Crimes Of War. How Bush Will Remain 'Unaccountable'

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

re-post of article from March 2003

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http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7501


Crimes Of War
How The U.S. Will Remain 'Unaccountable'

Sean O'Driscoll is a freelance journalist based in Washington, DC.



Don't expect to find her story on any U.S. news channels. 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 U.S. military bombed a residential compound to kill Saddam Hussein's son, Qusai, and one of Saddam's lieutenants, Izzat Ibrahim.

In the ferocity of the attack, dozens of local civilians, including women and children, were killed and injured by shrapnel and collapsing buildings. Seven other members of Doha's family were wounded in the same bombings; the youngest, a one-year-old baby, was being breastfed by her mother at the time.
While the Bush administration has repeatedly talked about aiding the Iraqi people after the war, it is difficult to see how they can win over the local population by bombing neighborhoods better known for housing young families than military targets.

What marks the Radwaniyeh bombings from other attacks in the center of Baghdad is that they could constitute a war crime under the Geneva Convention -- a document now being used to denounce the display of U.S. prisoners of war on Iraqi television stations. 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. Such bombings might explain the United States' refusal to sign up for the International Criminal Court, which was finally established in The Hague one week before the Iraq war began. ....

more...........

[Q]

1. 'Shock and Awe' was another crime against humanity...

...as was the Bushie bombings of other neighborhoods in their many attempts to 'get Saddam'.

- To this day I believe that the Bushies unnecessarily used shock and awe to do the maximum amount damage for Halliburton and other friends of Bush* to clean up.

[strauss_sucks]

2. Bechtel

Halliburton does the military housing and support, along with the oil support; it's Bechtel that does the infrastructure rebuild .... by, of course, subcontracting most of to Bin Laden Construction in S.A. Gotta luv this system?! It's soo brilliant for redistributing our tax dollars to BushCo's buddies.