[NYTr] Many in US Don't Realize Iraq War Is Illegal

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Francis Boyle

OpEdNews - October 13, 2007
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_sherwood_071013_many_americans_don_t.htm

Many Americans Don't Realize Iraq War Is Illegal

By Sherwood Ross

Mistakenly, many Americans still believe President Bush's war on Iraq
is justified because Congress supported it and funds it. 

 Yet, as international legal authority Francis Boyle of the University
of Illinois points out, President Bush got congressional backing by
lying that Hussein had W.M.D. and that Hussein was connected to 9/11.

That's fraud, probably the bloodiest, costliest lie in White House
history. 

 Also, to start a war, a country needs UN Security Council approval,
which Bush failed to get. Otherwise, a nation can fight only in
self-defense when attacked.  

 By attacking Iraq, Bush violated the Hague Conventions of 1899 and
1907, the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, the UN Charter, the Tokyo
War Crimes Tribunals, and the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and
Principles, Boyle said.

 As all treaties become the supreme law of the land under Article VI of
the U.S. Constitution, the Bush-Cheney presidency is guilty of breaking
all of the above, warmongering in spades.

 In testimony defending U.S. soldiers who have refused to fight in
Iraq, Boyle noted that, under Nuremberg, "a soldier has a right to
absent himself or herself from committing international crimes."

In short, if given a criminal order, the defense used by Adolf
Eichmann, Hitler's master killer, that he was only doing his job, is a
phony.

 Boyle testified that First Lt. Ehren Watada had the right, "if not the
obligation," to say, "I don't want to participate in this." Watada
faced an army court martial for not deploying with his unit for Iraq.
Watada won a victory when the judge ruled a mistrial.

 Boyle believes, "A soldier has an obligation to disobey illegal
orders," which he says is printed in black-and-white in the Army's
Field Manual(AFM) 27-10. Without Security Council authority, President
Bush's war is "a crime against peace," Boyle says.

That's also written in paragraph 498 of the AFM.  "Any person, whether
a member of the armed forces or a civilian, who commits an act which
constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore
and liable to punishment (as)...crimes against peace," the AFM reads.

 This broad definition would seem to include trigger-happy private
contractors in Iraq.And since the U.S. has committed war crimes in
Iraq, U.S. soldiers are legally within their rights not to serve there,
Boyle said. 

These crimes include torture of prisoners, authorized by former Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld and White House lawyers; the use of cluster bombs in
civilian areas; and the firing of depleted uranium shells--- this last
also a violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925. "It's a war crime,"
Boyle said, that is "not only poisoning Iraqis, it is poisoning our own
troops."

 President Bush has repeatedly said the U.S. does not torture, but he
is no objective arbiter in this matter. The International Committee of
the Red Cross, with supervisory jurisdiction, says it is torture and
that it is widespread and systematic.

Thus Bush and his colleagues are guilty of crimes against humanity.
Curiously, the public reaction to these crimes includes a large measure
of denial.

 If Congress okayed the war and funds it, many people think it's okay.
Besides, much of the bloodshed is concealed from their view. Fox TV,
for example, runs little film footage of the real carnage in Iraq while
reporting endless trivia and gossip. Fox is also continuing its show
"24" over Army protests that the series encourages U.S. troops to
torture. 

 Even though a CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll last June found 54% of
Americans do not believe the war is "morally justified" they appear
content to allow Bush-Cheney to serve out their term of office.

 Is that because 4 million of us haven't been forced out of our homes,
and another million or so killed and wounded and two million forced to
escape abroad?

 Is that because the $1 trillion the war is costing will be passed to
our children to pay by the profligate in the White House?

 Is it because our electricity and water supplies haven't been reduced
to a trickle, our hospitals aren't busting at the seams with wounded,
and our streets too dangerous to walk and our unemployment hasn't hit
50%? 

So far, apart from 3,800 soldiers needlessly killed and 30,000 maimed,
the stiffest penalty Americans are paying for Iraq is the gas price
spike to $3 a gallon.

 Why is it, the more oil Bush gets his hands on, the higher the price?
Maybe Americans would run Bush out of office if the Geneva Conventions
made price-gouging by his oil company buddies
illegal.


[Sherwood Ross is an American reporter who covers military and
political topics.  He has worked in the civil rights movement and
as a reporter for major dailies and wire services. Reach him at
sherwoodr1 at yahoo.com)