No Nuremberg for Anglo-American War Criminals

ꕤ Article SOURCE as indicated http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/10/18/433878/Tony-Blair-Bush-Iraq-war- Bush, Blair plotted Iraq war 1 year before invasion had started: White House memo Sun Oct 18, 2015 12:54AM A damning White House memo has revealed details of the so-called “deal in blood” forged by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush over the Iraq war. The document, titled “Secret... Memorandum for the President”, was sent by then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell to President Bush on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas, Britain’s Daily Mail reported on Sunday. The sensational memo revealed that Blair had agreed to support the war a year before the invasion even started, while publicly the British prime minister was working to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The document also disclosed that Blair agreed to act as a spin doctor for Bush and convince a skeptical public that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, which actually did not exist. In response, Bush would flatter Blair and give the impression that London was not Washington’s poodle but an equal partner in the “special relationship.” Powell told Bush that Blair “will be with us” on the Iraq war, and assured the president that “"the UK will follow our lead in the Middle East."  In November 2002, US President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell applaud at a summit in Prague. Between them is National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, to their right, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. (Reuters photo) Another sensational memo revealed how Bush used “spies” in the British Labour Party to help him to influence public opinion in the United Kingdom in favor of the Iraq war. Both documents were obtained and published by The Mail on Sunday. They are part of a number of classified emails stored on the private server of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton which courts have forced her to reveal. Blair has always denied the claim that he and Bush signed a deal “in blood” at Crawford to launch a war against Iraq that began on March 20, 2003, that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. The Powell memo, however, showed how Blair and Bush secretly prepared the Iraq war plot behind closed doors at Crawford. Powell told Bush: “He will present to you the strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause.” The top US diplomatic official added that the UK premier has the presentational skills to “make a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace.” Powell wrote that Blair will “stick with us on the big issues” but he needs to show the British public that “Britain and America are truly equal partners in the special relationship.”  In March 2003, the US and Britain invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law and under the pretext of finding WMDs; but no such weapons were ever discovered in Iraq. More than one million Iraqis were killed as the result of the US-led invasion, and subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored. The US war in Iraq cost American taxpayers $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, according to a study called Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/10/18/433878/Tony-Blair-Bush-Iraq-war- http://www.globalresearch.ca/kuala-lumpur-war-crimes-tribunal-bush-convicted-in-absentia-it-s-official-george-w-bush-is-a-war-criminal/30839 Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal. Bush Convicted in Absentia: IT’S OFFICIAL – George W Bush is a war criminal. By Yvonne Ridley Global Research, May 14, 2012 Foreign Policy Journal 14 May 2012 EXTRACT In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were today (Friday) found guilty of war crimes. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia. The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. They included testimony from British man Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi who was tortured in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. Full transcripts of the charges, witness statements and other relevant material will now be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council. The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission is also asking that the names of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo, Bybee, Addington and Haynes be entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals for public record. The tribunal is the initiative of Malaysia’s retired Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who staunchly opposed the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. FULL AT SOURCE http://www.globalresearch.ca/kuala-lumpur-war-crimes-tribunal-bush-convicted-in-absentia-it-s-official-george-w-bush-is-a-war-criminal/30839 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111128105712109215.html Kuala Lumpur tribunal: Bush and Blair guilty A war crimes tribunal in Malaysia offers a devastating critique of international criminal law institutions today. 28 Nov 2011 13:37 GMT Richard Falk Richard Falk is Albert G Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global Studies. He is also former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. EXTRACTS In Kuala Lumpur, after two years of investigation by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC), a tribunal (the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, or KLWCT) consisting of five judges with judicial and academic backgrounds reached a unanimous verdict that found George W Bush and Tony Blair guilty of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and genocide as a result of their roles in the Iraq War. The proceedings took place over a four-day period from November 19-22, and included an opportunity for court-appointed defense counsel to offer the tribunal arguments and evidence on behalf of the absent defendants. They had been invited to offer their own defense or send a representative, but declined to do so. ... Universal jurisdiction The KLWCT did not occur entirely in a jurisprudential vacuum. It has long been acknowledged that domestic criminal courts can exercise universal jurisdiction for crimes of state wherever these may occur, although usually only if the accused individuals are physically present in the court. The underlying legal theory is based on the recognition of the limited capacity of international criminal trials to impose accountability in a manner that is not entirely dictated by geopolitical priorities and reflective of a logic of impunity. In this regard, universal jurisdiction has the potential to treat equals equally, and is very threatening to the Kissingers and Rumsfelds of this world, who have curtailed their travel schedules. The United States and Israel have used their diplomatic leverage to roll back universal jurisdiction authority in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom and Belgium. "War must be outlawed. That will have to be our struggle for now. We must struggle for justice and freedom from oppression, from economic hegemony. But we must remove the threat of war first. With this sword of Damocles hanging over our heads we can never succeed in advancing the interests of our countries.  War must therefore be made illegal. The enforcement of this must be by multilateral forces under the control of the United Nations. No single nation should be allowed to police the world, least of all to decide what action to take, [and] when." Mahathir Mohamed anti-war speech of February 24, 2003 ... In his 2007 statement, Mahathir promised that a future KLWCT would not, in his words, be "like the 'kangaroo court' that tried Saddam". Truly, the courtroom proceedings against Saddam Hussein was a sham trial excluding much relevant evidence, disallowing any meaningful defense, and culminating in a grotesque and discrediting execution.  ... FULL AT SOURCE http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111128105712109215.html ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT When you don't know what's going on, the conviction for war crimes in absentia sounds vaguely amusing -- as if the Malaysians were off their heads and had gone rogue in deciding to convict such fine and upstanding Americans (and Blair) for war crimes. It's only down the track that you learn that, yes, there really is grounds for such an outlandish-sounding conviction, as there is a convention against torture and against waging wars of aggression. Yes, people were tortured and, yes, the Iraq invasion was illegal and was launched on false pretexts (WMDs). So these government representatives are totally bent and criminal in their actions. And, as time progresses, more information comes out supporting that ugly fact.  The latest is just more confirmation that these people and their governments really are criminals. Germans were tried by the victors at Nuremberg and hanged for war crimes. But there won't be any such trials for the Anglo-American war criminals. ________________ Wonder if those Clinton e-mails were meant to come out, to maybe influence elections.  As in, Bush is Republican and Clinton is Democrat.  So creating a situation (private server) where this information would be released could maybe have been deliberate to advantage the Democrats, I'm thinking. Of course, I could be completely wrong.  lol ꕤ

War in Iraq Cost Over $1.7 trillion dollars / Private Contractors PROFIT from US War: $138 billion US taxpayer to private contractors

Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War By Angelo Young, International Business Times 20 March 13 The accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels. Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops. Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday. The No. 1 recipient? Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. ..., which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. ..., in 2007. The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg. Who were Nos. 2 and 3? Agility Logistics ... of Kuwait and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Together, these firms garnered $13.5 billion of U.S. contracts. As private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels, the amount of corruption ballooned, even if most contractors performed their duties as expected. According to the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the level of corruption by defense contractors may be as high as $60 billion. Disciplined soldiers that would traditionally do many of the tasks are commissioned by private and publicly listed companies. Even without the graft, the costs of paying for these services are higher than paying government employees or soldiers to do them because of the profit motive involved. No-bid contracting - when companies get to name their price with no competing bid - didn't lower legitimate expenses. (Despite promises by President Barack Obama to reel in this habit, the trend toward granting favored companies federal contracts without considering competing bids continued to grow, by 9 percent last year, according to the Washington Post.) Even though the military has largely pulled out of Iraq, private contractors remain on the ground and continue to reap U.S. government contracts. For example, the U.S. State Department estimates that taxpayers will dole out $3 billion to private guards for the government's sprawling embassy in Baghdad. The costs of paying private and publicly listed war profiteers seem miniscule in light of the total bill for the war. Last week, the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University said the war in Iraq cost $1.7 trillion dollars, not including the $490 billion in immediate benefits owed to veterans of the war and the lifetime benefits that will be owed to them or their next of kin. http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/308-12/16561-focus-cheneys-halliburton-made-395-billion-on-iraq-war COMMENT The things that stood out for me are: War in Iraq cost $1.7 trillion dollars PLUS $490 billion in immediate benefits owed to veterans PLUS lifetime benefits owed to them or their next of kin Privatization of US military operations rose to unprecedented levels Private contractors (companies) received min.  $138 billion of US taxpayer money for contracts doled out by US govt Half (52%) of that went to 10 govt contracts Biggest recipients: KBR, Inc ie parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co received:  $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over past decade Agility Logistics (of Kuwait) &  state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp Kuwait contractors received  $13.5 billion of US contracts (jointly) Private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels Amount of corruption ballooned Costs higher than paying government employees Professional, disciplined soldiers - displaced No wind-back by Obama admin on doling out contracts (without public tender process) - on contrary: increase of such contracts Iraq = private contractors remain on the ground, although US military has largely pulled out of Iraq eg.  $3 billion taxpayer money to private guards for USG sprawling embassy in Baghdad This is really mindblowing.   The amount of money that is made by PRIVATE companies enriching themselves through war is staggering. Bear in mind also, that those who PROFIT from war will lobby FOR WAR. What is also staggering is that the functions of the US military have been farmed out. The danger of that is lack of (a) accountability and (b) transparency. So, really, the government is pulling a stunt where they've probably got an 'anything goes' thing happening, because what's going on is contracted and therefore beyond public scrutiny. Hopefully, that makes sense.  I don't have a way with words.  But I hope that idea comes across. If the military screws up, it is on government heads.  But if private contractors screw up, it is passed off as a bad apple, renamed and redeployed as a mercenary. The 'decommissioning' of the US military for these private contractor forces or functionaries is worthwhile considering. And there's also the costs incurred by the taxpayer funding those that: do the job at higher price than professional soldiers introduce corruption and those that don't even compete (put in tenders) but I think these aspects aren't half as important as the establishment of 'private' State armies and functionaries that are arm's length and beyond public accountability and scrutiny. What's also interesting is the Kuwait profits.