Setting the record straight on the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq

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http://dailyscare.com/1549/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-u-s-invasion-and-occupation-of-iraq

<snip>5. On March 7, 2003, following General Powell's absurd performance at the U.N. Security Council, Britain's attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, gave Blair his 13-page "Full Legal Advice" regarding the war plan. He rejected Bush's doctrine of preemption: "This is not a doctrine which, in my opinion, exists or is recognized in international law." He found many other faults in American legal reasoning, and insisted that any military action to be justified by past Security Council resolutions must be limited to what was necessary to enforce the terms of the 1991 ceasefire resolution. As he had told Blair consistently over the previous year, "Regime Change cannot be the objective of military action.” He warned Blair that he might face prosecution for aggression or murder if he went ahead with the plan. <3>

6. Twelve days later, the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, with token support from Australia, Denmark and Poland. Three British Law Officers resigned, including Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the Deputy Legal Adviser to the Foreign Office. Her letter of resignation called the invasion a "crime of aggression.” This view of the invasion is shared by most international diplomats and legal experts. Kofi Annan called it "illegal.” Former Nuremberg Chief Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz, like Ms. Wilmshurst, defined it as "aggression,” the same crime for which German leaders were convicted, and in some cases hanged, at Nuremberg.

7. The brutality of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq has never been adequately documented. The U.S. and Britain bombarded Iraq with about 29,000 bombs and missiles during this first phase of the war. A familiar propaganda campaign surrounding the use of precision weapons preempted precise media coverage of their performance or their destructive power. Rob Hewson, the editor of Jane's Air Launched Weapons estimated that 75 to 80 percent of these weapons struck within 40 feet of their target, meaning that at least 5,000 bombs and missiles struck something else. When they are accurate, even the smallest of these weapons, the Mark 82 500 lb. bomb, destroys everything within a radius of 40 to 400 feet depending on building construction, making their detonation in inhabited areas a horrific nightmare. Even more hellish, Iraqi troop concentrations were incinerated by Mark 77 napalm, a modern version of the napalm used in Vietnam. The Rock Island arsenal in Illinois received an order from the U.S. Marine Corps for 500 new napalm bombs soon after the invasion, apparently to replenish those expended in Iraq. Les Roberts' international team of epidemiologists concurred with reports by the "interim" Iraqi health ministry that between 60 and 80 percent of violent civilian deaths in various periods during the first two years of the war were caused by American and other foreign forces, not by "insurgents,” and that most of these were the result of air strikes. <4>

8. American soldiers were brainwashed to believe that Iraq was responsible for the September 11, 2001, alleged terrorist attacks in the United States, and they have treated the population accordingly. U.S. military personnel receive negligible training in the laws of war, usually one hour during basic training and another one hour briefing on deployment to a war zone. There is no specific training on the special responsibilities of an occupying power under the 4th Geneva Convention, even though Article 144 of the convention commits all countries to provide such training. A recent survey by the U.S. Department of Defense found that only about half of U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq would report a unit member for killing or wounding a civilian, 36 percent believe that torture should be allowed "to gather important info about insurgents,” and 17 percent say that "all non-combatants should be treated as insurgents.” A PTSD study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 1, 2004, found that 14 percent of soldiers in the 3rd Infantry Division and 28 percent of marines in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force reported being "responsible for the death of a civilian" in Iraq. And, since 2003, U.S. special forces trained by Israeli mist'aravim assassins in Israel and North Carolina, have prowled the streets of Iraq by night to murder suspected Iraqi resistance fighters -- what Donald Rumsfeld called "manhunts.”

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1. Thanks -- good resource. nt