Saddam will not be able to reveal US accomplices (LTTE / The Herald / UK)

[struggle4progress]

<snip> Given that the US has picked the judges and determined the terms of reference of the proceedings, it will fall somewhat short of fairness, at least in the sense of allowing the accused to reveal who his accomplices were (the CIA), who brought him to power (the CIA) and who supplied his weaponry (yes, you got it). The Human Rights Watch report on US army torture in Iraq has recently stated that "in a way it was sport". The trial is designed along the same Wayne Rooneyesque lines. Keep the world's attention away from Halabja (and the period 1975-90) by focusing on Dubjail. A bit like charging Al Capone with tax evasion. Meanwhile, justify the illegal war by telling us that Saddam was a bad man.

Ironically, when I lived under Saddam's gentle tutelage for several years in the 1980s I worked closely with two American lawyers, Harvard graduates both – they were developing Iraqi planning laws while I focused on demographics and water resources. Saddam was our friend then, a bulwark against Shia fundamentalism. Millions of Iraqi dead later, Shia fundamentalism is on the cusp of realisation in Iraq amid a civil war. Bring on balkanisation. Funny old thing, war.

As one of the few westerners there at the time I recall clearly the day that Rumsfeld blew into Baghdad to stroke Saddam's inflated ego. I also recall Mitlah Ridge (1991) where tens of thousands of Iraqis (Shia conscripts) were buried while still alive. I remember Amiriyah (1991) where hundreds of women and children were encrusted on to the walls of their shelter trying to avoid a "clean" missile. I often think of the million Iraqi children murdered by sanctions, their flesh minced by British cluster bombs while they frolicked among the depleted uranium. <snip>

When they have dispatched the madman before he can finger his erstwhile pals in the US and here, I really do hope that our young war criminal and his friend in the Oval Office can be held in Abu Ghraib – it's just outside the Green Zone and can be accessed in half an hour – with the jailers picked by Rumsfeld, and before facing a new set of judges with a Sunni on the panel. I'd be quite happy to have my two Harvard friends from all these years ago, .. people who actually understand Iraq, perform that function. <snip>

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/49224.html

[afdip]

1. nice article but not much that is new . . . . .

[stillcool]

4. i will take all the repetition...

of this kind any day. Someone needs to answer for these crimes, and the crimes bear repeating on a daily basis until that day comes.

[LynnTheDem]

2. "tens of thousands of Shia conscripts were buried while still alive"

Into mass graves. By US forces.

But hey, never mind.

[frylock]

6. what bodies?

<snip>

It wasn’t until late in the afternoon of Feb. 25 that the press pool was permitted to see where the attack occurred. There were groups of Iraqi prisoners. About 2,000 had surrendered. But there were no bodies, no stench of feces that hovers on a battlefield, no blood stains, no bits of human beings. “You get a little firefight in Vietnam and the bodies would be stacked up like cordwood,” Daniel said. Finally, Daniel found the Division public affairs officer, an Army major.

“Where the hell are all the bodies?” Daniel said.

“What bodies?” the officer replied.

Daniel and the rest of the world would not find out until months later why the dead had vanished. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them alive and firing their weapons from World War I-style trenches, were buried by plows mounted on Abrams main battle tanks. The Abrams flanked the trench lines so that tons of sand from the plow spoil funneled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, actually straddling the trench line, came M2 Bradleys pumping 7.62mm machine gun bullets into the Iraqi troops.

“I came through right after the lead company,” said Army Col. Anthony Moreno, who commanded the lead brigade during the 1st Mech’s assault. “What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people’s arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands.”

<more>

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0211/sloyan.html

[LynnTheDem]

8. America cites "gap in international law" and other US/UK war crimes @ 1991

"Many Iraqi soldiers were killed by the simple expedient of burying them alive: in one report, American earthmovers and ploughs mounted on tanks were used to attack more than 70 miles of trenches.

Colonel Anthony Moreno commented that for all he knew, 'we could have killed thousands'.

One US commander, Colonel Lon Maggart, estimated that his forces alone had buried about 650 Iraqi soldiers.

"What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with peoples arms and things sticking out of them,' observed Moreno.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=45

The US Pentagon defended this atrocity, saying there was a "gap" in international law that allowed for burying the troops alive.

http://jeff.paterson.net/aw/aw4_buried_alive.htm

Then there was the Basra massacre, aka The Highway of Death. On March 2, 1991, Iraq announced over public radio that it was withdrawing from Kuwait. The surrendering soldiers, as well as families of Iraq and other nations seeking to escape the US ariel bombings, went down the Basra road to Southern Iraq.

Above them, the U.S. bombed both ends of the highway, ensuring that there would be no escape from what was to follow. Along the seven-mile stretch, the U.S. then killed thousands. On some planes, the PA system bleated out Rossini’s William Tell Overture (the Lone Ranger theme).

WARNING: SHOCKING PHOTOS

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0212/pt04.html

The Highway of Death

“Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic.“ — Major Bob Nugent, Army intelligence officer.

On the Highway of Death

"It was like going down an American highway—people were all mixed up in cars in trucks. People got out of their cars and ran away. We shot them....The Iraqis were getting massacred."
—Pfc. Charles Sheehan-Miles

"We've blown away a busload of kids."
—Unidentified platoon sergeant during March 2 assault.

http://www.cornerstonemag.com/pages/show_page.asp?7

"We're yelling on the radio, 'They're firing at the prisoners! They're firing at the prisoners!'
—Specialist 4 Edward Walker, describing February 27, 1991, incident during ground invasion of Iraq.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27c/069.html

The UK Parliament commented on the Basra road massacre:

UK Parliament
House of Commons
column 1347

Hon. Members will know that I am not emotional about many subjects. But I suggest that, emotionally, we shall be haunted for a long time to come by what has happened in the last few weeks. We shall be haunted in particular by what occurred on the Basra road. That was done in the name of the American Congress and the British House of Commons.
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm...

And I betcha less than 20% of the entire population of the USA even knows about these facts.

[frylock]

9. thanks for the links, lynn.

[wakeme2008]

3. As always

http://www.bushflash.com/thanks.html

Thanks for the Memories....

[stillcool]

5. thanks for that ....nice one,,,,

we've alway had him. How frigging sad.

[struggle4progress]

7. That's a classic: it's been around a while but well worth a repeat look

Saddam, of course, is in his current jam for the same reason Manuel Noriega is now rotting away in a US jail: he mistakenly believed that being able to expose Bushistas as criminal accomplices offered him some protection.