OMNI
WAR CRIMES
NEWSLETTER #6, May 5, 2016.
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace,
Justice, and Ecology.
(#1 Oct. 8,
2011; #2 Nov. 25, 2011; #3 March 7, 2012; #4 Oct. 4, 2012; #5 June 8, 2013).
What’s at stake: Whether world
populations are disposable, a good
word for US bipartisan foreign policy. http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/25920-disposable-life
"From 1945 to the end of the century, the United States attempted
to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30
populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes. In
the process, the US caused the end of life for several million people, and
condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."
William Blum, Rogue State, p.2. Blum gives
additional details in Killing Hope.
"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."
- Robert H. Jackson , U.S. Prosecutor, Nuremberg
See: International
Justice Day/ICC Newsletter, War on/of
Terror, Victims, individual wars, UN Torture Awareness Month, UN International Day
in Support of Victims of Torture, and other newsletters.
Nos.
2-5 at end.
Finding
OMNI’s Newsletters, Blog, Index
Contents War
Crimes Newsletter #6,
May 5, 2016
United
States
Gordon, American Nuremberg
Commentary from TomDispatch via Tikkun
Chomsky, Invasion of Iraq
Textbook Example of War Crimes
Cohen, From Hiroshima to Vietnam
Davies, “From Ohlendorf to Obama”
Ashtari on Clarke: Bush Committed
War Crimes
Benjamin Ferencz Nuremberg
Prosecutor, Google Search
Pierce: Cheney: Zombie War
Criminal
Kissinger Won the Truman Award?
and Some Commentary
Goodman, War Profiteers
World
See
newsletters on wars—Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Drones, more.
South Sudan War Crimes
See Sam Totten (recent recipient
of a Giraffe Award)
US WAR CRIMES AND CRIMINALS
American Nuremberg:
The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial
for Post-9/11 War Crimes by Rebecca Gordon. Hot Books/Skyhorse Publishing, 2016.
From the book cover: No subject is more hotly debated than the
extreme measures that our government has taken after 9/11 in the name of
national security. Torture, extraordinary rendition, drone assassinations,
secret detention centers (or “black sites”), massive surveillance of citizens.
But while the press occasionally exposes the dark side of the war on terror and
congressional investigators sometimes raise alarms about the abuses committed
by U.S. intelligence agencies and armed forces, no high U.S. official has been
prosecuted for these violations – which many legal observers around the world
consider war crimes.
The United States helped establish the international principles guiding the prosecution of war crimes – starting with the Nuremberg tribunal following World War II, when Nazi officials were held accountable for their crimes against humanity. But the American government and legal system have consistently refused to apply these same principles to our own officials. Now Rebecca Gordon takes on the explosive task of “indicting” the officials who – in a just society – should be put on trial for war crimes. Some might dismiss this as a symbolic exercise. But what is at stake here is the very soul of the nation.
The United States helped establish the international principles guiding the prosecution of war crimes – starting with the Nuremberg tribunal following World War II, when Nazi officials were held accountable for their crimes against humanity. But the American government and legal system have consistently refused to apply these same principles to our own officials. Now Rebecca Gordon takes on the explosive task of “indicting” the officials who – in a just society – should be put on trial for war crimes. Some might dismiss this as a symbolic exercise. But what is at stake here is the very soul of the nation.
American Nuremberg by Rebecca
Gordon.
From the Introduction: No subject is more hotly debated than the
extreme measures that our government has taken after 9/11 in the name of
national security. Torture, extraordinary rendition, drone assassinations,
secret detention centers (or “black sites”), massive surveillance of citizens.
But while the press occasionally exposes the dark side of the war on terror and
congressional investigators sometimes raise alarms about the abuses committed
by U.S. intelligence agencies and armed forces, no high U.S. official has been
prosecuted for these violations – which many legal observers around the world
consider war crimes.
The United States helped establish the international principles guiding the prosecution of war crimes – starting with the Nuremberg tribunal following World War II, when Nazi officials were held accountable for their crimes against humanity. But the American government and legal system have consistently refused to apply these same principles to our own officials. Now Rebecca Gordon takes on the explosive task of “indicting” the officials who – in a just society – should be put on trial for war crimes. Some might dismiss this as a symbolic exercise. But what is at stake here is the very soul of the nation.
The United States helped establish the international principles guiding the prosecution of war crimes – starting with the Nuremberg tribunal following World War II, when Nazi officials were held accountable for their crimes against humanity. But the American government and legal system have consistently refused to apply these same principles to our own officials. Now Rebecca Gordon takes on the explosive task of “indicting” the officials who – in a just society – should be put on trial for war crimes. Some might dismiss this as a symbolic exercise. But what is at stake here is the very soul of the nation.
You can read
this online at: www.tikkun.org/nextgen/american-war-crimes-that-still-ought-to-be-prosecuted 4-25-16
American
War Crimes That Still Ought to Be Prosecuted
Let’s take a moment to think about the
ultimate strangeness of our American world. In recent months, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have offered a range of
hair-raising suggestions: as president, one or the other of them might order
the U.S. military and the CIA to commit acts that would include the
waterboarding of terror suspects (or “a hell of a lot worse”), the killing of the relatives of terrorists,
and the carpet bombing of parts of Syria. All of
these would, legally speaking, be war crimes. This has caused shock among
many Americans in quite established quarters who have decried the possibility
of such a president, suggesting that the two of them are calling for outright
illegal acts, actual “war crimes,” and that the U.S. military and others
would be justified in rejecting such orders. In this context, for
instance, CIA Director John Brennan recently made it clear that no Agency operative under his
command would ever waterboard a suspect in response to orders of such a nature
from a future president. ("I will not agree to carry out some of
these tactics and techniques I've heard bandied about because this institution
needs to endure.")
These acts, in other words, are
considered beyond the pale when Donald Trump suggests them, but here’s the
strangeness of it all: what The Donald is only mouthing off about, a perfectly
real American president (and vice president and secretary of defense, and so
on) actually did. Among other things, under the euphemistic term
“enhanced interrogation techniques,” they ordered the CIA to use classic
torture practices including waterboarding (which, in blunter times, had
been known as “the water torture”).
They also let the U.S. military loose to torture and abuse prisoners in their
custody. They green-lighted the CIA to kidnap terror suspects (who sometimes
turned out to be perfectly innocent people) off the streets of cities
around the world, as well as from the backlands of the planet, and transported
them to the prisons of some of the worst torture
regimes or to secret detention centers (“black sites”) the CIA was allowed to set up in
compliant countries. In other words, a perfectly real administration
ordered and oversaw perfectly real crimes. (Its top officials even
reportedly had torture techniques demonstrated to them in the White House.)
At the time, the CIA fulfilled its
orders to a T and without complaint. A lone CIA officer spoke out publicly in
opposition to such a program and was jailed for disclosing classified
information to a journalist. (He would be the only CIA official to go to
jail for the Agency’s acts of torture.) At places like Abu Ghraib, the military similarly carried out its
orders without significant complaint or resistance. The mainstream media
generally adopted the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” or “harsh techniques” in its reporting -- no “torture” or
“war crimes” for them then. And back in the post-2001 years, John
Brennan, then deputy executive director of the CIA, didn’t offer a peep of
protest about what he surely knew was going on in his own agency. In 2014, in fact, as its director he
actually defended such torture practices for producing
“intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save
lives.” In addition, none of those who ordered or oversaw torture and
other criminal behavior (a number of whom would sell their memoirs for millions of dollars) suffered
in the slightest for the acts that were performed on their watch and at their
behest.
To sum up: when Donald Trump says such
things it’s a future nightmare to be called by its rightful name and denounced,
as well as rejected and resisted by military and intelligence officials.
When an American president and his top officials actually did such things,
however, it was another story entirely. Today, TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon catches the nightmarish quality of
those years, now largely buried, in the grim case of a single mistreated human
being. It should make Americans shudder. She has also just published a new
book, American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials
Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes, that couldn’t be more relevant.
It’s a must-read for a country conveniently without a memory. -- editorial
introduction by Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tikkun's media ally :TomDispatch.com [Gordon’s essay will appear
in the next War Crimes Newsletter]
Noam Chomsky. America Is the World Leader at
Committing 'Supreme International Crimes'
Noam Chomsky, AlterNet, Reader Supported News,
July 11, 2014
Chomsky writes: "The
U.S.-U.K. invasion of Iraq was a textbook example of aggression. Apologists
invoke noble intentions, which would be irrelevant even if the pleas were
sustainable."
READ MORE
VFP E-News, Friday, August 21, 2015
From Japan to Vietnam,
Radiation and Agent Orange Survivors Deserve Justice From the U.S. by Marjorie
Cohn, VFP Advisory Board Member
We have just marked anniversaries
of the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the US government
against the people of Japan and Vietnam. Seventy years ago, on August 6, 1945,
the U.S. military unleashed an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing at least
140,000 people. Three days later, the United States dropped a second bomb, on
Nagasaki, which killed 70,000. And 54 years ago, on August 10, 1961, the US
military began spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam. It contained the deadly
chemical dioxin, which has poisoned an estimated 3 million people throughout
that country. <More>
NICOLAS J. S. DAVIES,
“FROM OHLENDORF TO OBAMA.” Z MAGAZINE (September 2013). The
US political and economic
system of legalized bribery and inverted totalitarianism promotes leaders who
can win the votes of the public while serving the interests of the wealthy
(e.g., a militarized budget) and while violating the rule of law, including war crimes (e.g., thousands of assassinations by drones and
JSOC death squads in Afghanistan ,
Pakistan , Yemen , Somalia
Former Counterterrorism Czar Richard
Clarke: Bush, Cheney Committed War Crimes
Posted: 05/29/2014 11:21 am
EDT Updated: 4 hours ago
Richard Clarke, the
nation’s top counterterrorism official under former Presidents Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush, accused Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney of
committing war crimes in their 2003 invasion of Iraq
"I think things that they authorized probably
fall within the area of war crimes. Whether that would be productive or not, I
think, is a discussion we could all have,” said Clarke, who resigned in 2003
after the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq The Hague
In the first-ever
judgment of its kind, Bush and seven other top members of his administration
were convicted in absentia of war
crimes in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2012 for the unlawful
invasion of Iraq.
“So the precedent is
there to do that sort of thing. And I think we need to ask ourselves whether or
not it would be useful to do that in the case of members of the Bush
administration,” Clarke continued. “It’s clear that things that the Bush administration
did -- in my mind, at least, it’s clear that some of the things they did were
war crimes."
Col. Lawrence
Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, alsoaccused Cheney of war crimes in 2011, citing the former vice
president's affinity for enhanced interrogation techniques.
"Waterboarding is a war crime, unwarranted
surveillance ... all of which are crimes," Wilkerson said in 2011. "I
don't care whether the president authorized him to do it or not, they are
crimes."
GOOGLE
SEARCH, BENJAMIN FERENCZ, AUGUST 27, 2013
1.
Benjamin
B. Ferencz: Benjamin
Ferencz
Benjamin B. Ferencz.
Beginning in 1945 with his prosecution of war criminals during the Nuremberg
Tribunal, the work of Benjamin
Ferencz has
long focused ...
2.
Benjamin Ferencz - Books
Books by Benjamin B. Ferencz. ... depth interviews by
Heikelina Verrijn Stuart and Marlise Simons about their work and ideas, about
the war
crimes trials,
human ...
3.
Benjamin B. Ferencz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Benjamin Berell Ferencz (born March 11, 1920) is a
Hungarian-born American lawyer. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and
the ...
4.
Inaugural Benjamin B. Ferencz Essay Competition - WULS: Whitney ...
As a war crimes investigator during the
liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, ...This
competition, held in honor of Benjamin B. Ferencz,
addresses the very ...
5.
Crimes Against Humanity -- Benjamin Ferencz Interview, 9/19/01
Sep 19, 2001 - Ben
Ferencz has
spent most of his 82 years doing just that. He was a prosecutor for the United States during the Nuremberg
6.
Chief prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz at the ... - Photo Archives
Chief prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz at the Einsatzgruppen
Trial. ... for Glueck, who was writing a book on war crimes,
Ferencz developed considerable expertise in the field. ... His unit was assigned the
task of setting up a war
crimes branch.
7.
Lecture Series - Prof. Benjamin Ferencz
In a series of lectures
entitled "The Evolution of International Law - A Personal Account",Benjamin B. Ferencz describes his personal
experiences and ...
8.
The Prosecutor and the Judge: Benjamin Ferencz and Antonio ...
Benjamin
Ferencz and
Antonio Cassese - Interviews and Writings ... author, and lecturer, was
present at the American war
crimes trials
in Dachau and was the ...
9.
Benjamin
Ferencz and Antonio Cassese - Interviews and Writings
The Prosecutor and the
Judge: Benjamin
Ferencz and
Antonio Cassese ... author, and lecturer, was
present at the American war
crimes trials
in Dachau
10. Browse Titles by Telford Taylor, Benjamin Ferencz new introduction ...
The Well-Known Zombie War Criminal Dick Cheney
[See essay on Condoleezza Rice in #4 --Dick]
elcome back to our weekly survey of the state
of Our National Dialogue which, as you know, is what Charles Mingus would have
come up with, had he composed "Goodbye Beanie With The Propeller On
Top."
We shake up
the usual order today and begin over at CBS. Onetime Louis Napoleon national
security correspondent Bob Schieffer had the week off, and Charlie Rose,
deprived of his Big Table of Sycophancy, sat in for him. The producers decided
that who the country really needed to hear from concerning the situation in the
Ukraine Wisconsin
CHENEY: I
think he is but I also think he hasn't got any credibility with our allies. I
just happen to speak to a couple of members of European parliament within the
last couple of days who indicated that, you know, the-- their quest for the
Europeans to cooperate on sanctions is more difficult than it would have been
because of what happened with respect to Syria that, in fact, they got ready to
go. And at the last minute the U.S.--
And...
CHENEY:
Well, in my judgment, we have to recognize the fact that this is a-- this is an
egregious violation, if you will, of treaty commitments, of solemn obligation
on the part of the Russian government to recognize the boundaries of the newly
independent states of the old Soviet Union and-- and the Warsaw
Also,
too...
CHENEY: And
my answer is reinstate the ballistic missile defense program in Poland Europe that
we keep our commitments. So far that's in doubt. And I think it's a matter--
much a matter of sending a strong signal that the U.S. will keep its
commitments to our-- our friends and allies, that's been in doubt for some time
now because of the policies of the Obama administration and this becomes a
crucial moment.
Bear in mind that this is the architect of the
most catastrophic American war of aggression in recent memory, the one that
demolished American credibility abroad -- You may recall that Great Britain bailed on the Syria
adventure quite visibly -- and is
almost wholly responsible for the entirely justifiable
war-wearinesshere at home.
That Dick Cheney blames the president for staying out of what 56 percent of the
American people said they wanted no part of is no surprise because Dick Cheney
is essentially a toddler playing Army Men with other people's children. But, of
course, the truly remarkable thing is that Charlie Rose sat there like a dog
waiting for a treat -- Roll over, Charlie. Good boy. -- and did not do so much
as comment on the pure bloodstained irony of Dick Fking Cheney talking tough
about how countries shouldn't invade other countries, and the danger to
American credibility if we are insufficiently bellicose in response. . . .
KISSINGER
The
former National Security Adviser to Pres. Nixon, U.S. Secretary of State, and
unindicted war criminal “was honored with the 2016 Harry S. Truman Legacy of
Leadership Award at a dinner organized by the nonprofit fundraising arm of the
Truman Presidential Library and Museum.”
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (April
9, 2016).
Kissinger
War Criminal,
Google Search
May 5, 2016
www.globalresearch.ca/crimes-against-humanity...kissinger.../5358322
Oct 21, 2015 - Henry Kissinger was national security advisor and
one of the principle .... That holds especially for our two most recent War-Criminals-in-Chief, ...
https://theintercept.com/.../henry-kissingers-war-crimes-are-central-to-the...
Feb 12, 2016 - The late essayist Christopher Hitchins
examined Kissinger's war crimes in his 2001 book, The Trial of
Henry Kissinger. He listed the key elements of his
case: 1. The deliberate mass killing of civilian populations in Indochina.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Henry_Kissinger
Wikipedia
The Trial of Henry Kissinger. The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001) is Christopher Hitchens'
examination of alleged war
crimes of Henry Kissinger, the National Security Advisor and
later United States Secretary of State for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald
Ford.
Summary - Publication history - Documentary film - See also
Apr 17, 2015 - The Ivy League's favorite war criminal: Why the atrocities of Henry Kissinger should be mandatory reading. In an
appearance at Yale
www.zpub.com/un/wanted-hkiss.html
The February and March 2001 issues of
Harper's Magazine feature a series by Christopher Hitchens on the case for
charging Kissinger with War Crimes.
www.commondreams.org/.../why-not-being-friends-wa... Common Dreams
Feb 13, 2016 - "If Clinton has ever disagreed with Kissinger because of his past war crimes or support for horrendous
policies," writes Gosztola, "she has not ...
“Christmas
Comes Early for War Profiteers: It's a
good time to be an arms dealer.” BY
LEONARD C. GOODMAN. In These Times. Newsletter
20 Sept 2014.
WORLD
SUDAN
From: Mubarak Ardol Anawa
Date:08/04/2015 12:51 PM (GMT-06:00)
Subject: Sudan: Attacks in South Kordofan
‘constitute war crimes’- Amnesty International, see the report
Important source: Google Sam Totten
Contents of #2 Nov. 25, 2011
Bush and Blair at 2011 Malaysian Tribunal
Bush Should Have Been Impeached
No Statute of Limitations
Nader:
President Obama
“Kill Anything”:
Vietnam War
Hunt for Nazi War Criminals
ICC Warrant for Ntaganda
Contents of #3
Agent Orange
Hedges and Al Arian, Collateral Damage
Tirman, The
Deaths of Others
Haditha Massacre Unpunished
National, Official, Individual Memory of Atrocities
Film: Al
Doura Atrocities
Greenwald: Why High US Officials Are Not Prosecuted
Dixson: US
History of Military Atrocities
Global
Samuel Totten and Rafiki Ubaldo, eds. We
Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda Rutgers
UP, 2011.
Contents
of #4
Why do people attack US soldiers, embassies, and
civilians? How might we stop it?
Afghan Wedding Airstrike Murders to 2010
Afghan Wedding Airstrikes 2012
New Film on Indicting Cheney for Torture
Yoder: Bush
and Obama
Vets for Peace vs. Condoleeza Rice
Hedges: Murder and Sgt. Bales
Poem by Kolki
About War
Crimes Times
Contents
of War Crimes and Criminals #5
Film: Indict Cheney for War
Crimes
US War Crimes Google Search
Reporting Child Victims of War
Prosecute US War Crimes
McNamara: Afghanistan
Chemical War ,
Vietnam War, Agent Orange , US
No to Naming Freeway After Bush
II
Shanley: Madeleine Albright, “we think the price is
worth it”
Sudan Burns Villages in Southern
Provinces
See: International
Justice Day/ICC Newsletter, War on Terror, Victims, individual wars, UN
Torture Awareness Month, UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture,
and other newsletters.
OMNI
For research purposes, specific subjects can
be located in the following alphabetized index, and searched on the blog using
the search box. The search box is located in the upper left corner of the
webpage.
Newsletter Index: http://omnicenter.org/dick-bennetts-peace-justice-and-ecology-newsletters/dicks-newsletter-index/
Newsletter Index: http://omnicenter.org/dick-bennetts-peace-justice-and-ecology-newsletters/dicks-newsletter-index/
END WAR CRIMES NEWSLETTER #6
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