed about 46 million people in a number of countries, most of them civilians, either directly or through proxy by its puppet regimes:
Germany—World War II (several cities bombed by U.S. including Dresden, Nuremberg, Hamburg, Cologne): Number of people killed: 600,000 (according to Israeli official’s recent statement.)
Japan–World War II.442,000 civilians killed by U.S. and U.K. fire bombing.
The U.S.’ so-called “War on Terrorism” has killed up to 4.6 million people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Pakistan according to a Brown University report.
Pakistan 1971. Up to three million ethnic Bengalis killed by the Pakistan army (a U.S. proxy) in East Pakistan (the country’s biggest province). Due to this East Pakistan separated from Pakistan and became Bangladesh.
The invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by U.S. proxies Rwanda and Uganda beginning in 1998, has killed more than 6.9 million civilians. This genocide continues.
The above is a partial list which does not include Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Indonesia, Angola, Mozambique and Latin America. Also of relevance are deaths resulting from famines and mass poverty enforced by U.S. policies globally, especially by sanctions.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (who assumed this post in 1997)was asked by the CBS interviewer Leslie Stahl in 1996 about the deadly effect of U.S. sanctions on Iraqi children. Stahl: “We have heard that half a million children have died. Is the price worth it?”
Albright replied
“I think it is a very hard choice but the price–we think the price is worth it.”
As Kevin Reese and Margaret Flowers put it in their 2020 Global Research article
“Economic sanctions are an act of war that kills tens of thousands of people each year through financial strangulation.”
The list of U.S. war crimes above confirms that:
The Israeli genocide of Palestinians does not emanatefrom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but from the U.S. Empire.
The mass murder of civilians has been part of U.S. military doctrine since World War II and Washington has attempted to “normalize” this practice in one war after another.
World War II. Germany and Japan
” The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians” said U.S. President Harry Truman in a radio address on August 9, 1945. “We will use [this weapon] so that military objectives…are the target and not women and children.”
Of course Hiroshima was a city of 350,000 civilians and not a military target. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky in his article on the Hiroshima bombing, calls Truman “a liar and a criminal”.
“Had [Truman] been misled by his advisers that Hiroshima was a military base and that it was OK to bomb… was he stupid and uneducated?”
The U.S. firebombing of Tokyo on March 9, 1945, is considered the single most deadly air raid in history killing more than 100,000 civilians, injuring a million and making another million people homeless. The bombing destroyed half of Tokyo.
Kisako Motoki, then 10 years old, lost her parents and brother to the bombing. She recalls:
“I saw melted bodies piled up on top of each other as high as a house. I saw black pieces, bits of bodies everywhere on the ground and burnt corpses in the water. I couldn’t believe this was happening in this world.”
Haruyo Nihei, another survivor of the Tokyo bombing, says U.S. claims that its planes were bombing factories are “false”. “There were no big military factories in the areas they bombed on March 9” she explains, “they did it as punishment. I believe they should be held accountable for war crimes.”
CurtisLeMay, the U.S. Air Force general, who ordered the bombing of Tokyo said:
“[U.S. forces] scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night… than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.”
“if he had been on the losing side, he would be charged with war crimes.”
The Korean War (1950-53)
US military sources confirm that 20 percent of North Korea’s population was killed off over a three-year period of intensive bombings. Every single family in North Korea lost a loved one in the course of the Korean War.
According to General Curtis LeMay who was head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War:
“After destroying North Korea’s 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians… over a period of three years…we killed off 20% of the population…perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerence of another.”
North Korea lost up to 30% of its population (more than three million people) due to U.S. bombing according to War Veteran and Global Research Associate Brian S. Willson:
“Everyone I talked with, dozens and dozens of folks, lost one if not many more family members during the war especially from the continuous bombing…deliberately dropped on virtually every space in the country…The pained memories of the people are still obvious and their anger at ‘America’ is often expressed.”
Pyongyang 1953
Pyongyang 2023
General MacArthur Says “Sorry for the Human Suffering”
Truman and MacArthur, 1950
The criminal bombings of Pyongyang in 1951 ordered by president Truman, had been opposed by General Douglas MacArthur who was commander of allied forces in Korea:
“A defiant Douglas MacArthur appeared before Congress and spoke of human suffering so horrifying that his parting glimpse of it caused him to vomit.
“I have never seen such devastation,” the general told members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. At that time, in May 1951, the Korean War was less than a year old. Casualties, he estimated, were already north of 1 million.
“I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man,” he added, “and it just curdled my stomach.” (quoted by the Washington Post, August 10, 2017)
As Chossudovsky explains in his September 2013 article on the Korean War:
“The Korean War set the stage for a global process of militarization and U.S.-led wars… In the words of U.S. General Wesley Clark quoting a senior Pentagon official,
‘We’re going to take out seven countries in five years starting with Iraq then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off, Iran. (March 2, 2007).
The Vietnam War
From 1965 until 1975, the United States military dropped “more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, double the amount dropped onEurope and Asia during World War II…It remains the largest aerialbombardment in human history.”
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. expanded the style of genocidal warfare it had perfected in Korea, bombing three countries at the same time, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Vietnam War protestors march at the Pentagon in Washington, DC on October 21, 1967.
The bombing of Vietnam was accompanied by a ground invasion of a million American and allied troops who devastated the country for ten years generating a holocaust.
The spraying of Agent Orange destroyed three generations of Vietnamese children (up to the present) many thousands of whom were and are born with serious mental disorders and physical deformities. Many babies were still-born or without brains, arms and legs.
“So when they were not able to achieve victory through attrition, through the body count, the only recourse was to increase the firepower and this was turned loose on the Vietnamese countryside.”
The role of racism was also central to U.S. strategy. Similar to Israeli officials calling Palestinians “human animals” the U.S. military dehumanized the Vietnamese.
“The idea was that the Vietnamese were not really people” says Turse “they were subhuman, mere ‘gooks’ who could be killed or abused at will. I talked to veterans who told me that from the moment they got into basic training, they were told, ‘Never call them Vietnamese, call them gooks or dinks, slopes, slants, rice-eaters.’ Anything to take away their humanity, to dehumanize them and make it easy to see any Vietnamese–all Vietnamese as the enemy.”
Demolishing Iraq: Iraq War I. The Gulf War (1991)
More than thirty-two years ago. the so-called “Gulf War” (Iraq War I) was launched against Iraq on January 17, 1991.
Of relevance to Palestine, extensive crimes against humanity were committed by the US and its NATO allies under the banner of a “peace making operation”.
There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it’s impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.”
Those extensive crimes against humanity were the beginning of a long and unending war against the people of Iraq.
Destroying Iraq. Iraq War II (2003- )
During April 2004, the Iraqi city of Fallujah was almost completely destroyed by the U.S. military which showed no regard for its massive killing of civilians as documented by Felicity Arbuthnot who reported from Iraq on this massacre. She quotes Brigadier-General Mark Kimmett who was asked by a reporter:
“You talk about a clean war in Fallujah but the Iraqis have an image through television, from what is happening in Fallujah including killing children.
Is there a way that you can convince Iraqis through your point of view that you have only utilized force against terrorists?”
As Arbuthnot puts it,
“With his hallmark contempt for humanity, Kimmit replied:
“With regards to the solution on the images of Americans killing innocent civilians, my solution is quite simple, change the channel..to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station.
The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda and lies.”
image depleted uranium shells, Fallujah
“Marines killed so many civilians that the municipal soccer stadium had to be turned into a graveyard”. (emphasis added)
The Americans invaded, chillingly: “house to house, room to room”, raining death and destruction on the proud, ancient “City of Mosques.”
One correspondent wrote: “There has been nothing like the attack on Fallujah since the Nazi invasion and occupation of much of the European continent – the shelling and bombing of Warsaw in September 1939, the terror bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940.”
Arbuthnot emphasizes that Fallujah was in fact made “a free fire zone” by the U.S. military:
“two hospitals were demolished…and at the General Hospital, patients and doctors were initially handcuffed, the ‘liberators’ regarding it as a ‘centre of propaganda’, since the staff talked…of the numbers of dead and wounded they were treating. The ‘non-American wounded were in essence left to die’ as a result. “
Arbuthnot quotes a Lt. Col Pete Newell as saying that U.S. forces wanted
“Fallujah to understand what democracy is all about.”
US Military Doctrine and Israel’s Ongoing Genocide
Israel’s current genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza is a continuation of the horrendous civilian killings carried out by the US and its NATO allies since the Second World War.
The atrocities committed in Palestine are similar to those committed in Fallujah. Washington’s fingerprints are on the Gaza genocide. Netanyahu has the unconditional support of the Biden administration.
From Dresden to Gaza (1945-2023): The Death of 40++ Million People
From Dresden to Gaza, the U.S.’ “hallmark contempt for humanity” has resulted in the death of more than 40 million people.
The people of the Global South are in the way of Washington and its proxies who covet the valuable mineral resources these people happen to live over or near.
The massacres of Gazans, Congolese and Iraqis (among others) facilitate access to these minerals (natural gas in the case of Gaza) ensuring the continuing impoverishment of the Global South and the resulting enrichment of the U.S. empire.
***
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) stand in solidarity with the People of Palestine.
The original source of this article is Global Research
This text was first published on March 8, 2015 at the outset of Obama’s second term.
The Islamic State is not only protected by the US and its allies, it is trained and financed by US-NATO, with the support of Israel and Washington’s Persian Gulf allies.
Al Qaeda Affiliated Entities are “Intelligence Assets. Instruments of US Intelligence. The Global War on Terrorism is a fabrication used to justify a war of conquest. The Jihadist terrorists are “Made in America”. They are instruments of US intelligence, yet they are presented to public opinion as “enemies of America”.
Introduction
The Obama administration has embarked upon the ultimate war crime, a Worldwide military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity.
The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest.
This military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously, resulting in millions of civilian deaths and countless atrocities. More recently, U.S. and NATO ground forces have been deployed in Eastern Europe including Ukraine on Russia’s immediate doorstep.
Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theatre operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
In turn, Israel in liaison with the US, is threatening Iran with nuclear weapons. And the U.S. and its allies are threatening China and North Korea under President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”.
Under a global military agenda, the actions undertaken by the Western military alliance (U.S.-NATO-Israel) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria and Iraq are coordinated at the highest levels of the military hierarchy.
In turn, military undertakings are closely coordinated with a process of economic warfare which consists not only in imposing sanctions on sovereign countries but also in deliberate acts of destabilization of financial and currencies markets, with a view to undermining the enemies’ national economies.
The Criminalization of War
What is at stake is a global criminal undertaking in defiance of international law. In the words of the late William Rockler:
“The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok.” (William Rockler, Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor)
We will recall that the architect of Nuremberg, Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg Prosecutor Robert Jackson said with some hesitation:
“We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.”
Does this historical statement apply to President Barack Obama and his European political cohorts?In defiance of Nuremberg, the Obama administration has invoked the conduct of “humanitarian wars” and counter-terrorism operations, with a view to installing “democracy”in targeted countries.
America and the Western World are allegedly threatened by the Islamic State bogeyman. And the International community is called upon take a stance.
War becomes peace. Realities are turned upside down. By actively co-opting the United Nations, the US administration has also invoked “self defence” as a justification to wage war against this illusive “outside enemy” of the Western World.
These lies and fabrications are part of of war propaganda. Under no circumstances can Obama’s war be upheld as a “solution”, as a means to implementing peace. War is the ultimate crime, “The Crime against Peace” as defined under Nuremberg.
The US-NATO led war applied Worlwide is a criminal undertaking under the disguise of counter-terrorism. It violates the Nuremberg Charter, the US constitution and the UN charter. According to former chief Nuremberg prosector Benjamin Ferencz, in relation to the 2003 invasion of Iraq:
“a prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity — that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.”
Ferenz was referring to “Crimes against Peace and War” (Nuremberg Principle VI): which states the following:
“The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:(a) Crimes against peace:(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).(b) War crimes:Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.(c) Crimes against humanity:Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.”
“(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).”
It should be noted that Nuremberg Principle III relates directly to president Obama and the heads of State and heads of government of the US-NATO led coalition:
“a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.”
Moreover, the evidence amply confirms that the United States of America is a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” and that the campaign against the Islamic State is a smokescreen used by the US and its allies to justify in the eyes of public opinion its global war of conquest.
Under Nuremberg the “Global War on Terrorism” is a criminal undertaking.
The Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War
Following in the footsteps of Nuremberg, the objective of the December 2005 Kuala Lumpur initiative led by Tun Mahathir Mohamad was to criminalize war and eventually abolish war.
Let us recall the fundamental principles contained in the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War under the helm of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the fourth and longest serving prime minister of Malaysia.
“Killings in war are as criminal as the killings within societies in times of peace.
Since killings in peace time are subject to the domestic law of crime, killings in war must likewise be subject to the international law of crimes.
This should be so irrespective of whether these killings in war are authorized or permitted by domestic law.” (See full text of the Kuala Lumpur Initiative below)
Since the adoption of the KL Initiative to Criminalize war in December 2005, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT) has passed two important judgements:
against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al for war crimes in Iraq,
and against the State of Israel on charges of genocide against the people of Palestine.
More than ever the Kuala Lumpur Initiative launched almost ten years ago in December 2005 by Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad should be widely understood and applied.
What is at stake is the universal recognition of the value of human life, solidarity and understanding between nationalities, ethnic groups and religions, as well as respect for national sovereignty. These are preconditions for World peace. As outline in the Kuala Lumpur declaration: “peace is the essential condition for the survival and well-being of the human race”.
In contrast tothese broad principles which define human values, the US military and financial establishment and its allies are intent upon destroying and destabilizing sovereign countries as part of an imperial agenda, through acts of war and economic plunder, the end result of which is the transformation of sovereign nations into open economic territories, under the jurisdiction of US approved proxy regimes.
To no avail, since 2008, President Obama has followed in the footsteps of George W. Bush. Together with America’s NATO allies, his administration has not only supported terrorist organizations, it has covertly supported terrorist insurgencies and has waged an extensive bombing campaign against Libya (2011), Syria and Iraq (2014-), drone attacks and targeted assassinations against Pakistan (2004-) among other military-intelligence operations.
Under the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War which was adopted under the helm of Tun Mahathir,
“All national leaders who initiate aggression must be subjected to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.”
Let us be crystal clear: Consistent with Nuremberg, the above statement applies to president Barack Obama and the heads of State and heads of government of NATO countries which endorsed the extensive carpet bombing operations directed against Libya, Syria and Iraq, resulting in the death of countless civilians.
Under Nuremberg and Kuala Lumpur, Barack Obama, France’s president Francois Hollande, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron et al are war criminals.
War Propaganda and the Demonization of Muslims: A Criminal Undertaking under International Law
An extensive propaganda campaign has been launched with a view to upholding US-NATO-Israel military actions in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Palestine as humanitarian endeavours, as part of a crusade against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
This agenda has been embraced at the political level by America’s European allies. A broad political consensus prevails which upholds war as a peace-making undertaking, as a solution, as a means to implementing “democracy” and the “free market”.
The Pentagon, NATO and Israel are the protagonists of war and war crimes. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are presented at the “outside enemy” which threatens the Western World.
In turn, a hate campaign has been launched against Muslim countries as well as Muslim communities within Western countries. This recent wave of Islamophobia is intended to create divisions within Western societies.
In a bitter irony, while the West has initiated a Worldwide demonization campaign against Muslims, the millions of victims of US-NATO led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, are predominately Muslims. Moreover, in both Syria, Iraq and Palestine the Christian communities have also been targeted, the cultural heritage of Muslims and Christians in Mesopotamia has been decimated by US sponsored terrorists.
The crimes and atrocities committed by the Western military alliance in Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo are beyond description. These crimes have been amply documented in the 2012 Judgment of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al
The intent of Obama’s campaign is to beat the drums of war, to justify in the eyes of public opinion, America’s wars in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
The Global War on Terrorism: The Political Consensus
Sustained by media disinformation, the Global War on Terrorism is now part of a far-reaching political consensus in Western countries. It has also been used by Western governments to justify and implement “anti-terrorist” legislation within their respective countries.
Image: “War is Peace We Can Believe In”. President Barack Obama and his European cohorts herald War as a Peace-making endeavor
The fact that the “Global War on Terrorism” is endorsed by the so-called “international community” and rubber-stamped by the United Nations Security Council does not, however, provide it legitimacy under international law. Despite these endorsements, it nonetheless constitutes a diabolical criminal undertaking, which is fundamentally based on a Lie.
When the Lie becomes the Truth and War becomes Peace, there is no turning backwards.
The legitimacy of the Global War on Terrorism is sustained by media disinformation and war propaganda. In this regard, the various actions intended to deliberately mislead public opinion, obfuscate the atrocities of America’s led wars and justify war on humanitarian grounds, are categorized as criminal acts of war propaganda, under Nuremberg. In this regard, David Walsh in an April 2003 article, recounts the circumstances surrounding the prosecution of one of Nazi Germany’s most prominent propagandist:
Hans Fritzsche was named head of the German Press Division in 1938 … The Nuremberg prosecutor detailed the propaganda campaigns taken up by the German media, under Fritzsche’s immediate supervision,…
“Fritzsche incited atrocities and encouraged a ruthless occupation policy. The results of propaganda as a weapon of the Nazi conspirators reaches into every aspect of this conspiracy, including the atrocities and ruthless exploitation in occupied countries. It is likely that many ordinary Germans would never have participated in or tolerated the atrocities committed throughout Europe, had they not been conditioned and goaded by the constant Nazi propaganda. The callousness and zeal of the people who actually committed the atrocities was in large part due to the constant and corrosive propaganda of Fritzsche and his official associates.”
Nuremberg also applies to military indoctrination and “internal propaganda” within the various US and NATO war colleges and academies which glorify war.
Moreover, under Nuremberg, the granting of a peace prize to war criminals, including Barack Obama and Tony Blair is criminal, in that it upholds the legitimacy of the war criminals in high office.
The Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War acknowledges the criminal nature of war propaganda as defined under Nuremberg and calls upon the mainstream media to:
“actively oppose war and the incitement to war and consciously promote the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Entertainment media [Hollywoods] must cease to glorify war and violence and should instead cultivate the ethos of peace.”
Beyond doubt, the “Global War on Terrorism” is a fabrication. It is part of a conspiracy to mislead the public into accepting war as a humanitarian undertaking. The United States of America is the “Number One” State Sponsor of Terrorism responsible for extensive war crimes.
Without war propaganda, war criminals in high office would not have a leg to stand on. Their legitamcy in the eyes of public opinion would collapse like a deck of cards.
The Big Lie: The Global War on Terrorism, Obama’s Crusade against the Islamic State (ISIS)
America’s “global war on terrorism” is a hegemonic project, carried out under a fake counter-terrrorism mandate which consists in going after an illusive “Jihadist” Enemy which “threatens Western civilization”.The Global War on Terrorism is a Lie. The alleged enemy of the West is fabricated. Counter-terrorism is invoked as a pretext to wage an all out war of conquest.
We will argue that the U.S. airstrikes initiated in August 2014 directed against Iraq and Syria under the pretext of going after the Islamic State (ISIS) are part of a scenario of military conquest and escalation extending from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to Central and South Asia.
Since August 2014, the US Air Force with the support of a coalition of more than twenty countries has relentlessly waged an intensified air campaign against Syria and Iraq allegedly targeting the Islamic State brigades.
According to Defense News, over 16,000 airstrikes were carried out from August 2014 to mid January 2015. Sixty percent of the air strikes were conducted by the US Air Force using advanced jet fighter and bombing capabilities (Aaron Mehta, “A-10 Performing 11 Percent of Anti-ISIS Sorties”. Defense News, January 19, 2015.)
The airstrikes have been casually described by the media as part of a “soft” counter-terrorism operation, rather than an act of all out war directed against Syria and Iraq.
This large scale air campaign which has resulted in countless civilian casualties has been routinely misreported by the mainstream media. According to Max Boot, senior fellow in national security at the Council on Foreign Relations. ”Obama’s strategy in Syria and Iraq is not working… [ because] the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIS has been remarkably restrained”. (Newsweek, February 17, 2015, emphasis added).
Americans are led to believe that the Islamic State constitutes a formidable force confronting the US military and threatening Western Civilization. The thrust of media reporting is that the US Air Force has failed and that “Obama should get his act together” in effectively confronting this ”Outside Enemy” of America.
According to CFR Max Boot, military escalation is the answer: what is required is for the president “to dispatch more aircraft, military advisers, and special operations forces, while loosening the restrictions under which they operate.” (Ibid)
What kind of aircraft are involved in the air campaign? The F-16 Fighting Falcon,( above right), The F-15E Strike Eagle (image below) , The A-10 Warthog, not to mention Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor stealth tactical fighter aircraft.
Why has the US Air Force not been able to wipe out the Islamic State, which at the outset was largely equipped with conventional small arms not to mention state of the art Toyota pickup trucks?
From the very outset, this air campaign has NOT been directed against ISIS. The evidence confirms that the Islamic State is not the target. Quite the opposite.
The air raids are intended to destroy the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria.
The USAF-15E Strike Eagle
We call on our readers to carefully reflect on the following image, which describes the Islamic State convoy of pickup trucks entering Iraq and crossing a 200 km span of open desert which separates the two countries.
This convoy entered Iraq in June 2014.
What would have been required from a military standpoint to wipe out a ISIS convoy with no effective anti-aircraft capabilities?
Without an understanding of military issues, common sense prevails.
If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June.
The answer is pretty obvious, yet not a single mainstream media has acknowledged it.
During the 1991 Gulf War, retreating Iraqi ground forces were decimated under Operation “Desert Storm” at a time when smart bombs had not been fully developed, at least by today’s standards.
The Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map right). With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, F16) it would have been –from a military standpoint– ”a piece of cake”, a rapid and expedient surgical operation, which would have decimated the Islamic State convoys in a matter of hours.
Instead what we have witnessed is an ongoing drawn out six months of relentless air raids and bombings, and the terrorist enemy is apparently still intact.
(In comparison, the NATO bombing raids of Yugoslavia in 1999 lasted about three months (March 24-June 10, 1999).
And we are led to believe that the Islamic State cannot be defeated by a powerful US led military coalition of more than 20 countries.
The air campaign was not intended to decimate the Islamic State.
The counter-terrorism mandate is a fiction. America is the Number One “State Sponsor of Terrorism”.
The Islamic State is not only protected by the US and its allies, it is trained and financed by US-NATO, with the support of Israel and Washington’s Persian Gulf allies.
Al Qaeda Afiliated Entities are “Intelligence Assets. Instruments of US Intelligence
The Global War on Terrorism is a fabrication used to justify a war of conquest. The Jihadist terrorists are “Made in America”. They are instruments of US intelligence, yet they are presented to public opinion as “enemies of America”.
The Islamic State (IS) militia, which is currently the alleged target of a US-NATO bombing campaign under a “counter-terrorism” mandate, continues to be supported covertly by the US. Washington and its allies continue to provide military aid to the Islamic State.
US and allied bombings are not targeting the ISIL, they are bombing the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria including factories and oil refineries.
The IS caliphate project is part of a longstanding US foreign policy agenda to carve up Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan.
These various affiliated Al Qaeda entities in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are CIA sponsored “intelligence assets”. They are used by Washington to wreck havoc, create internal conflicts and destabilize sovereign countries.
The US is also supporting Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region of China. The underlying objective is to trigger political instability in Western China.
“Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the Jihad.”
Lest we forget, Osama bin Laden, America’s bogyman and founder of Al Qaedawas recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihadist war against Afghanistan . He was 22 years old and was indoctrinated in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp. Al Qaeda was a creation of US intelligence, which was put together with the support of Pakistani and Saudi intelligence:
“[I]t was the government of the United States which supported Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged.” (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), RAWA Statement on the Terrorist Attacks In the US, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RAW109A.html , 16 September 2001)
Since the Carter Administration, Washington has supported the Islamic terror network
Ronald Reagan called the terrorists “freedom fighters”. The US supplied weapons to the Islamic brigades. It was all for “a good cause”: fighting the Soviet Union and regime change, leading to the demise of a secular government in Afghanistan.
Ronald Reagan meets Afghan Mujahideen Commanders at the White House in 1985 (Reagan Archives)
Front row, from left: Major Gen. Hamid Gul, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Willian Webster; Deputy Director for Operations Clair George; an ISI colonel; and senior CIA official, Milt Bearden at a Mujahideen training camp in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1987. (source RAWA)
… the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books…
Picture above is translated as follows: “Jihad – Often many different wars and conflicts arise among people, which cause material damages and loss of human life. If these wars and disputes occur among people for the sake of community, nation, territory, or even because of verbal differences, and for the sake of progress…”
This page is from a third-grade language arts textbook dating from the mujahidin period. A copy of the book was purchased new in Kabul in May 2000.
Washington’s Agenda: Destabilize Secular Institutions. Install an Islamic State in Afghanistan. The Role of the Wahhabi Missions
US military intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s was supported by the Wahhabi missionaries out of Saudi Arabia, who trained the Taliban (‘graduates”) in the CIA sponsored madrassas (schools) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Wahhabi doctrine would not have spread in the way it did without the support of US intelligence.
Saudi Arabia worked closely with Washington in recruiting the Mujahideen (holy warriors) to fight against the Soviet Union. The Saudi monarchy enlisted the support of the religious authorities. Confirmed by the Afghan Project (http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/afintro.htm ), which has collected hundreds of CIA and State Department documents, cables and memoranda, the CIA developed from the late 1970s, ties with a number of Islamic organizations. The objective was to use “Islamic fundamentalist” doctrine to unseat secular governments and install an Islamic proxy State.
Saudi Arabia and the Bush Family links to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda: The State Sponsors of Terrorism
George W. Bush and the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
The late Saudi King Abdullah was known to have supported and financed Al Qaeda in liaison with the Washington. Saudi intelligence played a key role in this regard.
The House of Saud provided and continues to provide financial aid to the terrorists. And so does the bin Laden family. According to The Washington based CATO Institute (November 2001) Saudi Arabia is a “prime sponsor of terrorism”.
The U.S. government has warned that it will treat regimes that harbor or assist terrorist organizations the same way that it treats the organizations themselves. Yet if Washington is serious about that policy, it ought to regard Saudi Arabia as a State sponsor of international terrorism. Indeed, that country should have been included for years on the U.S. State Department’s annual list of governments guilty of sponsoring terrorism.
Image right: George W. Bush and the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
The Insidious Relationship between the Bush and bin Laden Families
Now let us turn our attention to the relationship between the Bush and bin Laden families.
The Bushes and bin Ladens are long-time friends. This relationship goes back to George H. W. Bush, who served as head of the CIA in the Ford administration, before becoming Vice President under the Reagan administration and President of the United States (1989-1993).
George W. Bush Junior had business dealings in the oil industry dating back to the late 1970s, at the time when his father Bush Senior was head of the CIA
The Bush-bin Laden Relationship: Flash Forward to September 10, 2001
Despite his family ties and links to the Royal Saudi household, Osama bin Laden was officially considered ”a disgrace” to members of the bin Laden family, who reluctantly provided him with “pocket money”, which was used to develop Al Qaeda (The Base). He was referred to as a “Black Sheep”.
Its all part of a “good guys project” of going after Osama, the “Black Sheep”, and waging the “Global War on Terrorism”.
There is nothing wrong, therefore, in socializing and doing business with family members of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, including the late Salem bin Laden and Shafiq bin Laden of the Carlyle Group.
Flash Forward to September 10, 2001. The Bush-bin Laden Relationship prevails. Confirmed by the Washington Post, “fellow investors” of the Carlyle Group Osama’s brother Shafiq bin Laden and former President H.G.W. Bush met at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on September 10, 2001, one day before 9/11,
It didn’t help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden [Shafiq bin Laden]. Former president Bush [senior, see image below], a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. (Greg Schneider, Pairing the Powerful With the Rich, Washington Post, March 16, 2003)
Lest we forget, Osama bin Laden was the alleged architect of the 9/11 attacks, yet his brother Shafiq bin Laden was meeting up with the presidents’s dad, former president George H. W. Bush on September 10, 2001.
A day later, on the evening of September 11, 2001, president George W. Bush pronounced a historic speech in which he defined the relationship between “terrorists’ and “state sponsors of terrorism”:
The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.
Needless to say Osama’s brother Shafiq and members of the bin Laden family were flown out of Washington in government planes in the immediate wake of 9/11.
Al Qaeda and The Islamic State
U.S. sponsored Al Qaeda terror brigades (covertly supported by Western intelligence since the 1980s) have been deployed in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen. Al Qaeda affiliated organizations have also been deployed in several Asian countries including China and Indonesia.
“The Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) builds upon the history of CIA supported terrorism since the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war. What has unfolded is a vast network of Al Qaeda affiliated entities supported covertly by US intelligence, extending from Central Asia the Middle East into South East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Libya 2011
We will recall that the alleged “pro-democracy” rebels in Libya (2011) were led by Al Qaeda paramilitary brigades integrated by NATO Special forces. The “Liberation” of Tripoli was carried out by “former” members of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The jihadists and NATO worked hand in glove. These “former” Al Qaeda affiliated brigades were the backbone of the “pro-democracy” rebellion against Moahamar Gaddafi.
The commander of the assault on Tripoli was Abdel Hakim Belhadj, (also known as Abu Abdullah al-Sadeq, Hakim al-Hasidi), who was recruited by the CIA in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He had been entrusted, with NATO’s approval, (according to CNN) of:
“one of the most powerful rebel brigades in Tripoli [which] took charge of successful rebel efforts … to storm Gadhafi’s Bab al-Azziziyah compound, further bolstering his prominent position in rebel ranks. …
“[Belhadj] was a well-known figure in the jihadist movement. He fought the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan and helped found [with the support of the CIA, M.Ch.] the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group there.” (CNN, August 11, 2011)
But Belhadj, according to CNN has repented. He is no longer a terrorist (i.e. a “bad guy”) “but a powerful voice against Al Qaeda’s terrorism”.
“In 2009, Sadeeq [BelHadj] and other senior LIFG leaders formally repudiated al Qaeda style terrorism and disbanded their campaign to overthrow the Libyan regime.
The breakthrough was the result of a two-year dialogue with the regime brokered by Benotman [a former LIFG commander now in the employ of the London based Quilliam Foundation with a mandate in conflict resolution. CNN interviewed leading figures of the LIFG in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli in September 2009, shortly before the group’s leaders were released. Although they were then behind prison bars, the leaders’ disavowal of violence appeared genuine. (Ibid)
Guess What? Confirmed by media reports, the illustrious pro-democracy former LIFG leader Abdelhakim Belhadj (alias Sadeeq), who worked in close liaison with US-NATO in 2011 has now (February 2015) joined the leadership of the Islamic State in Libya, thereby facilitating the extension of the Islamic State project into the Maghreb, on behalf of his US-NATO sponsors:
If Belhadj has gone over to Islamic State, it will represent a major boost to Islamic State’s efforts to co-opt and bring in Libya’s existing jihadist forces under their banner, which now reportedly includes as many as 3,000 fighters. Belhadj’s forces play a significant role in the Islamist “Libyan Dawn” coalition (which includes the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda’s Ansar al-Sharia), which currently holds Tripoli, and which claims to be the rightful government in opposition to the U.N. recognized government of Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni. (Washington Times , March 3, 2015)
Mali 2013
Similarly, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an entity involved in terrorist attacks in 2013 in Mali traces origins back to the CIA sponsored al Qaeda insurgency in Afghanistan. AQIm also has ties to the LIFG. According to the Washington based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
“Most of AQIM’s major leaders are believed to have trained in Afghanistan during the 1979-1989 war against the Soviets as part of a group of North African volunteers known as “Afghan Arabs” that returned to the region and radicalized Islamist movements in the years that followed. (Council on Foreign Relations, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, cfr.org, undated)
What the CFR report fails to mention is that the leaders of AQIM were trained as part of the CIA initiative launched in 1979 under the Carter administration.
The State Sponsors of Terrorism: US, NATO, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel
With regard to The Islamic State (ISIS) which is now in the limelight, it is categorized as enemy Number One of America, it was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-’Āmah ( رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة).
In relation to the Syrian insurgency, the Islamic State fighters together with the Al Qaeda affiliated jihadist forces of the Al Nusrah Front are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance. They are covertly supported by US-NATO-Israel. Their mandate is to wage a terrorist insurgency against the government of Bashar al-Assad. The atrocities committed by Islamic State fighters in Iraq are similar to those committed in Syria. Their unspoken mandate is to wreck havoc and destruction in Syria and Iraq, acting on behalf of their US sponsors.
The ISIS brigades were involved in the US-NATO supported insurgency in Syria directed against the government of Bashar al Assad. NATO and the Turkish High Command were responsible for the recruitment of ISIL and Al Nusrah mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011.
According to Israeli intelligence sources, this initiative consisted in:
“a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011.)
There are Western Special Forces and Western intelligence operatives within the ranks of the ISIL. British Special Forces and MI6 have been involved in training jihadist rebels in Syria.
Western military specialists on contract to the Pentagon have trained the ISIS and Al Nusrah terrorists in the use of chemical weapons.
“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)
According to the State Department Bureau of Counter-terrorism, Jabhat al Nusrah, the main rebel force in Syria is a terrorist organization, an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
The State Department has issued a “prohibition against knowingly providing, or attempting or conspiring to provide, material support or resources to, or engaging in transactions with, al-Nusrah Front, and the freezing of all property and interests in property of the organization that are in the United States, or come within the United States or the control of U.S. persons.” (emphasis added). It is understood that US State Department Counter-terrorism policy also applies to “state sponsors of terrorism”.
Al Nusrah is financed by Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel in close consultation with NATO and the Pentagon.
The Obama administration has openly confirmed its support for the Syrian rebels with most of this aid channeled to Al Nusrah.
US Senator John McCain is reported to have met up with jihadist terrorist leaders in Syria. (see picture right)
The Role of Israel: State Sponsor of Al Nusrah and the Islamic State (ISIS)
Jihadist fighters have met Israeli IDF officers as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu. The IDF top brass acknowledges that “global jihad elements inside Syria” [ISIL and Al Nusrah] are supported by State of Israel.
image. “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon next to a wounded mercenary, Israeli military field hospital at the occupied Golan Heights’ border with Syria, 18 February 2014″.
The ISIS’s practice of beheadings is part of the US sponsored terrorist training programs implemented in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Yousaf al Salafi – allegedly the Pakistan commander of Islamic State (IS) or Daish – has confessed during investigations that he has been receiving funds through the United States.
Law enforcing agencies on January 22 claimed that they arrested al Salafi, along with his two companions, during a joint raid in Lahore. However, sources revealed that al Salafi was actually arrested sometimes in December last year and it was only disclosed on January 22.
“During the investigations, Yousaf al Salafi revealed that he was getting funding – routed through America – to run the organisation in Pakistan and recruit young people to fight in Syria,” a source privy to the investigations revealed to Daily Express on the condition of anonymity.
While the stated objective of the Obama administration is to go after the ISIS terrorists, recent reports confirm that US and allied forces are delivering weapons to the Islamic State.
According to the Head of the Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee Hakem al-Zameli, US apache helicopters shot down by Iraqi forces were delivering weapons to the Islamic State (ISIS) rebels:
Last week, Head of the Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee Hakem al-Zameli announced that the helicopters of the US-led anti-ISIL coalition were dropping weapons and foodstuff for the ISIL terrorists in the Southern parts of Tikrit.
He underscored that he had documents and photos showing that the US Apache helicopters airdropped foodstuff and weapons for the ISIL.
On Friday the Iraqi security forces regained control of al-Baghdadi district from the ISIL terrorists.
“Iraqi security forces seized control of al-Shohadaa neighborhood and 13 Daesh (ISIL) militants were killed in the clashes,” Lt. Saoud al-Ibeidi said.
“The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL,” al-Zameli said, according to a Monday report of the Arabic-language information center of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.
He said the Iraqi parliament has asked London for explanations in this regard.
The senior Iraqi legislator further unveiled that the government in Baghdad is receiving daily reports from people and security forces in al-Anbar province on numerous flights by the US-led coalition planes that airdrop weapons and supplies for ISIL in terrorist-held areas.
The Iraqi lawmaker further noted the cause of such western aids to the terrorist group, and explained that the US prefers a chaotic situation in Anbar Province which is near the cities of Karbala and Baghdad as it does not want the ISIL crisis to come to an end.
Earlier today, a senior Iraqi provincial official lashed out at the western countries and their regional allies for supporting Takfiri terrorists in Iraq, revealing that US and Israeli-made weapons have been discovered from the areas purged of ISIL terrorists.
“We have discovered weapons made in the US, European countries and Israel from the areas liberated from ISIL’s control in Al-Baqdadi region,” the Al-Ahad news website quoted Head of Al-Anbar Provincial Council Khalaf Tarmouz as saying.
He noted that the weapons made by the European countries and Israel were discovered from the terrorists in the Eastern parts of the city of Ramadi.
Al-Zameli had also disclosed in January that the anti-ISIL coalition’s planes have dropped weapons and foodstuff for the ISIL in Salahuddin, Al-Anbar and Diyala provinces.
Al-Zameli underlined that the coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq.
“There are proofs and evidence for the US-led coalition’s military aid to ISIL terrorists through air (dropped cargoes),” he told FNA in January.
He noted that the members of his committee have already proved that the US planes have dropped advanced weaponry, including anti-aircraft weapons, for the ISIL, and that it has set up an investigation committee to probe into the matter.
“The US drops weapons for the ISIL on the excuse of not knowing about the whereabouts of the ISIL positions and it is trying to distort the reality with its allegations.
He noted that the committee had collected the data and the evidence provided by eyewitnesses, including Iraqi army officers and the popular forces, and said, “These documents are given to the investigation committee … and the necessary measures will be taken to protect the Iraqi airspace.”
Also in January, another senior Iraqi legislator reiterated that the US-led coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq.
“The international coalition is only an excuse for protecting the ISIL and helping the terrorist group with equipment and weapons,” Jome Divan, who is member of the al-Sadr bloc in the Iraqi parliament, said.
He said the coalition’s support for the ISIL is now evident to everyone, and continued, “The coalition has not targeted ISIL’s main positions in Iraq.”
In late December, Iraqi Parliamentary Security and Defense Commission MP disclosed that a US plane supplied the ISIL terrorist organization with arms and ammunition in Salahuddin province.
MP Majid al-Gharawi stated that the available information pointed out that US planes are supplying ISIL organization, not only in Salahuddin province, but also other provinces, Iraq TradeLink reported.
He added that the US and the international coalition are “not serious in fighting against the ISIL organization, because they have the technological power to determine the presence of ISIL gunmen and destroy them in one month”.
Gharawi added that “the US is trying to expand the time of the war against the ISIL to get guarantees from the Iraqi government to have its bases in Mosul and Anbar provinces.”
Salahuddin security commission also disclosed that “unknown planes threw arms and ammunition to the ISIL gunmen Southeast of Tikrit city”.
Also in Late December, a senior Iraqi lawmaker raised doubts about the seriousness of the anti-ISIL coalition led by the US, and said that the terrorist group still received aids dropped by unidentified aircraft.
“The international coalition is not serious about air strikes on ISIL terrorists and is even seeking to take out the popular (voluntary) forces from the battlefield against the Takfiris so that the problem with ISIL remains unsolved in the near future,” Nahlah al-Hababi told FNA.
“The ISIL terrorists are still receiving aids from unidentified fighter jets in Iraq and Syria,” she added.
Hababi said that the coalition’s precise airstrikes are launched only in those areas where the Kurdish Pishmarga forces are present, while military strikes in other regions are not so much precise.
In late December, the US-led coalition dropped aids to the Takfiri militants in an area North of Baghdad.
Field sources in Iraq told al-Manar that the international coalition airplanes dropped aids to the terrorist militants in Balad, an area which lies in Salahuddin province North of Baghdad. (Fars News, February 28, 2015, emphasis added)
Obama’s diabolical crusade against the Islamic State is a Big Lie. While the avowed objective is to “go after” the Islamic state, the evidence confirms unequivocally that the US-NATO military alliance with the support of Israel is protecting the Islamic State.
Concluding Remarks
More than 60 percent of the reserves of crude oil lie in Muslim countries. The Worldwide hate campaign directed against Muslims has a geopolitical and economic dimension. It is part of the Battle for Oil. It consists in demonizing the inhabitants of the countries to which these oil reserves belong. Had these countries been inhabited by Buddhists, US foreign policy would have demonized the Buddhists.
America’s ultimate objective through acts of war and regime change is to take possession, namely to “steal those oil reserves”.
Muslims are accused of supporting terrorism, when the evidence amply confirms that the various terrorist organizations affiliated to Al Qaeda are owned and protected by the CIA, MI6, Mossad, et al.
Osama bin Laden was recruited by the CIA. In intelligence parlance, Al Qaeda is referred to as an “intelligence assets”, which serves US foreign policy interests.
And lest we forget, as documented above, US officials in high office have over the years established direct contacts with the terrorists. not to mention the insidious relationship between the Bush and Bin Laden families.
What has to be achieved:
Without war propaganda and media disinformation, war criminals in high office do not have leg to stand on.Without the mainstream media’s lies and fabrications, the legitimacy of the “Global War on Terrorism” would collapse like a deck of cards.The Criminalization of War is our ultimate goal as formulated by the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War under the helm Tun Mahathir Mohamad.
War is a criminal undertaking under Nuremberg. It is the ultimate “Crime against the Peace”.
Pursuant to the two judgments of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, the priority of the Kuala Lumpur process is to undermine war propaganda, reveal the media lies, reverse the tide of disinformation and wage a consistent campaign against the corporate media’s half truths, half lies, innuendos and apologies.
Bear in mind, war propaganda is also considered a criminal act under Nuremberg. And legal action against the corporate media should therefore also be contemplated.
The Truth is a powerful instrument.
Counter-propaganda in the form of a mass campaign nationally and internationally constitutes a means of upholding the Truth and breaking the legitimacy of the warmongers in high office.
Peace and a World without war is our ultimate objective.
Indict political leaders for war crimes.
Dismantle the multibillion dollar national intelligence apparatus, which also supports media disinformation.
Uphold 9/11 Truth. Reveal the falsehoods behind 9/11 which are used to demonize Muslims and justify the extended Middle East/Central Asian war under the banner of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT).
Expose how a profit-driven war serves the vested interests of the banks, the defense contractors, the oil giants, the media giants and the biotech conglomerates.
Reorganize the system of international justice which protects the war criminals. Implement the prosecution of war criminals in high office.
Close down the weapons assembly plants and implement the foreclosure of major weapons producers.
Close down all US military bases in the US and around the world.
Develop an antiwar movement within the armed forces and establish bridges between the armed forces and the civilian antiwar movement.
Dismantle the US-sponsored military adventure and its corporate sponsors. Bring home the troops. Forcefully pressure governments of both NATO and non-NATO countries to withdraw from the US-led global military agenda. Call for the Dismantling of NATO.
Develop a consistent antiwar movement in Israel. Inform the citizens of Israel of the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israeli attack on Iran.
Target the pro-war lobby groups including the pro-Israeli groups in the US.
Dismantle the homeland security state. Repeal the legitimacy of Obama’s extrajudicial assassinations. Repeal the drone wars directed against civilians.
Undermine the “militarization of law enforcement”.
Reverse the gamut of anti-terrorist legislation in Western countries which is intended to repeal fundamental civil rights.
These are no easy tasks. They require an understanding of the power structure, of hegemonic relations between the military, intelligence, the state structures and corporate powers which are promoting this destructive agenda.
They require a degree of commitment, solidarity and organization at the political and social levels. They require the formation of an effective and all encompassing grassroots structure of networking (nationally and internationally) which confronts the war criminals in high office and their corporate lobbies and sponsors.
Ultimately these power relations must be undermined with a view to changing the course of World history.
As outline in the 2005 Kuala Lumpur declaration under the helm of Tun Mahathir Mohamad: “peace is the essential condition for the survival and well-being of the human race”.
The criminalization of war is the avenue to reaching World peace.
This text was first presented at the Kuala Lumpur International Conference on The New World Order, A Recipe for War or Peace, Perdana Global Peace Foundation, Putrajaya Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 9 March 2015
Text of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration to Criminalize War
15 December 2005
THE Kuala Lumpur Global Peace Forum of concerned peoples from all five continents
UNITED in the belief that peace is the essential condition for the survival and well-being of the human race,
DETERMINED to promote peace and save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,
OUTRAGED over the frequent resort to war in the settlement of disputes between nations,
DISTURBED that militarists are preparing for more wars,
TROUBLED that use of armed force increases insecurity for all,
TERRIFIED that the possession of nuclear weapons and the imminent risk of nuclear war will lead to the annihilation of life on earth.
From Left to Right: Francis A.Boyle, Helen Caldicott, Denis J. Halliday, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Hans-Christof Von Sponeck, Michel Chossudovsky, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
To achieve peace we now declare that:
Wars increasingly involve the killing of innocent people and are, therefore, abhorrent and criminal.
Killings in war are as criminal as the killings within societies in times of peace.
Since killings in peace time are subject to the domestic law of crime, killings in war must likewise be subject to the international law of crimes. This should be so irrespective of whether these killings in war are authorized or permitted by domestic law.
All commercial, financial, industrial and scientific activities that aid and abet war should be criminalised.
All national leaders who initiate aggression must be subjected to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
All nations must strengthen the resolve to accept the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter and institute methods to settle international disputes by peaceful means and to renounce war.
Armed force shall not be used except when authorised by a Resolution passed by two-thirds majority of the total membership of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
All legislators and all members of Government must affirm their belief in peace and pledge to strive for peace.
Political parties all over the world must include peace as one of their principal objectives.
Non-Governmental Organisations committed to the promotion of peace should be set up in all nations.
Public servants and professionals, in particular in the medical, legal, educational and scientific fields, must promote peace and campaign actively against war.
The media must actively oppose war and the incitement to war and consciously promote the peaceful settlement of international disputes.
Entertainment media must cease to glorify war and violence and should instead cultivate the ethos of peace.
All religious leaders must condemn war and promote peace.
To these ends the Forum resolves to establish a permanent Secretariat in Kuala Lumpur to –
IMPLEMENT this Initiative.
OPPOSE policies and programmes that incite war.
SEEK the cooperation of NGOs worldwide to achieve the goals of this Initiative.
Signed by:
Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Prof. Francis A. Boyle, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Matthias Chang, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Prof Shad Saleem Faruqi, Denis J. Halliday, Dato’ Mukhriz Mahathir, Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, Dato’ Michael O.K. Yeoh, Hans-Christof Von Sponeck
The original source of this article is Global Research
March 19 2022 marks 18 years since the US-UK led war on Iraq in 2003. But that war did not start in 2003. It is an ongoing 31 years wars. It is part of a broader war against humanity.
This article by Felicity Arbuthnot was first published on October 9, 2010. Felicity was for several years a war correspondent in Iraq.
***
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” François-Marie Arouet -“Voltaire” (1694-1778.)
I have a deeply held belief that the duty of a commentator is, to the best of one’s ability, to record, to shine light in often dark places, to act as a voice for those whose own voice, fears, plights might not be heard or known. To write about the emotions one sometimes feels when doing it, is an anathema and anyway a redundancy.
The purpose is to attempt to draw attention to wrongs, not to whinge about the effects they can have – and any way, a private life should be just that. If politicians wish to strip themselves of their dignity and allude to everything from their sex life, to using private grief to gain sympathy votes, those with a shred of self-respect do not wish to emulate them. Here, I am breaking my taboo, for a reason.
Over the last several weeks I have again researched in depth, invasion’s atrocities in Iraq, unearthing the unthinkable, switching off emotion and reading of terror, torture, monstrous wickednesses, word after sickening word. Then, Fallujah revisited (1) with document after document revealing the depth of the darkest depravities towards others, which can be plumbed, by “some mother’s son” – or daughter. Indeed, some child’s father or mother, able to shoot the children, toddlers, babies of others, in cold blood, drive over them in tanks, leaving the pathetic remains to be eaten by stray dogs.
Photographs viewed have included many which even hardened investigators have deemed: “too disturbing to view.” This is not a view I hold.
If family members who have survived, emergency workers (when not incinerated by U.S., troops themselves) medical staff, if not shot, imprisoned, tortured, or tied up with a bag over their head) can view, identify, bury with love and respect – or in the case of medical staff, carefully photograph, and note time, location of finding, then number, wrap and retain for a period, before burial, hoping a relative will claim the charred, mutilated, or worse, remains. It is a duty for those with any “voice”, from countries responsible for this first documentable U.S., U.K., genocide of the 21st century, to draw attention to it, in the memory of and in tribute to, the voiceless, nameless, uncounted victims, in the hope that eventually, legal recourse might result.
In fact it was compassion which over came all – bodies and faces burned near beyond recognition, or the eviscerated, the all with the eyes, often, still staring out in a desperate silent plea for help, combined with utter bewilderment. “We have the scumbags on the run”, wrote a marine on his website. “We lit them up”, wrote another, as many took photographs of these lost souls – and sent them to porn sites in exchange for free viewing. And between the U.S., occupiers (now, surreally, re-branded “advisors” – same car, new paint) and what Hussein al-Alak of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign has called: ” the U.S., imposed Vichy government, with their foreign passports ..”, who will fight for justice for the Iraqis?
And, as since 1991, this is also a war against the unborn, new born and under fives. After the bodies and the rubble, the gore, blood and limbs, there are the deformities. The fledgling life, born without eyes, brain, with one cyclops eye, with no head, with two heads, with no limbs, or fingers – or too many.
A biblical land turned to genetic and ecological Armageddon, for current and future generations, till the end of time. “Mission accomplished”, said George W. Bush, in his ridiculous little flying suit, on the USS Abraham Lincoln on 1st May 2003. “Let freedom reign”, he scribbled, after the first, corrupt, murderous, corpse-littered “elections”. Result: “Let genocide commence.”
The U.S., appointed “Viceroy” in Iraq, J. Paul Bremer, dressed for the part, Hollywood style, in ridiculous desert, or army boots, depending on your perception, arrived shortly after the invasion, seemingly believing in population reduction. Reportedly asking what the population of Iraq was, he was told, about twenty five million. His response was allegedly : “Too many, try five.” But then, he had been Kissinger Associates’ man.
As I read, I listened to the great and the good in various world legal bodies discuss whether the Congo and Rwanda should be “classed” as genocide. In July 2004, as U.S., troops were training for the Fallujah massacre, the coming November, the U.S., House of Representatives passed a unanimous resolution calling the tragedy of Darfur: “Genocide.” They asked the administration to consider “Multilateral or even Unilateral” action, to end this genocide. Reluctance to take proactive steps to prevent further loss of human life was “criminal”, they opined.
Seemingly genocides these days are only committed by Africans or Eastern Europeans, not those great bastions of democracy, U.S., U.K., and the “only democracy in the Middle East”, ally Israel. The Israeli Defence Force, trained U.S., troops for the two week November 2004, Fallujah pogrom. (2) “If it moves, shoot it”, was the order of the day. As two world wars, as Korea, Vietnam, the face of liberation never changes.
“Their tactics basically involve massive fire power … bringing in tanks and helicopters to fire on targets … demolishing buildings, establishing snipers on roofs, smashing holes in walls (and) shooting anything that moved.” This in addition to: ” … aerial bombardment and shell fire from large field guns.”
The plight of Fallujah:
“Was not fully understood in the West, save by some of the survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto … they were trapped (like) rabbits in a cornfield”, being circled to be mown down and dismembered by combine harvesters.(3)
The photographs are testimony to the chilling description. The unsung heroes are those who determined to record them, so some time, some where, the crimes would be known and legal retribution sought. These terrible, pathetic images, are the silent testimony to the first known Western genocide of the 21st century. Sadly, it is a near certainty that Iraq and Afghanistan will, in time, produce proof of more.
On visits to Iraq during the embargo years, when there was the silent genocide over nearly thirteen years of the U.S.-U.K.,- driven U.N., embargo’s prohibition of all necessary to sustain the basics of life, with children dying of “embargo-related causes”, at an average of six thousand a month, witnessing the heartbreak, the bafflement at their plight, the terrible guilt was always leaving. One saw and shared to some extent, the unimaginable, being perpetrated in one’s name, then one left. Across the border, in Jordan, the lights were on, the towns bustled, clean water came out of the taps, and the illegal American and British bombs were not dropping. Yet so near, the children were dying, the people were dying, in the name of “We the people …”
Looking through the photographs, reading of the near incomprehensible depths of sadistic destruction of their fellow human beings, men and women in uniform can uniformly sink to, I could also escape at the end of the day. I could make a meal, go and listen to live jazz at a favorite jazz pub, or simply pour a glass of wine and listen to music, surrounded by numerous books, collected pictures and loved items, in a home I enjoy, before seeking the warmth of the duvet and a comfortable bed.
But if the conscious mind can switch off, clearly the sub-conscious does not. One night the nightmare, one was sure was not a nightmare, but reality, struck. In the surreal world of nightmares, I “woke”, to find myself saturated, blood pouring from under my arms. Wondering what was happening and what to do about it, I did, in nightmare-land, what I often do when working something out (though not usually at 3 a.m.,) and got the tools together and went out in to my garden. As ever, to trim and nurture plants, and bushes, mostly grown from tiny, often quarter inch cuttings, cosseted indoors, until clement weather, then planted outside, in sheltered warmth, and further fed and tended until suddenly seemingly overnight, a vibrant, colored addition, standing on its own roots, is ready to face all seasons. But my garden, with its protective hedges, (white flowers in summer, orange berries in winter and thorns to deter the trespasser …) had gone. There were just bulldozer tracks, deep, ruining, not a leaf, stem or bloom left – just a wasteland.
Then, in nightmare-world, in my nightclothes, blood covered, I realised I had no keys to get back in. What if anyone found me in this state? I turned to the front door to try and figure a plan – but the building had gone. I was alone, bloody, near undressed and all had vanished, turning back to other familiar buildings, suddenly there was nothing. Just ruin, rubble and wasteland, as far as the eye could see. My life, my books, my comfort zone, were no more. Just the bloodied clothes I stood in remained.
Like walking away, I, of course, woke up – soaked and shivering. To a hot bath, a washing machine and a warm airing cupboard full of clean bed linen – my garden still intact. The people of Iraq, with their destroyed homes and gardens, fruit groves, date palm groves, or their vibrant plantings on balconies or flat roofs; the Palestinians, suffering the same plight for sixty two interminable years, and the people of Afghanistan in their flattened compounds, destroyed with their scented groves and gardens of blossoms and apricots, live a nightmare from which they never awake.
I thought again of the Iraqi child, whose parents had a beautiful garden, who showed a friend and I her drawing book, before the invasion. One picture had an abundance of flowers, carefully colored, in numerous hues, on the side were American soldiers – shooting at the flowers. “Why are the soldiers shooting the flowers?” We asked. “Because Americans hate flowers”, she replied solemnly. It was a deeply saddening moment, that she represented so many children, who saw American as representing only wrath, fear and deprivation. She knew nothing of those Americans who had worked tirelessly to reverse the situation. If she has survived, she will be a young adult. She is unlikely to have changed her views.
In the U.K., Scottish parliamentarian, Dr Bill Wilson (4) is ploughing a determined path to bring Tony Blair to justice. In furtherance of this, he has now written to Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond and Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, calling for Scotland to adopt the recently agreed international definition of the crime of aggression into its legislature. His letter reads:
“The International Criminal Court’s Review Conference of the Rome Statute in Kampala (5) earlier this year adopted a resolution by which it amended the Statute so as to include a definition of the crime of aggression and the conditions under which the Court could exercise jurisdiction with respect to the crime. The actual exercise of jurisdiction is subject to a decision to be taken after 1 January 2017 by the same majority of States Parties as is required for the adoption of an amendment to the Statute. However, I believe that there is now no legal obstacle to individual countries adopting the new definition of the crime of aggression into their own legislatures. I hope you will agree with me that it would be to Scotland’s credit if we could be one of the first countries to do this, and it would be a fine legacy for the present Scottish Government to leave as it nears the end of its term.”
He commented that, further, since the The International Criminal Court has now agreed on a definition of the crime of aggression: “I believe that although the ICC itself cannot prosecute on the basis of this for the time being, there is no impediment to individual countries adopting the definition into their own legislatures immediately. If Scotland did so, it would be an excellent example to the rest of the world and would send the clear message that we respect international law here. It would also create a powerful incentive for present and future UK Governments to think carefully before embarking on warfare.
“I think most Scots would not wish to see a repeat of the tragedy we have seen unfold in Iraq. This might be a way of preventing such misguided ventures in the future.” Dr Wilson, is adamant: Scotland is in a position to: “… lead ethically in adopting the crime of aggression definition”, and has legal advise which concurs. Dr Wilson plans to use Fallujah as an example of this aggression, but also points out there there are surely numerous others, undocumented, as yet.
As John Pilger reminds, Blair promised that the (illegal) invasion of Baghdad would be ” … without a bloodbath and that Iraqis in the end would be celebrating … In fact, the criminal conquest of Iraq smashed a society, killing up to a million people, driving four million from their homes, contaminating cities such as Fallujah with cancer-causing poisons and leaving a majority of young children malnourished in a country once described by Unicef as a ‘model.’ ” (New Statesman, 30th September, 2010.)
As Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, now seem to be in would be imperial sights, a precedent which will flag a up a warning sign to leaders of ill intent, is surely needed. Dr Gideon Polya, who’s work on excess deaths from invasions since 1950, states, in Afghanistan: “The annual death rate is 7% for under-5 year old Occupied Afghan infants, as compared to 4% for Poles in Nazi-occupied Poland, and 5% for French Jews in Nazi-occupied France.”
The U.S., and U.K., whose leaders have trumpeted the dangers of the latest “new Hitler” in the countries they planned to decimate, have outdone the Nazis. Enough.
Felicity Arbuthnot, distinguished journalist, Veteran War Correspondent, Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization, Associate Editor of Global Research.
