A Meeting of Minds?

So what do war criminals eat at a birthday party?

UK Apologises Over Rendition

Yet another example of the UK government allowing another country to walk all over us. From the BBC:

David Miliband has admitted two US 'extraordinary rendition' flights landed on UK territory in 2002.

The foreign secretary said in both cases US planes refuelled on the UK dependent territory of Diego Garcia.

He said he was "very sorry" to have to say that previous denials made in "good faith" were now having to be corrected.

So, now the list of incidents that underline our utter willingness to kowtow to our allies includes:

• The arrest and detainment of an innocent man due to pressure by the US government
• Allowing an alleged war criminal to escape justice
• Removing criticism of Israel from Iraq dossier to protect relationship
• The British government conceding to pressure from Saudi Arabia over the BAE scandal
• And now, allowing the US government to use UK territory for their policy of rendition (despite initial denials).

Doesn't it make you feel proud to be British?

British Government Sought to Protect Relationship with Israel

This from The Guardian:

The full extent of government anxiety about the state of British-Israel relations can be exposed for the first time today in a secret document seen by the Guardian.

The document reveals how the Foreign Office successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial, now discredited Iraq weapons dossier. At the heart of it was nervousness at the top of government about any mention of Israel's nuclear arsenal in an official paper accusing Iraq of flouting the UN's authority on weapons of mass destruction.

The dossier was made public this week, but the Foreign Office succeeded before a tribunal in having the handwritten mention of Israel kept secret.

The FO never argued that the information would damage national security. The Guardian has seen the full text and a witness statement from a senior Foreign Office official, who argued behind closed doors that any public mention of the candid reference would seriously damage UK/Israeli relations. In the statement, he reveals that in the past five years there have been 10 substantial incidents and 20 more minor ones relating to Israeli concerns about attitudes to their government within Whitehall.

The Information Tribunal, which adjudicates on disputes involving the Freedom of Information Act, agreed to remove the single reference to Israel when it ordered the release of the draft of the Iraqi weapons dossier written by John Williams, the FO's chief information officer at the time.

Along with unfavourable references to the US and Japan, the reference to Israel was written in the margin by someone commenting on the opening paragraph of the Williams draft. It was written against the claim that "no other country [apart from Iraq] has flouted the United Nations' authority so brazenly in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction".

This comes on the back of the 'revelation' that the UK government put the interests of the US government before the interests of UK citizens, the failure of Scotland Yard to arrest an alleged war criminal and the ongoing BAE scandal. All of this begs the question, when are we going to stop allowing other countries to dictate to us? When are we going to stick two fingers up to the Saudis, the Americans and the Israelis and determine out own course of action? When are we going to stop being controlled by the interests of others? I for one won't be holding my breath.

Bush Administration Invoke Nuremberg - I Say "Bring it On"

RickB picked this up at Ten Percent and I have never laughed so hard in all my life (at the concept, not RickB!):

The Bush administration has instructed U.S. diplomats abroad to defend its decision to seek the death penalty for six Guantanamo Bay detainees accused in the Sept. 11 terror attacks by recalling the executions of Nazi war criminals after World War II.

A four-page cable sent to U.S. embassies and obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press says that execution as punishment for extreme violations of the laws of war is internationally accepted and points to the 1945-46 International Military Tribunals as an example. Twelve of Adolf Hitler’s senior aides were sentenced to death at the trials in Nuremberg, Germany, although not all were executed in the end.

The unclassified cable was sent by the State Department to all U.S. diplomatic missions worldwide late on Monday. [Taken from Yahoo!]

Ok, why so funny? Ok, well one of the major principles of the Nuremberg trials was as follows:

Principle Vl

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under; international law:

a) Crimes against peace:

i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

b) War crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or illtreatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

c) Crimes against humanity:

Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

If the Nuremberg trials are suddenly the basis of how international criminals are prosecuted, the underlined sections make a very compelling case for Bush and Blair to stand trial for war crimes. Note from part (a), there are no exceptions and no examples when such action is justified. As such, the war in Iraq was a 'war of aggression'. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot apply the principles of the Nuremberg trials when you see fit. It either applies to all, or it does not. By using the justification of the Nuremberg trials as reason enough to execute those 'convicted', the Bush administration is also providing us with the rope from which to hang them. So yes, I accept this justification, provided you really accept every principle outlined in the Nuremberg trials. Otherwise, you might start to look like a hypocrite.

I was always taught at uni never to end with a quote, but bollocks to that I'm going to. This is what chief U.S. Prosecutor, Robert Jackson, said when he addressed the Nuremberg tribunal:

“.....we should remember that we’re handing these Nazi war criminals a poisoned chalice. If we ever sip from it we must be subject to the same principles or else the whole thing is a farce.”

Blair & Co-conspirators Are Being Investigated By Scotland Yard For War Crimes

ViaLandsker

Press Release: Scotland Yard to investigate Tony Blair and ex-Attorney General Peter Goldsmith for war crimes

Press Conference,
Room C, 1 Parliament Street
Tuesday 15th January 2008 3pm

John McDonnell MP, Chris Coverdale: International War Law Expert and Annie Machon of the Campaign to Make War History brief MPs and the media on allegations of war crimes committed against the people of Iraq by Britain's former Prime Minister and former Attorney General.

Officers from Scotland Yard have commenced a criminal investigation into the deaths of Iraqi citizens killed during the armed invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Metropolitan Police are acting in response to crimes reported by peace activists from We Are Change UK and The Campaign to Make War History. In an unprecedented step, the case was handed to the War Crimes division of the Counter Terrorism branch who are now investigating allegations of 14 criminal offences committed by Tony Blair, Lord Goldsmith and others. The offences are under the International Criminal Court Act 2001, which came into effect under English common law, just two days before 9/11.

Two Members of We Are Change UK and a representative from the Campaign to Make War History were interviewed for six hours at Belgravia Police station on the 20th December 2007. Evidence was provided to the police relating to the crimes of:-

• genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and conduct ancillary to these crimes under Sections 51 and 52 of The International Criminal Court Act 2001.
• a crime against peace and complicity in a crime against peace under Articles 6 and 7 of The Nuremburg Principles.
• murder, incitement to murder and conspiracy to murder under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
• conspiracy to commit genocide, a crime against humanity and war crimes under the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Video of press conference-

makewarshistory.org.uk

It's a start, I can imagine even now senior officers are being co-opted to strangle the investigation, that's if anyone is taking it seriously in the first place, but it does not have to be that way. These people lied, most deliberately in order to kill and steal. The first thing to do is report this far and wide, to force it to be taken seriously. Pressure and support for the investigation would help, how might we go about that? More in time, for now let's put this onto the agenda and into people's minds.

Hezbollah Fighters Did Not Systematically Embed Themselves With Civilians in Lebanon

A little while back, certain commentators were jumping all over a report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) regarding the war in Lebanon last summer. According to reports:

"Human Rights Watch's report said it found numerous rockets fired by Hezbollah in which there was no apparent legitimate military target, indicating civilians were deliberately attacked.

The report also said Hezbollah's justifications that the rocket attacks were a response to Israeli fire into southern Lebanon and aimed at drawing Israel into a ground war had no legal basis under the rules of war.

"Hezbollah's explanations for why it fired rockets at Israel's civilian population utterly fail to justify these unlawful attacks," said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division. "Hezbollah, like Israel, must respect the laws of war."

This was given as evidence, by the usual suspects (ie USS Neverdock), that Hezbollah was the only guilty party in the conduct of the war. Amongst the many other accusations of bloggers such as these, were claims that the reporting of civilian casualties in Lebanon was grossly exaggerated. Marc at USS Neverdock has gone so far as to call these claims 'lies'. Now a new report by HRW has exposed these counter-claims as lies themselves. According to The Guardian:

Israel was accused yesterday of firing indiscriminately during last year's 34-day war in Lebanon in a report by Human Rights Watch which challenged Israel's claim that the high number of civilian casualties resulted from Hizbullah shielding itself among the Lebanese population.

In a 249-page investigation, the New York-based group said its research showed that even though the militants were also guilty of serious violations of the laws of war, there was no evidence that they systematically fought from among civilians.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, dismissed Israel's claim to have killed 600 Hizbullah fighters. He said the best estimate was that there were 250 Hizbullah fighters among the 1,109 Lebanese deaths. About 160 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed.

So, the levels of civilian deaths would appear to be accurate after all. Not only that, it would appear that the oft-repeated claims of elements of the mainstream media (that embedding themselves within the civilian population was part of a systematic policy) was entirely fabricated in order to support Israeli bombing raids. This report was itself buried on page 8 of the international edition of The Guardian (I would be interested to know where it was placed in the domestic edition).

Of course, we shouldn't expect this report to make an appearance on right-wing blogs, unless they attempt to discredit it. This is the problem with many right-wing commentators when they use human rights organisations' reports to support their arguments. They spend too often discrediting them, it seems hard to believe that they would then take the report as gospel just because it 'supports' their tenuous arguments. There will, no doubt, be further attacks on HRW on blogs like USS Neverdock which rather undermines their arguments when they use them as evidence. Who decides when a report by a human rights organisation is worthy or not? You either support their findings in their entirety, or you do not. You cannot pick and choose which ones are valid based on political prejudice. Those that do, can never be taken seriously as a political commentator. But then I guess these bloggers have no intention of being treated as serious commentators, they are merely interested in spreading one-sided propaganda.

UK Opts Out of Charter of Fundamental Rights

Amongst the predictable back slapping that has accompanied Blair's 'good' work on the EU treaty, some detail has been overlooked. On the BBC's website the opt-out of the Charter of Fundamental Rights gets a passing mention, but little substantial detail on what this actually means. Fortunately, The Independent has already explained what this Charter entails:

Prohibition of eugenic practices, particularly those aiming at the selection of person. Article 3

What's at stake: Science is seeking to eradicate disabilities by genetic manipulation. It might be possible for parents to order a "designer" baby.

No one should be subjected to torture. Article 4

What's at stake: Since the invasion of Iraq, British soldiers have found themselves in the dock over the abuse of civilian detainees.

Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her. Article 8

What's at stake: A vast amount of data is stored on each of us already. From 2010, ID cards will be compulsory for anyone applying for a passport in the UK.

Everyone has the right to freedom of assembly and of association. Article 12

What's at stake: Anti-war protests prompted the Government to bring in legislation to prevent unlicensed demos within quarter of a mile of Parliament.

No one can be removed to a state where there is a serious risk of torture. Article 19

What's at stake: The Government's determination to deport terror suspects to countries with questionable human rights records.

So, nothing major then, just the protection of UK citizens from torture, protecting the right to protest and protecting our privacy. Pretty fundamental rights that should clearly be enshrined in law (unless you support torture and totalitarian tendencies of course). And what does Blair have to say about his success?

"This deal gives us a chance to move on. It gives us a chance to concentrate on the issues to do with the economy, organised crime, terrorism, immigration, defence, climate change, the environment, energy - the problems that really concern citizens in Europe."

Yes, because in a continent with a history of totalitarian dictatorships, we are more concerned about crime and money than governments infringing our basic civil liberties. Perhaps Blair is right, maybe protecting UK citizens from torture by the state and protecting our right to protest against a totalitarian regime is less important than the economy. Interesting that he also claims that citizens are more concerned with organised crime. I just love the idea that citizens should be protected from the criminal activities of their peers, but not of their elected officials. Because that is the fundamental point at the heart of this issue. The opt-out enables the UK government to place the rights of UK politicians ahead of the rights of UK citizens. Still, as the BBC claim:

EU treaty good for UK, says Blair

They just forgot to add the word 'politicians'.

Keogh and O'Connor in Jail

Ok, I admit it, I have been amazingly slack on this story:

Two political staff have been jailed for leaking a secret memo about talks between George Bush and Tony Blair.

Civil servant David Keogh, 50, from Northampton, was found guilty of two offences under the Official Secrets Act and jailed for six months.

The memo recorded Oval Office talks between Mr Bush and Mr Blair about Iraq in 2004, the court was told.

Luckily, RickB has been much more on the ball than I have. Another nail in the coffin of Blair's legacy.

Reap What You Sow

A survey of US combat troops deployed in Iraq has found that one in 10 said they mistreated civilians and more than a third condoned torture to save the life of a comrade, a report said Friday.

The study by an army mental health advisory team found continuing problems with morale and that acute mental health issues were more prevalent among troops with lengthening tours or on their second and third deployment to Iraq. "They looked under every rock, and what they found was not always easy to look at," said Ward Casscells, the Pentagon's health affairs chief.

For the first time ever, a sampling of soldiers and marines in combat units were questioned on issues of character, and their answers suggested hardened attitudes toward civilians among front line troops:

-- About 10 percent of soldiers surveyed reported mistreating non-combatants or damaging their property when it was not necessary;

-- Less than half of the soldiers and marines would report a team member for unethical behavior;

-- More than a third of all soldiers and marines reported that torture should be allowed to save the life of a fellow soldier or marine.

Major General Gale Pollock, the army's acting surgeon general, sought to make a distinction between soldiers' thoughts about torture and their actions.

"These men and women have been seeing their friends injured and I think that having that thought is normal," she said at a Pentagon press conference.

"But what it speaks to is the leadership that the military is providing, because they're not acting on those thoughts. They're not torturing the people," she said.

The team surveyed 1,320 soldiers and 447 marines between August and October 2006 in Iraq. Although the report was completed in November, it was only released Friday in censored form after its findings began to leak to the press. The study found that morale among soldiers was worse than among marines, which it said was explained in part by the marines' shorter six month tours.

The team recommended that the army's yearlong tours in Iraq either be shortened, or that soldiers be given 18 to 36 months between deployment to recover. Instead, the army is moving in the opposite direction, extending tours to 15 months to keep pace with a surge in forces. The army is struggling to allow units a year at home between deployments.-

Well apart form the propaganda they try and use this report for I have just one thing to add, wait until they get home, when the aftercare fails, when the spousal abuse starts, when the death by cop starts, when the hate crimes against muslims start. There is a talking point that they can't leave Iraq because the terrorists will follow them back to the US, the sad truth is it's the damaged human beings in their own military who will bring the terror home.

How To Stop Civilian Casualties

Don't report them! Yep it was easy really.

George W. Bush appears on Charlie Rose and asserts as fact that sectarian violence was down in Baghdad-

What a relief, oh wait:-

"Unlike previous reports, the new UNAMI Quarterly Human Rights report does not contain official statistics of violent deaths regularly gathered by the Ministry of Health and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad," according to a statement delivered by Michèle Montas, Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. "This is because the Iraqi Government decided not to make such data available to UNAMI."-

-"Is it just a coincidence that when we've established benchmarks for the Iraqi government to show they are in control of the security situation, they withhold the only evidence that might hold the answer?" -

Genius! If a tree is blown up in a forest and the defenestration figures are withheld, the surge works!-

Human Rights Watch's Whitson said that the move by the Iraqi government to hold up the statistics was similar to American policy on gathering wartime civilian death data. "They're just taking a page from the US on this," she argued. "In the 1991 Gulf War, the US kept records of civilian casualties, but in this war, they've refused to do it. Parties to the conflict have a legal duty to keep this information because it goes directly to evidence on the impact of war. How can you pretend to be protecting civilians if you're not keeping records?

-the McClatchy-Tribune Newspapers reported yesterday that the Bush administration is no longer counting deaths from car bombings in its civilian fatality estimates.
"Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims," wrote the news service's Nancy Youssef. "President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. 'If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory,' he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose."-

David Keogh & Leo O’Connor Are Heroes

In domestic reporting of this case it seems our MSM is going to pussy foot around the case, David Keogh and Leo O'Connor leaked a memo that showed Bush wanting to bomb the Al Jazeera TV stations HQ (in Qatar, not in Iraq, ie. he wanted to attack a civilian target in a whole other country) and discussion of the blitz on Fallujah. In other words they leaked evidence of the planning of war crimes:-

"My concern is that the only conspiracy surrounding this was a conspiracy to level Fallujah," said Mr Kilfoyle. "He [Mr Blair] would say 'conspiracy theory'. That's been the American line and now he's adopting it. But if it is so fantastical, why are they prosecuting these two people this week?

"I am in no doubt that there was a mention of Fallujah. I was made aware of the contents by Mr Clarke. He and I sat down and talked about the contents of it because he was seeking my advice on what to do with it-

Blair is now doing his masters bidding like a good 51st client state bitch and trying to fuck these public spirited men over in closed court. If you want to follow this case you will need to use overseas media and some trusty blogs:-

LONDON: An ex-government official and a political researcher went on trial Wednesday for allegedly leaking a classified memo in which U.S. President George W. Bush reportedly referred to bombing Qatar-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera.

David Keogh, 50, a former government encryption specialist, and ex-parliamentary researcher Leo O'Connor, 44, are accused of violating Britain's Official Secrets Act.

Keogh is alleged to have passed the memo to O'Connor, who in turn placed it in a file he handed to his boss Tony Clarke, then a legislator who had voted against Britain's decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The document, marked "Secret-Personal" was intended to be restricted to senior officials and written by an adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair's staff.

Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper previously has reported that the memo revealed details of a conversation between Bush and Blair at the White House on April 16, 2004.

According to the newspaper, Blair argued against Bush's suggestion of bombing Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The Daily Mirror said its sources disagreed on whether Bush's suggestion was serious.

Blair has said he had no information about any proposed U.S. action against Al-Jazeera, and the White House called the claims "outlandish and inconceivable."

Prosecutor David Perry said the record of the leaders' meeting was sensitive and was concerned with policy toward Iraq.

He said contents of the memo would not be read in open court. Because of the sensitive nature of the details, the document would be seen by jurors and discussed in a private session, closed to the press and public, Perry said.

Perry told the court that the meeting between Bush and Blair took place while the Coalition Provisional Authority still was acting as administrator in postwar Iraq — "against the background of the insurgency in Iraq at a time when British citizens, both military personnel and civilians were in that country."

Discussions ranged over a number sensitive issues, he said, and included "information about this nation's defense interests and this nation's international relations."

Blair's foreign policy secretary drafted a memo about the meeting that later was circulated to officials in London, Washington, the U.N. and Iraq — including Britain's MI6 spy agency.

Keogh worked at a government communications unit that handled sensitive documents and intelligence, passing them on to British diplomats based overseas via secure methods.

Perry said Keogh received a faxed copy of the memo on April 16 and made his own copy of the document, later passing it to O'Connor. Clarke, no longer a lawmaker, alerted authorities when he discovered the memo among paperwork from O'Connor.

Prosecutors have not yet outlined how O'Connor allegedly passed the memo to Clarke. He has denied handing it over, telling police it may have been given to the lawmaker because of his critical views of the Iraq invasion.

Officials later were able to use scientific tests — examining folds and markings from fax machines — to establish that the leaked memo had been a copy handled by Keogh, Perry said.

Keogh denies two charges of making a damaging disclosure of part of a government document. O'Connor denies a charge of making a damaging disclosure of a document passed to him illegally.-

This prosecution does not serve the people it serves the state, so come on jury members, tell 'em to get fucked, innocent verdicts all round. Then straight to the Media to tell them all about the case and the memo.

Children Of War

About 70% of primary school students in a Baghdad neighborhood suffer symptoms of trauma-related stress such as bed-wetting or stuttering, according to a survey by the Iraqi Ministry of Health. Many Iraqi children have to pass dead bodies on the street as they walk to school in the morning, according to a separate report last week by the International Red Cross. Others have seen relatives killed or have been injured in mortar or bomb attacks.

"Some of these children are suffering one trauma after another, and it's severely damaging their development," said Said Al-Hashimi, a psychiatrist who teaches at Mustansiriya Medical School and runs a private clinic in west Baghdad. "We're not certain what will become of the next generation, even if there is peace one day," Al-Hashimi said.

The low- to middle-income neighborhood is inhabited by a mix of Shiites and Sunni Arabs. Author of the study, Mohammed Al-Aboudi said he believes the sample was broadly representative of conditions throughout the capital.-

This is not surprising this is what war is, which makes it the ultimate crime to choose to attack another country.
h/t Mia Culpa

Possible ICC Investigation of Blair?

How the hell did I miss this one?? Guess it's because I don't read the Telegraph. On Saturday, the paper reported that:

Tony Blair faces the prospect of an International Criminal Court investigation for alleged coalition war crimes in Iraq.

The court's chief prosecutor told The Sunday Telegraph that he would be willing to launch an inquiry and could envisage a scenario in which the Prime Minister and American President George W Bush could one day face charges at The Hague.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo urged Arab countries, particularly Iraq, to sign up to the court to enable allegations against the West to be pursued. Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations said that his country was actively considering signing up.