It is essentially common knowledge that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States. Iraq possessed no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and had no connection to al-Qaeda or 9/11, thus, discrediting the Bush administration’s justifications for war. Since the invasion was not authorized by the United Nations Security Council nor waged in self-defense against an imminent threat, the invasion of Iraq was an unlawful use of force (see Art. 39 and 51 of the Charter of the United Nations). In other words, the war in Iraq was a crime against peace and a war of aggression. The Nuremberg Principles (Art. 6) define “crime against peace” as “namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing”. The Judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal famously stated that “to initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Upon waging war with another country, the consequences of that initial act of aggression are various forms of human suffering. This includes, but is not limited to, torture, rape, mass murder, and the intentional or unintentional killing of civilians. This has evil has manifested in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Tag Archives: war crimes
Rally Against War Crimes speech (featuring Noam Chomsky, Oct. 4, 2009)
Forty years ago, on April 3, 1969, more than 800 people met in Stanford University’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium to form what became known as the April Third Movement (A3M). This movement called upon Stanford and the Stanford Research Institute, which was owned by the university, to halt chemical and biological warfare research, classified research and other programs related to the Vietnam War. The April Third Movement was more than just an activist movement that took place at Stanford. It was part of a national youth movement that mobilized against America’s colonial and atrocious war in Southeast Asia. This movement occurred on university campuses across America, in which students organized sit-ins, teach-ins and rallies, printed flyers and occupied buildings to express moral outrage against and put an end to the war in Vietnam. Through their hard work and passionate organizing, Stanford students were successful in eliminating classified research at Stanford and contributed to the popular movement that ended the Vietnam War. Read the rest of this entry »
Washington Post (Incorrectly) Asserts that Torture Worked
Trying to provide a justification for the effectiveness of torture, the Washington Post published an article, on August 29, called “How a Detainee Became An Asset: Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding”. The article’s main argument can summed up in these paragraphs:
“After enduring the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency’s secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called ‘terrorist tutorials.’…
These scenes provide previously unpublicized details about the transformation of the man known to U.S. officials as KSM from an avowed and truculent enemy of the United States into what the CIA called its ‘preeminent source’ on al-Qaeda. This reversal occurred after Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning and prolonged sleep deprivation, among other harsh interrogation techniques….
[F]or for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general’s report and other documents released this week indicate.”
Blues African 