I understand thatLouise Arbour, the former war crimes prosecutor and current United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, has called for an investigation into crimes against the Geneva Conventions during the recent American assault on Fallujah.
In addition to that here is an article I found that is also covers the idea of Bush being a war criminal.
Lacking an actual conventional or unconventional attack on the United States by Iraq, lacking possession of deliverable weapons of mass destruction targeted at the U.S. or its allies, or direct tangible evidence of Iraqi involvement with other organizations or nations plotting to attack the United States, there is simply no case for a defensive war. Consequently, that leaves one to speculate -- did Bush ordered a war of aggression against Iraq? If so, that would be a crime.
Since World War Two, the standard for war crimes has been the trials at Nuremberg in 1945 prosecuted by the United States and its allies against the Third Reich. The first two counts of the Nuremberg trial indictments of the Nazis and German government after World War Two make this clear.
They are concisely summarized by Court TV's web site.
Count one of the indictment was "Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War." The Casefiles says: The "common plan or conspiracy" charge was designed to get around the problem of how to deal with crimes committed before the war. The defendants charged under Count One were accused of agreeing to commit crimes.
And count two was "Waging Aggressive War, or Crimes Against Peace." From Casefiles: This evidence was presented by the British prosecutors and was defined in the indictment as "the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances."
The conclusion one is forced to now draw from the facts that have been demonstrated, is that there is certainly reasonable doubt that there was a solid foundation for the attack on Iraq. A war crimes investigation is therefore necessary to ascertain whether or not the Bush administration conspired to ignore evidence that Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were indeed already destroyed or did not pose a threat. Furthermore, an investigation is required to judge whether or not the Bush administration premeditatedly planned to violate the U.N. charter and Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution and wage a war of aggression against Iraq.
Put plainly -- because an imminent threat from Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction has clearly not been demonstrated by the discoveries, or lack of discoveries, resulting from the prosecution of the war, it is entirely reasonable to examine if Bush lied and deceived for the purpose of starting a war.
it is a matter of fact that in his hour of maximum peril -- even after he was personally targeted by the multiple cruise missiles that started the war -- Saddam Hussein did not use weapons of mass destruction to defend himself or his regime. What other conclusion can one draw? Either he did not have those weapons, could not access those weapons if he had them, or chose not to use them if he had them. In any case, this is prima facia evidence that Iraq was not an imminent threat to American troops inside Iraq, let alone to the continental United States.
Second, US actions inside Iraq demonstrate that the U.N. weapons inspection process was working just as it was intended.
Currently in occupation of the entire country, the U.S. is saying that it has over one thousand suspect weapons of mass destruction sites to investigate and that it may take many months, maybe two years, to complete the task. Now that the pre-war "cheat and retreat" accusation aimed at Iraq is gone, one wonders why, therefore, the occupation forces are having such a hard time finding the vast quantities of banned weapons Bush and Blair swore they knew Iraq possessed.
Yet, Bush could barely tolerate the five months that the United Nations inspection team headed by Dr. Blix was on the ground in Iraq. Moreover, in announcing that he was abandoning the proceedings of the United Nations Security Council and taking the course of war, Bush 'premeditatively' forced the Blix inspection effort to cease its work. The justification for war because the U.N. could not verify the "absence of evidence" now becomes an indictment of Bush. Without clear-cut evidence that Iraq had and was ready to use those weapons means that Bush ordered an attack ccontrary to the findings of impartial analysis. In other words, Bush ordered the ultimate international death sentence without independent verification that a crime had been committed.
Third, Bush made much of the "relevance" of the United Nations in regards to the enforcement of its Iraq resolutions. Through its orderly and legal process, the U.N. put into effect an investigation to verify Iraq's claim that it had complied with disarmament resolutions. That was the Blix headed UNMOVIC weapons inspections team. In his last report before the attack, Blix informed the Security Council that real disarmament of the Al Samoud missile was taking place (in spite of Iraq's contention that the missile's range was not in violation of U.N. requirements), and that no banned weapons had been discovered.
Nevertheless, Bush wantonly disregarded this legally constituted authority, under which the United States had agreed to abide through the UN Charter, and Article Six, Paragraph Two of the U.S. Constitution, and ordered American military personnel to attack Iraq. While Bush accepted the U.N. process with the resolution creating the UNMOVIC inspectors, he gave up in March 2003 when it appeared that he was not going to get the outcome he wanted, ie., a second resolution approving war. The rule of law has little value if Bush, or anyone else, can capricioulsy disregard the means to obtain the desired ends.
Bush acted as would the worst characters in an old cowboy movie: convinced of the alleged rustler's guilt and too impatient to wait for the sheriff to get all the facts, he and his gang strung-up the prisoner from the branch of the old cottonwood tree. Unfortunately for Bush, fans of old westerns know how the truth played out in most of those movies. In this case, even if a stockpile of banned weapons is someday discovered, Bush has acted as judge, jury and executioner in contravention of the 'Code of the West' and everything American tradition stands for.
In summary, simple logic and a recognition of the actual facts means that a war crimes investigation of Bush is obligatory .
By Dave Chandler- publisher of environmental and political web sites
