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By way of introduction, first this fragment of news: """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Guardian Unlimited <thewrap-list@guardianunlimited.co.uk> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 08:54:59 +0000 (UTC) Subject: The Wrap: Short blames Blair government for Kelly's suicide [...] >>> US STEPS UP HUNT FOR SADDAM If Clare Short can use incendiary language on the front page of the Independent, then so can Robert Fisk. The campaigning reporter says US troops "turned a botched raid" on a house in Baghdad "into a bloodbath" in which up to 11 people were killed, some of them "cremated" in a burning car. He says the US obsession with capturing Saddam Hussein is squandering any political advantage they may have won with the deaths of his two sons. """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""* On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 10:33:37 +0200 "AS-ILAS" <AS-ILAS@gmx.de> writes: > > >1) International outcry over release of Hussein sons=92 >photos and video >2) Release of Hussein sons=92 photos: Washington exposes >its own barbarism >3) The killing of Hussein=92s sons: the Nuremberg >precedent and the criminalization of the US ruling elite These stories are quite good, but there are few things which I think deserve more emphasis. As to the photos, it's important to understand that they do NOT constitute proof of anything. A good mortician is also a scuptor, like a movie makeup artist, and by banging in a bit of bone here, and piling up a bit of putty there, it is likely that just about any roughly similar person can be made to look like almost anyone. The putty can form an actual mask, and especially when viewed in controlled lighting and angle the image means nothing. I expect the sons are dead, but the display of the images are not proof, but propaganda and gloating. More convincing proof would be testimony by trusted officials as to recognition, and physical evidence. Also underemphasized is the death of the child. This ties in with the story from The Wrap above -- there is utter disregard for killing the innocent. During the "war" it was stated that some level of "collateral damage" was acceptable while attacking the enemy. But Bush made a humongous deal of landing on an aircraft carrier to announce that major hositilities are over. There is now a UN resolution (such as it is) that the US is now the *occupier* of Iraq. I would hope that those with more knowledge of law check this, but it seems to me that an occupier should be performing security functions according to police standards, not the rules of war. These are not even summary executions -- for what crime was the child executed? A summary execution implies that one kills the criminal or enemy person -- and no one else -- in a controlled manner. No, these are wanton murders, at least of those caught in area when these attacks take place. This was not self defense -- neither the murder of the sons or the above mentioned attack in Bagdhad with perhaps 11 deaths -- these are attacks initiated by the US even when less violent options were not exhausted. No police force in any civilized country could hope to get away with these sorts of actions. If a murder was suspected to be holed up in a London apartment building, will the police blow up the building? (OK, maybe the Isralis would do that, but does anyone but the US look to the Israelis for legal standards?). Does the US have license to kill anyone it pleases, and to blazes with whoever happens to get in the way? Is THIS the liberation and freedom to be brought to Iraq? Is this what the democratization brings? If such action is indeed by the defacto rules, then obviously the war is NOT over, and Iraqis have the right to kill whoever of the enemy troops they can, by the rules of war and self-defense. One can have criminals and deal with them according to criminal law, or one can have eneemies and deal with them by the rules of war (and even those rules do not allow for the indiscrimate killing of civilians) -- but one can't have it both ways at one's convenience. By what set of law CAN the US just "Bushwhack" who it pleases? It appears to me, on the face of it, that the two sons, and the other people were murdered, and that this is part of a series of war crimes committed by the US. It also seems to me that those citizens and commentators who fail to be concerned with and have objection to these actions are either complicit in murder themselves or morally incompetent. To just say "the world is better with the sons gone" (means justify ends?) is to miss the point entirely. ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk