"The United States is holding terrorism suspects in more than two dozen detention centres worldwide, about half of which operate in total secrecy, according to a new human rights report.Human Rights First said in a report that secrecy surrounding the facilities made "inappropriate detention and abuse not only likely but inevitable"...Ms Pearlstein says multiple sources report US detention centres in, among other places, Kohat in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia and at Al Jafr prison in Jordan, where the group said the CIA had an interrogation facility. Prisoners are also being held at the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, and others were suspected of being held on US warships."

Regardless of whether Donald Rumsfeld personally ordered the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, he could still be tried, convicted, and hanged. Japan's WW II General Tomoyuki Yamashita was captured on 2nd September 1945. He was charged with violating the "laws of war". The Japanese Army had committed terrible atrocities in the Far East but there was no evidence that they acted under his orders. However, Tomoyuki Yamashita was found guilty and hanged on 23rd February 1946.

AP: "The Supreme Court ruled [on 6/7] that Americans can sue foreign governments over looted art, stolen property and war crimes dating to the 1930s, a victory for an elderly California woman trying to get back $150 million worth of paintings stolen by the Nazis more than 65 years ago. Justices said that the governments are not protected from lawsuits in U.S. courts over old claims." Meanwhile, the hypocritical Bush administration continues to insist that the US government cannot be held responsible for looted art, stolen property, and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan - even dating back three years!

Tom Stephens and John Philo write, "Dear Congressman Conyers: We write to ask that you take the lead in efforts to appoint special counsel to investigate the top officials of the current US Government executive branch and their leading co-conspirators. The targets of this proposed investigation include, but are not limited to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Stephen Cambone, Douglas Feith, Lewis Libbey, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey, Newt Gingrich, and John Ashcroft. The subject matter of this proposed investigation is the conduct of the so-called 'war on terrorism,' and the illegal and catastrophic US war of aggression against Iraq. Specifically, we believe that these individuals and others conspired to commit war crimes, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and to cover up their wrongdoing in connection with these crimes."

NY Times reports, "The confidential memorandums, several of which were written or co-written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. They were endorsed by top lawyers in the White House, the Pentagon and the vice president's office but drew dissents from the State Department... On Jan. 25, 2002, Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, in a memorandum to Bush, said that the Justice Department's advice was sound and that Mr. Bush should declare the Taliban as well as Al Qaeda outside the coverage of the Geneva Conventions. That would keep American officials from being exposed to the federal War Crimes Act, a 1996 law, which, as Mr. Gonzales noted, carries the death penalty."

Joe Conason writes, "Conservative law professor John Yoo, who has since returned to teaching UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall law school, wrote or co-authored crucial memoranda that encouraged the Pentagon and the White House to deny traditional protections to prisoners of war and detainees... Yoo is a Republican stalwart who was among the principal authors of the USA PATRIOT Act. His resume includes clerkships with U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Lawrence Silberman and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, two of the most ideological jurists on the federal bench. Like so many of the highest appointees in the Justice Department, Yoo is a longtime activist in the right-wing Federalist Society, which has bestowed upon him its Paul Bator award for legal scholarship and teaching. He is a prolific author of papers on such varied topics as the Supreme Court's Bush vs. Gore decision (which he supported, of course) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (which he strongly opposed)."

"The concern about possible future prosecution for war crimes-and that it might even apply to Bush adminstration officials themselves- is contained in a crucial portion of an internal January 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales obtained by Newsweek. It urges George Bush declare the war in Afghanistan, including the detention of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, exempt from the provisions of the Geneva Convention... Administration critics have charged that key legal decisions made in the months after September 11, 2001 including the White House's February 2002 declaration not to grant any Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters prisoners of war status under the Geneva Convention, laid the groundwork for the interrogation abuses that have recently been revealed in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq." Impeach Bush Now!

For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core Marine. But Iraq changed Massey, as he graphically described to the Sacramento Bee. "A. We lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot. Q: A demonstration? Where? A: On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons... Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out? A: Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist attacks on American soldiers. The intelligence reports that were given to us were basically known by every member of the chain of command... The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government."

"Nobody needs to tell Kurt Vonnegut to stop beating around the Bush. 'They're adroit criminals,' the 81-year-old literary lion labeled Bush and his underlings... 'They're committing war crimes - attacking a country that hasn't attacked us. Pretending it had. And torturing prisoners and filling countless graves with dead Iraqis. But adroit, sure. Al Capone was adroit.' The pop-culture icon added dismissively: 'I don't care how Bush does, because I don't believe him. He believes himself, and that's what is quite terrifying.' As for Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, they're the ones 'who allowed this torture to go on, kept it secret since January. These are war crimes,' Vonnegut said. 'I dealt with prisoners when I was a soldier. We sure didn't torture them - we were well aware of the Geneva Convention. I myself became a prisoner' of the Germans as an Army corporal in Dresden during World War II."

Some people never learn! Despite John Negroponte's abysmal history of collusion with groups systematically torturing and murdering political dissenters in Honduras, all but three senators voted to confirm Negronponte as ambassador to Iraq. Sure he's got a dirty past, said the Senators - but that's all in the past...he's different now. These are the same people no doubt who voted to approve Ashcroft, Gale Norton and others who have behaved despicably. Most of these same senators bought the line that their dubious histories were "all in the past." In the end, just three lawmakers -- all Democrats -- voted against Negroponte: Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa, Mark Dayton of Minnesota and Richard Durbin of Illinois. They are true heros, willing to think for themselves, and stand up for what is right, despite pressures to take the easy way out.

There is no transcript here, but at around 8:45 a.m. EST on Monday, Don Imus called Cheney and Rumsfeld "war criminals" for their illegal war in Iraq. How quickly will Imus follow Howard Stern into talk show oblivion for daring to criticize the criminal Bush regime?

"Dramatic corroboration of the massacre of Afghan prisoners by the US-backed Northern Alliance at the start of the war in 2001 was provided by American pathologists commissioned to investigate the claims by the UN. A vivid account of the slaughter was provided to The Observer last week by three Britons who were released from the US detention camp at Guantanamo more than two years after they were first seized in Afghanistan. They told how they narrowly escaped the massacre before being handed over to American forces... The details about elements of the Tipton Three's story assumed a new importance last week, after the Sun published claims by a US Embassy spokesman, Lee McClenny, that the three had trained at an al-Qaeda camp in 2000. They told The Observer last week that they had all confessed to this accusation only after months of solitary confinement and 200 separate interrogations, only to have it finally disproved by MI5, which brought documents showing they were in Britain."

Ah, they're going to "find" the WMDs just in time for some electioneering: "TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) - Over the past few days, in the wake of the bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the signing of Iraq's interim constitution, there have been reports that U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq." Is this anonymous report out of Iran real or disinformation? Stay tuned...

The UK Independent reports: "An eminent panel of legal experts is to accuse Tony Blair of committing war crimes in Iraq in a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court [ICC] in The Hague. The panel, which includes law professors from universities in Britain, Ireland, France and Canada, will claim on Tuesday there is compelling evidence that the Prime Minister broke international law and UN treaties by invading Iraq last year." This is why Bush is against the ICC -- Blair wouldn't be the only facing formal accusations -- he would be joined by Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz...

Chris Stephen writes for Foreign Policy in Focus: "Serbia plunged itself into confrontation with The Hague--and possibly also the international community--this week, by refusing to hand over four former commanders in Kosovo whose indictments were made public on October 20. The four held the rank of colonel-general at the time of their alleged offenses in Kosovo in 1999, while one is now a senior government minister... Pressure is already mounting on Serbia to arrest the key war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army chief indicted in 1995 for crimes including the massacre at Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. The problem for Belgrade is that arresting these men now, with the government mired in crisis and facing impending elections, could strengthen the hand of the nationalists... The U.S. Senate is considering cutting aid for Serbia next year unless it hands over Mladic."

"A Spanish High Court judge will investigate the death of a Spanish cameraman killed in a U.S. tank attack on a Baghdad hotel during the war in Iraq, judicial sources said Friday. Relatives of Telecinco cameraman Jose Couso asked the court in May to investigate his death and put three U.S. soldiers on trial. Their lawyer said the attack was a war crime and Spanish law allowed for suspected war criminals to be tried in Spain wherever the alleged crime had been committed. The 37-year-old cameraman was killed April 8 when a U.S. tank fired at a hotel serving as the main Baghdad base for international journalists covering the war. A Pentagon report has absolved the U.S. soldiers, who said they thought a spotter was directing enemy fire from the building. 'It's the first time that something like this has happened in Spain,' the family's lawyer Pilar Hermoso told Reuters. 'No judge has ever agreed to investigate a war crimes case against soldiers before.'"

From the Campaign to End Genocide: "Since World War II, the U.S. has led the global community in ensuring accountability for the world's worst crimes. But our current leaders have betrayed this legacy through their active opposition to the International Criminal Court, an institution aimed at ending impunity for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity once and for all. Through the Victims Trust Fund Campaign, we will show our leaders that we value international law and justice. By insisting on increased U.S. support for the Victims Trust Fund and the ICC, we can help restore dignity and justice to victims for centuries to come." Check out their excellent introductory flash movie below.

"They told us that the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed, and I was very happy. But in August of 1945 I was only ten years old, and I was very, very happy. The crew of the B-29 was so young and heroic, and in the photo they also looked very happy. For some reason, I clearly remember the name of the pilot, Paul Tibbets. Of course I remember the name of the plane, the Enola Gay. And oh yes, I remember the name of the bomb. It was called 'Little Boy.' That made me smile. I was so proud to be an American that day because we had done something so remarkable. They said we were the first. We were Americans. We were powerful. But they didn't say that Little Boy had killed 66,000 people with its huge fireball that fateful day in August. They didn't say that Hiroshima was not a military target, but a city filled with men and women and children and animals who had no idea they were about to die so horribly. When you're ten, they don't always tell you everything..."

PentaPost reports, "The United Nations' chief war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, made a last-ditch effort today to hang on to her job as head of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda... Del Ponte's advisers said privately that Rwanda and its two closest allies in the council, the United States and Britain, orchestrated the move to replace her to prevent her from prosecuting senior members of the Rwandan military. 'Undue pressures took place to push me to abandon certain investigations,' Del Ponte told the council. 'Although I always considered my task as a prosecutor to be outside the scope of politics, I was unfortunately exposed more than I would have liked to politics.'... More than 500,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda in 1994 by Hutu extremists from the former government."

"Former United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix yesterday blasted the US-led war on Iraq as a violation of international law. He said: 'I do not see the action as compatible with the UN charter.' Speaking on Swedish radio, Blix questioned whether Saddam Hussein had posed an immediate threat to his neighbours and the US. He said: 'I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.' Blix said resident Bush must have had other reasons for the invasion. He added: 'An important element surely was the need to show striking power after the terror attack of September 11, 2001.' Blix said it was becoming increasingly improbable that US and British forces would find WMD in Iraq." Will this condemnation appear in any US newspapers? Of course not!

WashPost reports: "Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: 'If you want your family released, turn yourself in.' Such tactics are justified, he said, because, 'It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.' They would have been released in due course, he added later. The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered."

James Carroll writes, "Was the war necessary? ... When allied warplanes knowingly and repeatedly attacked targets that would kill significant numbers of civilians, only the urgent effort to prevent Hussein's mass-destructive and imminent aggression could have justified such carnage. But now the proffered rationale of necessity is being shown to have been false. The 'preventive war,' as it turns out, prevented nothing... No wonder the dispute won't die. The questions matter too much. No wonder polls are shifting away from Bush. Citizens of the United States do not like to think of themselves as wanton killers. No wonder American soldiers in Iraq are openly expressing doubts. A democracy's first requirement of military discipline is the army's belief in the moral necessity of its mission. No wonder, even, pressures of the dispute may have driven one man to kill himself. The issue is mortal: Was George Bush's new style 'preventive' war just another war of aggression, after all?"

"The Red Cross yesterday accused Tony Blair and George Bush of breaching the Geneva Convention over the shabby treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war. The humanitarian organisation said the true number of PoWs and their whereabouts was unknown, family visits have been denied and there was no system in place to monitor arrests or pass on details to the Red Cross. A high-ranking official of the International Committee of the Red Cross said: 'It is an obligation of the occupying power to notify us of any arrests but that's not happening. We are not receiving anything like full information on prisoners of war. 'There is no proper notification. No organisation. There is not the will to resolve this issue. 'Talks are now taking place at the highest level and if we don't make progress then we will be merciless in fighting our corner.'"

AP reports, "The U.N. Security Council approved another one-year exemption for American peacekeepers from prosecution by the new international war crimes tribunal. France, Germany and Syria abstained, apparently ignoring a U.S. appeal not to further strain the bitter trans-Atlantic division over the war against Iraq. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke out strongly against any attempt to try to make the exemption permanent -- which the United States initially sought. He warned that this would not only undermine the International Criminal Court but the authority of the Security Council 'and the legitimacy of United Nations peacekeeping.' The resolution, adopted by a vote of 12-0 with the three abstentions, authorizes a year-long exemption from arrest or trial for peacekeepers from the United States and other countries that have not ratified the Rome treaty establishing the court." Someday, somehow, Bush will be held accountable for his war crimes...

NY Times reports: "Belgium's government reacted angrily today to mounting American pressure to rescind controversial war crimes legislation, arguing that the country had already addressed Washington's concerns. Belgian government officials said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had only made the issue more difficult to deal with by threatening Thursday to find another venue for NATO meetings if Brussels failed to act on United States demands... The law, which allows anyone to bring war crimes charges in Belgian courts, regardless of where the crimes are said to have taken place, was recently amended to allow the government to dismiss politically motivated cases by transferring them to the defendants' home country. This was done with a recent lawsuit brought by a group of Iraqis against Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of allied forces in Iraq."

From Reuters: "Washington lambasted a Belgian law on Thursday which could put Iraq war commander General Tommy Franks and other officials in the dock, and vowed to block spending on NATO's new Brussels HQ while the law stands... Lawsuits have been brought against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon [and] Franks, former President George Bush senior, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gulf War commander General Norman Schwarzkopf.. If these people came to Belgium they could be arrested... 'By passing this law, Belgium has turned its legal system into a platform for divisive politicized lawsuits against her NATO allies,' Rumsfeld told a news conference. 'It would obviously not be easy for U.S. officials or potentially coalition officials, civilian or military, to come to Belgium for meetings. Certainly until this matter is resolved we will have to oppose any further spending for construction for a new NATO headquarters here in Brussels.'"

Erich Schmitt writes: "Military investigators have been called in to determine whether United States troops were responsible for the death of an Iraqi prisoner of war last week, defense officials said today. One military official said tonight there were indications of 'foul play' in the death of a 52-year-old Iraqi whose corpse was found last Friday at a prisoner camp run by the First Marine Division near Nasiriya. Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of allied forces in Iraq, has been briefed on the incident, officials said. The inquiry, by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, is the first involving the death of a prisoner in American custody in Iraq. British authorities are investigating the deaths of two Iraqis under British control, and accusations that British forces tortured Iraqi prisoners."

Asia Times reports, "The Pentagon has claimed that the tank fire was a purely defensive move. Specifically, Victoria Clarke wrote the committee a week after the event, stating that 'coalition forces were fired upon and acted in self defense by returning fire'. At the time of the incident, US forces were attempting to find and kill an Iraqi 'spotter' who was believed to be watching American troop movements and relaying the information back to snipers scattered throughout the city. But interviews with more than a dozen eye-witnesses at the hotel tell a different story. The unanimous rendition given to the investigators was that no shots of any sort were fired from the hotel. Some of the most damning evidence came in the investigation from AP reporter Chris Tomlinson, who was embedded with the Fourth Battalion... Tomlinson tried to relay the message to the journalists in the hotel, asking them to hang sheets out the windows. Unfortunately, it was too late."

"The investigation into alleged torture of Iraqi prisoners of war was dramatically widened last night when Army investigators began questioning the other members of the eight-man unit of a soldier arrested last week... [Pvt.] Gary Bartlam... was arrested on Wednesday following the developing of a roll of film at a high street shop... One picture, apparently taken in a warehouse, showed a man stripped to the waist and suspended high in the air by a rope attached to a fork-lift truck. A soldier driving the truck could be seen staring at his victim and apparently laughing. Another picture showed a pair of white legs and the head of an Iraqi. The hand of a man behind the Iraqi's head appeared to be forcing him to perform a sex act. A third picture showed a pair of bare bottoms with an Iraqi on his knees on the floor and his body bent. Another man was pressed behind him in what seemed to be a sexual position. The fourth picture appears to show two naked Iraqis cowering on the ground."

"Military police are questioning a British soldier about photographs of alleged 'torture' of Iraqi prisoners of war, including one gagged and bound, and dangling in netting from a fork-lift truck. Other photos allegedly show soldiers committing sex acts in front of captured Iraqis. Photograph developers are understood to have called the police after a film had been handed in to their shop... The allegations are extremely embarrassing to the British army which prided itself on a more tolerant and understanding approach than US soldiers towards Iraqis. They follow last week's disclosure that Colonel Tim Collins who commanded the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment is being investigated by military police after serious allegations of ill-treatment made by an American soldier. The colonel... is alleged to have pistol-whipped an Iraqi civil leader, shot at the feet of Iraqi civilians, and shot at the tyres of vehicles when there was no threat to the lives of soldiers."

"Take action today together with CCR [Center for Constitutional Rights], Greenpeace International, the Center for Economic and Social Rights and Peacerights to ensure the accountability of persons responsible for war crimes against the Iraqi people." Send an e-mail!

BBC reports, "The Athens Bar Association says it will file a suit against Britain at the International Criminal Court - the recently created tribunal for cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The lawyers call the attacks by the United States and British forces against Iraq 'crimes against humanity and war crimes'. They have listed a number of international treaties they say the two countries have violated. These include the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Convention and the International Criminal Court's statute... The lawsuit will be filed within a fortnight. He said American officials could not be prosecuted as the US is not a signatory to the ICC's founding treaty. Eighty-nine countries signed up to the treaty creating the court, which was formally inaugurated in March in The Hague. Mr Paxinos... is confident that the evidence compiled by the lawyers is strong, adding that the case would be a test of the ICC's credibility. "

The London Evening Standard reports: "A senior British officer celebrated as a hero in the Iraq war today strongly denied accusations that he is a 'war criminal'. Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins, 43, stands accused of a number of 'serious breaches' of the Geneva Convention after claims that he punched, kicked and threatened Iraqi prisoners of war to force information from them and that he opened fire needlessly. The allegations are now being looked into by the Army's Special Investigations Branch."

Cheryl Seal writes, "Belgian activist Jan Fermon has filed war crimes charges against Tommy Franks and a marine commander. The White House has known about the case for weeks and has been threatening Belgium with vague 'serious consequences' to try to intimidate them into blocking Fermon. About the same time, someone in the White House made a call to the rightwing rag and Bush mouthpiece 'The Washington Times,' which immediately ran an editorial that whined about how Franks is a victim of a 'lynching party' by those mean, ungrateful Iraqis. Now White House propaganda is trying to characterize Fermon as merely 'some leftwing lawyer'. Why do they want to minimize Fermon and, more to the point, why are they so afraid of him? Because Fermon is a heavy hitter known to follow through, winning convictions in the Rwandan war crimes trial."

The Chicago Sun-Times reports: "America's top military officer has warned that NATO may have to move from its Brussels headquarters after an attempt to bring war crimes charges against Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, in the Belgian courts. Gen. Richard Myers, chief of the U.S. general staff, intervened in the argument with Belgium after American officials expressed fears that Belgian war crimes laws would expose NATO officers to the risk of arrest."

"Former Iraqi prisoners of war have accused British and American troops of torturing them in custody, blindfolding them before kicking and beating them with weapons for long periods. Investigators for... Amnesty International said statements taken from 20 former detainees even included one claim, made by a Saudi man, that he had been subjected to electric shocks by his US captors. 'In one case we are talking about electric shocks being used against a man ... [and] if you keep beating somebody for the whole night and somebody is bleeding and you are breaking teeth, it is more than beating,' Amnesty researcher, Said Boumedouha, told a press conference... 'I think that is torture.' Mr Boumedouha spoke of one interviewee who claimed to have been 'beaten up for a whole night, who was bleeding but they wouldn't even give him water'. His instinct, he said, was that they were telling the truth. 'But to what extent, and the details of it all ... that we are still trying to establish.'"

Previously sealed by UN inspectors, Iraqi nuclear sites have been looted since the US invasion. WashPost reports "seven sites associated with Iraq's nuclear program have been visited by the Pentagon's 'special nuclear programs' teams since the war ended last month. None was found to be intact." The most important is the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, where UN inspectors had catalogued tons of metals suitable for processing into the core of a nuclear weapon. "Iraqi civilians have stripped it of computers, furniture and much equipment; whether dangerous nuclear materials were taken is unknown. US authorities do not know...because of an ongoing conflict between the Bush administration and the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as a dispute within the administration about how much to involve the IAEA in Iraq." Experts are concerned that looted materials may fall into terrorist hands, and that Iraqi civilians may be exposed unwittingly to hazardous radiation.

AP reports: "Military officials are investigating a Marine who says he shot an Iraqi soldier twice in the back of the head following a grenade attack on his comrades. The Marine Forces Reserve announced the preliminary inquiry of Gunnery Sgt. Gus Covarrubias on Friday, the day the Las Vegas Review-Journal published an interview in which he described the killing. Covarrubias, 38, of Las Vegas, said that during an intense battle in Baghdad on April 8, he pursued a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard who fired a rocket-propelled grenade at his unit. Covarrubias said he received a concussion in the attack and several other Marines also were injured. Covarrubias, a 20-year Marine veteran, said he found the soldier inside a nearby home with the grenade launcher by his side. Covarrubias said he ordered the man to stop and forced him to turn around. 'I went behind him and shot him in the back of the head. Twice,' Covarrubias told the Review-Journal."

Robert Fisk writes: "What is a journalist's life worth? I ask this question for a number of reasons, some of them -- frankly -- quite revolting. Two days ago, I went to visit one of my colleagues wounded in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Samia Nakhoul is a Reuters correspondent... Part of an American tank shell was embedded in her brain -- a millimetre difference in entry point and she would have been half paralysed.... Samia Nakhoul wasn't the only one to be hit. Her Ukrainian cameraman, father of a small child, was killed. So was a Spanish cameraman on the floor above. And then yesterday I had to read, in the New York Times, that Colin Powell had justified the murder -- yes, murder -- of these two journalists... quote: 'According to a US military review of the incident, our forces responded to hostile fire appearing to come from a location later identified as the Palestine Hotel... Our review of the April 8th incident indicates that the use of force was justified.'"

Expatica.com reports: "US Allied Forces Commander, General Tommy Franks, and a second, unnamed party, could face trial in Belgium for war crimes under the country's amended genocide law after four Belgian doctors lodged a complaint in Brussels. The four men, two of whom are still in Baghdad, work for the Belgian association Medicine for the Third World and were witnesses to the Allied invasion of the country. Several events have already been cited by the doctors' lawyer, Jan Fermon, including an ambulance under fire from US troops, the bombing of a market, an attack on a civilian bus, random executions and inaction in the face of hospital pillaging. This will be the first time Belgium's law of universal competence will be tested since its politico-diplomatic cleanup last month. The so-called genocide law had given courts in Belgium universal jurisdiction to try cases of genocide, war crimes and human rights violations."

The Boston Globe reminds us that "the cultural patrimony not only of Iraq but of civilization itself was violated when rampaging mobs stole thousands of irreplaceable artistic and archaeological treasures from Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities. Such crimes should have been prevented or halted in the early stages by US troops. As an occupying power, the [US] has an obligation under the Geneva Convention's laws of war to ensure public order. The museum's holdings included neolithic sculptures 9,000 years old, art and artifacts from ancient Sumeria, Mesopotamia, Akkadia, Babylonia, Assyria, Chaldea, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The mobs that were permitted to sack the Baghdad museum were carting away mankind's memory of its past. There is no name for such a crime. And the awful truth is that the US government bears a shameful responsibility for not preventing this crime against history... Liberators do not stand by while thieves carry away the heritage of humanity."

"The Belgian parliament has effectively gutted the country's 1993 'genocide law', allowing the government to dismiss a series of cases against foreign political leaders including Ariel Sharon and George Bush senior... Following the amendment, the judiciary can now reject cases where there are no victims of Belgian nationality or if the plaintiffs have not resided in Belgium for more than three years. The government is also given the power to intervene directly to quash cases if the accused comes from a 'democratic country'. The US-based Human Rights Watch said the amended law created 'political and diplomatic hurdles to the prosecution of many human rights crimes.'"

"United States troops opened fire on a crowd hostile to the new pro-American governor in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday, killing at least 10 people and injuring as many as 100, witnesses and doctors said. The shooting overshadowed the start of US-brokered talks aimed at sketching out a post-Saddam Iraq. At Mosul hospital Dr Ayad al-Ramadhani said the American soldiers had fired into a crowd that was becoming increasingly hostile towards governor Mashaan al-Juburi as he was making a pro-US speech in the city."

"The entire morning, everyone who had tried to cross the road had been shot... After 45 minutes, the first Baghdad citizens dared to come out. Arab interpreters in the tanks told the people to go and take what they wanted in the building." 'The word spread quickly and the building was ransacked. I was standing only 300 yards from there when the guards were murdered. Afterwards the tank crushed the entrance to the Justice Department, which was in a neighboring building, and the plundering continued there. I stood in a large crowd and watched this together with them. They did not partake in the plundering but dared not to interfere. Many had tears of shame in their eyes.' 'Are you saying that it was US troops who initiated the plundering?' "Absolutely. The lack of jubilant scenes meant that the American troops needed pictures of Iraqis who in different ways demonstrated hatred for Saddam's regime.'"

National Post of Canada reports, "A coalition of lawyers and human rights groups yesterday unveiled a bid to use the UN's new International Criminal Court as a tool to restrain American military power... Rights activists joining Mr. Ratner yesterday were Phil Shiner of the British-based Public Interest Lawyers, and Roger Norman of the Committee on Economic and Social Rights. They said five eminent international lawyers will outline a case against the United States and Britain next month for submission first to an international 'alternative' court called the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal in Rome, then the prosecutor's office of the ICC in The Hague... Mr. Shiner said the activists' case will probe the coalition's use, or suspected use, of cluster bombs, depleted uranium ammunition and fuel-air explosives. These weapons are unauthorized, he claimed, because they 'can't distinguish between civilian or military' targets."

Wayne Madsen writes, "Earlier this year, Saddam Hussein appealed to his countrymen to defeat the "new Mongols," his euphemism for the American military poised to attack Iraq. Hussein appears to have been correct in his prognostication concerning the after effects of an American invasion of Iraq... It is clear that by aiding and abetting the looting of Iraqi art and antiquities the United States military violated [the Geneva Conventions]... America's turning the siege of Baghdad into the pillaging of Baghdad should be condemned by every nation and person. The study of human history, indeed, humanity's very birthright, has suffered a terrible blow from the Bush regime. No amount of monetary compensation from oil revenues will ever compensate the Iraqi people, the Arab nation, and the world for the loss of a crucial record of world civilization. The Bush regime and its modern-day Mongol vandals must be made to account for their crimes against humanity."

Robert Fisk writes, "First the Americans killed the correspondent of al-Jazeera... and wounded his cameraman. Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its cameramen and a cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 channel and wounding four other members of the Reuters staff. Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was it possible that the right word for these killings - the first with a jet aircraft, the second with an M1A1 Abrams tank - was murder?... The Americans responded with what all the evidence proves to be a straightforward lie. General Buford Blount of the US 3rd Infantry Division - whose tanks were on the bridge - announced that his vehicles had come under rocket and rifle fire from snipers in the Palestine Hotel, that his tank had fired a single round at the hotel and that the gunfire had then ceased. The general's statement, however, was untrue."

In London, "daffodils were laid at the Cenotaph and at the entrance to Downing Street, before being moved to Parliament Square. [In] Hyde Park, more than 30 speakers took to the platform, among them George Galloway, the Labour MP threatened with expulsion from the party, Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn. The cricketer turned Pakistani politician Imran Khan said before the march: 'It doesn't matter how many people turn out, it's registering a protest that a principle, and international law, have been violated, and everyone who cares must register a protest. Something illegal has happened.' Veteran CND campaigner Bruce Kent called for Tony Blair to be tried by the International Criminal Court. 'What we have seen is nothing less than mass murder,' he said. He told the rally that there was a widespread belief that the United States was the only superpower left. 'It's not true,' he said. 'You, the millions of ordinary of the world, are the superpower that can stand up to them.'"

AP reports, "Former Nebraska Congressman Clair Callan wants a judge to determine if George W. Bush is guilty of war crimes in Iraq. Callan filed a motion for a temporary restraining order in federal court in Lincoln that would stop Bush from ordering further attacks in Iraq. The former Democratic congressman argued that Bush is in violation of international treaties for ordering the U.S. military to attack a country that has not attacked the United States. Callan filed the motion Thursday. Federal attorneys have 60 days to respond. A federal judge last month denied Callan's request for the court to block Bush from starting the war. Callan, who is from Fairbury, served in the House of Representatives from 1965 to 1967." You GO, Clair!

"The Arab Committee for Human Rights flatly condemned Tuesday, April 8, the U.S. targeting of the offices of Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV channels in Baghdad, which claimed the life of Al-Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub. The committee also announced the setting-up of an international coalition to put U.S. and U.K. war criminals on trial. 'It (the coalition) will assume the responsibility of filing lawsuits before international criminal tribunals to punish the forces of aggression for their (war) crimes),' the committee said in a statement, a copy of which obtained by Al-Quds Press news agency. The statement, entitled 'A War Without Eyewitnesses, Crimes Without Punishment,' further called on 'all democratic powers worldwide and world peace camp to act in concert to bring to immediate cessation such a barbaric aggression on the Iraqi people.'"

"The Massachusetts Anti-Corporate Clearinghouse plans to file formal criminal complaints against Raytheon ... charging the company with conspiring to provide the U.S. government with the tools to commit war crimes and crimes against peace. "The Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal convicted the makers of the Zyklon-B gas used in the gas Nazi chambers of conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity because they knew the gas they were selling to the government was being used to murder innocent people," according to Sean Donahue. "Similarly we can assume that the executives of Raytheon were aware published accounts documented the U.S. government's use of bombs and missiles to deliberately destroy the civilian infrastructure of Iraq during the1991 Gulf War, a violation of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions... 'Raytheon therefore knew that its primary client had a history of committing war crimes, and should have known...that the U.S.government would commit war crimes again.'"

Guardian reports, "Representatives of editors in 115 countries have written to Donald Rumsfeld to condemn the 'inexcusable' and 'reckless' American attack on a hotel in Baghdad, which left two journalists dead and several injured... 'Throughout the war it has been common knowledge to both sides in this conflict that international journalists were using the Palestine Hotel as their base - and the failure of the US military to act upon this information is inexcusable, even in what has been termed the 'fog of war'.' 'In consequence, the United States may be in breach of international law, particularly the Geneva conventions... Under the Geneva conventions and the precedents of customary international law, journalists enjoy protection from the dangers arising from military operations and the US military forces are bound not to conduct indiscriminate attacks.'"

"Around 20 bodies and burnt-out cars littered the streets of the southwestern Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Dora, an AFP photographer reported. Bodies, including those of children, were still strewn over the road between Al-Dora and the international airport, which is under the control of US forces... Some of the corpses were in or under the charred vehicles. Dead children lay on the side of the road, covered in sheets. One family, two of whose members were completely incinerated, died in the back of a pick-up truck. 'If the price of freedom is this, we don't want it,' said one Iraqi helping at the scene. A gutted white Mercedes car sat at the roadside, a white flag still fluttering from its antenna. A US officer at the scene said Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitary militia attacked an American convoy which retaliated, causing the deaths on Monday. Witnesses, however, said that US soldiers opened fire on cars carrying civilians they thought posed a threat on Wednesday morning."

London Times reports Arabs were enraged by the killing yesterday of an al-Jazeera correspondent in an American airstrike, "accusing Washington of attempting to silence the news channel. The death of Tariq Ayoub, a familiar face to millions who watch al-Jazeera's coverage of the war in Iraq, struck a raw nerve. That attack, and the shelling by an American tank of a hotel housing journalists in which two people were killed, was condemned throughout the Arab world. In an evening broadcast, Mr Ayouba's wife asked, 'Who is doing the terrorism now?' Abu Dhabi TV was also hit, [and] American bombs wrecked [al-Jazeera's] office in Kabul in 2001. The US said that attack was accidental, but many in the Arab world thought it suspicious because the network had drawn strong criticism for its broadcasts of messages from Osama bin Laden. 'It is impossible not to detect a sinister pattern of targeting,' Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, said."

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has written to Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld demanding an investigation of U.S. military strikes that killed three journalists in Baghdad on April 8. CPJ Acting Director Joel Simon writes, "The missile strike on the Al-Jazeera facility raises questions about whether the building was deliberately targeted...the station's offices were also hit in Kabul, Afghanistan in November 2001." And "eyewitnesses said they heard no gunfire coming from the [Palestine] hotel," which was attacked by U.S. tankfire. "While U.S. officials have expressed regret for the loss of life in these attacks and stated that they do not target journalists, they have left the impression that they bear no responsibility for protecting journalists operating independently in Iraq...The Geneva Conventions contemplate the presence of 'non-embedded,' or civilian, journalists in the battlefield, and the U.S. military has an obligation to avoid harming them."

"Footage filmed by France 3 television of a strike on a hotel which killed two journalists in Baghdad today shows a US tank targeting the journalists' hotel and waiting at least two minutes before firing. The journalist and film editor who filmed the attack, Herve de Ploeg, said: 'I did not hear any shots in the direction of the tank, which was stationed at the west entrance of the Al-Jumhuriya (Republic) bridge, 600 metres north-west of the hotel. The tank's turret is seen moving toward the Palestine Hotel, where foreign reporters have set up shop, and the gun carriage lifting and waiting at least two minutes before opening up. 'It had been very quiet for a moment. There was no shooting at all. Then I saw the turret turning in our direction and the carriage lifting. It faced the target,' said De Ploeg. 'It was not a case of instinctive firing,' he said... The incident killed a cameraman for the Telecinco Spanish television station and another for the British news agency Reuters."

On March 10th, GuluFuture reported, "The Pentagon has threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq, according to veteran BBC war correspondent, Kate Adie. In an interview with Irish radio, Ms. Adie said that questioned about the consequences of such potentially fatal actions, a senior Pentagon officer had said, 'Who cares. They've been warned.' I am enormously pessimistic of the chance of decent on-the-spot reporting, as the war occurs,' she told Irish national broadcaster, Tom McGurk on the RTE1 Radio 'Sunday Show.' Another guest on the show, war author Phillip Knightley, reported that the Pentagon has also threatened they 'may find it necessary to bomb areas in which war correspondents are attempting to report from the Iraqi side.'" And so they have. On April 8, U.S. troops bombed and fired cannons on three Baghdad buildings housing independent journalists. Tally: 3 dead, several wounded.

"A Reuters journalist was killed and three were wounded in Baghdad on Tuesday when a U.S. tank fired a shell at the media hotel where they were working. A Spanish journalist was also wounded. Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukrainian national based in Warsaw, died after the blast at the Palestine Hotel, base for much of the foreign media in the Iraqi capital... U.S. officials said their forces had been fired on from the hotel but a British reporter there who saw the tank take aim said he had heard no other firing. 'I never heard a single shot coming from any of the area around here, certainly not from the hotel,' British Sky television's correspondent David Chater said... The United States has said Iraqi forces operating from civilian areas like hotels would be legitimate targets. 'We have said very clearly from the very beginning that Baghdad will be a very dangerous place to be,' U.S. military spokesman Captain Frank Thorp told CNN in Qatar. 'This is a war zone.'"

Al-Jazeera correspondent Tariq Ayoub was killed on Tuesday when two US missiles struck the Baghdad offices of the Qatar-based channel. "We regret to inform you that our cameraman and correspondent Tariq Ayoub was killed this morning during the US missile strike on our Baghdad office," the Qatar-based channel said in a statement read out during its news bulletin. Another cameraman, Zuheir Iraqi, was slightly wounded with shrapnel to his neck... 'It seems that we have become a target,' Tayseer Allouni, Al-Jazeera correspondent said. Another of Jazeera's Baghdad correspondents Majed Abdel Hadi called the U.S. missile strike and Ayoub's death a 'crime'." Indict Bush for War Crimes Now!

International Committee of the Red Cross reports, "Heavy artillery fire and military operations overnight from Friday to Saturday brought in a steady influx of war wounded to a rate of about one hundred patients an hour to the Al Yarmouk hospital up until midday Saturday. No-one is able to keep accurate statistics of the admitted and transferred war wounded any longer as one emergency arrival follows the other in the hospitals of Baghdad. 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. All of the hospitals are under pressure and the medical staff is working without respite. Despite the intense and desperate activity, hospital staff is still managing the situation. Doctors who have spontaneously offered their assistance reinforce medical teams in the emergency units."

"We now glimpse the forbidden truths of the invasion of Iraq... Covering this in a shroud of respectability has not been easy for George Bush and Tony Blair. Millions now know too much; the crime is all too evident... In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected German arguments of the 'necessity' for pre-emptive attacks against its neighbors. 'To initiate a war of aggression,' said the tribunal's judgment, 'is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime'... How do we face this threat to all of us? The answer [lies in understanding the extent of our own power. Patrick Tyler writes] that America faced a 'tenacious new adversary' -- the public. He says we are entering a new bi-polar world with two new superpowers: the Bush/Blair gang on one side, and world opinion on the other, a truly popular force stirring at last and whose consciousness soars by the day. Wasn't it the poet Shelley who, at a time like this, exhorted us to: 'Rise like lions after slumber'?"

"A new report by the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), WATER UNDER SIEGE IN IRAQ, charges that the US and UK risk committing war crimes by depriving Iraqi civilians of safe water. In urban centers throughout Iraq, millions of civilians face disease and possible death due to inadequate access to water as a result of the US-British invasion. 100,000 children in Basra are already threatened with severe illness due to a crippled water treatment plant, according to UNICEF. As American troops advance on Baghdad, the city of five million has lost electric power and the population there also faces a pubic health crisis from water-borne disease. 'International law on this matter is unambiguous--depriving people of life-sustaining resources is a war crime,' said Roger Normand of CESR. 'While Bush has warned Iraqis not to commit war crimes, Anglo-American forces at the gates of Baghdad risk committing war crimes themselves against a population that is half children.'"

CNN's in-bed correspondent Jason Bellini reported from "Saddam Hospital in downtown Nasiriya [where [Jessica Lynch] was rescued just a few days ago. [Videotape shows numerous civilians in hospital beds, some with legs or arms missing.] The children who will never play soccer again. The expectant mother who will be unable to lift her baby. The wounds that time won't heal. Wounded civilians in Iraq are harder for us embedded with the U.S. military to see and report on than the bright and thrilling explosions that hurt them. Twenty-year-old Heider was eating breakfast when he heard a helicopter flying overhead, [followed by] an explosion, which killed his brother, wounded his father and made him an amputee. Fifteen-year-old Jesmack says he was walking down a street when a bomb hit nearby, sending shrapnel into his arms and legs. The doctor who served as our guide and translator said more than 400 people have died in Nasiriya since the war began. Another 1,300 have been injured."

The Bush push is beginning to seem more and more like the opening scenes of "The Empire Strikes Back," with Darth Vader's massive armored assault on the rebels. Now Centcom Studios proudly reports that as many as 3,000 Iraqis have been slaughtered in a "brief" raid into Baghdad with "armored vehiciles" - i.e., tanks. Notice how the media is avoiding using the term, so as to separate the US's use of brutal force from the horrific images of Jenin and Tiannamen Square, where armored vehicles were used to kill civilians. In Gulf War I, vets say that as many as 6,000 Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by US "armored vehicles." The Pentagon justifies its slaughter through a dehumanization campaign. Here is a quote from Gen. Peter Pace: "If IT moves on the ground and IT takes aggressive action, IT'S going to get killed." So Iraqis have become objects, not human beings.

On Friday U.S. forces reported finding "thousands of boxes containing vials of unidentified liquid and white powder as well as manuals on chemical warfare at two sites near Baghdad." Today Reuters reports, "First tests...indicate that it was not a chemical weapon...most of it appeared to be atropine, used as an antidote to nerve gas, and another chemical." And "there were [STILL] no reports of chemical or biological attacks even though troops have crossed what the U.S. said might be a - Red Line - drawn around the city within which Saddam might use weapons of mass destruction."

NY Times reports, "Bush has authorized American military forces to use tear gas in Iraq, the Pentagon says, a development that some weapons experts say other countries might see as a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The Defense Department said tear gas, which has been issued to American troops, would be used only to save civilian lives and in accordance with the convention, ratified by the United States in 1997. But critics say any battlefield use of tear gas would violate the treaty, offend crucial allies, including Britain, and hand Saddam Hussein a possible pretext for using chemical weapons against the United States... In four major uses of chemical weapons in the past - by the combatants in World War I; by the Italians in Ethiopia; by the Egyptians in Yemen; and in the Iran-Iraq war - deployment was preceded by use of nonlethal agents."

Canadian Press reports, "Red Cross doctors who visited southern Iraq this week saw 'incredible' levels of civilian casualties including a truckload of dismembered women and children, a spokesman said Thursday from Baghdad. Roland Huguenin, one of six International Red Cross workers in the Iraqi capital, said doctors were horrified by the casualties they found in the hospital in Hilla, about 160 kilometres south of Baghdad. 'There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious wounds in the region of Hilla,' Huguenin said in a interview by satellite telephone. 'We saw that a truck was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very difficult to believe this was happening.' Huguenin said the dead and injured in Hilla came from the village of Nasiriyah, where there has been heavy fighting between American troops and Iraqi soldiers, and appeared to be the result of 'bombs, projectiles.'"

"Lawyers acting for Human Shield Action today warned the leaders of the coalition forces that political as well as military leaders will be liable to war crimes prosecution and claims for reparation if human shield volunteers are killed or harmed by the coalition's attacks. The coalition forces appear not to respect Geneva Convention provisions that prohibit attacks indiscriminate in their effects on civilians... Another concern is that coalition forces appear not to accept that human shields deserve the same protection from attack, as all other citizens in this conflict. A letter has today been sent to the Prime Minister, Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary and leaders of the UK Armed Forces as well as their opposite numbers within the other countries in the coalition. This letter warns of war crimes prosecutions if Geneva Convention provisions protecting human shield volunteers as civilians are breached."

UK Mirror reports, "They lie in packed wards, eight to each airless room. Many are crying. Others softly moaning. Some stare, as if lifeless. These are the survivors of what are claimed to be cluster bomb attacks on villages in Babylon and its capital Al Hillah, some 70 miles south of Baghdad. The attacks, which happened around lunchtime on Monday, are said to have killed at least 60 people and injured a further 250. But no one has completed the tally. I see six bodies in the makeshift morgue, a crude metal box teeming with flies, situated beneath an awning at Babylon General Hospital. Beds are laid in the entrance, every space being exploited. But it is upstairs on those wards that the suffering scream. Among the 168 patients I counted, not one was being treated for bullet wounds. All of them, men, women, children, bore the wounds of bomb shrapnel. It peppered their bodies. Blackened the skin. Smashed heads. Tore limbs. "

"On 1 April 2003, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called on the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to investigate the United States (U.S.)-British coalition forces' bombing of the Iraqi state television headquarters in Baghdad as a possible violation of international humanitarian law. It is the first time in its existence that the Commission is being petitioned. Set up in 1991 under the Geneva Conventions' First Additional Protocol, it has the job of investigating alleged serious violations of international humanitarian law. 'A media outlet cannot be a military target under international law and its equipment and installations are civilian property protected as such under the Geneva Conventions,' noted RSF Secretary-General Robert Menard. 'Only an objective and impartial inquiry can determine whether or not the Conventions have been violated.' "

Guardian reports, "Yesterday's strike took out two homes of an extended family of about a dozen. Tuesday's raid destroyed the local school, and on Monday a poor baklava seller, pitied by the entire neighbourhood, lost his wife, mother, sister, nephew, and two sons to American missiles. Here in Sueb, 22 miles from the centre of Baghdad and just beyond the ring of burning crude oil that marks the outer reaches of the Iraqi capital, where urban sprawl ends and desert begins, a battle that has gone largely unseen has been raging for days... 'We are beginning to believe that the Americans want to take revenge on us for what happened before,' said Fareed Fathi."

David Isenberg writes, "It is increasingly an Orwellian world. Up is down. White is black. Invading another country is providing for the defense of your own. And now, it appears that the use of lethal chemical weapons will be 'non-lethal', if, as appears possible, so-called 'non-lethal weapons' (NLW) are used by the United States in Iraq... One controversial class of NLW likely to be used in Iraq is toxic riot-control agents (RCA), such as tear gas, CS gas and pepper spray. The media have reported that the US is preparing to use such agents in Iraq, particularly if the conflict centers on street fighting in Baghdad itself, as now seems likely. The use of riot control agents would, in the view of many legal and arms control experts, violate the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which entered into force in 1997. The CWC bans the use of these agents in battle." When Rummy unleashes these weapons, he will certainly accuse Saddam of using them first.

"To: International Criminal Court: On March 21, 2003, the US, UK and other forces launched a massive air strike against Iraq as part of the US military plan, 'shock and awe.' In the first 48 hours of this attack some 3,000 precision-guided bombs were fired at or near Baghdad, a densely populated city of 5.6 million... It is illegal too to launch indiscriminate as well as disproportionate attacks and acts intended to spread terror among the civilian population. The Rome Statute specifically prohibits intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure. The so-called 'shock and awe' tactics described above constitute a war crime in violation of the Rome Statute... I respectfully request that you initiate an investigation into this situation under Article 15 of the Rome Statute against all persons subject to the jurisdiction of the Court. This should include investigation of all officials involved, including all heads of States taking part in the war."

Guardian reports, "Dozens of Iraqi villagers were killed and injured in a ferocious American air and land assault near the Iraqi city of Babylon. Reuters reporters on the scene confirmed the deaths of at least nine children, two other civilians and two Iraqi fighters at Hilla in a bombardment on Monday night and early yesterday morning. An Iraqi hospital official said the death toll stood at 33 civilians, with more than 300 wounded. Unedited TV footage from Babylon hospital, which was seen by the Guardian, showed the tiny corpse of a baby wrapped up like a doll in a funeral shroud and carried out of the morgue on a pink pallet. It was laid face-to-face on the pavement against the body of a boy, who looked about 10. Horrifically injured bodies were heaped into pick-up trucks, and were swarmed by relatives of the dead, who accompanied them for burial. Bed after bed of injured women and children were pictured along with large pools of blood on the floor of the hospital."

UK Independent reports, "An American missile, identified from the remains of its serial number, was pinpointed yesterday as the cause of the explosion at a Baghdad market on Friday night that killed at least 62 Iraqis. The codes on the foot-long shrapnel shard, seen by the Independent correspondent Robert Fisk at the scene of the bombing in the Shu'ale district, came from a weapon manufactured in Texas by Raytheon, the world's biggest producer of 'smart' armaments. The identification of the missile as American is an embarrassing blow to Washington and London as they try to match their promises of minimal civilian casualties with the reality of precision bombing. Both governments have suggested the Shu'ale bombing - and the explosion at another Baghdad market that killed at least 14 people last Wednesday - were caused by ageing Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles."

Knight-Ridder reports, "Bakhat Hassan - who lost his daughters, ages 2 and 5, his son, 3, his parents, two older brothers, their wives and two nieces, ages 12 and 15, in the incident - said American soldiers at an earlier checkpoint had waved them through as they drove away from their home village. As they approached another checkpoint 25 miles south of Karbala, they waved again at the American soldiers. 'We were thinking these Americans want us to be safe,' Hassan said through an Army translator at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. The soldiers didn't wave back. They fired. 'I saw the heads of my two little girls come off,' Hassan's wife, Lamea, 36, recalled numbly. She repeated herself in a flat, even voice: 'My girls - I watched their heads come off their bodies. My son is dead.' U.S. officials originally gave the death toll as seven in the incident, and reporters at the scene placed it at 10. But Hassan's father died at the Army hospital later."

"A missile hit the middle of the street outside the Omar Al Faroukh mosque on Palestine Street at about 4:15 this afternoon, just as people were leaving after prayers. Ahmed was walking out behind his friend Umar when he heard an explosion and saw his friend fall. Umar is a student at Rafidain College. He had fragments of shrapnel about 3cm long removed from his liver and abdomen. His lower ribs are fractured and his left hand has shrapnel wounds. His grandfather, Fuad Taher demands that Bush and Blair be charged and brought to court." Jo Wilding writes from Baghdad.

Electronic Iraq reports, "U.S. ground forces in Iraq are using cluster munitions with a very high failure rate, creating immediate and long-term dangers for civilians and friendly soldiers, Human Rights Watch reported today. While use of the weapon has not yet been confirmed by official U.S. military sources, it is evident from television images and stories from reporters embedded with U.S. units that U.S. forces are using artillery projectiles and rockets containing large numbers of submunitions, or cluster munitions. When these submunitions fail to explode on impact as designed, they become hazardous explosive 'duds'--functioning like volatile, indiscriminate antipersonnel landmines. Two U.S. Marines were killed in separate incidents on March 27 and 28 after stepping on unexploded cluster munitions delivered by artillery in southern Iraq. 'The United States should not be using these weapons. Iraqi civilians will be paying the price with their lives and limbs for many years.'"

Agence France Presse reports, "Twenty people, including 11 children, were killed when a nighttime missile attack struck a farm near Baghdad. Another 10 people were wounded, according to relatives who survived the Saturday night assault, which destroyed three homes in the Al-Janabiin suburb on the southeastern edge of Baghdad. They said the dead also included seven women and two men belonging to five families. The two relatives were the only residents to escape unharmed from the ruins of the homes, according to an AFP journalist on the scene... The witnesses in Al-Janabiin, who showed an AFP journalist the debris from the attack, said a missile struck the farm leaving a trail of destruction over a wide area. AFP journalists have witnessed five such incidents in which civilians were the primary victims of a coalition strike, reporting at least 70 dead and dozens of wounded. Iraqi officials have said hundreds of civilians have been killed and wounded since the start of the war. "

"After 11PM on Tuesday, March 25 what may have been an anti-personnel fragmentation bomb exploded in a Baghdad residential neighborhood adjacent to a secondary school. The blast primarily hit a private home [next] to the Balquis Secondary School for Girls. Three family members sleeping on a mattress in a second-floor bedroom were wounded. On Thursday, March 27, members of the Iraq Peace Team (IPT), visited the bombed house. IPT observed hundreds of small holes in the walls of the upstairs roof patio [and] extracted uniform cubed metal pellets with sharp edges. The pellets were three to five millimeters thick. Dr. Jaques Beres... confirmed to IPT that the pellets were from a fragmentation bomb. IPT's Kathy Kelly said, 'We urge all those responsible for upholding the UN Charter to investigate this apparent breach of the Geneva Conventions. We urge the US military to discontinue any further use of anti-personnel weapons. Such weapons directly and lethally discriminate against civilians.'"

"British and American coalition forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately flouting a UN resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction. DU contaminates land, causes ill-health and cancers among the soldiers using the weapons, the armies they target and civilians, leading to birth defects in children... DU has been blamed for the effects of Gulf war syndrome - typified by chronic muscle and joint pain, fatigue and memory loss - among 200,000 US soldiers after the 1991 conflict. It is also cited as the most likely cause of the 'increased number of birth deformities and cancer in Iraq' following the first Gulf war. 'Cancer appears to have increased between seven and 10 times and deformities between four and six times,' according to the UN subcommission... A study of Gulf war veterans showed that 67% had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers."

Doug Ireland writes, "The bomb that destroyed Abu Taleb Street and its marketplace in the heart of a working-class corner of Baghdad on March 27 took at least a dozen innocent lives and left dozens more shredded and crippled for life... In the hours that followed the tube's lapdog talkers loyally relayed yet another Big Lie -- that the carnage had been caused by an Iraqi missile which had fallen back to earth. You might have missed the refutation of this mendacious claim, since it came at 2:11 a.m. EST on Thursday in a live report from the BBC's excellent Rageh Omaar... Omaar himself saw the two large craters -- nullifying U.S. claims that a single malfunctioning Iraqi weapon was responsible. 'It is impossible to say what could possibly have been the military target in this heavily populated area,' the usually modulated reporter told his BBC audience with ill-concealed emotion (even ABC News, which has a synergy deal with the BBC, failed to pick up this startling report)."

Reuters reports, "Almost every house in Baghdad's poor al-Shula neighborhood had a horror story to tell on Saturday after death rained from the night sky. The United States said it was checking to see whether one of its missiles or bombs had caused the shattering explosion that killed at least 62 people on Friday evening in the heart of Baghdad. To the traumatized residents of the Shi'ite Muslim neighborhood, the conclusions of that inquiry meant little. At the house of Sumaya Abed, the scene was one of devastation. She was delirious with grief. 'Ali, Hussein and Mohammad are gone. My three boys are dead,' a sobbing Abed repeated over and over again. 'Oh God! To whom shall we turn in our sorrow? Oh God! To whom shall we address our grief? We're just poor people who wanted to live in peace,' said Abed, 53. Dozens of black-garbed women relatives, friends and neighbors sat by her side, weeping and trying to comfort her. But words could do little.'"

Sean O'Driscoll writes, "Doha Suheil, a five-year-old girl, was crippled on March 20 after the Radwaniyeh suburb of Baghdad was hit by 2,000-pound cruise missiles... The Radwaniyeh bombings... could constitute a war crime under the Geneva Convention... Part 5, Article 85, added in 1977, states that a 'grave breach' of the Convention is committed by: 'iii.) launching an attack against works or installations containing dangerous forces in the knowledge that such attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects, which is excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.' The example often used by lawyers and academics to illustrate 'excessive force' is the use of air attacks to destroy a building full of civilians to kill a single desired target. An attack on a poorly constructed residential neighborhood to kill a small number of undisputedly legitimate war targets doesn't come far off the textbook case."

Tam Dalyell is Labour MP for Linlithgow and Father of the House of Commons. He writes: "My [local] Labour party has just voted to recommend that Tony Blair reconsider his position as party leader because he gave British backing to a war against Iraq without clearly expressed support from the UN. I agree with this motion. I also believe that since Mr Blair is going ahead with his support for a US attack without unambiguous UN authorisation, he should be branded as a war criminal and sent to The Hague. I have served in the House of Commons as a Labour member for 41 years, and I would never have dreamed of saying this about any one of my previous leaders. But Blair is a man who has disdain for both the House of Commons and international law. This is a grave thing to say about my leader. But it is far less serious than the results of a war that could set western Christendom against Islam."

Guardian reports, "Questions are being raised about the legality of the bombing of Iraqi television's main station in Baghdad. The attack appears to have been triggered by Washington's determination to pull the plugs on a vital propaganda weapon of Saddam Hussein's regime. Amnesty International said that the bombing could be a breach of the Geneva Conventions. 'The bombing of a television station, simply because it is being used for the purposes of propaganda, cannot be condoned. It is a civilian object, and thus protected under international humanitarian law,' it said... The International Federation of Journalists described the attack as an attempt at censorship, and said that it may have breached the Geneva Conventions. 'I think there should be a clear international investigation into whether or not this bombing violates the Geneva Conventions,' Aidan White, its general secretary, said."

Reuters is reporting that a few hours and a simple Internet search was all it took for UN inspectors to realize that documents backing U.S. and British claims that Iraq had revived its nuclear program were crude fakes. A senior official from the U.N. nuclear agency who saw the documents offered as evidence that Iraq tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, described one as so badly forged his "jaw dropped." Conversely pResident Bush found this same bogus information so compelling that he added it to his State of the Union Speech in January as proof that Iraq had revived its nuclear program last fall.

AFP reports, "The Belgian parliament amended a law to prevent US President George W. Bush being prosecuted for war crimes over the conflict in Iraq... The law allows Belgian courts to try suspects for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, regardless of where the alleged acts took place or the nationality of the accused. Under the amendment... a federal prosecutor will [have the power to] decide in certain cases whether to accept a suit... 'It's a serious problem,' said Colin Powell , after he was named last week in a lawsuit for alleged crimes during the 1991 Gulf war along with former president Bush and Dick Cheney... The lawsuit against him was filed by seven Iraqi families over the bombing of a civilian shelter in Baghdad that killed 403 people on the night of February 12-13, 1991... 'I expect there to be, any day, a suit against President (George W.) Bush in Belgium,' Herman De Croo, speaker of Belgium's lower house of parliament, said."

Time reports, "'F*ck Saddam. We're taking him out.' Those were the words of George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of Condoleezza Rice. It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the UN, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase. The Senators laughed uncomfortably; Rice flashed a knowing smile. Bush left the room. A year later, Bush's outburst has been translated into action, as cruise missiles and smart bombs slam into Baghdad." This is PROOF that the UN inspections were a massive ruse, designed simply to buy time for Bush to position 300,000 troops for an unprovoked aggressive war against Iraq. Prosecute War Criminal Bush! (http://democrats.com/warcrimes)

Speaking of prisoners whose treatment violated the Geneva Convention, Anthony Lappe writes: "Then there's America's most famous 'enemy combatant' Taliban Johnny, aka John Walker Lindh. Immediately after being captured in the brutal prison rebellion at Mazar-e-Sharif, the frail American jihadist was interviewed by war zone aficionado Robert Young Pelton (who was staying at Dostum's compound at the time). According to an account in the New Yorker, after asking his Special Forces buddies to wait to 'shoot him' until he was done, Pelton interrogated the wounded Lindh under the gun of U.S. military personnel. Later the military stripped him naked, taped him to a gurney and threw him in the back of a transport plane back to the U.S. Pelton's interview ran on CNN and was used to convict Lindh for conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and to provide material support to a terrorist organization. He is currently serving a 20-year sentence."

Jamie Doran's film "provides irrefutable evidence that US forces in Afghanistan carried out a massive war crime... Footage [includes] the broken corpses of young Afghans killed by US air strikes and automatic weapons fire littering the grounds of the Qala-i-Janghi fortress-many of them with their arms still tied behind their backs.... Some 8,000 Taliban fighters had given themselves up to General Abdul Rashid Dostum's Northern Alliance... Some 3,000 of them were crammed into private container trucks commandeered by Doshtum's forces. During a 20-hour drive to the Sheberghan prison, most of these prisoners died from suffocation in the airless containers. Witnesses interviewed in the film described how soldiers fired into the containers when the prisoners screamed for air and water... Several witnesses recounted that US soldiers were present as the prisoners were loaded into the trucks and also when the container doors were opened at Sheberghan and hundreds of dead bodies spilled out."

New Zealand Herald reports, "An Australian FA/18 Hornet pilot refused an American command to bomb a target in Iraq in the first conflict between the different rules governing the way the two allies make war... 'The crew chose not to complete the mission because they could not positively identify the target,' Defence Force spokesman Brigadier Mike Hannan said. The rules under which Australians are fighting in Iraq are governed by Australian and international law, the 1949 Geneva Convention, and additional 1977 protocols that the US has not signed. A range of weapons in the American arsenal - such as landmines and cluster bombs - are banned by Australia, and Canberra has emphasised that its forces will refuse to attack civilian targets, including key bridges, dams and other vital infrastructure of the kind bombed by the US in the 1991 Gulf War... 'In this case the pilot ... decided that the information didn't support the justification for the use of the weapon and aborted the mission.'"

UPI reports, "Syria strongly condemned the killing of five of its civilians in a coalition air strike that targeted their bus while on their way home from Iraq [Sunday morning] and summoned the U.S. and British ambassadors to lodge an official protest... The source said 'this criminal act resulted in the killing of five Syrian civilians and the injury of others.' He said the air strike was in violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention related to the protection of civilians during war time and that Syria preserves the right to request compensation in line with international laws... One of the wounded said ... the coalition jets dropped cluster bombs on them... 'This is a dangerous matter and refutes claims that they only hit military targets,' Omran said.'This is a civilian target... There are many other targets such as houses, restaurants, gas stations and schools on the border that were damaged or destroyed.' "

UK Guardian reports, "A senior legal adviser to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, has quit the Foreign Office because of a difference over the legal advice sanctioning the war against Iraq, it emerged last night. Elizabeth Wilmhurst, 54, deputy legal adviser, is understood to be unhappy with the government's official line that it has sufficient basis for war under UN resolutions. Ms Wilmhurst has been a legal adviser at the Foreign Office for 30 years, and deputy legal officer since 1997. Her resignation will be an embarrassment to Tony Blair as well as to Mr Straw and raises new doubts about the legal basis for the war. It will encourage anti-war MPs to renew pressure on the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, to publish in full his legal advice to the government."

Under strict orders from the Pentagon, the US media is showing Americans one side of the war: swaggering generals ordering the bombing of "targets of opportunity," or unit commanders destroying "pockets of resistance." We see the bombs exploding, but we don't see the death destruction they leave behind. But the world outside the US is seeing very different pictures, thanks largely to Al-Jazeera. Here are some of the most gruesome ones, including the infamous half-headed child that is being broadcast around the world. This is being done by YOUR government in YOUR name with YOUR money. If you object, sign our war crimes petition at http://democrats.com/warcrimes

"We, the undersigned, believe George W. Bush should be indicted for the following war crimes: 1. George W. Bush ordered a "War of Aggression" against Iraq. This constitutes a "war of aggression" that was outlawed at the Nuremberg Trials and in the United Nations Charter: - Iraq never attacked the United States or threatened an attack. - Iraq never provided material support to any terrorist group that attacked the United States. - At the time of the US attack, Iraq was nearing full compliance with UN Resolution 1441 and prior resolutions requiring disarmament. - George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in order to bring about a "regime change," which was never authorized by a UN resolution. 2. George W. Bush ordered the bombing of the city of Baghdad, with 5 million innocent civilians, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. We call upon all responsible international bodies to indict, convict, and punish George W. Bush for his crimes." Sign the petition and spread the word!

Thomas Walkom writes, "Even Britain recognizes that resolution 1441 is a weak reed. It insists that war is implicitly authorized by Security Council resolutions 678 and 687, both of which date from the early 1990s. Nonsense, says Ted McWhinney. Security Council resolutions are specific to time and place; they cannot be dragged out years later to justify unilateral actions... Besides, writes British lawyer Keir Starmer, the earlier Security Council resolutions don't quite work, either. Resolution 678 (1990) did authorize military action but only to force Iraq to abandon its occupation of Kuwait. And resolution 687 (1991), which established the ceasefire at the end of the first Gulf War, doesn't authorize force at all... This is not to suggest that Bush and Tony Blair are about to be bundled into police vans... [But] Bush would be wise to stay out of Belgium. That small country has aggressively pursued war criminals, arguing that it has the right to try them under its domestic law."

"We the undersigned - call on the European powers, especially the governments of France, Germany and the Russian Federation , to provide for their contingent of peacekeeping troops to depart for Iraq within hours, take steps to secure its borders and airspace against attack, and provide protection for the U.N. inspectors there to continue to carry out their duty; - call on the aforementioned powers and all member nations of the U.N., to take the earliest opportunity to ratify this peacekeeping action in the U.N. General Assembly, under the auspices of UN Resolution 377, Uniting for Peace, which was expressly conceived to prevent aggression by any permanent member of the Security Council... - call the US-UK leaders to mind of the consequences, for themselves and for their countrymen, both civilian and military, of defying the precedent set by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which found for the death penalty... " Sign the petition.

Acting in defiance of the United Nations, Emperor Bush will give Saddam Hussein 72 hours to flee Iraq before the bombing begins. This ultimatum proves that Bush's "disarmament" demand was a charade from the beginning, and his goal was always to remove Saddam and put Iraq under US control. If Bush begins bombing Iraq without UN authority, he will be a war criminal under the UN Charter.

Robert Scheer: "The maiming or killing of a single Iraqi civilian in an attack by the US would constitute a war crime, as well as a profound violation of the Christian notion of just war. That is because the report of the UN inspectors has made indelibly clear that disarmament is working... Terrifyingly, we are hours away from doing irreparable harm to our democratic heritage by launching a risky, arrogant crusade that most of the world opposes, all at the behest of a small coterie of neoconservative ideologues plotting to remake the world in their image and who unfortunately have the ear of our accidental resident. All this in the name of the victims of 9/11, an attack carried out by Muslim fanatics originally embraced and trained by the US during the Cold War and whose proven ties have been with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. If we pursue this unjust war in the coming weeks, we can surely add the desecration of the victims' memory to the list of outrages we will perpetrate."

Here's a remarkable buried paragraph from a PentaPost story: "British officials also expressed fresh concern that failure to obtain a resolution authorizing war against Iraq would expose them to potential prosecution by a newly established International Criminal Court with jurisdiction over war crimes. Britain is a signatory to the treaty establishing the tribunal, but the United States is not. Blair was advised by his attorney general last October that military action to force 'regime change' in Baghdad would violate international law." It's heartening to learn that the "rule of law" still applies in Britain - and it's shocking to realize that Bush is willing to wantonly violate international law, and has pulled the US out of the ICC to escape "personal responsibility" - spending the rest of his wasted life behind bars.

CNN reports, "The first permanent global war crimes court was inaugurated Tuesday with the swearing in of its first 18 judges. But Washington - which opposes the tribunal - stayed away from the ceremony... 'By the solemn undertaking they have given here in open court, these eleven men and seven women, representing all regions of the world and many different cultures, have made themselves the embodiment of our collective consciences,' Kofi Annan said. Human rights groups have hail the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the biggest step for world justice since the Nuremberg military tribunal tried Nazi leaders after World War II. But ... George W. Bush renounced the 1998 Rome Treaty creating the ICC, even though the administration of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, signed the agreement. The US ambassador to the Netherlands, Clifford Sobel, declined an invitation to join Annan and the hundreds of guests - including presidents, heads of government and foreign ministers."

"The tribunal was initiated by Akira Maeda, a professor of international law at Tokyo Zokei University, and a broad group of people in Japan from labor unionists to members of the parliament. Experts in international law, journalists and members of a fact-finding delegation that had traveled to refugee camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan all testified at the hearing. Japanese photo-journalists who had traveled throughout the country at great risk told how they had to take their pictures clandestinely. They were threatened with arrest or even being shot for violating the U.S. military-imposed censorship...The initial complaint presented for the tribunal charges George Bush with 31 counts of war crimes, violations of the Geneva Conventions and other crimes against peace in the war on Afghanistan. "

Originally Bush's "Shock and Awe" (a.k.a. Blitzkrieg) attack on Iraq involved 600-800 missiles over 2 days, producing destruction comparable to the A-bomb attack on Hiroshima. But apparently that wasn't enough to terrify Saddam into surrendering, so now Gen. Richard Myers has upped the ante to 3,000 missiles over 2 days - equivalent to an H-bomb. How many innocent men, women, and children will die? Better yet, how few of Baghdad's 5 million civilians will survive? "We can't forget that war is inherently violent," Myers said. "People are going to die. As hard as we try to limit civilian casualties, it will occur. We need to condition people that that is war. People get the idea this is going to be antiseptic. Well, it's not going to be." Bush is a war criminal - impeach Bush now!

Rupert Murdoch's Australian website reports, "Bush will next week give Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to disarm within 72 hours or face war. Mr Bush met his security team at the White House overnight for top secret talks before making his final decision on whether to launch a military strike on Iraq. It is believed the Resident plans to deliver a last-minute challenge to Saddam as early as Wednesday to destroy his weapons of mass destruction immediately or face attack. Reports from Britain last night even set a date for war: bombing will begin on March 13 before a full-scale invasion on March 17. The move means the US plans to act whether or not a new disarmament resolution succeeds at the United Nations." If this is true - and it could just be Murdoch disinformation - Bush, Blair, and Howard will be war criminals - and Murdoch is an accessory.

According to Chris Floyd, Rumsfeld recently testified to Congress about his plans to "unleash a barrage of so-called 'non-lethal' biochemical weapons against any godless Ayrab stupid enough to resist the incoming herd... Rumsfeld hopes to emulate the glorious success of Russian security forces, who used 'non-lethal calmatives' to liberate the Nord-Ost hostages from their captors--and from the bonds of earthly existence as well... Rumsfeld painted the deployment of field chemical weapons as a 'humanitarian gesture,' but here too there's a slight hitch. 'There is no way known to medical science that can put large numbers of people to sleep without killing a sizable percentage of them,' as Harvard biology professor and biochemical weapons expert Matt Meselson told The Nation."

Bob Fertik writes, "Just six months ago, George W. Bush had every nation in the world on his side, with only 3 notorious exceptions - North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. Today, the whole world is against him... Bush could ignore the world and simply invade Iraq. Certainly, he has the troops to do so. But outside the U.S., this would be viewed as direct defiance of the United Nations - and Bush would be declared a war criminal by people around the world. Would that stop Bush? No, because Bush has no conscience... Bush has global ambitions, and he wants to conquer Iraq as the first step towards remaking the world according to his will. Although he knows no history, he has at his disposal the means to join history's most selective pantheon of global conquerors: Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Hitler. Will we, the people of the world, let him? The time has come for us to decide..."

Forty-three Australian experts in international law and human rights legislation have issued a declaration that an invasion of Iraq will be an open breach of international law and a crime against humanity, even if it takes place with the authorisation of the UN Security Council. The statement concisely argues that any Australian participation in a war on Iraq - part of the Bush administration's coalition of the willing - will make the government of Prime Minister John Howard and Australian military personnel liable for prosecution in the International Criminal Court. Submitted as an open letter to Australian newspapers and published yesterday by the Sydney Morning Herald...

A pre-emptive strike on Iraq would constitute a crime against humanity, write 43 Australian experts on international law. "Members of the 'coalition of the willing', including Australia, have not yet presented any persuasive arguments that an invasion of Iraq can be justified at international law. The United States has proposed a doctrine of 'pre-emptive self-defence' that would allow a country to use force against another country it suspects may attack it at some stage. This doctrine contradicts the cardinal principle of the modern international legal order and the primary rationale for the founding of the UN after World War II - the prohibition of the unilateral use of force to settle disputes... If all else fails, it is to be hoped that the fact that there is now an international system to bring even the highest officials to justice for war crimes will temper the enthusiasm of our politicians for this war."

Here is a story you'll certainly never see in the US media. According to Germany's Der Spiegel, "As the USA prepares for a war against Iraq, it is being sued by Iran for its previous close relationship to Saddam Hussein. At the International Court of Justice, Teheran is accusing the United States of delivering dangerous chemicals and deadly viruses to Baghdad during the eighties." Of course, it was Donald Rumsfeld who shook Saddam's hand in 1983 and opened the door for these sales. Will Rumsfeld be tried as a war criminal for supplying chemical and biological weapons to Iraq? What about Bush Sr., who was the mastermind behind the plan? Stay tuned...

NY Times reports that Belgium's "high court said investigations and a trial could proceed even if a suspect was not physically present in Belgium. Several cases involving foreign leaders, past and present, had been on hold for almost a year, pending the high court's decision. The case against Ariel Sharon and Amos Yaron dates back to 2001, when survivors of the 1982 massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut filed a criminal complaint." These massacres will be dwarfed by Bush's planned "shock and awe" attack on Baghdad, which could massacre hundreds of thousands. Will Bush ultimately face justice in Belgium? Will Henry Kissinger be held to account for his monumental war crimes? Stay tuned...

Distinguished British journalist Jon Pilger writes, "Judges at Nuremberg who tried the Nazi leaders for war crimes left no doubt about what they regarded as the gravest crimes against humanity. The most serious was unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state that offered no threat to one's homeland. Then there was the murder of civilians, for which responsibility rested with the 'highest authority'. Blair is about to commit both these crimes, for which he is being denied even the flimsiest United Nations cover now that the weapons inspectors have found, as one put it, 'zilch'... Using the archaic 'royal prerogative' he did not consult Parliament or the people when he dispatched 35,000 troops and ships and aircraft to the Gulf; he consulted a foreign power, the Washington regime. Unelected in 2000, the Washington regime of George W. Bush is now totalitarian, captured by a clique whose fanaticism and ambitions of 'endless war' and 'full spectrum dominance' are a matter of record."

Critics of W-ar with Iraq have argued the best way to deal with Saddam is to haul him before a war crimes tribunal of the UN. Now it turns out that this policy was written into law by Congress! "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (PL 105-338) - SEC. 6. WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL FOR IRAQ: Congress urges the President to call upon the United Nations to establish an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting, and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials who are responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and other criminal violations of international law." So why is Bush breaking the law? Impeach Bush Now!

Two American citizens - Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla - have now been imprisoned for more than six months without charges. Jennifer Van Bergen writes, "While there is no question that the government has a clear obligation to detain those determined to be threats to national security, it has no authority to make such determinations without judicial oversight. Indeed, to do so in the face of longstanding treaties (to which we are signatories) that require such oversight is a violation of the Geneva Conventions - and a violation of Geneva is, by federal statute, a war crime. Yes, a war crime, punishable by fine, imprisonment, or even potentially the death penalty. Check it out: 18 U.S.C. sec. 2441. Similarly, Bush's Military Tribunals violate Geneva." Impeach Bush now!

From Times Online: "Danish police arrested last night an exiled Iraqi general tipped as a possible replacement for President Saddam Hussein. He faces charges that he was responsible for killing thousands of Kurds in a chemical weapons attack 14 years ago. The arrest of General Nizar Khazraji, the former Iraqi Chief-of-Staff and the most senior officer to defect from Baghdad, appeared to wreck any chances that he might lead a mutiny in the Armed Forces and help to topple Saddam's regime. He has been under investigation in the North Sea town of Soroe for the past year, after he was reported to the Danish authorities by a Kurdish immigrant. Reports from Copenhagen last night said that the police had charged him with war crimes, violating the Geneva conventions and other human rights abuses....Iraqi opposition sources said last night that his arrest was a serious blow to their efforts to build a credible alternative to Saddam's regime."

According to Reuters, a team of UN investigators who just left Afghanistan obtained compelling evidence that a powerful US-backed warlord in northern Afghanistan jailed and tortured witnesses to prevent them from testifying in a war crimes case. The investigation focused on alleged human rights abuses against key witnesses in a case involving U.S. ally General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum earlier denied reports that his troops killed up to 1,000 Taliban fighters by transporting them to a prison in airless transport containers. He is now accused of trying to stop witnesses giving evidence of the alleged crime once a delayed U.N.-led investigation gets underway. No wonder Bush is down on the International Court.

Under Secretary of State John Bolton admitted the big reason the US opposed the creation of the International Criminal Court was fear that the court might prosecute not just military leaders but Bush himself. In a classic show of rightwing hypocrisy and spin, Bolton actually said the administration feared having Bush harassed internationally the same way Clinton was domestically. "That history argues overwhelmingly against international repetition. Simply launching massive criminal investigations has an enormous political impact. Although subsequent indictments and convictions are unquestionably more serious, a zealous independent prosecutor can make dramatic news just by calling witnesses and gathering documents, without ever bringing formal charges.'"

UK Guardian reports, "The dead are not hard to find. Turn left into the desert after the town of Shiberghan and they lie all around - some in shallow graves, others protruding from the sand. The clothes they wore are still there: decaying black turbans, charred shoes, a prayer cap, even a set of rusted car keys. In the nine months since they were buried the sun has bleached their bones white. But the jaws, femurs and ribs scattered across the desert are unmistakably human. We found teeth, thick black human hair and bits of skull... The site is littered with spent bullets. There are thick jackets lying above ground, which would have seemed useful to their owners last November... Nobody knows exactly how many Taliban prisoners were secretly interred in this mass grave, a short distance from the main road. But there is now substantial evidence that the worst atrocity of last year's war in Afghanistan took place... during an operation masterminded by US special forces."

U. of Illinois Law Prof. Francis Boyle writes: "For the past year I have been working with the International Commission of Inquiry into United States war crimes that were committed during the Persian Gulf War. This Commission has conducted the largest independent world-wide investigation of war crimes in history. Since last May [1991], the Commission has held thirty hearings across the United States and in twenty countries across five continents to expose the war crimes that the United States government inflicted upon the People and State of Iraq." Read the stunning and gripping list of US war crimes during the Gulf War, presented in a symposium February 27, 1992. It lists the charges of war crimes against Bush Sr and his administration -- many of whom are individuals who have moved forward into the present occupation of the White House. Notice how the son is following the path of the father, and their disregard for Congress and our Constitution." Is this a flashback to our future?

Newsweek writes, "The dead of Dasht-e Leili - and the horrific manner of their killing - are one of the dirty little secrets of the Afghan war. The episode is more than just another atrocity in a land that has seen many. The killings illustrate the problems America will face if it opts to fight wars by proxy, as the US did in Afghanistan, using small numbers of U.S. Special Forces calling in air power to support local fighters on the ground. It also raises questions about the responsibility Americans have for the conduct of allies who may have no - interest in applying protections of the Geneva Conventions. The benefit in fighting a proxy-style war in Afghanistan was victory on the cheap - cheap, at any rate, in American blood. The cost, NEWSWEEK's investigation has established, is that American forces were working intimately with 'allies' who committed what could well qualify as war crimes." Will Bush demand punishment for these war crimes, or does Bush APPROVE of mass murder?

The Independent of South Africa reports, "American soldiers have been involved in the torture and murder of captured Taliban prisoners, and may have aided in the 'disappearance' of up to 3 000 men in the region of Mazar-i-Sharif, according to Jamie Doran, an Irish documentary film-maker. Doran's latest film, Massacre At Mazar, was shown on Wednesday in in the Reichstag, the German parliament building in Berlin, and there were immediate calls for an international commission to be set up to investigate charges made in the documentary. Andrew McEntee, a leading international human rights lawyer, who has viewed the film footage and read full transcripts, believes there is prima facie evidence of serious war crimes having been committed by American soldiers in Afghanistan. McEntee, who was in Berlin for Wednesday's special screening, said war crimes had been committed not just under international law but, also, 'under the laws of the United States itself.'"

The NUMBER ONE reason the GOP and a handful of their poser pals, the so-called Blue Dog Dems, are against having an international court that would handle war crimes cases is because they KNOW their leaders - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Reich, Kissinger, et al. - are themselves war criminals. The line about protecting U.S. soldiers is total bull - the only butts they are trying to save are those sitting in the White House. Meanwhile, we find it hysterically funny (in a dark sort of way!) that leading the fight against the court is one of the nation's biggest crooks - Tom "Boiler Room Scam" DeLay, who has bilked doctors and other professionals out of millions! He also aided and abetted Enron as they ripped off DeLay's own consituents back in TX! We guess birds of a feather - in this case buzzards - stick together!

"The Bush administration has decided to renounce formally any involvement in a treaty setting up an international criminal court and is expected to declare that the signing of the document by the Clinton administration is no longer valid, government officials said today...a decisive rejection by the Bush White House of the concept of a permanent tribunal designed to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes...In addition, other officials said, the United States will simultaneously assert that it will not be bound by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a 1969 pact that outlines the obligations of nations to obey other international treaties...Harold Hongju Koh, a Yale law professor... said the retraction of the signature on the treaty would be a profound error. 'The result is that the administration is losing a major opportunity to shape the court so it could be useful to the United States,' Mr. Koh said.

"The world's first permanent court for the prosecution of war criminals and dictators became a reality today as the United States stood on the sidelines in strong opposition...The court closes a gap in international law as the first permanent tribunal dedicated to trying individuals, not nations or armies, responsible for the most horrific crimes...it has an implacable foe in the Bush administration, which argues that the court will open American officials and military personnel in operations abroad to unjustified, frivolous or politically motivated suits." Justifiable suits could be brought against Henry Kissinger (Vietnam, East Timor, Chile), Ronald Reagan (Nicaragua, El Salvador) and George H.W. Bush (Nicaragua, Iraqgate, Panama). Should Bush be the first President ever to 'unsign' a treaty, Michael Posner, exec. dir. of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said: "It would...send a signal to other governments around the world that treaties they signed are unsignable."

The world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court, was ratified by the UN and takes effect July 1st. Ten nations shared the honor of being the decisive signatory, but not the US. The ICC will step in when countries are unwilling or unable to dispense justice for the most serious crimes committed by individuals after the effective date: genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. After failing to exempt US soldiers and officials, the Bu$h administration is considering 'unsigning' the treaty President Clinton signed. Aside from Bu$h's unilateral ethnocentrism, just what has the Bu$hies so afraid? Is this consistent with 'restoring honor and dignity?'

According to the Times of India, "A US warplane dropped at least two bombs on the Afghan capital Kabul in the early hours of Tuesday morning, sparking a large fire in the southeast of the city, residents said. One of the buildings targeted was the office of the Qatari-based satellite television channel, Al-Jazeera, which has broadcast video-taped messages from alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden and his deputies since the September 11 atrocities in New York and Washington. The office was destroyed in the attack but neighbours said they believed it was empty and there were no known casualties." If the US intentionally targeted journalists, this was a war crime.

During Bob Kerrey's press conference, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman asked Kerrey whether the architects of the Vietnam War - men like Henry Kissinger - should be brought before a War Crimes Tribunal. Kerrey didn't embrace the idea, but the question should be asked by Americans who remember the atrocities committed during the war.