Text 10345, 94 rader
Skriven 2009-03-17 07:30:00 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
  Kommentar till text 10295 av JOHN FITZGERALD (1:123/140)
Ärende: WAR CRIMES??
====================
Replying to a message of JOHN FITZGERALD to BOB ACKLEY:

 DC>>   the fact is is that Bush and co. are guilty of war crimes.  

 JF>>   What crimes were that?  You forgot to say.

 BA>>   We can start with the bombing of telephone exchanges - 
 BA>>   which acts started several *months* before the 
 BA>>   actual invasion started. 

 JF>    You mean when Bill Clinton sent cruise missiles into Baghdad he was
 JF> committing war crimes?

Yep.

 JF> And his ventures into Haiti, Serbia, Sudan, etc were all done without a
 JF> declaration of war.

So was Reagan's invasion of Grenada.

 JF>   Funny, listening to many  Democrats and the Get-Bush
 JF> -Bots with their on/off sense of ethics, you'd  never know this.

 BA>>   Bombing a country one is not at war with is a crime.  
 BA>>   In point of fact there was never a declaration of
 BA>>   War against Iraq.

 JF>   The invasion was an allied/UN venture, authorized by a joint
 JF> resolution  which was passed overwhelmingly by both Republicans and
 JF> Democrats. Accounts on this issue can be found with no difficulty:

 JF>  ----------------------------------------------------------------

 JF> http://en.wikipedia.orgwikiJoint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_Un
 JF> ited_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq  

 JF> Excerpt:

 JF> Debate about the legality of the 2003 invasion of Iraq under
 JF> international law centers around ambiguous language in parts of 
 JF> UN Resolution 1441 (2002).

Everybody on the planet except Bush minor said he needed to get specific
authorization from the UN before he could legally invade Iraq.  Bush minor
even applied for such permission in the UN Security Council, and  when
he saw that he wouldn't get the vote he needed he dropped the request
and claimed he already had sufficient authorization.

 JF> The position of the US and UK is that the invasion was authorized by a
 JF> series of UN resolutions dating back to 1990. Resolution 1441
 JF> declared that Iraq was in "material breach" of the cease-fire under
 JF> UN Resolution 687 (1991), which required cooperation with weapons
 JF> inspectors. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties states that
 JF> under certain conditions, a party may invoke a "material breach" to
 JF> suspend a multilateral treaty. Thus, the US and UK claim that they
 JF> used their right to suspend the cease-fire in Resolution 687 and to
 JF> continue hostilities against Iraq under the authority of UN
 JF> Resolution 678 (1990), which originally authorized the use of force
 JF> after Iraq  invaded Kuwait.[29] This is the same argument that was
 JF> used for  Operation Desert Fox in 1998.[30]  ...

 JF>  ---------------------------------------------------------------------

 BA>>   The deliberate bombing of electrical generating plants and 
 BA>>   distribution systems,and the deliberate destruction of water 
 BA>>   purification plants and distribution systems are all war crimes. 

 JF>    And apparently Democrats (and you?) are only peeved about it
 JF> because  it happened under Bush.  They were silent when Clinton was
 JF> sending cruise missiles into Baghdad, and his ventures into Haiti,
 JF> Serbia, etc.

Not 'and me.'  I objected to all of those at the time.  Thirty years ago I
also noted - but didn't say anything - that the US government's strategic
forces (the nuke people) listed civilian targets as legitimate 'economic' or
'leadership' targets.  At the time I was in the AF and working in the Joint
Strategic Target Planning Staff, opinions of lowly enlisted peons were not
solicited - and it was not 'career enhancing' to offer unsolicited opinions.

 JF>    In Serbia, the air war from March to June 1999 represented the
 JF> largest commitment of American military personnel the Persian Gulf
 JF> War, done  without a declaration of war.

Yep.  And a lot of that bombing was illegal under international law.  The AF
was quite proudly showing off its bombs designed to take out electrical
distribution facilities - a small bang that releases long 'ropes' of some
carbon
compound, said ropes are designed to short out distribution facilities, many
such short circuits overload transformers - which then explode.  The fact that
these facilities were purely civilian targets and thus bombing them constituted
a war crime was never mentioned.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)