This war is illegal!

If there's one thing Bobby Byrd is an expert on, it's building unneeded roads, particularly if they will be built in West Virginia by his cronies.

 

U.S. : Nuclear components in Iraq

Pre-Gulf War plans, parts found hidden in residential backyard


MSNBC AND NBC NEWS

WASHINGTON, June 25 — U.S. intelligence officials have found decade-old plans and equipment for a nuclear weapons program in Iraq, indicating that former President Saddam Hussein might have been able to restart the weapons programs he built before the first Gulf War, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday.
THREE U.S. OFFICIALS told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that an Iraqi scientist who was part of what Saddam called his “nuclear mujahadeen” had led the intelligence officials to a barrel in a garden, where they found plans for a centrifuge and components of a uranium enrichment system.
The officials cautioned against reading too much into the discovery, which was first reported by CNN, stressing that it was not a “smoking gun” or evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. They said the plans dated back to the end of the first Gulf War, when Saddam was already widely known to be seeking such weapons, and came as no great surprise.
But the officials asserted that the discovery did prove that Saddam was hiding nuclear components from U.N. inspectors and could have rebuilt a weapons program once they left.
Richard Butler, the United Nations’ former chief weapons inspector, told MSNBC TV’s Lester Holt that he was “absolutely unsurprised” by the report. “We have known of [Saddam’s previous plans] for a decade.”
President Bush claimed before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March that Iraq already was harboring weapons of mass destruction and has promised that they would eventually be found.
But Butler said that the discovery of components of a uranium enrichment system suggested that Iraq was far from production of actual weapons. The need for an enrichment system established that “Iraq does not have adequate sources of natural uranium,” he said. “... It has to be, above all, enriched to get weapons grade.”
“This all adds up and makes sense,” Butler said.

 

Greeks accuse Blair of war crimes in Iraq

Athens lawyers' Hague case names PM, Straw and Hoon

Helena Smith in Athens
Tuesday July 29, 2003


Tony Blair and other British ministers are accused of crimes against humanity in prosecuting the war against Iraq in a case lodged with the international criminal court by Greek lawyers yesterday.

The Athens Bar Association accuses the government of breaching almost every international treaty and the entire spectrum of human rights in the 47-page complaint.

"The repeated, blatant violations by the United States and Britain of the stipulations of the four 1949 Geneva conventions, the 1954 convention of the Hague as well as the charter of the international criminal court, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity," the lawyers said in a statement.

"[The accused] intended to cause severe psychological distress or major physical or psychological damage to individuals who enjoy the protection of the Geneva conventions."

The association, which has 20,000 members, said the campaign against Iraq was highlighted by attacks on a non-combative population, non-military targets and defenceless towns, villages, settlements and buildings.

The natural environment was also destroyed by air assaults that were disproportionate to the desired military objective, it argued.

The association said it had lodged the suit at the court in the Hague "in correspondence with its institutional role to, amongst other things, safeguard international law".

Should the case go ahead, the association plans to call innumerable international witnesses, including the UN secretary general Kofi Annan, the former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, and the European commission president, Romano Prodi.

The ICC was established last year with the express purpose of trying cases of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

But the tribunal, which some critics have called a kangaroo court, fearing cases of this very kind, can only act when a country is unable or unwilling to investigate or prosecute the crimes alleged to have been committed by its citizens.

In addition to Mr Blair, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, and the minister of state for the armed forces, Adam Ingram, are also accused of war crimes.

It is now up to the ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to decide whether there is any substance to the suit.

The complaint, which outlines 110 violations of the criminal code, echoes the widespread anti-war sentiment which gripped Greece before the conflict.

Although the Greek Socialist government quietly supported the invasion, providing air space and a military base on Crete for allied spy and war planes, more than 90% of the Greek population were vehemently opposed to it.

Mr Blair was singled out in particular as the focus of their venom.

After lodging the complaint, the association's president, Dimitris Paxinos, reiterated that there were "good grounds" to sue Mr Blair, irrespective of whether his government had "sexed up" intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction to justify the war.

Mr Blair, he said, would have to appear before the court if there was an "indication of guilt" even if, he conceded, it was unlikely that the ICC would summon Mr Blair to testify.

"I don't think that's very likely," he told a local radio station, "but really that does not concern me.

"I see it as my duty to bring the action."

The association, he said, had not brought similar charges against the American president, George Bush, because Washington had still not ratified the treaty which set up the ICC.

Downing Street has repeatedly dismissed the allegation the British government is culpable of war crimes in Iraq.

Upon hearing of the action by the Greek lawyers' group in May, a No 10 spokesman said: "As we have made clear on a number of occasions, the government acted in accordance with international law."

Last night legal experts said that if the court did decide to hear the case it would set a precedent that could "open the floodgates" of similar actions being brought before the tribunal.

 

Is there then, today, a right of humanitarian intervention under international law? The question is disputed. Some authorities argue that the UN Charter rules it out absolutely. War is only permissible in self-defence. However, others see a contradiction between this reading of the Charter and the Charter's underwriting of binding human rights norms. Partly because the matter is disputed, I will not here base myself on a legal right of humanitarian intervention. I will simply say that, irrespective of the state of international law, in extreme enough circumstances there is a moral right of humanitarian intervention. This is why what the Vietnamese did in Cambodia to remove Pol Pot should have been supported at the time, the state of international law notwithstanding, and ditto for the removal of Idi Amin by the Tanzanians. Likewise, with regard to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq: it was a case crying out for support for an intervention to bring the regime finally to an end.

Just think for a moment about the argument that this recent war was illegal. That something is illegal does not itself carry moral weight unless legality as such carries moral weight, and legality carries moral weight only conditionally. It depends on the particular law in question, on the system of law of which it is a part, and on the kind of social and ethical order it upholds. An international law - and an international system - according to which a government is free to go on raping, murdering and torturing its own nationals to the tune of tens upon tens, upon more tens, of thousands of deaths without anything being done to stop it, so much the worse for this as law. It is law that needs to be criticized, opposed, and changed. It needs to be moved forward - which happens in this domain by precedent and custom as well as by transnational treaty and convention. I am fully aware in saying this that the present US administration has made itself an obstacle in various ways to the development of a more robust and comprehensive framework of international law. But the thing cuts both ways. The war to depose Saddam Hussein and his criminal regime was not of a piece with that. It didn't have to be opposed by all the forces that did in fact oppose it. It could, on the contrary, have been supported - by France and Germany and Russia and the UN; and by a mass democratic movement of global civil society. Just think about that. Just think about the kind of precedent it would have set for other genocidal, or even just lavishly murderous, dictatorships - instead of all those processions of shame across the world's cities, and whose success would have meant the continued abandonment of the Iraqi people.
Norman Geras
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Beat me to it, Doubter - obviously we've been hanging out at the same blogs lately.

Everyone who opposed the war and thinks of him- or herself as "on the left" or generally in support of "progressive" causes and values needs to read the entire essay.

http://www.normangeras.blogspot.com/2003_07_27_normangeras_archive.html#105948316257163866

 

This suit filed by the Athens Bar Association against the British PM and other officials demonstrates precisely why President Bush has been correct in keeping the US out of this Court. It was as predictable as night following day that the Left would misuse this court to try to persecute democratically elected western leaders and thereby erode the sovereignty of their governments. We elect a President and he answers to the American people, and under some circumstances, to the congress, not to the Athens Bar Association.

That this outrage originated in Greece is not surprising. I doubt the "Athens Bar Association" would have taken this step without government approval. This is acountry that has been notoriously soft on terrorism for decades. A number of Amercian military and CIA officers have been assassinated there and the host government has done little or nothing, despite widespread belief they knew who was responsible. Indeed, many have speculated that the reason for inaction is precisely because the ruling socialists know all too well who is involved, since they were close political allies. Apparently the government has been forced to make some tentative steps to assist us, since we are supposed to be NATO allies. Like its blood enemy Turkey however, it seems to be a country with an unerring ability to shoot itself in the foot.