NeoCons and War Crime Trials for U.S. and Iraq

by David Boje, Ph.D.

1 May, 2003

A talk for International Day of Solidarity, New Mexico State University

Located on the web at PeaceAware.com Click ESSAYS

Photo 1 – Ali Ismaïl Abbas after his burned arms were amputated in a Baghdad Hospital. It had appeared on an inside page -- A6 -- of the Globe and Mail (Canada) on Monday April 7th. The picture is also part "Hospitals snapshots of war's horror" By Samia Nakhoul, Reuters - Baghdad - 7 April 2003

Did you know that Samia Nakihoul, the Lebanese-born Gulf bureau chief for Reuters, that wrote the story on Ali Abbas was also one of the reporters wounded when a round fired by a US tank struck the Palestine Hotel's 15th floor near downtown Baghdad, in room 1502. Dead were Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukrainian based in Warsaw, and Jose Couso, a cameraman for Madrid's Telecinco television. Samia Nakihoul and the other wounded were carried out of the hotel on bloody sheets, loaded into vehicles and rushed to the nearby hospital. General Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry Division issued the order to blast the hotel. A French videotape, four minutes prior to the attack until the attack shows no evidence that the tank was being fired upon.

Photo 1b - Reporters carry a wounded Reuters cameraman, Samia Nakihoulout of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel after it was hit by fire from an American tank.(Source)

A New Yorker writer urged a doctor to ask Ali Ismaïl Abbas what he was thinking about, lying there, all burned and armless: “He says, 'Bush is a criminal and he is fighting for oil'”(Boyles, 2003). The boy is quite articulate and his remark seems right out of Brisard and Dasquié’s (2002) Forbidden Truth [1] or perhaps Chomsky’s (2001) ‘9-11.’ [2] Yesterday at our Peace Vigil a group of pro-war demonstrators assembled with flags, ribbons and signs. One sign answered the picture I held up of Ali. The sign read, "It is not about the Oil, It is about 9-11." Pro-war people actually believe what CNN tells them.  The raw statistics are shocking. The U.S. military carried out a plan that NeoCons had in place before Bush was elected, and within the first days of the war, they carried it out by securing 980 oil wells to feed the SUVs of America. But, at what cost?

Iraqi body count on May 1st is 2653 dead Iraqui civilians, with 37,055 U.S. bombs dropped, 172 coalition fatalities, 6,779 dead Iraqi soldiers, 9,200 Iraq soldiers are POWs, all at a cost per taxpayers of $1,180 and no weapons of mass destruction found (PeaceAware.com JusticeAware page, 2003).

Does Ali know that this is not the U.S.A.'s first war crime? History informs us that the U.S. has organized campaigns of international terrorism since WWII in Central America, Africa, Philippines, Indonesia, and the Middle East. The U.S. is the only country found guilty of international terrorism by the World Court. Yesterday a woman came over to our Peace Vigil and asked me to read the names of the dead from 9-11. It is good to have dialog. Yet, it is also shocking. She actually believes that Iraq perpertrated 9-11. Like 83% of the American public, she believes one or more Iraqis flew the hijacked planes and that Saddam orchestrated the plan. This is the power of the 'media' Matrix. I tried to explain that 9-11 was a result of NeoCon strategy of getting the Taliban to secure a pipeline across Afghanistan, and when they refused, being threatened with all out war in the months leading up to 9-11. I said, "The U.S. knew about it before the hijackings, and 9-11 was about Bush's support of Unocal" (Boje, 2002). She stormed off, angrilly shouting, "You peace-people always try to lay this off on President Bush." When will Americans unplug from the Matrix? When will Amercans wake up to the NeoCon ploy to use the tragedy of 9-11 to circle the Middle East oil with military bases, to effect genocide to secure the oil.

Ali is not plugged into the NeoCon Matrix. He does not buy into the NeoCon rhetoric about liberation. "It is thus that they intend to free us? Killing us,” Ali told a reporter (Guimaraes, 2003). 12-year-old Ali seems to be aware of International law. Article 51 of the UN Charter says, for example, the use of armed attack by one nation on another is barred, unless it is an act of self-defense (Chomsky, 2001: 66). Since the U.S. was not under armed attack by Iraq, Ali’s remarks are quite accurate. The missile that took his father & pregnant mother, his brothers & sisters is a violation of UN Article 51. The missile also killed his three cousins and three other members of his family and is a violation of the Geneva Convention articles concerning unnecessary civilian casualties. I think the 2,653 Iraqi civilians is a gross under count. History will no doubt uncover tens of thousands, but the Pentagon, as you know, does not count the civilian dead.

The Iraq invasion is a preemptive strike which violates international law, and is therefore a war crime.  In addition, using the UN mandate for Iraq to disarm as U.S. rationale to even threaten war, is apparently a violation of international law and the charter of the UN. The war crimes include the use of Depleted Uranium and Cluster Bombs in heavily concentrated civilian areas, a direct violation of international law and the Genva convention. [1] A UN report issued in 2002, stating that the use of DU weapons violates laws and agreements protecting civilian populations in wartime. These include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the United Nations, the Genocide Convention, the Convention  Against Torture, the Geneva Conventions of 1948, the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980 and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 against the use of “poison or poisoned” weapons (see PeaceAware.com Discussion board for listing of sources to the war crimes). [2]

“We didn’t want war. I was scared of this war,” said Ali (Reuters, 2003).Do Americans hear Ali's message? “Our house was just a poor shack, why did they want to bomb us?” said Ali. The U.S.military experts on CNN told Americans that bombs are smart and do not hit civilians or their shacks. I heard a CNN expert describe how the size of each bomb is picked after a calculation to minimize civilian casualties. I think the calcualtion is an illusion, part of the hoax of bloodless war.

Ali is one of the lucky children. This is not a March-April war, it has been a war since Ali was born. Five to seven hundred thousand children died of disease and starvation from U.S.-led sanctions against medicine. Dr Najada says, ‘Ali will need his prosthetic arms changed every few months until he reaches puberty.’ Ali is very aware of the Matrix. He knows that the press is using him to sell papers, in the same way that the evening news uses fear to sell advertising.

Ali Ismaïl Abbas has sold perhaps more British [and U.S.] newspapers and magazines than any other single person in Iraq, with the possible exception of Saddam Hussein. He’s been featured in virtually every newspaper in the UK [but not in the U.S.], often more than once. In Europe and America, by now almost every major news magazine has run the pathetic photo of the boy along with his sad tale. . . . (Boyles, 2003, additions in brackets, mine).

Here is a side to the tale you may now know. When day after day journalists prompted him for interviews and made comments like “they are going to take care of you,” he finally responded, “’The journalists always promise to evacuate me – why don’t they do it now?’ he asked, his brow furrowed with pain and glistening with sweat.” It took from April 6th to April 17th for Ali to be flown from a Bghdad hospital to one in Kuait that had medicine and facilities to treat his wounds.

Ali was wise to the journalist's false claims of empathy and told them to stop coming back. “’You are coming to make fun of me because I have lost my arms?’ he asked. ‘Doctor, doctor, no more journalists please.’” Americans, according to the Guardian’, “ just don’t care about images of bodies torn by war – unless they happen to be those of pretty coed POWs” (Boyles, 2003). Ali is the most effective resistor to NeoCon foreign policy and a wake up call to America.

NeoCons used the media to take control of America's psyche and its foreign policy. NeoCons combine Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. Permanent Revolution is the root of the Bush/Cheney policy of Preemptive War, Colonial Invasion of Iraq, and Evangelical Capitalism?  NeoCons tutored President George Bush Jr. in foreign affairs, since Bush had no prior experience. Bush was an empty vessel. Prior to becoming president, Bush had never left the United States (except for 2 trips to Mexico). Bush's evangelical protestant value set was a perfect fit with the NeoCon radical foreign policy of 'strike first" preemption. You will recall Bush's comment before the war that this was a "Crusade" and that he intended to destroy the "Axis-of-Evil." Since WWII the foreign policy of the U.S. has been 'containment' and is now a radical Neocon policy of 'preemption.' Preemption, plus Evangelical Protestantism, combines in U.S. policy of "Evangelical Capitalism." This is the spreading of corporate hegemony of American corporations that make weapons of mass destruction (Rayethon, Lockheed Martin, TWR, Northrop Grumman) and the grab for oil (Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco) and purveyors of global sweatshops (Wal-Mart, Nike, Reebok) (see Boje, 2003 for more on Neocon).

Ali is now in Kuwait receiving long-delayed medical treatment (Preston, 2003). I think Ali should get the next Nobel Peace prize. Ali should testify at the war crimes trials in La Hague at the International Court.

Photo 2 – Ali in Kuwait Hospital (Panorama, 2003).
 

Unlike Ali, most Americans do not consider the invasion of Iraq to be a war crime. The NeoCons have succeeded in persuading the U.S. public by using Orwellian terms like “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Few know it was originally dubbed “Operation Iraqi Liberation,” but someone caught that the initials OIL was a Freudian slip? Securing Iraq's OIL was a higher priority than finding weapons of mass destruction or taking out Saddam. Most Americans believe that the United States has won a great war. Ali, on the other hand, in my view, correctly calls the invasion a war crime. He knows that in his 12 years on earth, the U.S. has reduced his country to little more than a refugee camp, with a puny army, no air force, and no medical supplies that is being invaded by the most powerful military on the face of the planet. Where is the glory in fighting children, in the massacre of Iraqi soldiers with 1/10th the military they had in 1991?

The NeoCons have used the media to switch American's attention to "Support Our Troops." Recent polls suggest few Americans care if the U.S. ever finds weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The “Support President Bush & Our Troops” campaign has won their hearts and minds. People have swallowed the Blue pill. They are persuaded by terms like “coalition of the willing” and football game images on CNN. I have an analogy. It is as if New Mexico State's football team took on the Las Cruces Middle School, then held a parade for the heroic 'Pistol Petes.' Most Americans are not calling for war crime trials. They are ready for the ticker tape parades and to forget Iraq. Motorists shout at us at each Peace Vigil, "Go home, the war is over." They swallowed the Blue pill and have plugged into the Matrix. Ali was awakened on April 6th, but the American public is still asleep.

Photo 3 – Awaiting treatment in Kuwait (f2.com April 16 2003).

Ali went into surgery in the Kuwait Hospital on April 17th to remove the dead skin off his body. Why did his evacuation to Kuwait take so long? Ali will undergo skin grafting and, condition permitting, be fitted with prosthetic arms (One News. April 28).

Ali has become a poster boy for a charity. I am not sure it is right or proper to make him the poster boy of the International Peace Movement. I am certain that using his photo to make money is unethical institutional practice. The Limbless Association charity, for example, has gathered more than $US250,000 ($A412,750) as part of a campaign to raise funds to airlift the boy out of Iraq for specialist treatment (f2.com April 16 2003). When will Ali get that money? Did you know it was the U.S. military and not any charity that flew Ali to Kuwait. I want to know if even one dime of the Limbless Association charity went to Ali?

Photo 4 - Ali Ismaïl Abbas recovering (One News. April 28)

Ali's story takes some bizarre twists. CNN and CBS ran sanitizes photos of Ali's "angelic face" obscuring details of his limbs and body.

Photo 5 - Sanitized Photo Journalism - Source

CNN did a mini-special on media coverage of "Ali's Plight" on April 15th, displaying lots of pictures of what was called his "angelic face," while obsuring his more real injuries. See and read more about the "iconic cleansing" by CNN and CBS news coverage.

I want to return to Ali's claim that the invasion of Iraq is a war crime. If so, can we start to list the crimes?

War Crimes Partial Listing

Take the British helicopter pilot who came to blows with an American who had almost shot him down. "Don't you know the Iraqis don't have a fucking air force?" he shouted. Did this pilot reflect on the truth he had uttered, on the whole craven enterprise against a stricken third world country and his own part in this crime? (Pilger, Apr 10, 2003).

Former US Army Colonel and ex-director of the Pentagon’s depleted uranium project, Doug Rokke, in an interview with the Scottish Sunday Herald, classified the American use of DU weapons as a “war crime.” Rokke argued that American “double standards are repellent,” since “This war was about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction ­ yet we are using weapons of mass destruction ourselves.” (see PeaceAware.com Discussion board for listing of sources to the war crimes). [3]

Amnesty International (AI) has confirmed that U.S. forces used cluster bombs to attack al-Hilla, Iraq on April 1… 33 civilians including many children were killed and around 300 injured. Survivors told reporters how the explosives dropped “like grapes” from the sky, and how bomblets bounced through the windows and doors of their homes before exploding. Cluster bombs were used in heavily populated civilian areas in Baghdad and other cities. The type of cluster bombs used at al-Hilla, are type BLU97 A, thatcan spray over 200 bomblets over an area the size of two football fields. At least 5% of the bomblets do not explode on impact, turning them into de facto anti-personnel mines. [4]

Civilian casualties have increased dramatically since U.S. ground forces arrived in the capital last week. NPR’s Anne Garrels reports: “The emergency room at Baghdad’s al-Kindi hospital was covered in blood. A father carried in his four-year-old son. He was pronounced dead on arrival. His 12 year old daughter was also killed when a bomb hit the modest carpentry shop the family called home. His wife lay in a gurney. Her beige sun dress drenched in blood from the waist down. A doctor said she too would die and left to treat someone else. The hospital is understaffed as doctors and nurses can’t make it to work through the fighting (NPR’s All Things Considered 4/8/03).”

April 15 (AFP) - At least 10 people were shot dead and scores wounded in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul, a hospital doctor said, with witnesses alleging US troops opened fire after a crowd turned against an American-installed local governor (see PeaceAware.com Discussion board for listing of sources to the war crimes). "They (the soldiers) climbed on top of the building and first fired at a building near the crowd, with the glass falling on the civilians. People started to throw stones, then the Americans fired at them," Hassun said. "Dozens of people fell," said the witness, whose own shirt was blood-stained. [5]

On April 28^th troops of the 82^nd airborne division fired on a crowd of school boys protesting U.S. occupation killing 15 (6 were children about Ali's age) and wounding 50. Witnesses told the press the troops opened fire after someone threw a rock at the school. Eyewitnesses said some of the youth celebrated Saddam’s birthday. There is a ban on celebrations of Saddam’s birthday. Why kill children over a birthday?

A U.S. M1 Abrams tank fired a shell into the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel, killing two cameramen with Reuters and Spanish television (BBC 4/8/03). Later that same day, a correspondent with al-Jazeera, was killed when U.S. missiles hit the station’s Baghdad bureau. On April 8th, U.S. air strikes severely damaged the Baghdad office of the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite network, killing journalist Taraq Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera cameraman Zouhair al-Iraqi was injured in the blast, according to the station. Moments later, another explosion damaged the nearby office of Abu Dhabi TV

On Saturday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said about 100 wounded patients were arriving at the Al Yarmouk hospital in central Baghdad every hour. But as the numbers rose sharply, the authorities lost count. According to the ICRC, “[O]ne emergency arrival follows the other…Ambulances are picking up the wounded and running them to the triage areas and on to hospitals. Some of the wounded try to reach the nearest hospitals by foot (AP 4/6/03).”

When will the U.S. be held accountable for Iraq? When will the U.S. be held accountable for a century of military interventions in Central America? When will the U.S. be held accountable for holding prisoners in secret, harsh, isolation without the rights of either civilian defendants or POWs? When will the U.S. be held accountable for the torture of prisoners that are turned over to the foreign security interrogators f Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt?  When will the U.S. implement democratic elections in Iraq? We both know democracy would mean that independence-minded Kurds or Islamic Shi'ites take over the oil fields of Iraq. When will the U.S. be held accountable for the use of nuclear weapons in the Middle East?

International Law relating to nuclear weapons:

·        International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion

·        Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

·        Non Proliferation Treaty

·        Geneva Conventions Protocol

·        UN Charter

·        US Constitution.
(source: IEER)

When will the American public wake up?  “There is no reason beyond choice to remain unaware of the facts” says Chomsky (2001: 69), “which are of course, familiar to the victims, though few of them are in a position to recognize the scale or nature of the international terrorist assault to which they are subjected” by the U.S. The pro war people in Las Cruces who assemble opposie us at each of our vigils are not aware. I have this idea, let's rename "A-Mountain" to be "Awareness Mountain" or how about calling it "Ali's Mountain."

I call for the U.S. to be tried by the 9-month-old International Criminal Court (ICC). ICC is run under the auspices of the U.N. Will this ever happen?  I think it will. On April 21^st, Professor Luis Moreno Ocampo was unanimously chosen to be the chief prosecutor of the newly formed ICC. People once thought that slaves would never be freed, that women in America would never get the vote that human rights would never count for much. It is time to stop the NeoCon foreign policy and get the U.S. under international law. It is time to return American government to the people and take it away from corporate rule. It is time for the war crime trials.

War crime trials could begin sooner than you think. “Iraqi civilians are preparing to take Allied commander General Tommy Franks to court in Belgium accusing him and other US military officials of war crimes in Iraq” (Wales.com.uk April 28, 2003). What are the charges?

• indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians,
• bombing a Baghdad market
• shooting an ambulance
• failure to stop hospitals being looted

General Frank could be convicted and sentenced by a Belgian court. But who did he report to? Should the U.S. Commander-In-Chief be going to the war crimes trial?

There is a second initiative to bring about war crime trials against the U.S. administration. International humanitarian law prohibits the indiscriminate use of weapons, such as cluster bombs in civilian areas. The list of alleged war crimes assembled by Lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Economic and Social Rights in New York includes (Mercury News. April 24):

·        33 civilian deaths after the apparent dropping of cluster bombs on Al-Hillah on April 1

·        bombing of a marketplace in Baghdad on March 28, where at least 60 people reportedly were killed.

·        U.S. strikes on the Palestine Hotel

·        destruction of the Al-Jazeera TV station's office in Baghdad on April 8, resulting in the deaths of three journalists.

Not to be outdone, the Bush administration is calling for war crime trials against the soldiers in Iraq who fought agsinst the invasion. Mr Pierre-Richard Prosper is the U.S. State Department ambassador-at-large for war crimes. The U.S. would offer thousands of Iraqi officials and some ordinary soldiers amnesty in exchange for confessions of their crimes. Does this sound like those cold war McCarthy trials or more like the old USSR trials? The target is the “top tier of trials would focus on the so-called 'dirty dozen' of senior leaders around the deposed Saddam Hussein, including both his sons and some other family members, as well as many of the 55 on the US list of most-wanted Iraqis and others, officials said” (Straits Times. April 28).  There would be secret military-run tribunals held in Iraq.

·        1991 Persian Gulf War crimes to liberate Kuwait

·        1993 plot to kill former president George Bush

·        2003 Iraq war crimes

The first to be tried will be Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz (News.Telegraph.uk April 26, 2003) He is accused of using chemical weapons against the Kurds and taking of hostages during the first Gulf war.

I have a better idea, let the International Criminal Court try the leaders of the U.S. and Iraq for war crimes.

I say it is no accident that last year the U.S. unsigned its treaty with the new International Criminal Court in The Hague and wants it to play no role in holding Iraq war crime trials. Nor does the U.S. administration want the UN to hold war crime trials, saying that they do not have the power to impose the death penalty.

I want to conclude by saying I am a Vietnam veteran. I want to say that veterans do what their country asks them to do. I want to say something now to the group of New Mexico military that are paying the cost of this illegal war. According to University of New Mexico (2003), Census 2000 P.L.94-171 Redistricting Data, the percent of Hispanics has increased 44.8% in Dona Ana in last decade.  In Dona Ana 63.4% of the population is Hispanic. [6] Many Hispanics go into military service in Dona Ana, given that this county is ranked 5th out of 33 New Mexico counties in terms of poverty, with 25.4 % of the people living below the poverty line in 1999. Hispanics accounted for 25% of the war casualties in Vietnam. [7] Approximately 80,000 Hispanics served in the Vietnam theater of operations. 20,000 Hispanic servicemen and women participated in Operation Desert Shield/ Storm. [8] 95% of the U.S. military in Iraq hail from poor and working class backgrounds. They are victims of an economic draft. I call on Hispanic veterans of New Mexico and all veterans of this Iraqw war to join the peace movement. The greatest fear of the NeoCons is that the veterans will join the peace movement, they way they did by the thousands after coming home from Vietnam. It is only the media Matrix that puts out that hogwash about peace people not welcoming the veterans. We support our troops, but want the war commanders of both Iraq and the U.S. to stand trial.

Conclusions

I agree with Chomsky (2001: 85) there is a “culture of terrorism” rooted in the United States of America. The U.S. continues to carry out large scale international terrorism that has escalated across the Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and the Bush Jr. administrations. It is time to call for war crime trials, beginning with the unprovoked invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003.

Put both Saddam and Bush on trial. That would be a spectacle that would net the media Matrix more profit than the funeral of Princess Di or the tiral of OJ Simpson. America always loves a good spectacle.

I believe that America needs to look more closely at the pictures of Ali Abbas and the other children who paid the price of oil. This is a war about oil. This is a war about American empire-building. This is a colonizer's war. The only hero of this war is Ali.

Click here for more photos of the Children of the Iraq War.

References

Boje, D. M. (2002a). Oil and Empire: Say No to the Oil War. October 28, 2002. Presentation to NMSU Teach In Speak Out.

Boje, D. M. (2003) Republican Party has Turned NeoCon. NeoCons combine Karl Marx and Leon Trosky's theory of Permanent Revolution. Permanent Revolution is the root of the Bush/Cheney policy of Preemptive War, Colonial Invasion of Iraq, and Evangelical Capitalism?

Boyles, Denis (2003). The Poster Boy. Duck Season. April 15.

Brisard, Jean-Charles & Guillaume Dasquié (2002). Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden. NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nations Books.

GUIMARÃES, Maria JOÃO (2003). The Civil Victims of the War of the "Intelligent Weapons." Destaque. 17 April.  

Hochschild, Adam (2003). A War on Enlightenment. Alter-Net. April 28.

One News (2003) Iraqi boy in limelight recovering. One News. April 28.

Ord, Douglas (2003). 'The Average Civilian Casualty Episode' - an excellent photo essay on Ali's plight (see photo 5 above). See http://home.eol.ca/~dord/ali_ismail_abbas.html

Panorama (2003). Ali’s fight for a new life. Panorama.

Pilger, John (2003). Crime Against Humanity. Z Magazine. April 10

Preston, Peter (2003). Breaking the code, but saving Ali's life. The Observer. April 20.

Reuters (2003). Ali's agony puts human face to suffering of war. Reuters. April 12. See Reuters second source.

Sparrow, Andrew and David Rennie  (2003). Try Tariq Aziz for war crimes. News.Telegraph.uk April 26.

Straits Times (2003). War crimes: US plans new trial process. Straits Times. April 28.

Sulaiman, Tosin (2003). Rights groups plan to probe possible coalition war crimes. Mercury News. April 24.

The Truth about September 11 (2003). List of links to documented evidence of high level US complicity in the attacks of Sept 11 2001

Wales.com.uk (2003). Franks may face war crimes charges. Wales.com.uk April 28