News Analysis - The criminal war in Iraq
WORKERS, FEB 2006 ISSUE
The US wants to cut its troop numbers in Iraq from 150,000 to fewer than 100,000 by the end of 2006. The Blair government wants to cut its troop numbers from 8,500 to 3,500. But they do not intend to leave Iraq. A paper in the US state-inspired journal Foreign Affairs spelt out US state policy as "at least a decade of commitment and hundreds of millions of dollars and ... longer US casualty rolls". So the war crimes are set to continue
During the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US and British states have breached the laws of war (the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg and UN Charters) many times over – destroying Iraq's civil administration and service infrastructure; seizing its oil fields and industries; attacking hospitals; wrecking museums, libraries and archaeological sites; using hooding and plastic cable ties on prisoners; torturing prisoners; carrying out mass detentions (more than 35,000 Iraqis have been detained by US forces since the invasion, but only 1,300 have been charged with any offence); using cluster bombs and depleted uranium; conducting air strikes (up from 25 a month from 2003 until the end of last August to 62 in September, 122 in October and 120 in November); using mercenaries and private armies; and creating, training and arming death squads.
The recent US attack on a village in Pakistan, killing a number of civilians, has been widely condemned as a war crime and an attack on Pakistan's national sovereignty. The Geneva Conventions forbid killing civilians in the hope of killing enemy soldiers.
Planned
The New York Times reported on 20 July 2003 that Defence Secretary Rumsfeld's approval is required if "any planned air strike was thought likely to result in deaths of more than 30 civilians. More than 50 such strikes were proposed and all of them were approved." This is open admission of war crimes guilt.
The Blair government has connived at the illegal sending of people captured by British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to interrogation centres, and has illegally colluded in 210 (at least) illegal CIA 'rendition flights' through our airspace, taking detainees for torture. The Foreign Office has admitted that these renditions 'could never be legal' and that any cooperation with such flights 'would also be illegal'.
The Blair government is responsible in law for the war crimes committed by its ally, the Bush government. The International Law Commission's Article 16 on Responsibility of States (2001) says, "A State which aids or assists another State in the commission of an internationally wrongful act by the latter is internationally responsible for doing so if (a) That State does so with knowledge of the internationally wrongful act; and (b) The Act would be internationally wrongful if committed by that State."
Case proven?