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[casi] Re: [casi]=?Windows-1252?Q?International_outcry_over_release_of_Hussein_sons=92_pho?= =?Windows-1252?Q?tos_and_video?=



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.






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