Time to Impeach a War Criminal

Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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Jun 5, 2005
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Good job mog. :!:


ya know, I almost ( almost :wink: ) feel a tad sorry for Americans as I see all this making such play /fun at them . Oh well, they're are rather tough skinned bunch.
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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World Tribunal for Iraq, Culminating Session Testimony

Istanbul, Turkey
25 June 2005

Thank you very much for inviting me to the Culminating Session of the
World Tribunal on Iraq. I first went to Iraq in November of 2003 as an
American citizen both frustrated and horrified by what my unelected
government was doing. I went to report on the situation because I was
deeply troubled by the “journalism” being provided by the corporate
media. At the time, as a frustrated mountain climber from Alaska working
as a journalist in Iraq, I never would have believed I would be
providing testimony to the World Tribunal on Iraq. I want to thank the
organizers for this opportunity. I am honored to be here in solidarity
with the Iraqi people.

In May of 2004 I interviewed a man who had just been released from Abu
Ghraib. Like so many I interviewed from various US military detention
facilities who’d been tortured horrifically, he still managed to
maintain his sense of humor.

He began laughing when telling me how CIA agents made him beat other
prisoners. He laughed, he said, because he had been beaten himself prior
to this, and was so tired that all he could do to beat other detained
Iraqis was lift his arm and let it drop on the other men.

Later, he laughed again as he told me what else had been done to him,
when he said, “The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they
brought it to my house.”

But this testimony is not about the indomitable spirit of the Iraqi
people. About the dignity and strength of Iraqis, we need no testimony.
This testimony is about ongoing violations of international law being
committed by the occupiers of Iraq on a daily basis in regards to
rampant torture, the neglect and obstruction of the health care sector
and the ongoing failure to allow Iraqis to reconstruct their infrastructure.

To discuss torture, there are many stories I could use here, but I’ll
use two examples indicative of scores of others I documented while in Iraq.

Ali Abbas lives in the Al-Amiriyah district of Baghdad and worked in
civil administration. So many of his neighbors were detained that
friends urged him to go to the nearby US base to try and get answers for
why so many innocent people were being detained. He went three times.

On the fourth he was detained himself. Within two days he was
transferred from the military base to Abu Ghraib, where he was held over
three months without charges before being released.

“The minute I got there, the suffering began,” said Abbas about his
interrogator, “I asked him for water, and he said after the
investigation I would get some. He accused me of so many things and
asked me so many questions. Among them he said I hated Christians.”

He was forced to strip naked shortly after arriving, and remained that
way for most of his stay in the prison. “They made us lay on top of each
other naked as if it was sex, and beat us with a broom,” he said. In
addition to being beaten on their genitals, detainees were also denied
water and food for extended periods of time, then were forced to watch
as their food was thrown in the trash.

Treatment also included having a loaded gun held to his head to prevent
him from crying out in pain as his hand-ties were tightened.

“My hands were enlarged because there was no blood because they cuffed
them so tight,” he told me, “My head was covered with the sack, and they
fastened my right hand to a pole with handcuffs. They made me stand on
my toes to clip me to it.”

Abbas said soldiers doused him in cold water while holding him under a
fan, and oftentimes, “They put on a loudspeaker, put the speakers on my
ears and said, “Shut Up, Fuck Fuck Fuck!” In this manner Abbas’s
interrogators routinely deprived him of sleep.

Abbas said that at one point, “Two men came, one a foreigner and one a
translator. He asked me who I was. I said I’m a human being. They told
me, ‘We are going to cut your head off and send you to hell. We will
take you to Guantanamo.’”

A female soldier told him, “Our aim is to put you in hell so you will
tell the truth. These are the orders we have from our superiors, to turn
your lives into hell.”

Abbas added, “They shit on us, used dogs against us, used electricity
and starved us.”

He told me, “Saddam Hussein used to have people like those who tortured
us. Why do they put Saddam into trial, but they do not put the Americans
to trial?”

But unlike Saddam Hussein, the US interrogators also desecrated Islam as
part of their humiliation.

Abbas was made to fast during the first day of Eid, the breaking of the
fast of Ramadan, which is haram (forbidden).

Sometimes at night when he would read his Koran, Abbas had to hold it in
the hallway for light. “Soldiers would walk by and kick the Holy Koran,
and sometimes they would try to piss on it or wipe shit on it,” he said.

Abbas did not feel this was the work of a few individual soldiers. “This
was organized, it wasn’t just individuals, and every one of the troops
in Abu Ghraib was responsible for it.”

Accounts by human rights groups support this. According to an April 2005
Human Rights Watch report, “Abu Ghraib was only the tip of the iceberg,
it’s now clear that abuse of detainees has happened all over—from
Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay to a lot of third-country dungeons where
the United States has sent prisoners. And probably quite a few other
places we don’t even know about.”

The report adds, “Harsh and coercive interrogation techniques such as
subjecting detainees to painful stress positions and extended sleep
deprivation have been routinely used in detention centers throughout
Iraq. An ICRC report concluded that in military intelligence sections of
Abu Ghraib, ‘methods of physical and psychological coercion used by the
interrogators appeared to be part of the standard operating procedures
by military intelligence personnel to obtain confessions and extract
information.’”

Amnesty International has also released similar findings.

Other human rights groups report that US military doctors, nurses, and
medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures such
as those administered to Sadiq Zoman.

55 year-old Zoman, detained from his home in Kirkuk in a raid by US
soldiers that produced no weapons, was taken to a police office in
Kirkuk, to the Kirkuk Airport Detention Center, the Tikrit Airport
Detention Center and finally to the 28th Combat Support Hospital, where
he was treated by Dr. Michael Hodges, a Lt. Col.

Lt. Col. Hodges’ medical report listed Zoman’s primary condition as
hypoxic brain injury (brain damage caused by lack of oxygen) “with
persistent vegetative state,” myocardial infarction (heart attack), and
heat stroke.”

After one month in custody, Zoman was dropped off in a coma at the
General Hospital in Tikrit by US soldiers. Zoman’s last name was listed
as his first name on the report, despite the fact that all of his
identification papers were taken during the raid on his home. Because of
this, it took his desperate family weeks to locate him in the hospital.

Hodges’s medical report did not mention the fact that the back of
Zomans’ head was bashed in, nor that he had electrical burn marks on the
bottoms of his feet and genitals, or why he had lash marks across his
back and chest.

Today he lies in bed still in a coma, and there has been no compensation
provided to his now impoverished family for what was done to Sadiq Zoman.

Another aspect I shall discuss is the catastrophic situation of the
health system in Iraq. I’ve recently released a report on the condition
of Iraq’s hospitals under occupation.

Although the Iraq Ministry of Health has supposedly gained its
sovereignty and received promises of over $1 Billion of US funding,
hospitals in Iraq continue to face ongoing medicine, equipment, and
staffing shortages under the US-led occupation.

During the 1990’s, medical supplies and equipment were constantly in
short supply because of the sanctions against Iraq. The war and
occupation brought promises of relief from effects of the sanctions, yet
hospitals have had little chance to recover and re-supply: instead, the
occupation has closely resembled a low-grade war since its inception. In
addition, allocation of resources by occupation authorities has been
dismal. Thus, throughout Baghdad there are ongoing shortages of
functional equipment and medicines of even the most basic items such as
analgesics, antibiotics, anesthetics and insulin. Surgical items and
even basic supplies like rubber gloves, gauze and medical tape are
running out.

In April 2004, an ICRC report stated that hospitals in Iraq are
overwhelmed with new patients, short of medicine and supplies and lack
both adequate electricity and water, with ongoing bloodshed stretching
the hospitals’ already meager resources to the limit.

Ample testimony from medical practitioners confirms this crisis. A
general practitioner at the prosthetics workshop at Al-Kena Hospital in
Baghdad, Dr. Thamiz Aziz Abul Rahman, said, “Eleven months ago we
submitted an emergency order for prosthetic materials to the Ministry of
Health, and still we have nothing.” After a pause he added, “This is
worse than even during the sanctions.”

Dr. Qasim al-Nuwesri, the chief manager at Chuwader General Hospital,
one of the two hospitals in the sprawling slum area of Sadr City,
Baghdad and home to 3 million people, added that they, too, faced a
shortage of most supplies and, most critically, of ambulances. But for
his hospital, the lack of potable water was the major problem. “Of
course we have typhoid, cholera, kidney stones…but we now even have the
very rare Hepatitis Type-E…and it has become common in our area,” said
al-Nuwesri, adding that they never faced these problems prior to the
invasion of 2003.

Chuwader hospital needs at least 2000 liters of water per day to
function with basic sterilization practices. According to Dr.
al-Nuwesri, they received 15% of this amount. “The rest of the water is
contaminated and causing problems, as are the electricity cuts,” added
al-Nuwesri, “Without electricity our instruments in the operating room
cannot work and we have no pumps to bring us water.”

At Fallujah General Hospital, Dr. Ahmed, who asked that only his first
name be used because he feared US military reprisals said of the April
2004 siege that “the Americans shot out the lights in the front of our
hospital. They prevented doctors from reaching the emergency unit at the
hospital, and we quickly began to run out of supplies and much needed
medications.” He also said that Marines kept the physicians in the
residence building several times, intentionally prohibiting them from
entering the hospital in order to treat patients.

In November, shortly after leveling Nazzal Emergency Hospital, US forces
entered Fallujah General Hospital, the city’s only healthcare facility
for trauma victims, detaining employees and patients alike. According to
medics on the scene, water and electricity were “cut off,” ambulances
targeted or confiscated by the US military, and surgeons, without
exception, kept out of the besieged city.

Hospital raids by US military and US-backed Iraqi forces now appear to
be standard operating procedure. On the 18th of this month, doctors at
the main hospital in Baquba went on strike, saying they are fed up with
constant abuse at the hands of aggressive Iraqi police and soldiers.

Dr. Mohammed Hazim in Baquba, pleaded for his governor to protect he and
his colleagues from “organized terrorism of the police and army.”

When wounded Iraqi security forces showed up demanding treatment, Dr.
Hussein told one of them he would require an x-ray. The doctor was told
to go to hell by the policeman he was treating and was then beaten. The
same policeman then ordered another police officer to put a bag over the
doctor’s head and take him away.

“Our security guards tried to stop them, telling them I was a doctor,
but they didn't listen and beat the security guards too,” he said, “Then
one of them put a gun to my head and threatened me.”

Similar behavior has been reported during the recent US-Iraqi military
operations in Haditha and Al-Qa’im. Doctors also recently went on strike
at the large Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad in a very similar incident.

Many doctors in Iraq believe that the lack of assistance, if not
outright hostility, by the US military, coupled with the lack of
rebuilding and reconstruction by foreign contractors has compounded the
problems they are facing.

The former ambassador of Iraq Paul Bremer admitted that US led coalition
spending on the Iraqi Health system was inadequate when he said, “It’s
not nearly enough to cover the needs in the healthcare field.”

When asked if his hospital had received assistance from the US military
or reconstruction contractors, Dr. Sarmad Raheem, the administrator of
chief doctors at Al-Kerkh Hospital in Baghdad said, “Never ever. Some
soldiers came here five months ago and asked what we needed. We told
them and they never brought us one single needle…We heard that some
people from the CPA came here, but they never did anything for us.”

At Fallujah General Hospital, Dr. Mohammed said there has been virtually
no assistance from foreign contractors, and of the US military he
commented, “They send only bombs, not medicine.”

International aid has been stymied by the horrendous security situation
in Iraq. After the UN headquarters was bombed in Baghdad in August 2003,
killing 20 people, aid agencies and NGOs either reduced their staffing
or pulled out entirely.

With senior Iraqi doctors fleeing Iraq en masse for fear of being
kidnapped, interns and younger doctors are left to deal with the
catastrophic situation. The World Health Organization last year warned
of a health emergency in Baghdad, as well as throughout Iraq if current
conditions persist. But despite claims from the Ministry of Health of
more drugs, better equipment, and generalized improvement, doctors on
the ground still see “no such improvement.”

In conclusion, a quick summary of the overall situation on the ground in
Iraq is in order. Over two years into the illegal occupation, while Iraq
sits upon a sea of oil, ongoing gasoline shortages plague Iraqis who
sometimes wait 2 days to fill their cars. In a country where a long gas
line once meant a one-car wait, Iraqis who are lucky enough to afford it
now purchase black market petrol and hope that it is not watered down.

Electricity remains in short supply. Most of Iraq, including the
northern region, receives on average 3 hours of electricity per day
amidst the nearly non-existent reconstruction efforts. Even the better
areas of Baghdad receive only 6-8 hours per day, forcing those who can
afford them to use small generators to run fans and refrigerators in
their homes. Of course, this is only for those who’ve been able to
obtain the now rarefied gasoline.

The security situation is, needless to say, horrendous. With over
100,000 Iraqis killed thus far and the number of US soldiers killed
approaching 2,000, the violence only continues to escalate.

Since the new Iraqi so-called government was sworn in two months ago,
well over 1,000 Iraqis and over 165 US soldiers have died in the
violence. These numbers will only continue to escalate as the failed
occupation grinds on. As the heavy handed tactics of the US military
persist, the Iraqi resistance continues to grow in its number and lethality.

As I mentioned before, potable water remains in short supply. Cholera,
typhoid and other water-borne diseases are rampant even in parts of the
capital city as lack of reconstruction continues to plague Iraq’s
infrastructure. Raw sewage is common across not just Baghdad, but other
cities throughout Iraq.

With 70% unemployment, a growing resistance and an infrastructure in
shambles, the future for Iraq remains bleak as long as the failed
occupation persists. While the Bush Administration continues to
disregard calls for a timetable for withdrawal, Iraqis continue to
suffer and die with little hope for their future. With each passing day,
the catastrophe in Iraq resembles the US debacle in Vietnam more and more.

Dr. Wamid Omar Nadhmi, a senior political scientist at Baghdad
University who was invited to this tribunal, told me last winter, “It
will take Iraqis something like a quarter of a century to rebuild their
country, to heal their wounds, to reform their society, to bring about
some sort of national reconciliation, democracy and tolerance of each
other. But that process will not begin until the US occupation of Iraq
ends.”

And it is now exceedingly clear that the only way the Bush
Administration will withdraw the US military from Iraq in order for
Iraqis to have true sovereignty is if they are forced to do so.
Click to expand...



read it and WEEP :cry:
 
R

Reverend Blair

Council Member
Apr 3, 2004
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RE: Time to Impeach a War

Drop that platitudes, Jim. Only monsters...undemocratic assholes with twisted little brains and hearts full of hate...commit torture.

You should be screaming with outrage at what your government is doing, at least if you believe in democracy and human rights at all. Instead yoyu offer platitudes and equivocations. There is something deeply wrong with the American spirit the answer to your government committing atrocities is to make lame excuses for them.
 
jimmoyer

jimmoyer

jimmoyer
Apr 3, 2005
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www.contactcorp.net
Whoah there Reverend Blair, just hold on to your apocalyptic horses, man.

I'm not your Dad's Oldsmobile, here.

I am quite aware of the details, quite aware of the outrage and why.

And the reference to the American Revolution was to simply to encapsulate briefly the severe economic depression, the hardships, the lack of a guarranteed future, the fact that the colonists could have lived with the Brits, as Canada showed, and that the war went on for 7-8 years with nothing but amorphous and suspect civil liberty to show.

The blunders, the hate, the evil done is all true.

But it's not the only truth, and it shouldn't be used to blot out the sun that shines on other truths that the righteous ignore.
 
R

Reverend Blair

Council Member
Apr 3, 2004
1,238
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Whoah there Reverend Blair, just hold on to your apocalyptic horses, man.
Click to expand...

I'm tired of holding my horses, Jim. The lack of criticism of the US government by US citizens has made those horses grumpy and the moral and intellectual cowardice of those who choose to offer excuses for the actions of that government is making the horses wild.


And the reference to the American Revolution was...
Click to expand...

The American revolution has nothing to do with Iraq. It has nothing to do with US foreign policy since at least the end of the nineteeth century. It certainly has nothing to do with the actions of Bush regime, other than the cruel and stupid actions of a man named George.

But it's not the only truth,
Click to expand...

The truth that matters is that your country is stumbling around the globe like a drunken biker shaking entire nations down for money. Imperialism is at the root of the problems in the Middle East and in the developing world. Your country not only played a role in that imperialism, but has the power to correct things and instead chooses to perpetuate them because they can turn a profit.

It's bloody well time that Americans stood up and said, "Enough." Instead you offer excuses and continue to torture and murder people for money. Stand up like men and women and demand that your leaders be held account for their crimes, install new leaders who have some semblance of humanity, and the world will follow you. Continue on the course you are on and eventually you will have nothing.
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 5, 2005
18,362
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Re: RE: Time to Impeach a War Criminal

jimmoyer said:
Whoah there Reverend Blair, just hold on to your apocalyptic horses, man.

I'm not your Dad's Oldsmobile, here.

I am quite aware of the details, quite aware of the outrage and why.

And the reference to the American Revolution was to simply to encapsulate briefly the severe economic depression, the hardships, the lack of a guarranteed future, the fact that the colonists could have lived with the Brits, as Canada showed, and that the war went on for 7-8 years with nothing but amorphous and suspect civil liberty to show.

The blunders, the hate, the evil done is all true.

But it's not the only truth, and it shouldn't be used to blot out the sun that shines on other truths that the righteous ignore.
Click to expand...

with due respect jim.......metaphors and platitudes simply don't do anymore. Don't think any of this is "poetic" (figures of speech) Most of us try to cut to the chase....
 
jimmoyer

jimmoyer

jimmoyer
Apr 3, 2005
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www.contactcorp.net
Ocean Breeze, with all due respect back, it is you who characterize my points as platitudes which is quite ad hominen.

My argument with you is simply that your truth should not push other truths out of the way, and I may add, I don't think you intend to do that.

I wouldn't be so proud that most of you "cut to the chase" because I don't see you catching what you think you are catching.

For example, has anyone ever pointed out, speaking of "cutting to the chase" that no war has ever offered a guarrantee? And are there not wars to stop genocide, to stop a way of being that festers long enough to be a threat?

The irony here is how the world little wants to help a democratic institution develop in Iraq because it can't get over the idea that you can't force democracy by guns, a contradiction you and others cannot for good reason hurdle over.

History shows us many failures, right?

But I hear this commercial running about telling parents to be parents and you got to tell your kid that they cannot smoke pot, and you got to tell them even if you hypocritically did so yourself at a younger age.

Get over the hypocrisy. And the Irony. It's rampant in every argument, even yours.

What of the EU telling Turkey that it has to take care of its women's rights or it won't be admitted ?

Are we allowed to tell anyone anything?

Do we have the right?

Well we do it all the time, even in our urban societies and talk about democracy by gun, the police will come in to your home and arrest you for whatever reason society has decided in its laws backed up by the gun.
 
moghrabi

moghrabi

House Member
May 25, 2004
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The Most Cowardly War in History


The Most Cowardly War in History
By Arundhati Roy
World Tribunal on Iraq

Friday 24 June 2005

Opening Statement of Arundhati Roy on behalf of the jury of conscience of the world tribunal of Iraq.
Istanbul, Turkey - This is the culminating session of the World Tribunal on Iraq. It is of particular significance that it is being held here in Turkey where the United States used Turkish air bases to launch numerous bombing missions to degrade Iraqs defenses before the March 2003 invasion and has sought and continues to seek political support from the Turkish government, which it regards as an ally. All this was done in the face of enormous popular opposition by the Turkish people. As a spokesperson for the jury of conscience, it would make me uneasy if I did not mention that the government of India is also, like the government of Turkey, positioning itself as a ally of the United States in its economic policies and the so-called War on Terror.

The testimonies at the previous sessions of the World Tribunal on Iraq in Brussels and New York have demonstrated that even those of us who have tried to follow the war in Iraq closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors that have been unleashed in Iraq.

The Jury of Conscience at this tribunal is not here to deliver a simple verdict of guilty or not guilty against the United States and its allies. We are here to examine a vast spectrum of evidence about the motivations and consequences of the US invasion and occupation, evidence that has been deliberately marginalized or suppressed. Every aspect of the war will be examined - its legality, the role of international institutions and major corporations in the occupation, the role of the media, the impact of weapons such as depleted uranium munitions, napalm, and cluster bombs, the use of and legitimation of torture, the ecological impacts of the war, the responsibility of Arab governments, the impact of Iraqs occupation on Palestine, and the history of US and British military interventions in Iraq. This tribunal is an attempt to correct the record. To document the history of the war not from the point of view of the victors but of the temporarily - and I repeat the word temporarily - anquished.

Before the testimonies begin, I would like to briefly address as straightforwardly as I can a few questions that have been raised about this tribunal.

The first is that this tribunal is a Kangaroo Court. That it represents only one point of view. That it is a prosecution without a defense. That the verdict is a foregone conclusion.

Now this view seems to suggest a touching concern that in this harsh world, the views of the US government and the so-called Coalition of the Willing headed by President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have somehow gone unrepresented. That the World Tribunal on Iraq isn't aware of the arguments in support of the war and is unwilling to consider the point of view of the invaders. If in the era of the multinational corporate media and embedded journalism anybody can seriously hold this view, then we truly do live in the Age of Irony, in an age when satire has become meaningless because real life is more satirical than satire can ever be.

Let me say categorically that this tribunal is the defense. It is an act of resistance in itself. It is a defense mounted against one of the most cowardly wars ever fought in history, a war in which international institutions were used to force a country to disarm and then stood by while it was attacked with a greater array of weapons than has ever been used in the history of war.

Second, this tribunal is not in any way a defense of Saddam Hussein. His crimes against Iraqis, Kurds, Iranians, Kuwaitis, and others cannot be written off in the process of bringing to light Iraqs more recent and still unfolding tragedy. However, we must not forget that when Saddam Hussein was committing his worst crimes, the US government was supporting him politically and materially. When he was gassing Kurdish people, the US government financed him, armed him, and stood by silently.

Saddam Hussein is being tried as a war criminal even as we speak. But what about those who helped to install him in power, who armed him, who supported him - and who are now setting up a tribunal to try him and absolve themselves completely? And what about other friends of the United States in the region that have suppressed Kurdish peoples and other peoples rights, including the government of Turkey?

There are remarkable people gathered here who in the face of this relentless and brutal aggression and propaganda have doggedly worked to compile a comprehensive spectrum of evidence and information that should serve as a weapon in the hands of those who wish to participate in the resistance against the occupation of Iraq. It should become a weapon in the hands of soldiers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, and elsewhere who do not wish to fight, who do not wish to lay down their lives - or to take the lives of others - for a pack of lies. It should become a weapon in the hands of journalists, writers, poets, singers, teachers, plumbers, taxi drivers, car mechanics, painters, lawyers - anybody who wishes to participate in the resistance.

The evidence collated in this tribunal should, for instance, be used by the International Criminal Court (whose jurisdiction the United States does not recognize) to try as war criminals George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, Silvio Berlusconi, and all those government officials, army generals, and corporate CEOs who participated in this war and now profit from it.

The assault on Iraq is an assault on all of us: on our dignity, our intelligence, and our future.

We recognize that the judgment of the World Tribunal on Iraq is not binding in international law. However, our ambitions far surpass that. The World Tribunal on Iraq places its faith in the consciences of millions of people across the world who do not wish to stand by and watch while the people of Iraq are being slaughtered, subjugated, and humiliated.



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Arundhati Roy received the Booker Prize for literature in 1997. Presently, one of the most eloquent voices for the global justice and anti-war movement, she was also awarded, among many others, the Sydney Peace Prize in 2004, and the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize in 2002.
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