inal And The Tribumal's Final Judgment LL 2 o O co < >Incinerated body of an Iraqi soldier on the “Highway of Death,”a name the press has given to the road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq. U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles a its front and rear, then bombing and straffing the resulting traffic jam for hours. More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway. The clear rapid incineration of the human being on the cover suggests the use of napalm, phosphorous, or other incendiary bombs. ‘These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols. This massive attack occurred after Saddam Hussein announced a complete troop withdrawl from Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660. Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who “are out of combat.” There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending seige of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the “highway of death.” The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indescriminate and excessive use of force. (Photo Credit: © 1991 Kenneth Jarecke / Contact Press Images) Cover: a market place in Basra after intense U.S. bombing.War Crimes A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq Ramsey Clark and Others Maisonneuve Press Washington, D.C. 1992Ramsey Clark and Others, War Crimes: A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq. Copyright © 1992 by The-Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal 36 East 12th Street, New York, NY 10003 phone 212-254-5385 / fax 212-979-1583 Published by Maisonneuve Press P. O, Box 2980, Washington, D.C. 20013 All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data War crimes: a report on United States war crimes against Iraq/ Ramsey Clark and others. De cm: Includes bibliographical notes Index 1. Persian Gulf War, 1991 ~ Destruction and pillage. 2. Persian Gulf War, 1991 —United States. |. Clark, Ramsey, 1927- . DS79.736,.W37 1992 91-48036 956.704'3--de20 cP. ISBN 0-944624-15-4 (pbk.) Printed in the United StatesDedication This book is dedicated to the memory of the more than 200,000 Iraqi people who were killed in an intense high-tech slaughter that was carried out in the forty-two days between January 16th and February 27th 1991, This book is also dedicated to the ongoing inter- national struggle against continued U.S. aggression. The shooting war may be over but the deadly character of U.S. Policy continues to wreak havoc and suffering on the people of Iraq. Unless the draconian economic sanctions are lifted, tens of thousands wilf continue to die from malnutrition and disease. This international effort is undertaken in the belief that millions of lives in future generations can be saved by exposing and mobilizing against the crimes of the past.vil Preface The material in this book was compiled by the Commission of Inquiry for the Intemational War Crimes Tribunal. Most of the material in the first part of the book was originally presented at the first hearings of the Commission of Inquiry in New York City on May 11, 1991. More than 1,000 people attended the hearings held at Stuyvesant Auditorium. Since the announcement of the formation of the Commission of Inquiry, organizations world-wide have come forward to participate and to offer evidence and testimony. A few selections of this additional testimony from other Commission hearings have been included where space permits. Commissions of Inquiry have been established in fifteen countries around the world, and public hearings where new testimony was presented were held in twenty-eight cities in the U.S. Obviously a great deal of this valuable material could not be presented in the short confines of this book. At the May 11, 1991, hearing in New York, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark outlined the 19-point indictment of the U.S. government's conduct in the Gulf War that served as the basis of the Commission's work, For seven hours eyewitnesses who had traveled to Iraq during and following the war presented evidence on the extensive and deliberate destruction of Iraq's infrastructure. Compelling video testimony was shown. Images of destroyed neighborhoods, shrapnel and burn victims, dehydrated and undernourished children in hospitals lacking electricity and necessary drugs were displayed in a photo exhibit. Some of these photos are also included in this book. The Commission of Inquiry for an International War Crimes Tribunal was initiated by Ramsey Clark and the Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East following Mr. Clark’s February trip to Iraq. Accompanied by a video filmmaker and a photographer, Mr, Clark traveled 2,000 miles through Iraq during a time when the U.S. was running up to 3,000 bombing sorties a day. He first documented the systematic destruction of the civilian infrastructure, a view later confirmed by a number of other delegations and even by the United Nation’s own team of investigators. The Commission of Inquiry was established to gather testimony and evidence on an international basis and to present the testimony in a series of public hearings. Evidence gathered at all these hearings is to be presentedvii to an international Tribunal of Judges on February 27, 28, and 29, 1992 in New York—the one-year anniversary of the war. This book contains in the Appendix the information detailing the extent of the destruction that Ramsey Clark originally presented in a letter to then United Nations Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar and President George Bush and released to the world press. Other eyewitness reports and passages from several of the international laws and conventions along with U.S. Representative Henry Gonzalez’s Resolution of Impeachment of President Bush on the basis of violations of the U.S. Constitution, the United Nations Charter and international laws have also been included. Acknowledgments This book represents the combined efforts of many hundreds of people who have helped to present and publicize much of this material. The staff of the Commission consisted of Adeeb Abed, Teresa Gutierrez, Brian Becker, Gavrielle Gemma, Sara Flounders, Bill Doares, Karen Talbot, and Phil Wilayto. Special acknowledgment should be given to the New York Research Committee which spent many hours filing reports, gathering the footnotes and checking facts. This committee was coordinated by Michelle Le Blanc and Barbara Nell Perrin and included Wallace Cheatham, Magic L. Dominic, Chtis Beauchamp, Kathy Avakian, David Finklestein, Max Becher, Andrea Robbins, Pat Hockmeyer, Brian Becker, Thelma Easy, Stephan Patty, Beth Bamsley, Bonna Whitten-Stoval and Paudy Hopkins. We want to specially acknowledge the contributions of Prof. Francis Boyle, M. A. Samad-Matias, Bob Schwartz, Yuriko Okiwara, Joan Sckler, Samori Marksman, Jan van Heurck, Hugh Stephans, Richard Becker, John Philpot, and David Jacobs. In addition, Betsy Gimbel and Rosemary Neidenberg spent many hours transcribing tapes of talks and testimony. Help in editing this material was provided by John Catalinotto and Gary Wilson. Paddy Colligan and Greg Dunkel did the copy-editing and proof-reading. Lal Rookh designed the cover and Kate Castle drew the cover graphic. ‘This book would not have been possible without the help of our publisher Maisonneuve Press. Special thanks to Robert Merrill of Maisonneuve Press who recognized the importance of establishing a permanent record of the work of the International Commission of Inquiry. His active participation and encouragement in cach step and his final editing of the abundance of material made all the difference.Contents Preface and Acknowledgements The Tribunal’s Final Judgment, February 29, 1992 Part One: The Charges Initial Complaint Charging George Bush, J. Danforth Quayle, James Baker, Richard Cheney, William Webster, Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf and Others to be Named with Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity Part Two: The Basis in International Law Why an Inquiry / Sara Flounders The Legal and Moral Basis for an International War Crimes Tribunal / Ramsey Clark International Law and War Crimes / Michael Ratner War Crimes Committed Against the People of Iraq / Francis Kelly Part Three: Testimony and Evidence Provoking Iraq / Gautam Biswas and Tony Murphy USS. Conspiracy to Initiate the War Against Iraq / Brian Becker The Myth of Surgical Bombing in the Gulf War / Paul Walker The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers on “The Highway of Death” / Joyce Chediac The Effects of the War on Health Care in Iraq ! David Levinson vii 29 32 39 47 63 74 83 90 94The Impact of Sanctions on Baghdad’s Children’s Hospital / Ann Montgomery The Impact of the War on Iraqi Society / Adeeb Abed and Gavrielle Gemma Eyewitness Interviews Crimes Against Egyptian and Palestinian Civilians in Iraq / Mustafa El Bakri Waging War on Civilization / Fadwa El Guindi The Attack on the Women’s Peace Ship / E. Faye Williams The Truth Behind Economic Sanctions: Report on the Embargo of Food and Medicines / Eric Hoskins Part Four: The New World Order The New World Order: What It Is and How to Fight It / Monica Moorehead The Demonization of Saddam Hussein: A Violation of the UN Convention Against Racism / Esmeralda Brown The Impact of the Gulf War on Women and Children / Nawal El Saadawi The Continuing War and the Kurds / Ali Azad Government Attacks and Violence Against Arab People / Neal Saad The Gulf War: A Crime Against the Peoples of Africa and Asia / Karen Talbot Yemen: A Victim of the Bribery and Corruption of the UN / Abdel Hameed Noaman Expulsion of Guest Workers and the Impact on Africa / M. A. Samad-Matias Palestine and the Gulf War / Houda Gazalwin The Harsh Government Prosecution of Military Resisters / William Kunstler The Old World Order and the Causes of the Gulf War / Tony Benn 99 102, 119 139 146 158 164 173 176 180 184 188 191 193 198 201 204Appendix A: International Law Selections from the Geneva Conventions Selections from the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunals Selections from the United Nations Charter Appendix B: Background Documents for the Tribunal The Announcement of the Formation of a Commission of Inquiry A Letter to Javier Pérez de Cuéllar / Ramsey Clark A Letter to Claiborne Pell / Ramsey Clark Selections from The Report to the Secretary General on Humanitarian Needs in Kuwait and Iraq | Martti Ahtisaari H.Res. 86: A Motion to Impeach George Bush / Henry Gonzalez H.Res. 180: A Resolution to Lift the Economic Embargo on Iraq / Henry Gonzalez The April Glaspie Connection Appendix C: International Tribunals Report from Belgium Report from Turkey Report from East Asia Index xi 211 217 219 223 227 234 236 245 248 259 266 274 277The Final Judgment The International War Crimes Tribunal The February 29, 1992, International War Crimes Tribunal was the culmination of one of the largest independent worldwide investigations into war crimes ever undertaken. Founded a year before, the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal issued a call to the people of the entire world to hold independent peoples’ investigations into the causes of the Gulf war and the conduct of its participants, The charge of war crimes against the U.S. for its conduct in the war, made by political forces in within the United States, inspired a wave of similar actions across the world. Pacifist groups, anti-imperialist groups, trade unions, mass organizations, members of parliaments, and official religious bodies joined to call Commission of Inquiry hearings in twenty countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, south and east Asia, and in at least twenty-four cities in North America. Thousands of people took part, representing millions more people all around the world. Many local commissions brought and substantiated charges against their own governments. Before 1,000 people in New York on May 11, 1991, Ramsey Clark charged George Bush and his lieutenants with nineteen counts of war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. These nineteen charges became the basis of all the other inter- national hearings. The fact that large and culturally diverse groups could hold inter- nationally coordinated public scrutinies of both the United States’ and their own governments’ role in a “popular” war is in itself a surprising achievement. It is all the more significant that this was accomplished without support from any government or international agency. This form of grassroots political activism had not been attempted before. At the final February 29, 1992 Tribunal, Ramsey Clark and the Commission of Inquiry research staff prepared a summary of the charges and evidence based on material gathered at Commission hearings and presented it to a panel of judges. It included testimony from witnesses such as Mohammed Khader, a Palestinian living in Baghdad during the war, who told how “smart bombs” killed hundreds of civilians at the Ameriyh shelter on February 13, 1991, including his wife and four daughters. Included also were computer print-outs of every installation hit by U.S. and allied bombs.2 International War Crimes Tribunal In addition to oral testimony and documents, the Commission made available photographic, videotape, and audio evidence. The panel of judges included internationally known civil and human rights activists, legal scholars, and freedom fighters. Some have served in the governments of their countries, others have served time in prison for their efforts on behalf of human rights. The judges reflected a diversity of cultures, nationalities, and ideologies. After reviewing all of the evidence and testimony, the panel retumed its judgment (printed below). The aim of the Tribunal was to demand that the U.S. government be held accountable for its actions and to stop future war crimes. Its goal was to arouse and organize anger and opposition to U.S. policies which involve the use of military force against developing nations, whether through direct US. intervention or through the use of surrogate or covert armies. In rebuilding an organized political opposition to the war, these mass hearings played an important role. This was a public inquiry fueled by the deter- mination that the victors would not write the history of this war. It is critical for this and future generations to learn the true history of the Gulf war. The major U.S. media did not cover the tribunal at all. This glaring censorship is all the more apparent when contrasted to the coverage that the press from a number of other countries accorded to this unprecedented event. Delegates had comé from thirty-three countries. International media focussed on the drama of a public Tribunal with 1,500 observers packing a hall in New York City to hear evidence of U.S. war crimes. The aura of U.S. invincibility was cracking. Two of Japan's three largest daily papers, Tokyo Broadcasting System, Danish National Television, newspapers throughout the Middle East and North Africa all gave major coverage. The largest Urdu and English language papers in Pakistan, although denied visas by the State Department to come to the Tribunal, published extensive reports. A number of international reporters based at the United Nations filed stories. Media throughout Europe, from Sweden to Italy, covered news conferences hosted by delegations returning from New York. Within the US., listener-sponsored radio stations gave detailed coverage, as did African. American weekly newspapers, much of the Spanish language media, and a number of progressive news weeklies. Despite the censorship of the major U.S. media, the information so strictly suppressed will continue to seep out. This book, now in its second printing, is a living part of a continuing struggle for truth and justice. Seventy-five years ago those who opposed World War I, as a battle of the great imperialist powers to re-divide and carve up the world markets, were jailed and denounced as traitors. But today who would describe that war, which cost twenty million lives, as a “war to end all wars” or much less a “war to make the world safe for democracy"? The perception and understanding of the Gulf war also will change. But many thousands of people are determined not to wait a generation for the research of historiansThe Final Judgment 3 through old archives to bring out the real economic and political interests that led up to the Gulf war and determined the conduct of the aggressors. The policy must be understood and opposed now because other U.S. wars and interventions are on the agenda of the New World Order. ‘The panel of Tribunal Judges and the international delegates came not just to hear the evidence of a past U.S. war. They challenged the Commission staff to consider ways to continue their international collaboration and exchange of information. The first step was the founding of the new Inter- national Action Center in New York City. Truth is a powerful weapon. Heightened cooperation between inter- national contacts could prevent further U.S. militarism, not just respond to it. The International Action Center will help to provide continuing opposition to U.S. intervention around the world. The Center will help with organizing swpport on difficult international issues, such as the continuing attacks on Cuba, the CIA support of the military coup in Haiti, and the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. This is the challenge in the work ahead and it is the challenge in reading the testimony in this book. The world cannot be viewed in isolated, unconnected segments. Learning about these hearings and the judgment will help the reader develop a clearer understanding of the real issues behind the assault on Iraq and an appreciation of the international movement that organized a powerful struggle for truth. This the hope for the future. Adeeb Abed Sara Flounders The Commission of Inquiry for the International ‘War Crimes Tribunal4 International War Crimes Tribunal Final Judgment: International War Crimes Tribunal The members of the international War Crimes Tribunal, meeting in New York, have carefully considered the Initial Complaint of the Com- inission of Inquiry dated May 6, 1991 against President George H. W. Bush, Vice President J. Danforth Quayle, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Commander of the Allied Forces in the Persian Gulf, and others named in the Complaint charging them with nineteen Separate crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the First Protocol thereto, and other international agreements and customary international law: having the right and obligation as citizens of the world to sit in judgment regarding violations of international humanitarian law; having heard the testimony from various Commissions of Inquiry hearings held within their own countries and/or elsewhere during the past year and having received reports from numerous other Commission hearings which recite the evidence there gathered; having been provided with documentary evidence, eyewitness state- ments, photos, videotapes, special reports, expert analyses and summaries of evidence available to the Commission, having access to all evidence, knowledge, and expert opinion in the Commission files or available to the Commission; having been provided by the Commission, or elsewhere obtained, various books, articles, and other written materials on various aspects of events and conditions in the Persian Gulf and military and arms establishments; having considered newspaper coverage, magazine and periodical reports, special publications, T.V., radio, and other media coverage and public statements by the accused, other public officials and other public materials, having heard the presentations of the Commission of Inquiry in public hearing on February 29, 1992, the testimony and evidence there presented, and having met, considered and deliberated with each other and with Commission staff and having considered all the evidence that is relevant to the nineteen charges of criminal conduct alleged in the Initial Complaint make the following findings. Findings The members of the International War Crimes Tribunal finds each of the named accused Guilty on the basis of the evidence against them and that each of the nineteen crimes alleged in the Initial Complaint, attached hereto, has been established to have been committed beyond a reasonable doubt.The Final Judgment 5 The members believe that it is imperative if there is ever to be peace that power be accountable for its criminal acts and we condemn in the strongest possible terms those found guilty of the charges herein. We urge the Commission of Inquiry and all people to act on recommendations developed by the Commission to hold power accountable and to secure social justice on which lasting peace must be based. Recommendations The Members urge the immediate revocation of all embargoes, sanctions and penalties against Iraq because they constitute a continuing crime against humanity. The Members urge public action to prevent new aggressions by the United States threatened against Iraq, Libya, Cuba, Haiti, North Korea, Pakistan and other countries and the Palestine people; fullest condemnation of any threat or use of military technology against life, both civilian and military, as was used by the United States against the people of Iraq. The Members urge that the power of the United Nations Security Council, which was blatantly manipulated by the U.S. to authorize illegal military action and sanctions, be vested in the General Assembly; that all permanent members be removed and that the right of veto be eliminated as undemocratic and contrary to the basic principles of the U.N. Charter. The Members urge the Commission to provide for the permanent preservation of the reports, evidence, and materials gathered to make them available to others, and to seek ways to provide the widest possible distribution of the truth about the U.S. assault on Iraq. Charges of Other Countries In accordance with the last paragraph of the Initial Complaint designated Scope of Inquiry, the Commission has gatherd substantial evidence of criminal acts by governments and individual officials in addition to those formally presented here. Formal charges have been drafted by some Commissions of Inquiry against other governments in addition to the United States, Those charges have not been acted upon here. The Commission of Inquiry or any of its national components may choose to pursue such other charges at some future time. The Members urge all involved to exert their utmost effort to prevent recurrences of violations by other governments that were not considered here. Done in New York this 29th day of February, 1992. (signed) Olga Mi Sheik Mohamed Rashid, Pakistan President of the National Human Former deputy prime minister. Long- Rights Commission in Panama, anon- _term political prisoner during the governmental body representing struggle against British colonialism and peasants’ organizations, urban trade activist for workers’ and peasants’ rights. unions, women’s groups and others.6 Dr. Haluk Gerger, Turkey Founding member of Turkish Human Rights Association and professor of political science. Dismissed from Ankara University by military government, Susumu Ozaki, Japan Former judge and pro-labor attorney imprisoned 1934-1938 for violating Security Law under militarist government for opposing Japan’s invasion of China, Bassam Haddadin, Jordan ~ ‘Member of Parliament, Second Secretary for the Jordanian Democratic Peoples Party. Member of Parliamentary Committee on Palestine. Dr. Sherif Hetata, Egypt Medical Doctor, author, member of the Central Committee of the Arab Pro- gressive Unionist Party. Political prisoner 14 years in 1950s and 1960s. Deborah Jackson, USA First vice president of the American Association of Jurists, former director of National Conference of Black Lawyers. Opato Matamah, Menominee Nation of North America Involved in defense of human rights of indigenous peoples since 1981. Represented the International Indian Treaty Council at the Commission of Human Rights at the U.N. Laura Albizu, Campos Meneses, Puerto Rico Past President of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and current Secretary for Foreign Relations. Honorary president of Peace Council. Aisha Nyerere, Tanzania Resident Magistrate of the High Court in ‘Arusha, Tanzania. Researched the impact of the Gulf war on East Africa Peter Leihavtich, Canada President of United Steel Workers of America, USWA, Local 8782 and of the Executive Council of the Ontario Federation of Labor. John Philpot, Quebec Attomey, member of Board of Directors of Quebec Movernent for Sovercignty. Organizing Secretary for the American Association of Jurist in Canada. International War Crimes Tribunal Lord Tony Gifford, Britain ‘Human rights lawyer practicing in England and Jamaica. Investigated human rights abuses in British-occupied Ireland. John Jones, USA Community leader in the state of New Jersey. Vietnam veteran who became leader of movement against U.S. attack on Iraq. Gloria La Riva, USA Founding member of the Farmworkers Emergency Relief Committee and Emergency Committee to Stop the U.S. ‘War in the Middle East in San Francisco. Key Martin, USA Member of Executive Committee of Local 3 of the Newspaper Guild in New York. Jailed in 1967 for taking message of Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Vietnam to active duty Gls. Dr. Alfred Mechtersheimer, Germany Former member of the Bundestag from the Green Party. Former Lieutenant Colonel in the Bundeswher; current peace researcher. Michael Ratner, USA Attorney, former director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, past president of the National Lawyers Guild. Abderrazak Kilani, Tunisia Tunisian Bar Association. Former President, Association of Young Lawyers; founding member, National Committee to Lift the Embargo from Iraq. René Dumont, France Agronomist, ecologist, specialist in agriculture of developing countries, author. His 45th book, This War Dishonors Us, appears in 1992. Tan Sri Ahmad Noordin bin Zakaria, Malaysia Former Auditor General of Malaysia. Known throughout his country for battling corruption in government. P. S. Poti, India Former Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court. In 1989 elected president of the AlHindia Lawyers Union.Part One: The Charges‘The civilian infrastructure was dineeely targeted. This photo shows the Al Jisser al Mualaq suspension bridge in B ‘ee Baghdad bridges were destrc They are vital arteries straddling ae cn River and linking a city of three eople. Sixty-one bridges were bombed throughout Iraq, most of them several times. Bridges are essential for transporting supplies to the civilian population. (Photo: Comission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal, April 1991} ionInitial Complaint Charging George Bush, J. Danforth Quayle, James Baker, Richard Cheney, William Webster, Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf and Others to be named With Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity and Other Criminal Acts and High Crimes in Violation of the Charter of the United Nations, International Law, the Constitution of the United States and Laws made in Pursuance Thereof. Preliminary Statement These charges have been prepared prior to the first hearing of the Commission of Inquiry by its staff. They are based on direct and cir- cumstantial evidence from public and private documents; official statements and admissions by the persons charged and others; eyewitness accounts; Commission investigations and witness interviews in Iraq, the Middle East and elsewhere during and after the bombing; photographs and video tape; expert analyses; commentary and interviews; media coverage, published reports and accounts gathered between December 1990 and May 1991. Commission of Inquiry hearings will be held in key cities where evidence is available supporting, expanding, adding, contradicting, disproving or explaining these, or similar charges against the accused and others of whatever nationality. When evidence sufficient to sustain convictions of the accused or others is obtained and after demanding the production of documents from the U.S. government, and others, and requesting testimony10 Ramsey Clark from the accused, offering them a full opportunity to present any defense personally, or by counsel, the evidence will be presented to an International War Crimes Tribunal. The Tribunal will consider the evidence gathered, seek and examine whatever additional evidence it chooses and render its judgment on the chatges, the evidence, and the law. Background Since World War I, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States have dominated the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region and its oil resources. This has been accomplished by military conquest and coercion, economic control and exploitation, and through surrogate governments and their military forces. Thus, from 1953 to 1979 in the post World War Il era, control over the region was exercised primarily through U.S. influence and control over the Gulf sheikdoms of Saudi Arabia and through the Shah of Iran. From 1953 to 1979 the Shah of Iran acted as a Pentagon/CIA surrogate to police the region. After the fall of the Shah and the seizure of US. Embassy hostages in Teheran, the U.S. provided military aid and assistance to Iraq, as did the USSR, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and most of the Emirates, in its war with Iran. U.S. policy during that tragic eight year war, 1980-1988, is probably best summed up by the phrase, “we hope they kill each other.” Throughout the seventy-five year period from Britain's invasion of Iraq early in World War I to the destruction of Iraq in 1991 by U.S. air power, the United States and the United Kingdom demonstrated no concern for democratic values, human rights, social justice, or political and cultural integrity in the region, nor for stopping military aggression there, The U.S. supported the Shah of Iran for 25 years, sclling him more than $20 billion of advanced military equipment between 1972 and 1978 alone. Throughout this period the Shah and his brutal secret police called SAVAK had one of the worst human rights records in the world. Then in the 1980s, the USS. supported Iraq in its wrongful aggression against Iran, ignoring Iraq's own poor human rights record. When the Iraqi government nationalized the Iraqi Petroleum Company in 1972, the Nixon Administration embarked on a campaign to destabilize the Iraqi government, It was in the 1970s that the U.S. first armed and then. abandoned the Kurdish people, costing tens of thousands of Kurdish lives. The U.S. manipulated the Kurds through CIA and other agencies to attack Iraq, intending to harass Iraq while maintaining Iranian supremacy at the cost of Kurdish lives without intending any benefit to the Kurdish people or an autonomous Kurdistan.” The U.S. with close oil and other economic ties to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait has fully supported both governments despite the total absence of democratic institutions, their pervasive human rights violations and theInitial Complaint 1 infliction of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments such as stoning to death for adultery and amputation of a hand for property offenses. The U.S., sometimes alone among nations, supported Israel when it defied scores of UN resolutions concerning Palestinian rights, when it invaded Lebanon in a war which took tens of thousands of lives, and during its continuing occupation of southern Lebanon, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza. ‘The United States itself engaged in recent aggressions in violation of international law by invading Grenada in 1983, bombing Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya in 1986, financing the contra in Nicaragua, UNITA in southern Africa and supporting military dictatorships in Liberia, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, and many other places. The U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 involved the same and additional violations of international law that apply to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The U.S. invasion took between 1,000 and 4,000 Panamanian lives. The United States government is still covering up the death toll. U.S. aggression caused massive property destruction throughout Panama.3 According to U.S. and international human rights organization estimates, Kuwait's casualties from Iraq’s invasion and the ensuing months of occupation were in the “hundreds”—between 300 and 600.4 Reports from Kuwait list 628 Palestinians killed by Kuwaiti death squads since the Sabah royal family regained control over Kuwait. The United States changed its military plans for protecting its control over oil and other interests in the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1980s when. it became clear that economic problems in the USSR were debilitating its military capacity and Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan. Thereafter, direct military domination within the region became the U.S. strategy. With the decline in U.S. oil production through 1989, experts predicted US. oil imports from the Gulf would rise from 10% that year to 25% by the year 2000. Japanese and European dependency is much greater. The Charges 1, The United States engaged in a pattern of conduct beginning in or before 1989 intended to lead Iraq into provocations justifying U.S. military action against Iraq and permanent U.S. military domination of the Gulf. In 1989, General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander in Chief of the Central Command, completely revised U.S. military operations and plans for the Persian Gulf to prepare to intervene in a regional conflict against Iraq. The CIA assisted and directed Kuwait in its actions. At the time, Kuwait was12 Ramsey Clark violating OPEC oil production agreements, extracting excessive amounts of oil from pools shared with Iraq and demanding repayment of loans it made to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Kuwait broke off negotiations with Iraq over these disputes. The U.S. intended to provoke Iraq into actions against Kuwait that would justify U.S. intervention. In 1989, CIA Director William Webster testified before the Congress about the alarming increase in U.S. importation of Gulf oil, citing U.S. rise in use from 5% in 1973 to 10% in 1989 and predicting 25% of all U.S. oil consumption would come from the region by 2000.§ In early 1990, General Schwarzkopf informed the Senate Armed Services Committee of the new military strategy in the Gulf designed to protect U.S. access to and control over Gulf oil in the event of regional conflicts. In July 1990, General Schwarzkopf and his staff ran elaborate, computerized war games pitting about 100,000 U.S. troops against Iraqi armored divisions. The U.S. showed no opposition to Iraq’s increasing threats against Kuwait. U.S. companies sought major contracts in Iraq. The Congress approved agricultural loan subsidies to Iraq of hundreds of millions of dollars to benefit U.S. farmers, However, loans for food deliveries of rice, corn, wheat and other essentials bought almost exclusively from the U.S. were cut off in the spring of 1990 to cause shortages. Arms were sold to Iraq by U.S. manufacturers. When Saddam Hussein requested U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie to explain State Department testimony in Congress about iraq’s threats against Kuwait, she assured him the U.S. considered the dispute 2 regional concern, and it would not intervene. By these acts, the U.S. intended to lead Iraq into a provocation justifying war. On August 2, 1990, Iraq occupied Kuwait without significant resistance. On August 3, 1990, without any evidence of a threat to Saudi Arabia, and King Fahd believed Iraq had no intention of invading his country, President Bush vowed to defend Saudi Arabia. He sent Secretary Cheney, General Powell, and General Schwarzkopf almost immediately to Saudi Arabia where on August 6, General Schwarzkopf told King Fahd the U.S. thought Saddam Hussein could attack Saudi Arabia in as little as 48 hours, The efforts toward an Arab solution of the crisis were destroyed. Iraq never attacked Saudi Arabia and waited over five months while the U.S. slowly built a force of more than 500,000 soldiers and began the systematic destruction by aircraft and missiles of Iraq and its military, both defenseless against U.S. and coalition technology. In October 1990, General Powell referred to the new military plan developed in 1989. After the war, General Schwarzkopf referred to eighteen months of planning for the campaign. The U.S. retains troops in Iraq as of May 1991 and throughout the region and has announced its intention to maintain a permanent military presence. This course of conduct constitutes a crime against peace.Initial Complaint 13 2. President Bush from August 2, 1990, intended and acted to prevent any interference with his plan to destroy Iraq economically and militarily. Without consultation or communication with Congress, President Bush ordered 40,000 U.S. military personnel to advance the U.S. buildup in Saudi Arabia in the first week of August 1990. He exacted a request from Saudi Arabia for U.S. military assistance and on August 8, 1990, assured the world his acts were “wholly defensive.” He waited until after the November 1990 elections to announce his earlier order sending more than 200,000 additional military personnel, clearly an assault force, again without advising Congress. As late as January 9, 1991, he insisted he had the constitutional authority to attack Iraq without Congressional approval. While concealing his intention, President Bush continued the military build up of U.S. forces unabated from August into January 1991, intending to attack and destroy Iraq. He pressed the military to expedite preparation and to commence the assault before military considerations were optimum, When Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael J. Dugan mentioned plans to destroy the Iraqi civilian economy to the press on September 16, 1990, he was removed from office.” President Bush coerced the United Nations Security Council into an unprecedented series of resolutions, finally securing authority for any nation in its absolute discretion by all necessary means to enforce the resolutions. To secure votes the U.S. paid multi-billion dollar bribes, offered arms for regional wars, threatened and carried out economic retaliation, forgave multi-billion dollar loans {including a $7 billion loan to Egypt for arms}, offered diplomatic relations despite human rights violations and in other ways corruptly exacted votes, creating the appearance of near universal international approval of U.S. policies toward Iraq. A country which opposed the U.S., as Yemen did, lost millions of dollars in aid, as promised, the costliest vote it ever cast. President Bush consistently rejected and ridiculed Iraq's efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution, beginning with Iraq’s August 12, 1990, proposal, largely ignored, and ending with its mid-February 1991 peace offer which he called a “cruel hoax.” For his part, President Bush consistently insisted there would be no negotiation, no compromise, no face saving, no reward for aggression, Simultaneously, he accused Saddam Hussein of rejecting diplomatic solutions, President Bush led a sophisticated campaign to demonize Saddam Hussein, calling him a Hitler, repeatedly citing reports—which he knew were false—of the murder of hundreds of incubator babies, accusing Iraq of using chemical weapons on his own people and on the Iranians knowing US. intelligence believed the reports untrue. After subverting every effort for peace, President Bush began the14 Ramsey Clark destruction of Iraq answering his own question, “Why not wait? ... The world could wait no longer.” The course of conduct constitutes a crime against peace. 3. President Bush ordered the destruction of facilities essential to civilian life and economic productivity throughout Iraq. Systematic aerial and missile bombardment of Iraq was ordered to begin at 6:30 p.m. EST January 16, 1991, eighteen and one-half hours after the deadline set on the insistence of President Bush, in order to be reported on television evening news in the U.S. The bombing continued for forty- two days. It met no resistance from Iraqi aircraft and no effective anti-aircraft or anti-missile ground fire. Iraq was defenseless. The United States reports it flew 110,000 air sorties against Iraq, dropping 88,000 tons of bombs, nearly seven times the equivalent of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. 93% of the bombs were free falling bombs, most dropped from higher than 30,000 feet. Of the remaining 7% of the bombs with electronically guided systems, more than 25% missed their targets, nearly all caused damage primarily beyond any identifiable target. Most of the targets were civilian facilities. The intention and effort of the bombing of civilian life and facilities was to systematically destroy Iraq's infrastructure leaving it in a preindustrial condition. Iraq's civilian population was dependent on industrial capacities. The U.S. assault left Iraq in a near apocalyptic condition as reported by the first United Nations observers after the war.8 Among the facilities targeted and destroyed were: ¢ electric power generation, relay and transmission, * water treatment, pumping and distribution systems and reservoirs; ¢ telephone aad radio exchanges, relay stations, towers and transmission facilities, ¢ food processing, storage and distribution facilities and markets, infant milk formula and beverage plants, animal vaccination facilities and irrigation sites, ¢ railroad transportation facilities, bus depots, bridges, highway over- passes, highways, highway repair stations, trains, buses and other public transportation vehicles, commercial and private vehicles; * oil wells and pumps, pipelines, refineries, oil storage tanks, gasoline filling stations and fuel delivery tank cars and trucks, and kerosene storage tanks; * sewage treatment and disposal systems; ¢ factories engaged in civilian production, e.g., textile and automobile assembly; and ¢ historical markers and ancient sites.Initial Complaint 18 As a direct, intentional and foreseeable result of this destruction, tens of thousands of people have died from dehydration, dysentery and diseases caused by impure water, inability to obtain effective medical assistance and debilitation from hunger, shock, cold and stress. More will die until potable water, sanitary living conditions, adequate food supplies and other necessities are provided. There is a high risk of epidemics of cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and other diseases as well as starvation and malnutrition through the summer of 1991 and until food supplies are adequate and essential services are restored. Only the United States could have carried out this destruction of Iraq, and the war was conducted almost exclusively by the United States. This conduct violated the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, and the laws of armed conflict. 4, The United States intentionally bombed and destroyed civilian life, commercial and business districts, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, residential areas, historical sites, private vehicles and civilian government offices. The destruction of civilian facilities left the entire civilian population without heat, cooking fuel, refrigeration, potable water, telephones, power for radio or TV reception, public transportation and fuel for private automobiles, It also limited food supplies, closed schools, created massive unemployment, severely limited economic activity and caused hospitals and medical services to shut down. In addition, residential areas of every major city and most towns and villages were targeted and destroyed. Isolated. Bedouin camps were attacked by U.S. aircraft. In addition to deaths and injuries, the aerial assault destroyed 10 — 20,000 homes, apartments and other dwellings. Commercial centers with shops, retail stores, offices, hotels, restaurants and other public accommodations were targeted and thousands were destroyed. Scores of schools, hospitals, mosques and churches were damaged or destroyed. Thousands of civilian vehicles on highways, roads and parked on streets and in garages were targeted and destroyed. These included public buses, private vans and mini-buses, trucks, tractor trailers, lorries, taxi cabs and private cars. The purpose of this bombing was to terrorize the entire country, kill people, destroy property, prevent move- ment, demoralize the people and force the overthrow of the government. As a result of the bombing of facilities essential to civilian life, residential and other civilian buildings and areas, at least 125,000 men, women and children were killed. The Red Crescent Society of Jordan estimated 113,000 civilian dead, 60% children, the week before the end of the war. ‘The conduct violated the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Con- ventions, the Nuremberg Charter, and the laws of armed conflict.16 Ramsey Clark 5. The United States intentionally bombed indiscriminately throughout Iraq. In aerial attacks, including strafing, over cities, towns, the countryside and highways, U.S. aircraft bombed and strafed indiscriminately. In every city and town bombs fell by chance far from any conceivable target, whether a civilian facility, military installation or military target. In the countryside random attacks were made on travelers, villagers, even Bedouins. The purpose of the attacks was to destroy life, property and terrorize the civilian population. On the highways, civilian vehicles including public buses, taxicabs and passenger cars were bombed and strafed at random to frighten civilians from flight, from seeking food or medical care, finding relatives or other uses of highways. The effect was summary execution and corporal punishment indiscriminately of men, women and children, young and old, tich and poor, all nationalities including the large immigrant populations, even Americans, all ethnic groups, including many Kurds and Assyrians, all religions including Shia and Sunni Moslems, Chaldeans and other Christians, and Jews. U.S. deliberate indifference to civilian and military casualties in Iraq, or their nature, is exemplified by General Colin Powell’s response to a press inquiry about the number dead from the air and ground campaigns: “It’s really not a number I'm terribly interested in.”? The conduct violates Protocol I Additional, Article 51.4 to the Geneva Conventions of 1977. 6. The United States intentionally bombed and destroyed Iraqi military personnel, used excessive force, killed soldiers seeking to surrender and in disorganized individual flight, often unarmed and far from any combat zones and randomly and wantonly killed Iraqi soldiers and destroyed materiel after the cease fire. In the first hours of the aerial and missile bombardment, the United States destroyed most military communications and began the systematic killing of soldiers who were incapable of defense or escape and the destruction of military equipment. Over a period of forty-two days, U.S. bombing killed tens of thousands of defenseless soldiers, cut off most of their food, water and other supplies and left them in desperate and helpless disarray. Without significant risk to its own personnel, the U.S. led in the killing of at least 100,000 Iraqi soldiers at a cost of 148 U.S. combat casualties, according to the U.S. government. When it was determined that the civilian economy and the military were sufficiently destroyed, the U.S. ground forces moved into Kuwait and Iraq attacking disoriented, dis- organized, fleeing Iraqi forces wherever they could be found, killing thousands more and destroying any equipment found. The slaughter con- tinued after the cease fire. For example, on March 2, 1991, U.S, 24th DivisionInitial Complaint 7 Forces engaged in a four-hour assault against Iraqis just west of Basra. More than 750 vehicles were destroyed, thousands were killed without U.S. casualties. A U.S. commander said, “We really waxed them.” It was called a “Turkey Shoot.” One Apache helicopter crew member yelled “Say hello to Allah” as he launched a laser-guided Hellfire missile.1° The intention was not to remove Iraq’s presence from Kuwait. It was to destroy Iraq. In the process there was great destruction of property in Kuwait. The disproportion in death and destruction inflicted on a defenseless enemy exceeded 1,000 to one. General Thomas Kelly commented on February 23, 1991, that by the time the ground war begins “there won't be many of them left.” General Norman Schwarzkopf placed Iraqi military casualties at over 100,000. The intention was to destroy all military facilities and equipment wherever located and to so decimate the military age male population that Iraq could not raise a substantial force for half a generation. The conduct violated the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, and the laws of armed conflict. 7. The United States used prohibited weapons capable of mass destruction and inflicting indiscriminate death and unnecessary suffering against both military and civilian targets. Among the known illegal weapons and illegal uses of weapons employed by the United States are the following: ¢ fuel air explosives capable of widespread incineration and death; © napalm; ¢ cluster and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs; and ¢ “superbombs,” 2.5 ton devices, intended for assassination of government leaders, Fuel air explosives were used against troops-in-place, civilian areas, oil fields and fleeing civilians and soldiers on two stretches of highway between. Kuwait and Iraq. Included in fuel air weapons used was the BLU-82, a 15,000-pound device capable of incinerating everything within hundreds of yards. One seven mile stretch called the “Highway of Death” was littered with hundreds of vehicles and thousands of dead. All were fleeing to Iraq for their lives, Thousands were civilians of all ages, including Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Jordanians and other nationalities. Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants of tanks, armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991. The press reported that no survivors are known or likely. One flatbed truck contained nine bodies, their hair and clothes were burned off, skin incinerated by heat go intense it melted the windshield onto the dashboard.18 Ramsey Clark Napalm was used against civilians, military personnel and to start fires. Oil well fires in both Iraq and Kuwait were intentionally started by U.S. aircraft dropping napalm and other heat intensive devices. Cluster and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs were used in Basra and other cities, and towns, against the convoys described above and against military units. The CBU-75 carries 1,800 bomblets called Sadeyes. One type of Sadeyes can explode before hitting the ground, on impact, or be timed to explode at different times after impact. Each bomblet contains 600 razor sharp steel fragments lethal up to 40 feet. The 1,800 bomblets from one CBU-75 can cover an area equal to 157 football fields with deadly shrapnel. “Superbombs” were dropped on hardened shelters, at least two in the last days of the assault, with the intention of assassinating President Saddam Hussein, One was misdirected. It was not the first time the Pentagon targeted a head of state. In April 1986, the U.S. attempted to assassinate Col. Muammar Qaddafi by laser directed bombs in its attack on Tripoli, Libya. legal weapons killed thousands of civilians and soldiers. The conduct violated the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter and the laws of armed conflict. 8. The United States intentionally attacked installations in Iraq containing dangerous substances and forces. Despite the fact that Iraq used no nuclear or chemical weapons and in the face of UN resolutions limiting the authorized means of removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the U.S. intentionally bombed alleged nuclear sites, chemical plants, dams and other dangerous forces. The U.S. knew such attacks could cause the release of dangerous forces from such installations and consequent severe losses among the civilian population. While some civilians were killed in such attacks, there are no reported cases of consequent severe losses presumably because lethal nuclear materials and dangerous chemical and biological warfare substances were not present at the sites bombed. The conduct violates Protocol I Additional, Article 56, to the Geneva Convention, 1977. 9. President Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Panama, resulting in the deaths of 1,000 to 4,000 Panamanians and the destruction of thousands of private dwellings, public buildings, and commercial structures. On December 20, 1989, President Bush ordered a military assault on Panama using aircraft, artillery, helicopter gunships and experimenting with new weapons, including the Stealth bomber. The attack was a surpriseInitial Compiaiat 19 assault targeting civilian and non-combatant government structures. In the El Chorillo district of Panama City alone, hundreds of civilians were killed and between 15,000 and 30,000 made homeless. U.S. soldiers buried dead Panamanians in mass graves, often without identification. The head of state, Mariel Noriega, who was systematically demonized by the U.S. government and press, ultimately surrendered to U.S. forces and was brought to Miami, Florida, on extra-territorial U.S. criminal charges. ‘The U.S. invasion of Panama violated all the international laws Iraq violated when it invaded Kuwait and more. Many more Panamanians were killed by U.S. forces than Iraq killed Kuwaitis. President Bush violated the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, committed crimes against peace, war crimes and violated the U.S. Constitution and numerous U.S. criminal statutes in ordering and directing the assault on Panama. 10, President Bush obstructed justice and corrupted United Nations functions as a means of securing power to commit crimes against peace and war crimes. President Bush caused the United Nations to completely bypass Chapter VI provisions of its Charter for the Pacific Settlement of Disputes. This was done in order to obtain Security Council resolutions authorizing the use of all necessary means, in the absolute discretion of any nation, to fulfill UN resolutions directed against Iraq and which were used to destroy Iraq. To obtain Security Council votes, the U.S. corruptly paid member nations billions of dollars, provided them arms to conduct regional wars, forgave billions in debts, withdrew opposition to a World Bank loan, agreed to diplomatic relations despite human rights violations and threatened economic and political reprisals. A nation which voted against the United States, Yemen, was immediately punished by the loss of millions of dollars in aid, The U.S. paid the UN $187 million to reduce the amount of dues it owed to the UN to avoid criticism of its coercive activities. The United Nations, created to end the scourge of war, became an instrument of war and condoned war crimes. The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution and laws of the United States. 11. President Bush usurped the Constitutional power of Congress as a means of securing power to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and other high crimes. President Bush intentionally usurped Congressional power, ignored its authority, and failed and refused to consult with the Congress. He deliberately misled, deceived, concealed and made false representations to20 Ramsey Clark the Congress to prevent its free deliberation and informed exercise of legislature power. President Bush individually ordered a naval blockade against Iraq, itself an act of war. He switched U.S. forces from a wholly defensive position and capability to an offensive capacity for aggression against Iraq without consultation with and contrary to assurances given to the Congress, He secured legislation approving enforcement of UN resolutions vesting absolute discretion in any nation, providing no guidelines and requiring no reporting to the UN, knowing he intended to destroy the armed forces and civilian economy of Iraq. Those acts were undertaken. to enable him to commit crimes against peace and war crimes, The conduct violates the Constitution and laws of the United States, all committed to engage in the other impeachable offenses set forth in this Complaint. 12, The United States waged war on the environment. Pollution from the detonation of 88,000 tons of bombs, innumerable missiles, rockets, artillery and small arms with the combustion and fires they caused and by 110,000 air sorties at a rate of nearly two per minute for six weeks has caused enormous injury to life and the ecology. Attacks by U.S. aircraft caused much if not all of the worst oil spills in the Gulf. Aircraft and helicopters dropping napalm and fuel-air explosives on oil wells, storage tanks and refineries caused oil fires throughout Iraq and many, if not most, of the oil well fires in Iraq and Kuwait. The intentional destruction of municipal water systems, waste material treatment and sewage disposal systems constitutes a direct and continuing assault on life and health throughout Iraq. The conduct violated the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the laws of armed conflict and constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity. 13, President Bush encouraged and aided Shiite Muslims and Kurds to rebel against the government of Iraq causing fratricidal violence, emigration, exposure, hunger and sickness and thousands of deaths. After the rebellion failed, the U.S. invaded and occupied parts of Iraq without authority in order to increase division and hostility within Iraq. Without authority from the Congress or the UN, President Bush continued his imperious military actions after the cease fire. He encouraged and aided rebellion against Iraq, failed to protect the warring parties, encouraged migration of whole populations, placing them in jeopardy from the elements, hunger, and disease. After much suffering and many deaths, President Bush then without authority used U.S, military forces to distributeInitial Complaint ar aid at and near the Turkish border, ignoring the often greater suffering among refugees in Iran. He then arbitrarily set up bantustan-like settlements for Kurds in Iraq and demanded Iraq pay for U.S. costs. When Kurds chose to return to their homes in Iraq, he moved U.S. troops further into northern. Iraq against the will of the government and without authority. The conduct violated the Charter of the United Nations, international law, the Constitution and laws of the United States, and the laws of Iraq. 14, President Bush intentionally deprived the Iraqi people of essential medicines, potable water, food, and other necessities, A major component of the assault on Iraq was the systematic deprivation of essexstial human needs and services. To break the will of the people, destroy their economic capability, reduce their numbers and weaken their health, the United States: ¢ imposed and enforced embargoes preventing the shipment of needed medicines, water purifiers, infant milk formula, food and other supplies; ¢ individually, without congressional authority, ordered a U.S. naval. blockade of Iraq, an act of war, to deprive the Iraqi people of needed supplies; ¢ froze funds of Iraq and forced other nations to do so, depriving Iraq of the ability to purchase needed medicines, food and other supplies; * controlled information about the urgent need for such supplies to prevent sickness, death and threatened epidemic, endangering the whole society; ° prevented international organizations, governments and relief agencies oo providing needed supplies and obtaining information concerning needs; * failed to assist or meet urgent needs of huge refugee populations including Egyptians, Indians, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Sudanese, Jordanians, Palestinians, Sri Lankans, Filipinos, and interfered with efforts of others to do so; * consistently diverted attention from health and epidemic threats within Iraq caused by the U.S. even after advertising the plight of Kurdish people on the Turkish border; ¢ deliberately bombed the electrical grids causing the closure of hospitals and laboratories, loss of medicine and essential fluids and blood; and ¢ deliberately bombed food storage, fertilizer, and seed storage facilities, As a result of these acts, thousands of people died, many more suffered illness and permanent injury. As a single illustration, Iraq consumed infant milk formula at a rate of 2,500 tons per month during the first seven months of 1990, From November 1, 1990, to February 7, 1991, Iraq was able to import only 17 tons. Its own productive capacity was destroyed. Many Iraqis22 Ramsey Clark believed that President Bush intended that their infants die because he targeted their food supply. The Red Crescent Society of Iraq estimated 3,000 infant deaths as of February 7, 1991, resulting from infant milk formula and infant medication shortages. This conduct violates the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other covenants and constitutes a crime against humanity. 15. The United States continued its assault on Iraq after the cease fire, invading and occupying areas at will. The United States has acted with dictatorial authority over Iraq and its external relations since the end of the military conflict. It has shot and killed Iraqi military personnel, destroyed aircraft and materiel at will, occupied vast areas of Iraq in the north and south and consistently threatened use of force against Iraq. This conduct violates the sovereignty of a nation, exceeds authority in UN resolutions, is unauthorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and constitutes war crimes. 16. The United States has violated and condoned violations of human rights, civil liberties and the U.S. Bill of Rights in the United States, in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to achieve its purpose of military domination. Among the many violations committed or condoned by the U.S. government are the following: * illegal surveillance, arrest, interrogation and harassment of Arab- American, Iraqi-American, and U.S, resident Arabs; ¢ illegal detention, interrogation and treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war; * aiding and condoning Kuwaiti summary executions, assaults, torture and illegal detention of Palestinians and other residents in Kuwait after the U.S. occupation; and * unwarranted, discriminatory, and excessive prosecution and punish- ment of U.S. military personnel who refused to serve in the Gulf, sought conscientious objector status or protested U.S. policies. Persons were killed, assaulted, tortured, illegally detained and pro- secuted, harassed and humiliated as a result of these policies, The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the Constitution and laws of the United States. 17. The United States, having destroyed Iraq’s economic base,Initial Complaint 23 demands reparations which will permanently impoverish Iraq and threaten its people with famine and epidemic. Having destroyed lives, property and essential civilian facilities in Iraq which the U.S. concedes will require $50 billion to replace (estimated at $200 billion by Iraq), killed at least 125,000 people by bombing and many thousands more by sickness and hunger, the U.S. now secks to control Iraq economically even as its people face famine and epidemic.!2 Damages, including casualties in Iraq, systematically inflicted by the U.S. exceed all damages, casualties and costs of all other parties to the conflict combined many times over. Reparations under these conditions are an exaction of tribute for the conqueror from a desperately needy country. The United States seeks to force Iraq to pay for damage to Kuwait largely caused by the U.S, and even to pay U.S. costs for its violations of Iraqi sovereignty in occupying northern Iraq to further manipulate the Kurdish population there. Such reparations are a neocolonial means of expropriating Iraq's oil, natural resources, and human labor. The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution and laws of the United States. 18, President Bush systematically manipulated, controlled, directed, misinformed and restricted press and media coverage to obtain constant support in the media for his military and political goals. ‘The Bush Administration achieved a five-month-long commercial for militarism and individual weapons systems. The American people were seduced into the celebration of a slaughter by controlled propaganda demonizing Iraq, assuring the world no harm would come to Iraqi civilians, deliberately spreading false stories of atrocities including chemical warfare threats, deaths of incubator babies and threats to the entire region by anew Hitler. The press received virtually all its information from or by permission of the Pentagon. Efforts were made to prevent any adverse information or opposition views from being heard. CNN’s limited presence in Baghdad was described as Iraqi propaganda. Independent observers, eyewitnesses’ photos, and video tapes with information about the effects of the U.S. bombing were excluded from the media. Television network ownership, advertizers, newspaper ownership, elite columnists and commentators intimidated and instructed reporters and selected interviewees. They formed a near-single voice of praise for U.S. militarism, often exceeding the Pentagon in bellicosity. ‘The American people and their democratic institutions were deprived of information essential to sound judgment and were regimented, despite profound concern, to suppott a major neocolonial intervention and war of24 Ramsey Clark aggression, The principal purpose of the First Amendment to the United States was to assure the press and the people the right to criticize their government with impunity. This purpose has been effectively destroyed in relation to U.S. military aggression since the press was denied access to assaults on Grenada, Libya, Panama and, now on a much greater scale, against Iraq. This conduct violates the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and is part of a pattern of conduct intended to create support for conduct constituting crimes against peace and war crimes. 19, The United States has by force secured a permanent military presence in the Gulf, the control of its oil resources and geopolitical domination of the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region. The U.S. has committed the acts described in this complaint to create a permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, to dominate its oil resources until depleted and to maintain geopolitical domination over the region. The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations, international law, and the Constitution and laws of the United States. Scope of the Inquiry The Commission of Inquiry will focus on U.S. criminal conduct because of its destruction of Iraq, killing at least 125,000 persons directly by its bombing while proclaiming its own combat losses as 148, because it destroyed the economic base of Iraq and because its acts are still inflicting consequential deaths that may reach hundreds of thousands. The Commission of Inquiry will seek and accept evidence of criminal acts by any person or government, related to the Gulf conflict, because it believes international law must be applied uniformly. It believes that “victors! justice” is not law, but the extension of war by force of the prevailing party. The U.S. Senate, European Community foreign ministers, and the westem press, even former Nuremberg prosecutors, have overwhelmingly called for war crimes trials for Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership alone. Even Mrs. Barbara Bush has said she would like to see Saddam Hussein hanged, albeit without mentioning a trial. Comprehensive efforts to gather and evaluate evidence, objectively judge all the conduct that constitutes crimes against peace and war crimes and to present these facts for judgment to the court of world opinion requires that at least one major effort focus on the United States. The Commission of Inquiry believes its focus on U.S. criminal acts is important, proper, and the only way to bring the wholeInitial Complaint 25 truth, a balanced perspective and impartiality in application of legal process to this great human tragedy. Ramsey Clark May 9, 1991 Notes 1. Covert Operations: The Persian Gulf and the New World Order (Washington, DC: Christic Institute, 1991). 2. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 206. 3. Independent Commission of Inquiry on the U.S. Invasion of Panama, The U.S. Invasion of Panama: The Truth Behind Operation Just Cause (Boston: South End Press, 1990). 4. Amnesty International Reports, 1991, pp. 122-124. 5. Congressional Record, June 12, 1990, $8605. 6. “Saddam's Oil Plot.” London Observer, October 21, 1990. 7. Rick Atkinson, “U.S. to Rely on Air Strikes if War Erupts,” Washington Post, September 16, 1990: Al +. Eric Schmitt, “Ousted General Gets A Break,” New York Times, November 7, 1991: A19. 8. Joint WHO / UNICEF Team Report: A Visit to Iraq (New York: United Nations, 1991). A report to the Secretary General, dated March 20, 1991 by representatives of the U.N. Secretariat, UNICEF, UNDP, UNDRO, UNHCR, FAO and WHO. Reprinted in Appendix B, below. 9. Patrick E. Tyler, “Powell Says U.S. Will Stay In Iraq,” New York Times, March 23, 1991: Al+- 10. Patrick J. Sloyan, “Massive Battle After Cease Fire,” New York Newsday, May 8, 1991: A4+. 11. “U.S. Prepares UN Draft on Claims Against Iraq,” New York Times, November 1, 1990.Nowhere to Hide | | | At the height of the allied bombing of Iraq in early 1991, Jon Alpert, a long- time contributor to NBC News, shot the only footage of the war's impact not censored by either Iraq or the U.S. Traveling with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Alpert captured on camera what it was like to be on the ground during the allied bombing. In an often harrowing journey, they witnessed widespread civilian casualties and extensive damage to homes, villages and markets, sometimes minutes after it occurred. In dra- matic and often graphic scenes, NOWHERE TO HIDE shows a far different reality than what most Americans saw on the nightly news. Produced by Jon Alpert 28 Minutes © 1991 ¢ VHS Distributed by Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal 36 East 12th Street, 6th Floor, NY, NY 10003 212-254-5385 All orders must be prepaid $25 Video/ $3 shipping and handling Speakers are available upon request “Horrifying glimpses at the civilian devastation inflicted by allied bombing (of Iraq).”” — San Jose Mercury NewsPart Two: The Basis in International Law{Above] New York Commission of Inquiry, May 11, 1991. (Below) Egyptian. Commission Hearing, August 8, 1991, held at the Hall of the Arab Progressive Unionist Party, Egypt's main opposition party. (Photos: Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal}Why an Inquiry Sara Flounders We are beginning a worldwide series of public forums to uncover, to expose, to examine that which has been hidden, suppressed and censored. ‘This is the first in a series of public hearings on evidence of U.S. and allied war crimes that will be held all across the U.S. and the world, from New York City to Cairo, from London to Manila, from Rome to New Delhi, from Toronto to San Francisco. Why is this so important? Since the days of the earliest societies, murder has always been considered a crime, in every society on the face of the earth, in every age. Long before there was any international order, any parliaments, any states, murder was considered a crime, and especially repugnant has been murder when the victim is defenseless. What do we do? We are witness to a collective crime against a portion of humanity. Life has the same value in Iraq as it does for all of us living in the United States. We have witnessed an unprovoked and cynical slaughter, a use of the most extreme form of terror against a community. Never in the history of the human race has so massive a concentration of military, economic and political power focused on one small portion of the earth’s surface. In the essays which follow, there will be detailed accounts of this destruction that was wreaked on one country; there will also be provided material and evidence on its impact on the entire region and the rippling disruption through the developing countries of Africa and Asia. But perhaps the most important aspect of this crime that we all publicly witnessed is that it was done in contravention of the very laws of each nation that participated in the invasion. It’s a crime not alone of the supreme military world power, the U.S. It was done collectively by the leading industrial powers. These leading industriel powers in their foreign and economic policy are regarded by the oppressed and exploited people of the world as imperialist powers. This was a crime done under the mantle of the UN Security Council, and there will be material presented on the United States’ use of bribery and coercion to gain these votes and on the resolution of the UN Security Council and its use of military force. But despite all30 Sara Flounders the countries involved, it was a decision of generals and rulers, corporate and industrial leaders, and not a democratic decision of the people, even in its form. This decision, momentous as it was, was not ratified nor ever even discussed in the UN General Assembly to this very day. Among the principal powers who participated, none of their parliamentary institutions were asked to decide. They were only given the opportunity to ratify a decision for destruction. This happened in the U.S., and it happened in every country. The papers presented here will begin to carry forward new material and new evidence, which grows every day. Some of it is even beginning to be recognized in the mass media. On May 8, 1991, an article appeared in New York Newsday by Patrick Sloyan, based on actual army footage of what he described as the largest battle of the war. The catch was that the battle occurred two days after Bush had ordered the final cease-fire, and eight days after Iraq had announced its full withdrawal, and fighting had ceased. It was a violation even of the cease-fire guidelines. A division of the Republican Guard withdrawing on a long, unprotected causeway, high above a swamp, on Highway 8, was attacked. General Schwarzkopf himself ordered this attack, claiming that a single infantryman had fired a round at a U.S. patrol. We'll never know if Schwarzkopf told the truth. But the footage tells us what happened: the U.S. assembled attack helicopters, tanks, artillery, and opened fire with laser-guided weapons. The footage shows, and the commander describes: “We went right up the column like a turkey shoot, we really waxed them.” That’s on tape! Thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed; not one U.S. soldier died.! The New World Order proposed by President Bush embodies the wish of the U.S., Britain, and France to return the world to the time a century ago, the 1890s, when they could sit down and carve up the entire world, when they could draw the lines through Africa and Asia. This is what the New World Order is all about. It’s a restoring of the old colonial world order, and the colonial wars that they fought in the 19th Century. The great Battle of Omdurman in 1898 sounds a lot like the Iraq war. Tens of thousands of Sudanese troops were mowed down by waves of machine gun fire: 11,000 Sudanese killed, 49 Europeans. The U.S. press which during the Gulf War so demonized Saddam Hussein, did the same a little more than 100 years ago to Sitting Bull. Then the real issue was the gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and it led to one of many slaughters of the Native people. Today it’s the oil in the Gulf. But the press coverage is the same. The government treaties, international agreements, and the conventions signed are treated with the same cynicism as the treaties signed with the Native people. These imperial forces have built a coalition, and we need a coalition for truth. There is a crying need for truth on a worldwide scale, and a crying need to mobilize the anger. Millions worldwide are suffering and strugglingWhy An Inquiry at against this New World Order, and we hope that this commission will accomplish a serious, factual presentation. But also that it will provide a basis for a coalition of the many forces scattered—to join forces ina common effort to prepare for the continuing wars, to connect the great crimes that have been committed to the war crimes here in the U.S. The budget cuts are a war crime against every city of the U.S. The 10,000 people who died here in the U.S. of AIDS during the six months of this war should also be considered casualties of the Gulf War. The public hearings conducted by the Commission of Inquiry will connect these crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and will record and broadcast nationally and internationally the acts of the New World Order. The many representatives from the mass media who attend these Commission meetings have really a special and unique responsibility to the world movement to disseminate this material as widely as possible. They have a real role and a contribution that they can make. There's a great deal of material already in and a great deal of information. that we don’t yet have. To obtain it will take a powerful movement—to release Bush's battle plans, the decisions, and all that’s been suppressed. We have filed Freedom of Information requests, but it takes a large struggle to force out into the open and to free up a great deal of this material. It takes a movement to encourage many of the troops who witnessed or even committed atrocities and others who have information and material to come forward. It takes a movement to encourage the media, to embolden them to release that which they already know. it will take a movement to embolden a whole layer of society that has been gagged and silenced. These Commission Reports are a first step in a long struggle. Notes 1. Patrick J. Sloyan, “Massive Battle After Cease Fire,” New York Newsday, May 8, 1991: Ad. Also, “Pullback A Bloody Mismatch: Rout of lagi Became Savage ‘Turkey Shoot,” New York Newsday, March 31, 1991. Sara Flounders is a member of the Executive Staff of the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal.The Legal and Moral Basis for an International War Crimes Tribunal Ramsey Clark I'm a lawyer, and therefore, according to Franz Kafka, never very far from evil. I don’t happen to share his philosophy of evil. I do recognize that nearly all lawyers are involved in misery, and that human rights lawyers are involved constantly in human tragedy. This Commission is involved in the greatest tragedy that afflicts our species: war. It seeks to do something that has never been done before, but that is imperative to survival of life on the planet, and that is to hold governments that wage wars of conquest against others accountable to the people for their conduct. All governments—now and forever hereafter. If the citizens of Greece had had the vision and the courage and the compassion to do it after the destruction of Milos, where all the men were killed, and all the elderly and women and children were sold in slavery, Athens could have prevailed. They pursued a policy, described by Thucydides, as one in which the powerful do as they will, and the weak suffer as they must. That is a policy that is impermissible by all human standards. Had the people of Rome demanded that their legions not ravage major parts of Europe and North Africa and the Middle East, there might have been peace at the time. Had the Mongolians contained the Khans so that they could graze in their own pastures, hundreds of thousands of people who met death at their hands could have raised their children in peace. If the Spanish Conquistadors had been contained by their own people, the peers of Cervantes, if they just heard the voice of one man, Bartolome de las Casas—whom, and we should never forget, said the Indians are human. beings as worthy as any Spanish child and must be accorded full human tights—then the tens of millions—because that’s the number—that died in this hemisphere as a result of conquest and disease would have been spared. Had the imperial forces of England, France, and others respectedThe Legal and Moral Basis for a War Crimes Tribunal 33 the rights of the people in Africa and Asia and elsewhere on the planet, rather than reaping wealth from the sweat of slave labor's brow, if their peoples had demanded accountability by their governments, if they had recognized that they too were victims, not just those who were conquered, all of this long human history of war and violence might have ended. Now we sce new threats to life, the use of technology against life, and ‘we come to a moment when it is absolutely imperative that the peoples of this planet hold accountable the great powers using technology against life on the planet, who destroyed Iraq and threatened every poot nation that exists today. It is for this reason that these Commission hearings, engaging in one of the largest investigations of criminal conduct in history, a process that will take many months and thousands and thousands of people on six separate continents, and hundreds of organizations from scores of nations, to examine a single complaint. It’s a complaint charging George Bush, Dan Quayle, James Baker, Dick Cheney, William Webster, Colin Powell, Norman. Schwarzkopf, and others to be named, with crimes against peace, with war crimes, crimes against humanity and other criminal acts and high crimes, in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, international law, the Constitution of the United States, and laws made in pursuance thereof, These Commissions can and must be historic meetings. It’s probably worth observing that the historic importance of any meeting doesn’t occur in the meeting but thereafter. Independence Hall would have been soon. forgotten if the British had won, wouldn't it? The imperative need is that ‘we recognize our role in history from this moment, to establish the facts set forth in this charge, and bring the transgressors to justice. The charge is initial, because the investigation, the Commission of Inquiry, is a process, as all quests for truth are, in a sense never ending. But we've allotted ourselves six months, and more if it becomes necessary, to find the essential facts supporting what at this moment are nineteen charges of the highest crimes that can be committed against humanity, There may be more charges as the evidence comes in. There may be alterations and modifications of some of the existing charges, but each of us as a citizen of this planet has an obligation to take this complaint, to master its substance, to see what the evidence that is needed is, and make sure that it is provided in hearings going on all over the world during the next six months, Let me describe the charges briefly. It’s what any prosecutor does in beginning a grand jury inquiry or the voir dire for a petty jury in a criminal trial. I won't deal with each of the nineteen charges because they will be taken up in particular papers throughout this volume and in Commission meetings held all over the world. But we must never lose our focus on the charges. The first two have to do with the most tragic crime of all, the crime against peace, the causing of war. There are no war crimes until there34 Ramsey Clark is war, and in that sense, a preamble to every war crime is a crime against peace. We charge, and we have substantial evidence, and we're secking more evidence, that George Bush and others, beginning sometime in 1988 or before, deliberately began a course of conduct intending to provoke actions by Iraq in the Persian Gulf that would justify 2 military attack and the destruction of the military of Iraq and its civilian economic support system. We charge that between August 2nd 1990 and January 17th 1991, George Bush and others systematically and in concert engaged in activity intended to bring the conflict to a violent conclusion by destroying Iraq. There was never during that period, according to the evidence that we have and the evidence that we expect to accumulate, any intent of negotiation, any intent toward peace, any intent of compromise or face-saving, As the president said so many times, there will be no reward for aggression {I might note that Panamanians ought to pay attention). The charges three to eight deal with the heart of the violence that was inflicted upon Iraq. It’s awfully important that its nature and its many aspects be clearly understood. This was not really a war. This was the use of technological war materiel to destroy a defenseless country, We can talk about the billions of dollars of arms that the United States and others sold to Iraq, but it takes only the most casual investigation of what happened over there to see that none of them afforded that nation any chance to really defend itself. It was destroyed from afar, systematically, without any capability of protecting the lives of its citizens, civilian or military. All you have to do to recognize this is look at the casualties. The United States is responsible for the deaths of at least 125,000, perhaps more than 300,000 by now, human beings living in Iraq between August and March of these past years. It claims to have lost 148 military people in combat, but in the type of war that it waged, it needn't have lost any, because it was destroying by aircraft, missile, and other devices the civilian infra- structure. We identify eight essential elements of urban and rural life in a partially industrialized and largely agricultural and poor nation, eight specific systemic parts of the economy that were destroyed throughout the nation, ‘There was no running water, as we know. There was no electric power, and that means no heat and no refrigeration. There were no communications by any means other than voice and couriers carrying documents that could be read. There was no transportation other than that of a few vehicles, because systematically instruments of power, electric generation plants, oil wells, refineries, pipelines, storage tanks, down to the filling stations, ‘were destroyed. The nation was rendered powerless even to function. It all came together in the hospitals, where there was no water to wash your hands with; there ‘was no water to give to dehydrated people who were suffering from nausea and diarrhea. There was no heat, and it was winter, and even in the war,The Legal and Moral Basis for a War Crimes Tribunal 35 the temperature would be 50 degrees Fahrenheit or less. There was no light. Maybe two candles in a ward of twenty people. There was no anesthesia for an 11-year-old girl whose leg had to be amputated near the hip, and who was still delirious a few hours later when you talked to her. There was no anesthesia for a man who had to be held down by four people while you watched as radical surgery was performed on an arm, There was no pain killer to relieve the throbbing, aching pain of wounds from shrapnel. There weren’t doctors who had equipment and hands that were clean that could heal the sick. There was a systematic destruction as well of civilian life itself. But we had found a new technique of war. You can cut off everything that people in the city need, and let them die on their own. You don’t have to carpet bomb any more, although the U.S. military did a fair share of that, too. Our planes came in with bombs that destroyed residential areas in every city, every major town, and most villages. We destroyed the infrastructure there, and we destroyed residential areas, schools, hospitals, transportation centers, mosques and all the rest. Even most of their military. U.S.-led Coalition forces destroyed the capacity of the Iraqi military to function before they were ever engaged. We have to remember what we're told, because the context isn’t clear at the time. General Kelly, when the so-called ground war began, said, “There aren’t many left alive to fight.” Those that were left alive, those that hadn’t been killed in their bunkers and elsewhere by planes that came in the night primarily, but often in the day, planes that they couldn't see, they couldn’t hit, that they couldn’t defend themselves from, that they couldn’t even flee from. How do you surrender in the middle of the night to a B-52 at 40,000 feet? But those who had survived the bombing had no communications, had been deprived of food and water, of essential supplies, had no organization or command structure left, were completely disoriented, largely in bad health, sick if you will, and we rolled over them. Many, as the U.S. military now admits, were simply buried alive by tanks specially modified with bulldozer blades. And this was not something that came up in the heat of battle. U.S. soldiers practiced for months techniques for burying alive Traqi soldiers. There is no indication that any Iraqis attempted to fight back. They were simply buried. ‘The Bush-Schwarzkopf plan called for a whole variety of illegal weapons. It used fuel air explosives, which can incinerate hundreds, even thousands of people at once. We used super-bombs, trying to assassinate leaders, That information has only recently come out, and we'll find a lot more. At least three super-bombs were dropped, trying to assassinate leaders in Iraq in violation of international law and the laws of the United States. ‘The military used napalm against civilians. It used napalm and other heat-intensive explosives to start oil well fires, to start fires in anything that was highly inflammable. We used anti-personnel devices, mother-bombs36 Ramsey Clark with 800 or more bomblets, each bomblet in some configurations containing 6,000 razor-sharp pieces of shrapnel. One mother bomb dropped from one plane is capable of covering the equivalent of more than 150 football fields with razor-sharp shrapnel flying everywhere, fatal within 50 feet of each bomblet to anybody that it hits. Our military violated all the laws of war. These laws are intended to restrain the excessive use of force against civilians and the military. These laws principally include indiscriminate bombing, including the destruction of plants and facilities, including dams, nuclear-viable materials, chemicals known to threaten civilian populations if released into the atmosphere. These are a violation necessarily of law. Our military intended to destroy not only the military capacity of Iraq, but to kill sufficient numbers of its civilian population and so destroy its civilian economic capacity that it would be at least half a generation and perhaps longer before Iraq could struggle to a standard of living that is acceptable by any humane criteria. And we did it, and we did it without tisk because of our technology. By the time what was called the ground war started, there was no effective capacity to resist, and there was no ground war, and we never stopped after that. Look at that 60-mile long roadway on the eastern side of the highway from Kuwait City to Basra, 60 miles long, strewn with human bodies and trucks and tanks and armored cars and all the rest. Look at the so-called Highway of Death, seven miles on the super-highway that a lot of the press saw because that’s where they could travel. Look at what we continue to do in the north. The United States subverted the integrity of the United Nations in its quest for war. The United Nations was created in the aftermath of the greatest mass destructiveness in human history, World War II, to end the scourge of war. By bribery, coercion, corruption and unlawful means of many other types, the United States deliberately bought votes, forced votes and caused the United Nations to become an instrumentality of war. An imperial president violated the Constitution of the United States, usurping all the powers of the legislature over war and peace, lying to the public, lying to the Congress, refusing to consult, and proclaiming as late as January 9, 1991, that he individually had plenary power to engage in a war of aggression against Iraq without talking to anybody. What military dictatorship in history ever claimed greater power than that? If we want integrity in the Constitution of the United States, these war crimes that have been described must be considered here as a domestic matter, because each constitutes a high crime under the Constitution, and an impeachable offense. It's been very rare in history that the people who lose a war don’t suffer terribly, but it’s never happened in history that a nation that has won a war has been held accountable. We intend to make this one different.The Legal and Moral Basis for a War Crimes Tribunal 37 ‘There are more than a dozen additional charges, I can’t get through them all, but they include various types of human tights violations here in the United States against Palestinians and other peoples in Kuwait, the people in north and south Iraq and elsewhere that were either caused or condoned by the United States government and its military forces. They include the terrible suffering that arose directly from embargoes, from blockades, illegal naval blockades, acts of war themselves, from demand for reparations from people who had already been destroyed beyond the capacity to support themselves, in effect taxing their wealth and oil revenues for future generations, for the benefit of conquering nations. These have caused tens of thousands of deaths already, for lack of food, for lack of medicine, for lack of shelter. Just think of the refugees. After six months, when all the evidence that we seek has been accumulated and organized, it will be presented to an International War Crimes Tribunal, probably in February of 1992, probably sitting symbolically in the Hague [the Tribunal has been set for February 27, 28, 29, 1992 in New York—editor]. That Tribunal will be chosen collegially from those who participated in all of these hearings and helped provide all the evidence that is being gathered for the Tribunal. The Tribunal itself will be composed of international leaders who will render a judgment on the basis of the nineteen charges and any others that have been developed in the interim. Then we begin the real effort, to take those reports, to take those charges, back to the people from which they came in the countries and the cities of six continents to demand action. The action will include the creation of an international court of criminal justice for the future, so that any nation hereafter that dares to violate these laws against war crimes and crimes against peace will be immediately accountable. The court will require reform of the United Nations so that it is no longer a corrupt institution in which wealth and power and not principle dominate. It will require worldwide disarmament so we can stop starving ourselves and then killing ourselves with the product of our energy. It will require the redistribution of wealth to the poor because we know there will be a billion more people on the planet before the end of this millennium, nine years away. Eighty percent will have beautiful darker skin and will be condemned to short lives of hunger, want, sickness, poverty and misery unless we act boldly now. It will include a new world information order, because the press has been an accomplice worldwide with this assault on. humanity. We'll pull out the old Sean McBride report and we will demand that we obtain information from every part of the planet and every suffering person always so that we will never be kept in the dark again, never lied to again and never led into war again. Each country will have the obligation for dealing with the matter of its own leaders because that is a domestic affair, and here in the United States, we will go to every congressional district and demand of our38 Ramsey Clark representatives that they begin the processing of resolutions of impeachment against George Bush and all other officials who led us into this war. It’s simply a matter of will. Our capacity to do it is abundant and manifest. It is the highest duty of every individual on this planet to see that his or her governmental officials are accountable for their acts, including acts of war in the immediate term and restrained in their pursuits of war for the future. The highest form of patriotism, of love of country, is to stand up in a time of moral crisis such as this and say, “My country will not commit war crimes or crimes against humanity ever again.” Ramsey Clark served as U.S. Attorney General in the administration of Lyndon Johnson. He is the convener of the Commission of Inquiry and a human. rights lawyer of world-wide respect. This report was given in New York, May 11, 1991. This is what remains of a market in Basra, southern Iraq, after U.S. bombing. Unlike Baghdad which received mostly laser-guided bombs, Basta was subject to B-52 carpet bombing. (Photo: Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal]International Law and War Crimes Michael Ratner In the work of this Commission, we are undertaking an historic task. We arc here to inquire into and ultimately judge whether the United States has violated laws that are fundamental to a civilized world; laws that are designed to protect people, human beings, from the barbarity of war. These laws prohibit war except in the narrowest of circumstances, they severely restrict who can be killed, the types of weapons that can be used and the appropriate targets. An indicia of a civilized country is adherence to these laws, not only by pious words but through actions. To act outside these laws, to disobey these laws, to flaunt these laws is to become “hostis humani generis,” an enemy of all mankind. In days past “enemies of all mankind” were slave traders and pirates. They could be brought to justice wherever found. Today such enemies include those countries and individuals who violate the fundamental laws that protect the peace and limit war. The testimony presented at the various Commissions of Inquiry here in New York and in other hearings throughout the world will determine whether the United States and its leaders are enemies of all mankind. As people living in the United States we have an obligation not to close our eyes, cover our ears and remain silent. We must not and cannot be “good Germans.” We must be, as Bertrand Russell said about the crimes committed by the U.S, in Vietnam, “Against the Crime of Silence.” We must bear witness to the tens of thousands of deaths for whom our government and its leaders bear responsibility and ask the question—Has the United States committed war crimes with regard to its initiation and conduct of the war against Iraq? As investigators we believe that the United States and its leaders have committed international crimes. Although we cannot bring them to justice, we can reveal their criminal conduct to ourselves, to the people of the United States, and to the world with the hope that U.S. conduct will be repudiated, conduct, which by the way, still continues. The U.S. still occupies parts of Iraq, it continues an embargo against food, and it engages in battle after a cease-fire,40 Michael Ratner Today I want to outline for you the legal framework in which we are operating and explain some of the broad principles of law applicable to judging the United States’ conduct. War crimes are violations by a country, its civilians, or its military personnel of the international laws of war. The laws of war are laws that must be obeyed by the United States, its officials and its military, and by the UN. The laws are contained in treaties that the U.S. has signed, for example the Geneva Convention of 1949 on Prisoners of War. They are reflected in what is called customary international law. This law has arisen over hundreds if not thousands of years, All countries must obey it. War crimes are divided into two broad categories. The first are called crimes against peace. Crimes against peace include the planning, pre- paration, or initiation of a war of aggression. In other words one country cannot make aggressive war against another country. Nor can a country settle a dispute by war; it must always, and in good faith, negotiate a settlement. The second category are what we can call crimes against humanity; I am including here crimes against civilians and soldiers. These are violations of the rules as to the means and manner by which war is to be conducted once begun. These include the following prohibitions: killing of civilians, indiscriminate bombing, the use of certain types of weapons, killing of defenseless soldiers, ill treatment of POWs and attacks on non-military targets. Any violation of these two sets of laws is a war crime; if the violations are done on purpose, recklessly or knowingly, they are considered very serious and called grave breaches; Nazis and Japanese following World War II were hanged for such grave breaches. First, I want to discuss crimes against peace and give you some sense of its application here, This prohibition is embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, the Nuremberg Charter, which is the law under which the Nazis were tried, and a treaty called the Kellogg-Briand pact. As the Nuremberg Charter defines, (a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomp- lishment of any of the acts mentioned under (ij. The United Nations Charter is the highest expression of this prohibition on aggressive war and sets down very rigorous rules for avoiding the use of force—rules which were flagrantly violated by the United States and a Security Council it controlled. Article 2(3) of the UN Charter requires that international disputes be settled by peaceful means so that international peace, security and justice are not endangered, Article 2(4) requires thatInternational Law and War Crimes 41 force shall not by used in any manner that is inconsistent with the purposes of the UN and Article 33 requires that parties to a dispute shall first of all seek a solution by negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies, or other peaceful means. Not until all such means are exhausted can force be used. So, taken together we have two basic rules: a nation cannot plan and make war, and second, if there is a dispute, the nations must exhaust every means of settlement—every means. Even then, only the UN can authorize war. There is strong evidence, some of which is presented in the papers here, that the U.S. violated both of these basic laws. These facts are not hidden. Much of the evidence indicating that the U.S. set up the war with Iraq is contained in U.S. Rep. Gonzalez’s impeachment resolution and brief in support presented to Congress and printed in full in the Congressional Record (H. Res. 86, February 21, 1991, see Appendix B, below, for the full text]. It is only the major commercial press which has ignored the facts. In part it includes the following revelations: As early as October 1989 the CIA representatives in Kuwait had agreed to take advantage of Iraq’s deteriorating economic position to put pressure on Iraq to accede to Kuwait’s demands with regard to the border dispute. ... Encouraging Kuwait to refuse to negotiate its differences with Iraq as required by the United Nations Charter, including Kuwait's failure to abide by OPEC quotas, its pumping of Iraqi oil from the Rumaila oil field and its refusal to negotiate these and other matters with Iraq. Months prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the United States administration prepared a plan and practiced elaborate computer war games pitting United States forces against Iraqi armored divisions, In testimony before Congress prior to the invasion, Assistant Secretary Kelly misleadingly assured Congress that the United States had no commitment to come to Kuwait's assistance in the event of war. April Glaspic’s reassurance to Iraq that the dispute was an ‘Arab! matter and the U.S. would not interfere. Even if we suspend judgment and believe thatthe U.S. neither planned nor prepared this war, it had no right to initiate war until all means of negotiation were at an end. The U.S., however, never wanted to negotiate. It wanted war, According to the New York Times, the U.S. wanted to “block the diplomatic track because it might defuse the crisis at the cost of a few token gains for Iraq.’”! Iraq at about this time made an offer to negotiate to settle the crisis. It offered to withdraw from Kuwait for some form of control over two uninhabited islands that would give it access to the Gulf and control over the Rumaila oilfield. The offer was, according to the some US, officials, “serious and negotiable.” Offers continued until the eve of42 Michael Ratner war and by that time Iraq was willing to withdraw totally from Kuwait. The U.S, instantly dismissed all offers to negotiate a settlement and refused to pursue them. “No negotiations” was the constant theme of U.S. President George Bush.? The U.S. and its allies wanted to see the crisis settled by force. It is the U.S. that chose war and not peace; it is the U.S. that committed a crime against peace. I want to say a word about the UN Resolutions embargoing Iraq and supposedly authorizing the use of force. All of the UN Resolutions were suspect because of what Rep. Gonzalez called in his impeachment resolution the “bribing, intimidating and threatening of others, including members of the UN Security Council.” Gonzalez cites the following outright bribes: ¢ Immediately after the November 29 vote in the UN authorizing force, the administration unblocked a $140 million loan for the World Bank to China and agreed to meet with Chinese government officials. ¢ The Soviet Union was promised $7 billion in aid from various countries and shipments of food from the United States. ¢ Zaire was promised forgiveness of part of its debt as well as military assistance. ¢ A $7 billion loan to Egypt was forgiven, a loan the President had no authority to forgive under U.S. law. © Syria was promised that there would be no interference in its Lebanon actions. Saudi Arabia was promised $12 billion in arms sales. * The U.S., which owes the most money to the U.N., paid off $187 million of its debt immediately after the vote authorizing the use of force. ¢ The administration attempted to coerce Yemen by threatening the cutoff of U.S. funds.3 But even were this not the case, can the UN apply measures of force such as the embargo, effectively a blockade and an act of war, and authorize all necessary means—which the U.S. saw as war—without negotiating first? It cannot do so according to the stipulations of its own Charter. Nor was the UN permitted to embargo food and limit the importation of medicine. Neither the UN nor any country can take measures that intentionally or knowingly have the effect of starving and harming the civilian population. This is prohibited by every tenet of international law. It is well known that Iraq imports 60 to 70 percent of its food. As testimony presented elsewhere in book and in many reports from fact finding missions to Iraq since the end of the war, many children died because of the lack of infant formula and adequate food and medicine. And what of this infamous resolution that authorized all necessary means to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait? Did this authorize war? Not by its own terms. The resolution was left specifically vague, stipulating only “all necessary means.” Nowhere did it mention war and certainly manyInternational Law and War Crimes 43 other means were readily available for achieving the goals of the UN resolutions. All other means were never exhausted. From the U.S. standpoint, massively violent war was the first and only option. All other means had to be precluded at any cost. Finally, on the point of the U.S. commission of crimes against peace even if we get over all of the other illegalities and assume that the UN had the authority to authorize war and did so in this case, what did it authorize? It authorized the use of force only to obtain the withdrawal from Kuwait. It certainly never authorized the incursion into, much less the occupation of, Iraq and the total subjection of that nation to the dictates of the UN acting out policies originating in the U.S. government. No one has authorized the U.S. to have even one soldier in Iraq. This is aggression in the classic sense. U.S. forces moved in from the north down to the 36th parallel and have set wp camps for displaced Kurds. Nor did the resolution authorize any bombing of Iraq, certainly not the bombing of Baghdad or Basra or the near complete destruction of the economic infrastructure. The second broad category we are concerned with are what are referred to as crimes against humanity. By this I mean both crimes against civilians and combatants. There is a long history of outlawing certain kinds of conduct once war has begun. The principle is that the means and manner of waging war are not unlimited. In other words, while it is of primary importance to prevent war, once war has begun there are limits on the types of targets that can be attacked and the weapons that can be employed. Central to these laws of war is the desire to protect civilians, noncombatants, soldiers who are no longer fighting, and the resources and infrastructure necessary to their survival. Again, at Nuremberg, the Nazis were tried for crimes against humanity which included killings of the civilian population and the wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages and devastation not justified by military necessity. ‘These laws are embodied in various treaties, including most importantly the Hague Convention of 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions. They all reflect a similar set of rules, violations of which are war crimes. They are built around two principles, First, military operations are to be directed at military objectives—the civilian population and civilian objects are not to be targets. So, massive bombing, as was engaged in by the U.S., which kills civilians and destroyed the water supply, is illegal. In fact, when the dispute was barely a month old, in September, Air Force chief of staff General Michael J. Duggan was fired for leaking to the press suggestions that the U.S. was already planning bombing targets which would include Iraqi power systems, toads, railroads, and petroleum plants.4 At the height of the war, this sort of bombing campaign was defended by Pentagon spokespersons in terms reminiscent of the Vietnam War. Many parts of Iraq became “free fire zones” in which everyone who remains in44 Michael Ratner such a zone is declared unilaterally by the U.S. as a legitimate target for destruction, The entire city of Basra, Iraq’s second largest, became such a free fire zone, as described by Brigadier General Richard I. Neal. The Washington Post story recounts: “In Riyadh, Marine Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal gave a detailed explanation of why repeated allied pounding of the southern Iraqi city of Basra is causing ‘collateral damage.’ Basra, Neal said, ‘is a military town in the true sense, it is astride a major naval base and a port facility, The infrastracture, military infrastructure, is closely interwoven within the city of Basra itself.’ The destruction of targets in. and around Basta is part of what Neal described as an ‘intensifying’ air campaign against all ‘echelons of forces, from the front lines and all the way back... There is no rest for the weary, for any of them. . . . There is no division, no brigade, there is no battalion that really is spared the attacks from our pilots,’”5 The second limit international law places on the conduct of war is the principle of proportionality—you can only use the amount of force against military targets necessary to achieve your objective. So, for example, des- troying the retreating Iraqi army was disproportional for it was not necessary to achieve the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. The whole conduct of the war, in fact, violates every conceivable notion of proportionality. International law lays down rules for how the civilian population is to be protected. Obviously civilians cannot be intentionally attacked, but, indiscriminate attacks are prohibited as well. Such attacks are defined as those that “employ a method of combat which cannot be directed at specific military objectives.” While the mass media, especially TV news, gave the impression during the war that the U.S. was using only “‘smart’’” bombs that directly hit their military targets, in fact 93 percent of the bombs used were “dumb” bombs of which at least 60 to 70 percent missed their targets, killing lots of people. Such bombs cannot be directed exclusively at a military objective and in my view are illegal. Nor can bombs dropped from a B-52 flying at thirty to forty thousand feet hit their targets. There is a special Jaw protecting objects indispensable to the civilian population—the infrastructure of a country. This includes prohibitions on destroying food supplies, water and sewer systems, agriculture, power, medical services, transportation and similar essentials. These cannot be attacked even if there is some military goal, if the effect would be to leave civilians without the essentials for life. In fact, the U.S. government openly stated its goal of destroying the infrastructure of Iraq including water, food supplies, the sewer system, electricity and transportation. The story was not reported in U.S, newspapers until late June of 1991, but the facts were obvious to even a casual observer, According to the Washington Post story, US. officials admitted that “Some targets, especially late in the war, were bombed primarily to create postwar leverage over Iraq, not to influence the course of the conflict itself... . the intent was to destroy or damageInternational Law and War Crimes 45 yaluable facilities that Baghdad could not repair without foreign assistance.’”6 A report of the United Nations Mission to Iraq led by Under Secretary General Martti Ahtisaari said that Iraq had been bombed into the pre-industrial age (see Appendix B, below).” Thousands of additional people—all civilians and most children—are dying as a result. Attacks are also to be limited to strictly military objectives. These are defined as those that make an effective contribution to military action and whose destruction offer a definite military advantage. Civilian objects are not to be attacked. In case of doubt, such as a school, it should be presumed that it is not used asa military object. What does this rule say about bombing of the al-Ameriyah shelter? At least 300 children and parents were incinerated in a structure that the U.S. knew was built as a shelter for civilians. Its possible use as a military communications center was only a matter of speculation and weak supposition. Or, what are we to make of the destruction of the baby milk factory at the beginning of the bombing campaign? Again, an American general has admitted that this was a mistake—a mistake that has cost many, many babies their lives. There are also a series of very specific laws: 1. The use of asphyxiating gases is prohibited. The U.S. violated this by its use of fuel-air explosive bombs on Iraqi frontline troops, these bombs are terror bombs which can burn the oxygen over a surface of one or two square kilometers, destroying human life by asphyxiation. 2. These fuel-air bombs and the U.S. use of napalm are also outlawed by the Hague and Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the use of weapons causing unnecessary harm to combatants. The level of U.S. evil is demonstrated by the sending to the Gulf of a stingray blinding laser system which is supposed to knock out optics on enemy weapons, but has the side effect of blinding soldiers as well who operate the weapons, 3. The bombing of peaceful nuclear power facilities is forbidden and particularly so because of the dangers of the spread of radioactivity. The UN International Atomic Energy Agency classified the reactors as peaceful, yet the U.S. bombed them, not caring about the spread of radioactivity. The bombing was intentional and planned in advance, clearly in violation of international law. 4. Both the Hague Convention of 1954 and Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks against historic monuments, works of art, places of worship and sites which constitute the cultural and spiritual heritage of a people. Catholic churches, a 4th century monastery and a Sunni Moslem mosque represent just some of the massive violations that occurred. [Sce Fadwa El Guindi’s essay on archaeological destruction, below—editor.} 5. Protocol I of the Geneva Convention also requires protection of the natural environment against widespread and severe damage—the U.S. massive bombing, the blowing up of reactors, the hitting of oil storage facilities ali violate this prohibition.— Michael Ratner What I have tried to outline today is the broad framework in which we can evaluate the criminal conduct of the United States. I believe that these hearings will establish beyond doubt the criminal nature of American. actions in this war. I want to close with the words of Bertrand Russell when he addressed the war crimes that had been revealed at the War Crimes Tribunal held in 1967 in Stockholm and in 1968 in Copenhagen to judge US. actions in Vietnam: It is not enough, however, to identify the criminal. The United States must be isolated and rendered incapable of further crimes. 1 hope that America’s remaining allies will be forced to desert the alliances which bind them together. I hope that the American people will repudiate resolutely the abject course on which their rulers have embarked, Finally, I hope that the peoples of the Third World will take heart from the example of the Vietnamese and join further in dismantling the American empire. It is the attempt to create empires that produces war crimes because, as the Nazis also reminded us, empires are founded on a self-righteous and deep-rooted belief in racial superiority and God-given mission. Once one believes colonial peoples to be untermenschen—'gooks’ is the American term—one has destroyed the basis of all civilized codes of conduct. Notes See Appendix A of this book for relevant selections from intemational law. 1. New York Times, August 22, 1990. 2. Michael Emry, “How the U.S. Avoided the Peace,” The Village Voice, March 5, 1991. 3. Congressional Record, January 16, 1991: H520. 4. Rick Atkinson, “U.S. to Rely on Air Strikes if War Erupts,” New York Times, September 16, 1990: Al. 5. “Ground War Not Imminent, Bush Says: Allies to Rely on Air Power “for a While,” Washington Post, February 12, 1991: Aid. 6. Washington Post, June 23, 1991: Al. 7. Martti Ahtisaari, “Report to the Secretary General on Humanitarian Needs in Kuwait and Iraq in the Immediate Post-Crisis Environment,” United Nations Report No. $122366, March 20, 1991. Michael Ratner is an attorney, former director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and past president of the National Lawyer's Guild. He has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Gulf War. This report was given at the New York Commission Hearing, May 11, 1991.War Crimes Committed Against the People of Iraq Francis Kelly On November 15, 1990, President George Bush declared, “Let me repeat, we have no argument with the people of Iraq. Indeed, we have only friendship for the people there.” President Bush’s “friendship” found a peculiar variety of expressions. In the course of his brief war against Iraq, president Bush killed thousands of civilians, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, and left the country in ruins. In a nation whose level of development was the envy of the region, the electrical system is now crippled, the sanitation system is gone, the communication system destroyed, and famine and disease claim hundreds of lives a day. Besides being offensive to any standard of civilized conduct, this campaign of systematic destruction also violated international law repeatedly by disregarding the rights of non-combatants, destroying Iraqi infrastructure, and using excessive force against Iraqi troops, President Bush popularized the myth of a clean war against Iraq and actively misinformed the public about what his policies really involved. While he asserted that he was at war with Saddam Hussein alone and indeed, that the U.S. military was utilizing technologies that would spare the civilian population, the bleak reality in the cities and towns throughout Iraq offers a painful refutation of the President's claims. President Bush said of the allied bombing raids: This has been fantastically accurate and that’s because 2 lot of money went into this high technology weaponry—these laser guided bombs and a lot of other things—stealth technology—many of these technologies ridiculed in the past now coming into their own and saving lives, not only American lives, Coalition lives but the lives of Iraqis.2 The air war against Iraq was accurate only in so far as the bombs always hit the ground, any more stringent criteria makes the President's statement invalid. The Pentagon later conceded that only seven percent of all bombs used against Iraq were the so-called “smart bombs.” These weapons hit48 Francis Kelly their targets about 80 to 90 percent of the time, while their “dumb” counterparts missed their targets 75 percent of the time. In the end, 70 percent of the bombs dropped on Iraq missed their intended targets.3 Witnesses to the destruction said that the Coalition bombing leveled entire blocks of civilian homes.‘ A group of refugees fleeing Baghdad early in the war claimed that the neighborhoods of Jadriyyah and Qadissiyya were hit, the bus station in Doura was hit as well as a bus full of people.5 In the city of Basra, Louise Cainkar, the director of the Palestine Human Rights Information Center, reported visiting five different sections of Basra where bombs had struck civilian homes. She said that the residents of the Ma’kel neighborhood reported that 400 civilians in that section alone had died from the U.S.-led Coalition bombardment.§ Although 80-90 percent of the smart bombs may have enjoyed a deadly precision, the remaining 10-20 percent did not. One such wayward missile exploded in a civilian area of Fallujah, a city about forty miles west of Baghdad. Civil defense officials claimed that one hundred and thirty people, mostly tenants of an apartment complex, were killed by the attack.” Twelve year-old Abdullah Mehsan now has two stumps where his legs used to be. He is arguably one of the lucky ones in his family; his father, an uncle, and a cousin all perished in that raid.8 Likewise, a failed assault on a bridge in the southem city of al-Nasiriya reportedly killed forty-seven people.? Some of the Coalition attacks betrayed a particularly pronounced disregard for civilian lives. Refugees fleeing Iraq reported that Coalition warplanes strafed the highway leading west to Jordan. Bemd Debusmann of Reuters said that “Of at least half a dozen burned or damaged vehicles on the desert highway, only one vehicle was clearly a military vehicle” and that “local residents told me that the bombing of the road was frequent and the targets almost always seemed to be civilian trucks or private cars.’"19 In one of their more arrant violations of the Geneva Convention, Coalition planes attacked a convoy of medical vehicles despite the fact that they bore the symbols of the United Nations, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent.!1 Louise Cainkar reported seeing “no less than forty bombed out civilian cars and freight trucks and two buses laying on their sides, most of them between the border and the 200km road marker” and claims that “the Jordanian authorities said twelve Jordanian truck drivers were killed on this road.’’!? Pentagon officials, while offering excuses, do not deny that civilian vehicles on the road between Baghdad and Amman have been hit.!3 So too in southern Iraq, the Coalition attacked civilian vehicles; they bombed a bus traveling on the highway to Basra and between thirty and forty people burned to death.!+ The most egregious attack on civilian, however, remains the bombing of al-Amariyah bomb shelter in Baghdad. At 4:30 am on February 13, 1991, USS. pilots sent a laser-guided ordnance down a ventilation shaft, destroying the shelter and killing at least three hundred people and possibly as manyWar Crimes Against the People of Iraq 49 as 1600.15.16 The U.S. military claimed that the structure was a command and control center and thus a legitimate target. However, the military steadfastly refused to provide any hard evidence of their assertion.!” Moreover, reporters who visited the scene after the bombing saw no evidence to support the Coalition’s claim. Indeed, retired Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael Dugan told the London Times that the intelligence information about the shelter was out of date at the time of the attack.!8 ‘When questioned about the civilian deaths, the Coalition claimed ignorance. Lt. General Thomas Kelly responded that “We didn’t know that the Iraqis had civilians in there.’"!9 The response is puzzling given that the U.S. military authorities knew that the structure was originally built as a bomb shelter.2° Survivors of the attack claim that the facility had been used as a shelter since the second week of the war.2122 hence the suggestion by intelligence officers that Iraqi authorities had moved civilians into the shelter at night, when U.S. photographic satellites cannot see, is patently absurd. Furthermore, officials conceded that the last aerial photos of the structure may have been taken a full week before its attack.? While the real motive for the attack may never be known, one point is clear: when it came to respecting Iraqi lives, the Coalition just couldn’t be bothered. Louise Cainkar estimates that in the end between 11,000 and 24,500 civilians died as an immediate result of the Coalition bombing™ and the United Nations estimates that Coalition bombing caused the destruction of 2,500 homes in Baghdad leaving 20,000 people homeless.25 President Bush’s prattle about friendship only adds insult to mortal injury. The relentless bombing of Iraq is repugnant to our basic sense of decency and it reveals an utter disregard for human life by the Coalition forces, However, it also betrays a contempt for international law in the a campaign whose putative motivation was the enforcement of that very body of law. The most salient example of this is the tragedy at al-Amariyah. Auticle 57 of the Geneva Convention delineates the responsibility that the parties to a conflict owe the non-combatants; it states that anyone conducting military operations must “do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilian or civilian objects and are not subject to special protections but are military objectives.” As outlined above, the U.S. military either knew that civilians were present and lied or just did not bother to check. If the latter is true, they are in violation of the Convention. If they did know that civilians were in the shelter, then while they might advance some specious argument that the military end justified the slaughter of innocents, nevertheless Article 57 mandates that they give advance warning of “attacks which may affect the civilian population,” which they failed to do. Given that survivors of the attacks spoke of listening to Voice of America, the Coalition clearly had the option of saving those civilian lives; they simply chose not to exercise it.26 So too with the attacks on the highways, the Coalition ignored their moral and50 Francis Kelly legal duty. Asa party to the conflict they were under an obligation to make every effort to avoid civilian casualties and furthermore to abide by the Geneva Convention’s restriction on indiscriminate attacks. The Convention unambiguously proscribes attacks of the variety witnessed on the Iraqi highways. Indeed, Article 51 states that 4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are: a] those which are not directed at a specific military objective. . . . 5, Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: a) an attack by bombardment by any method or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village, or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects. The attacks on the highways and bridges provide an ideal illustration of the motive behind these restrictions: while the highways carry military vehicles, they also carry civilian vehicles and probably in greater numbers, based on the eyewitness testimony to the destruction, The Pentagon's pathetic justification that civilians shouldn’t have been using those roads and bridges since their pilots can’t distinguish civilian vehicles from military ones in no way exculpates the Coalition for its crime. In fact it only further proves the guilt since the Geneva Convention also stipulates that when doubt exists whether a potential target is civilian or military the favor must go to the civilian use and the attack be cancelled. If the treatment of civilians was harsh, the assault on the Iragi army plumbed the depths of depravity, In the first two days of the ground phase, the U.S. Army employed tanks and earthmovers to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers alive. The tactic of ploughing sand into the trenches was designed to destroy the trenches and terrify the soldiers into surrendering, only surrender was almost impossible because the earthmovers were flanked by armored vehicles pouring machine-gun fire into the ditches as the sand was piled over, Colonel Anthony Moreno, who participated in the assault said that “What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people’s arms and things sticking out of them.”27 In the carly morning of February 26, 1991, the Iraqi forces began a panicked flight from Kuwait. U.S. forces left open only two roads out of Kuwait City. All retreating soldiers were forced onto these roads and it was made known that soldiers moving north would net be attacked. Later, the U.S. military feigned ignorance of the troops’ intentions and floated the possibility that they sought to reinforce the Republican Guards just over the border in Iraq. Thus, the Pentagon argued, the possibility of a serious threat from this retreating force left the Coalition no choice but to attack its adversary.28 However, the Coalition did not merely attack its foe; it massacred them. The fleeing Iraqi troops took two roads that meet nearWar Crimes Against the People of Iraq 51 the Kuwaiti town of al-Mutlaa and their exodus quickly became a trafic jam of immense proportions. U.S. Marines allowed the convoy of cars, trucks, and every sort of vehicle to get out of Kuwait City before bombing the front and the end of the convoy. Kill zones were assigned along the seventy miles of highway so that planes would not crash into each other.29,30 The Coalition forces were under orders to “find anything that was moving and take it out’’#! and thus began the orgy of slaughter. When the devastation finally ceased, the roadways were literally awash in blood. One reporter wrote that “As we drove slowly though the wreckage, our armored personnel carrier's tracks splashed through great pools of bloody water.’’3? Both soldiers and civilians alike perished on the Basra road as North Carolina Guardsman Mike Ange described: J actually went up close and examined two vehicles that basically looked like refugees maybe trying to get out the area. You know you had like a little Toyota pick-up truck that was loaded down with you know the furniture and the suitcases and you know mugs and you know the pet cat and you know that type of thing all over the back of this truck and those trucks were taken out just like the military vehicles.33 The BBC’s Stephen Sackur said that among the dead on the highway were contract workers from the Indian subcontinent as well as Palestinians fleeing an intolerant, “liberated Kuwait.’*4 The army estimates that 25,000 people were slaughtered on those highways.35 The Coalition immediately sought to provide a justification for the carnage. The Army pleaded that they couldn’t be sure these fleeing troops weren't going to join the Republican Guard and strike back at Coalition forces. A U.S. military spokesman claimed that the Coalition had “no real evidence of any withdrawal at this time.” Specifically, he said, “There’s no significant Iraqi movements to the north.” His comments were utterly false; half a day before that report had been issued, Iraqi troops had begun their exodus from Kuwait.36 Furthermore, U.S. troops observed that the Iraqi forces were “trying to escape up the highway.”37 One Navy pilot even claimed that the Iraqis had affixed white flags to their tanks, though it failed to save them.38 The retreat was not an orderly attempt to withdraw from Kuwait and re-group but rather a terrified run from a marauding foe. The fleeing soldiers were conscripts who had been forced to fight and never posed any threat to the U.S. forces.9? Furthermore, the Iraqis in their frenzied departure were in fact complying with UN resolution 660 which called for them to “withdraw immediately and unconditionally all its forces to the positions in which they were located before August 1, 1990.” The U.S. generals could not, in the end, conceal their true agenda. General McPeak said that the Coalition sought to disarm the Iraqis, a goal that exceeded the bounds of the UN mandate. Clearly, the Coalition was not protecting itself from a soon-to-be reinforced Republican Guard; it was52 Francis Kelly exploiting the Iraqi panic in order to further its own objectives, and Coalition soliders took tens of thousands of lives in the process. As McPeak put it when he spoke of the retreat: “It’s during this phase that the true fruits of victory are achieved from combat, when the enemy is disorganized.40 Of course, the Coalition later sought to soften the perception of the attack on the convoy as a massacre, McPeak had the gall to claim that the USS. forces made every effort to avoid killing the Iraqi troops, seeking to destroy their equipment instead. He stated, “I think we tried to disarm the Yraqi Army as humanely as possible.’’4! However, the London Independent correspondent Richard Dowden said in a televised interview, ‘The lorries further down the line would have tried to crash off the motorway and just get away, just get off the road and [the American pilots] would have chased them, and you saw them in the desert, and then you would see bodies going from those lorries so they'd actually hunted down people who were just running away.42 The attitude of those participating in the killing seems to bear out Dowden’s comment. Lt. General George Patrick told a reporter, “I think we're past the point of just letting him [i.e., Iraqi soldiers—Americans developed the habit of referring to them in the singular] get in his tanks and drive them back to Iraq and say, ‘I'm sorry.’ I feel fairly punitive about it.” Cmdr. Sweigart said, One side of me says, ‘That's right, it’s like shooting ducks in a pond.’ Does that make me uncomfortable? Not necessarily. Except that there is a side of me that says, ‘What are they dying for? For a madman’s cause? And is that fair?’ Well, we're at war—it’s the tragedy of war. But we do our jobs.43 We wonder if someday, Cmdr. Sweigart will claim that he was only following orders as Nazi war criminals did at the Nuremburg Tribunals, Even after the cease-fire between Iraq and the Coalition was signed, the U.S. continued to disarm the Iragi army. On March 1, 1991, an Iraqi convoy allegedly fired on a platoon of the 24th Infantry Division. Many Iraqi soldiers, due to their loss of communication lines, were unaware of the cease-fire agreement. Hence it is possible that the Iraqis really did fire upon U.S. forces. Even se the U.S. had loudspeakers, which they chose not to use, which would have allowed them to broadcast news of the cease-fire and possibly avert any bloodshed. Instead, they annihilated the convoy and killed 2,000 Iraqi soldiers without suffering a single death on the American side.“ Had the Iraqis fired first and gotten some sort of advantage on the USS. forces, surely someone would have been killed. One U.S. soldier quipped, “Say hello to Allah” as he obliterated his target with a Hellfire missile, The post-cease-fire massacre as this “battle” came to be called, like the slaughter near al-Mutlaa, Kuwait, is remarkable for its needlessness;War Crimes Against the People of Iraq 53 so many lives sacrificed for nothing.45 It has become perfunctory for proponents of the war, especially when talking about these kinds of massacres, to punctuate their remarks with comments about the brutality, the inhumanity, the nastiness of war. Interviewed about the war, former ambassador Robert Neumann argued for the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure as a military necessity, adding that “War is rough business.’46 These self-evident and self-serving observations seek to obfuscate the fact that the conduct of war is regulated by international law and that the obligations of the combatants cannot simply be swept aside with some essentially trivial remark. The obligations include respect for the rule of proportionality which the U.S. ignored in its treatment of the Iraqi forces both on the Basra highway and after the cease fire. The rule of proportionality granted the Coalition the right only to use as much force as is necessary to achieve its legitimate military aim. However, the violent destruction of the Iraqi army clearly exceeded the UN mandate under which the Coalition operated. The goal of the Coalition forces was to drive Iraq from Kuwait; they did not need to massacre them to accomplish this, much less destroy the economic infrastructure. Only after the cease-fire was signed and the rebellions had ended, did the full dimensions of Iraq's situation became apparent. The horror caused by the bullets and bombs was replaced by other, equally deadly forms of extermination. What the Pentagon spokespeople politely termed “collateral damage” is no less than annihilation of the infrastructure of Iraq and this destruction has caused what the International Committee of the Red Cross has termed a “public health catastrophe of immense proportions.’’47 On March 20, 1991, Under-Secretary General of the UN, Martti Ahtisaari submitted a report on the post-war situation in Iraq. In the report, he writes that It should, however, be said at once that nothing that we had read had quite prepared us for the particular form of devastation which has now befallen the country. The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. The UN Report chronicles the nature of the damage inflicted by unrelenting allied assault. The bombing virtually eliminated Iraq’s capacity to generate electrical power. At the time the report was published, all electrically operated installations had ceased to function and only diesel-powered plants produced power. Public sanitation is jeopardized by the elimination of garbage collection. The bombing destroyed all modern forms of communication, and transmission of information occurs only by person- to-person contact. When hostilities within Iraq finally ceased, the city of Erbil had only five of its forty-two community health centers functioning; Basra had five out of nineteen; and Sulamaneiya had six out of twenty.54 Francis Kelly Likewise, in Baghdad four hospitals were destroyed. Iraq lost its only laboratory for producing veterinary vaccines as well as all its available stores of animal vaccines in the bombardment.48,49 This infrastructural damage has profound implications: Iraq is experiencing a public health disaster on a scale heretofore unimaginable. The crux of the disaster lies in the destruction of the electrical system, At the end of the war, Iraq's electrical output was four percent of its prewar level; in May the level was twenty-two percent. The reduction in generating capacity is already producing a lethal effect. A team of medical professionals from Harvard visited Iiaq and in their report they write: “There is a link in Iraq between electrical power and public health. Without electricity, water cannot be purified, sewage cannot be treated, water borne diseases flourish, and hospitals cannot cure treatable illnesses.” This absence of electricity, coupled with direct damage to the sewage treatment facilities, has rendered the sewage treatment system as a whole inoperable, Richard Reid, the regional director of UNICEF, described the result, “You can go into places like Amara and Basra and walk for blocks and blocks almost knee deep in liquid sewage and it’s in people’s homes obviously, It’s everywhere.'50 Among other things, it’s in the Tigres River, a main sousce of drinking water for Baghdad. The water system, too, has been paralyzed. Iraqis, once accustomed to using 450 liters of water a day, now find themselves limited to between thirty and forty liters a day. The water they manage to obtain is probably contaminated, They lack of electricity has greatly affected hospitals which depend on electricity for refrigeration, sterilization, lighting, and sanitation. Doctors complain of having to perform operations by candlelight.5! There is a particularly savage irony here. President Bush accused the Iraqis of removing babies from incubators in Kuwait (a charge which later proved false) while it was the Coalition which by rendering incubators useless actually perpetrated the crime in Iraq. While all of Iraq will pay dearly for the destruction, children will suffer most acutely. President Bush declared 1990 the “Year of the Child.” In Iraq, 1991 is clearly not the year of the child. The Harvard Report, in what it describes as a conservative estimate, claims that by May of 1992 170,000 Iraqi children under the age of five will perish form health problems directly related to the destruction of Iraqi society. The pollution of the water supply has led to epidemics of typhoid, cholera, and gastroenteritis which threaten the entire population, and children in particular. The UN Report notes that immunization of children has stopped, that there is a high incidence of upper respiratory illnesses, diarrhea, and psychological problems for children under five. As the Iraqi people confront this crisis, their medical system is especially ill-equipped to cope. The report claims that the “Iraqi health system is currently operating at a fraction of its capacity before the gulf crisis.” Before the war, Iraq had 131 hospitals and 851 community health centersWar Crimes Against the People of Iraq 55 frre ae wean a {Above} Former residential area in Babylon Province which was bombed at 3:00 a.m. on February 26, 1991. Seventeen people were killed, including four children. (Below) A common scene throughout Iraq after the bombing: women washing and taking drinking water from an irrigation ditch. This photo comes from Kufa, an agricultural town south of Baghdad. This area was completely electrified and every home had running water before the U.S. bombing. Some 26,000 necessary civilian and industrial facilities were destroyed by U.S. bombing. Electrical grids were targeted thus making the preservation of food and medicine impossible as well as the purification of water and the treatment of sewage. (Photos: Commission of Inquiry)56 Francis Kelly nationwide, According to Ezio Murzi, the director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, ninety-five percent of Iraq’s population had easy access to medical care.52 Iraqi hospitals were well equipped with sophisticated medical technology but such progress has been tragically reversed, 53 Iraqi physicians who once used multi-million dollar CAT scanning devices now suffer severe shortages of everything: drugs, IV fluids, needles, syringes, bandages, and blood for transfusions.5455 Syringes are now often reused, even when not properly sterilized, a practice which raises the specter of hepatitis epidemic as well.56 Iraq used to import sixty percent of its medicines. The trade embargo, coupled with inoperability of Iraq’s only two pharmaceutical factories means a severe shortage of drugs of any sort. Of course, this includes painkillers; one victim of an air raid reportedly had his leg amputated without anesthetic.57 A whole range of medical practices have become impossible. Louise Cainkar reported that the necessity of using kerosene lamps has dramatically increased the number of bumed children, but the normal treatment for burns has become unavailable. The standard procedure of bathing the children and applying a salve is impossible; neither clean water, nor any kind of lotion is available. If the children can survive the risk of infections, which there are no antibiotics to treat, they will still be covered in scar tissue as skin grafts have become infeasible.58 In fact, the treatment of such victims usually extends no further than flapping a towel to keep away the flics.®? A host of other problems has arisen, Women are suffering physical stress from carrying water, a chore imposed upon them with the destruction of the water system. Dr. David Levinson cites anecdotal evidence that increased levels of stress are causing psychological problems.61 As though the collapse of the healthcare system were not enough, it is in fact only part of the problem: famine has begun to aggravate an already dire situation. The UN Report warned back in March that Traq’s food supply was critically low, While Iraq used to import seventy percent of its food, it can no longer do so because of the United Nation’s sanction. The report cautioned that even if Iraqi agriculture enjoyed a bumper crop, the country would probably only enjoy a portion of the yield because the destruction of the infrastructure has made harvesting crops very difficult. The scarcity of food has dramatically inflated food prices. The same package of powdered infant formula that cost one dollar before the war now costs fifty dollars.62 The cost of rice has increased twenty-five times. The caloric intake for the average Iraqi has been cut in half and the entire population is beginning to suffer from acute malnutrition.6 Richard Reid, the regional director of UNICEF said of the situation, We're seeing also in Iraq now a couple of manifestations of hunger that you had seen only before in Africa, never in our region, never in the Middle East or North Africa and that is marasmus, the conditionWar Crimes Against the People of Iraq 87 that makes kids under two suddenly look like wizened old men, the bony face, the skull; and kwashiokor, the malnutrition that turns a child’s hair a rusty red and gives him a pot belly. That’s unimaginable in Iraq and yet you see it all over the place now, even in Baghdad.6+ Even as he was presiding over the dismemberment of Iraqi society, President Bush continued to peddle his notion of a humane and surgical war: “And we are not trying to systematically destroy the functions of daily living in Iraq. That’s not what we're trying to do or are we doing it.” In fact, such systematic destruction was one component of the complex architecture of the war; Bush’s remark was his own desperate attempt to continue to mask what was becoming obvious to anyone who listened to the grisly stories coming from Iraq, Pentagon planners now admit that they chose certain targets within Iraq in order to gain leverage over Iraq following the war. The military acknowledged that they sought to intensify the effect of the sanctions by bombing Iraq.6 Senior Pentagon officials now also concede that it was neither “dumb” bombs nor failed “smart” bombs that caused the crucial damage to Iraq. Rather, it was the laser-guided missiles which struck their intended targets—electrical plants, oil refineries, and transportation networks—that have brought Iraq so much misery.§” Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states that, It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigations works, for the specific purpose of denying them of their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians or cause them to move away, or for any other motive. Hence, these admissions by the U.S. military are nothing short of a confession to war crimes. The continuing use of sanctions against Iraq adds another sinister dimension to the crisis, Not only has the Coalition brought Iraq to the brink of famine, but it is still actively aggravating the situation by refusing to lift the UN sanctions. While Iraqis suffer and die, U.S. officials trivialize the situation. U.S. ambassador to the UN, Thomas Pickering, even after the publication of the UN Report describing the onset of starvation, said that Iraq’s food supply was “minimal but adequate.’ Pentagon spokeperson, Lt, Col. T. P. Mazer downplayed the urgency of the crisis, “When you first see a car wreck, it looks really bad. But then the body guy gets there and pretty soon the car runs like new.”6 Besides the contemptuousness of the analogy, it fails to address the situation at all: under the UN sanctions, the “body guy” wouldn’t even be allowed to go into Iraq. Even band-aid measures of relief have met with resistance. A58 Francis Kelly shipment of ibuprofen from the Fellowship of Reconciliation was delayed by customs officials’? and a shipment of medical supplies sent by the Mennonite Central Committee met bureaucratic obstacles from the State Department.7! Even when the sanctions finally do end and food and medicine can flow freely into Iraq, the suffering will not be done. For most people in Iraq life will continue to be a struggle. George Bush may have vilified Saddam Hussein, but he punished the people. It has been the average Iraqi who has suffered: the children whose fathers died on the Basra highway, the people whose loved ones burned to death in al-Amariyah, and the parents who cannot feed their children. The level of misery and grief in Iraq are completely foreign to the people of the United States, but perhaps if they try to imagine what this war has meant on an individual level, they will be forces to ask themselves, ‘How did we let this happen?” Notes 1. Bill Moyers, “PBS Special Report: After the War,” Spring 1991. 2. Ibid. 3. Jack Colhoun, “U.N.: Iraq Bombed Back to Stone Age,” Guardian, April 3, 1991. 4, Mark Fineman, “Eyewitnesses Describe Allied Raids’ Devastation,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 5, 1991. 5. Mark Fineman, “Refugees Carry Tales of Terror from Baghdad,” Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1991. 6, Louise Cainkar, “Desert Sin,” in Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader. Michel Moushabeck and Phyllis Bennis, eds. (An advance copy of the article was used for this report,} 7.“Death Comes to a Town Almost Forgotten by War,” Manchester Guardian Weekly, February 24, 1991. 8. Ed Vulliamy, “Bombs Blast Away Lives and Limbs,” Manchester Guardian Weekly, May 12, 1991. 9. Bemd Debusmann, “Many Civilians Die in Bridge Bombing Raids,” Financial Times, February 8, 1991. 10. “News Reports That Allied Bombs Have Hit Civilians on Highway,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 1, 1991. 11. Nora Boustany, “In Baghdad, Surgery by Candlelight,” Washington Post, February 10, 1991. 12. Cainkar, “Desert Sin.” 13. Gerald F. Seib, “Heavy Civilian Casualty Toll of Raid on Iraq has U.S. Scrambling to Keep Alliance United,” Wall Street Journal, February 4, 1991. 14, Frank Smyth, “Rider: Kuwait Buses Bombed,” San Francisco Examiner, February 10, 1991. 15, Edward Cody, “U.S. Briefers on Attack Concede No Quarter,” Washington Post, February 14, 1991,war Crimes Against the People of Iraq 59 16. Cainkar, “Desert Sin.” 17. Doyle McManus and James Gerstenzang, ‘Structure Built to Shelter Iraqi Elite, U.S. Says,” Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1991. 18. William Arkin, Damian Durrant, and Marianne Cherni, On Impact: Modern Warfare and the Environment—A Case Study of the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Greenpeace, 1991}. Hereafter cited as On Impact. 19, “Kelly: ‘We Knew This To Be’ a Military Facility,” Washington Post, February 14, 1991. 20. see McManus and Gerstenzang, above. 21. Cainkar, “Desert Sin.” 22. Caryle Murphy, “Amariya Where One Raid Killed 300 Iraqis,” Washington Post, June 23, 1991. 23. see Seib, above. 24. Cainkar, “Desert Sin.” 25. Martti Ahtisaari, Report to the Secretary-General on Humanitarian Needs in Kuwait and Iraq (New York: United Nations, 1991). Hereafter cited as UN Report. 26. Cainkar, “Desert Sin.” 27. Patrick J. Sloyan, “U.S. Officers Say Iraqis Were Buried Alive,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 12, 1991. 28. “Trapped in the Killing Ground at Mutlaa,” Manchester Guardian Weekly, March 17, 1991. 29. Ibid. 30. See On Impact, p. 107 31. See On Impact, p. 109. 32. See On Impact, p. 108. 33. See Moyers, above. 34. Alexander Cockburn, “Unlimited Violence Wins Out,” Los Angeles Times, March 11, 1991. 35. See On Impact, p. 108. 36. See “Trapped in the Killing Ground,” above. 37. See On Impact, p. 108. 38. See On Impact, p. 110. 39. See Moyers. 40. See On Impact, p. 111. 41. See On Impact, p. 111. 42. See Moyers. 43. See “Trapped in the Killing Ground,” above. 44. See On Impact, p. 112. 45. Patrick J. Sloyan, “War's Fiercest Ground Battle Was After Cease Fire,” Oakland Tribune, May 8, 1991. 46. See Moyers. 47. Jessica Matthews, “A New Meaning for the Term Germ Warfare,” Manchester Guardian Weekly, April 28, 1991. 48. Harvard Study Team Report: Public Health in Iraq After the Gulf War. Hereafter cited as Harvard Report. 49. See Colhoun, above. 50. See Moyers. 51. See Boustany, above. 52. See Caryle Murphy, “Doctors in Postwar Iraq Teetering Between Hope and60 Francis Kelly Terror,” Washington Post, June 20, 1991. 53. Patrick Tyler, “Iraqi Hospitals Struggle With Wounds of War,” New York Times, fuly 5, 1991. 54, See Harvard Report. 55. See Boustany. 56. Walter V. Robinson, “Iraq Since the War: A Hell of Hunger and Privation,” San Francisco Examiner, March 24, 1991. 57. See Boustany. 58. Louise Cainkar, “Itaq Was a New Kind of War—Biological Warfare,” Guardian, May 15, 1991. 59. See Matthews, above. 60. “Hunger, Disease Stalk a Ravaged Iraq,” Guardian, March 13, 1991. 61. David Levinson, “Healthcare Effects of the War Against Iraq,” see Part Three of this volume. 62. Patrick E. Tyler, “Disease Spirals in Iraq as Embargo Takes Its Toll,” New York Times, June 24, 1991. 63. Joyce Price, “Embargo and Air War Diminish Iraq's Food Supply to a Record Low,” Washington Times, February 28, 1991. 64. See Moyers. 65. See Moyers. 66. Barton Gellman, “Allied Air War Struck Broadly in Iraq,” Washington Post, June 23, 1991. 67. Ibid. 68. “Hunger, Disease Stalk a Ravaged Iraq, Guardian, March 13, 1991. 69. Dennis Bernstein and Larry Everest, “Apocalypse Later,” East Bay Guardian, June 1991. 70, See Colhoun. 71. Press release from the Mennonite Central Committee, March 12, 1991. This essay was presented at the San Francisco Commission of Inquiry, September 14, 1991 and published in High Crimes and Misdemeanors: U. War Crimes in the Persian Gulf by the Research Committee of the San Francisco Commission of Inquiry (2849 Mission Street, #28, San Erancisco, CA 94110).Part Three: Testimony and EvidenceBomb damage in a residential neighborhood in Basra, Iraq's second largest city with a population of about 800,000 people, There are no military targets anywhere near (Photo: Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal)Provoking Iraq Gautam Biswas and Tony Murphy The picture the U.S. paints of the war against Iraq is that its impetus was the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. The U.S, was apparently only responding to a madman’s actions, a madman who would take over Saudi Arabia if given the chance, However, there is strong evidence that the U.S. has had designs on Iraq for a long time; that rather than the Persian Gulf War being sparked by Hussein's actions, the conflict was actually part of a long-term strategy of the U.S. designed to weaken Iraq. When the long record of U.S.-Iraq relations is studied, the war would actually seem to be premeditated on the part of the U.S. The premeditated aspect of the war is evident from the simultancous support by the U.S. for Hussein and by the U.S. cooperation with Kuwaiti efforts to weaken Iraq. War would be the inevitable outcome of such double dealing, The goal of war would be the destruction of Iraq as a power center in the Middle East. A history of CIA operations reveals designs to destabilize Iraq dating back to the 1950s, and it includes statements made as early as 1985 that showed US. intent to depose Hussein. Supporting Iraq and Weakening Iraq Intentions to create a situation which would cause Iraq to invade Kuwait are evident from the dual policy the U.S. pursued with both countries; tilting toward Iraq near the start of the Iran-Iraq war, with increasing favoritism as the 80s progressed, but secretly cooperating with Kuwait to economically weaken Iraq. Just before 1980, the U.S. retreated from its position that Iraq was a terrorist state and tool of the Soviets and began a process of support and cooperation.! According to authoritative Kuwaiti sources, in late 1979, U.S. Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski urged Saddam Hussein to attack Iran and seize Khuzistan, the U.S. objective being to roll back the Iranian revolution under the Ayatollah Khomeini. Hussein, if successful, could have access to the Gulf through the Shatt-al-Arab, a strait between Iraq and Iran.264 Gautam Biswas and Tony Murphy In late 1980, Hussein, now with the tacit approval of the Bush-Reagan administration, invaded Iran in order to regain that territory, conceded to Tran in 1975.3 The Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years; Saudi Arabia and Kuwait provided financial support while the U.S. {among other nations) provided arms. The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations reported in June 1990 that “From the start of the Iran-Iraq war . . . the warld’s arms dealers gathered like carrion to pick on the corpse of conflict. . . . In 1982, the Reagan-Bush administration removed. Iraq from the list of those countries which supported terrorism and in 1984 restored full diplomatic relations. This was a clear signal to the Western world that Iraq was back in the fold.”4 But the U.S. embrace of Iraq was not all public. In fact, the U.S. sent $50 billion in shipments of U.S. weapons to Iraq through third countries— including Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait—in violation of the arms embargo previously slapped on Iraq in response to reports of Iraqi human rights abuses.5 Another illegal military aid program to Iraq was funneled through a credit program in the Agriculture Department—$5.5 billion in credit guarantees between 1983 and 1990.6 Legally, Iraq was only supposed to receive credit for loans to buy U.S. food and agricultural products, like seeds and tobacco.” Most of the hardware shipped to Iraq was “dual use” equipment: trucks, machinery, and parts easily used for either civilian or military purposes. Yet, Rep. Charlie Rose (Dem-NC) talking to the media about the program, said that there was evidence that some U.S. agriculture companies might have provided guns, ammunition, and other military aid,8 Rose said of the program, “The Administration decided to funnel aid to Iraq through a quiet little sleepy oan program in the Agriculture Department because they thought it wouldn’t attract too much attention. And now that the whole thing has blown up in their face, they are petrified about people finding out.” The U.S. support for Iraq extended to encouragement of Iraq’s economic policies. The London Observer reported on October 21, 1990 that at a secret meeting in early 1990 in New York between an Iraqi minister and a U.S. former ambassador, Hussein was advised to push for higher oil prices. Hussein, saddled with an $80 billion debt after the war with Iran, consulted the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) to determine an appropriate price.!° In January 1990, the oil price was $21 per barrel and expected to plummet to $15 per barrel—as it did. The recommendation to Hussein by CSIS was to adopt an aggressive campaign to push the price of oil up to $25 per barrel.!! The Bush administration continued to express sympathy for Hussein’s economic woes, and worked to stave off Congressional efforts at sanctions and suppress State Department reports mildly critical of Iraq’s government.!? But Hussein's economic problems were steadily beingProvoking Iraq 65 worsened as a result of coordinated efforts by the CIA and Kuwait to glut the oil market.!3 This had been happening since the mid-1980s. As Iraq became increasingly embroiled in the war with Iran, Kuwait took advantage of Iraq's preoccupation to encroach on Iraqi territory until the southern tier of the Rumaila oil reserves was in Kuwaiti hands. In all, Kuwait annexed 900 square miles of Iraqi land.14 Kuwait then purchased the Santa Fe Drilling Corporation, a company that specializes in “slant drilling” (drilling horizontally or at an angle rather than vertically) and proceeded to pump out billions of dollars of Iraqi oil. This action glutted the oil market and prices came tumbling down.!5 In the second quarter of 1990, Kuwait's excess overproduction was eighteen percent of OPEC’s total excess.16 It was around this time that Hussein accused OPEC of waging economic war against him. Documen- tation for this claim does exist. A top-secret Kuwaiti intelligence memorandum described a meeting in November 1989 between Brig. Fahd Ahmad Fahd, the director general of state security in Kuwait and CIA Director William H. Webster. It states the following, We agreed with the American side that it was important to take advantage of the deteriorating economic situation in Iraq in order to put pressure on that country’s government to delineate our common border. The Central Intelligence Agency gave us its view of appropriate means of pressure, saying that broad cooperation should be initiated between us on condition that such activities are coordinated at a high level.}7 The above facts suggest that the U.S. was working with Kuwait to intentionally provoke Iraq. How else to explain the lack of concern by Kuwaiti government officials when Iraqi soldiers began massing on their country’s northern border? Congress held hearings about the dangerous situation of the troop deployment; only the Bush administration and the Kuwaitis seemed unconcerned. In a July 30, 1990, meeting between the Jordanians and Kuwaitis, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabeh Ahmed alJaber al Sabah, the Emir’s brother, wasn’t the least worried about an Iraqi invasion. Instead he was reported to be making sarcastic remarks: “We are not going to respond {to Iraq]. . . . If they don’t like it, let them occupy our territory. . .. We are going to bring in the Americans.’”18 Later that week, the crown prince of Kuwait confirmed that Kuwaitis had known all along about American intentions.!9 He said he had told his senior military officers that if an invasion were to occur, their responsibility was to hold off the Iraqis for twenty-four hours and then “American and foreign forces would land in Kuwait and expel them.”20 In the months preceding the invasion, Hussein had grown increasingly hostile. On April 12, 1990, Hussein met with four Senators, including Robert Dole and Alan Simpson. Hussein complained about increasing American66 Gautam Biswas and Tony Murphy hostility and especially a Voice of America broadcast that criticized the Iraqi government, as well as the efforts in Congress for economic sanctions against Iraq for human rights violations. Dole and Simpson reassured Hussein that the U.S. press was “spoiled and conceited,” and that neither the VOA broadcast nor the congressional sanctions issues accurately reflected Bush administration sentiment.2! Dole said that the VOA commentator had been fired—which turned out to be a lie. Shortly thereafter, Hussein instructed his military officers to prepare a plan for the invasion of Kuwait? On May 28, 1990 at an Arab League Summit meeting, Hussein accused fellow Arabs of economic warfare through depression of the price of oil He also hinted that if other Arab countries were not willing to help him with his war debt, he would be willing to resort to force against them.25 Hussein's intentions during the months leading up to the invasion actually were quite clear, yet the U.S. maintained its policy of privately encouraging Hussein while publicly denouncing Iraq and supporting similar hostile actions toward Iraq by other nations. On April 25, 1990 April Glaspie, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq flatly told Hussein: “We have no opinion on the Arab- Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait... .James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction.”24 This comment was made in the context of near catastrophic hostility between Iraq and Kuwait. Iraqi troops were already staging on the border. Nearly aycar after her meeting with Hussein, Glaspie claimed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that something had been lost in the translation, that Iraq had “maliciously” edited the transcript of the meeting “to the point of inaccuracy.”25 Her warnings that the U.S. would not tolerate the use of force against Kuwait had been deleted, she said. Later, however, when actual transcripts of cables Glaspie sent to the State Department immediately after the meeting were released, it became apparent that Glaspie lied to the Senate and that the original transcripts released by Iraq were quite accurate [see Appendix B for transcripts of the cables—editor]. She had, in effect, given Hussein a green light just at the moment before the invasion by saying that the U.S. would not interfere in border disputes between Iraq and Kuwait.26 If the Iraqi government had edited out Glaspie’s warning, her positions would have been grossly out of synch with other official U.S. statements made to Iraq at the time. On the day before Glaspie’s meeting with Hussein, State Department Spokesperson Margaret Tutweiler told reporters at a press briefing, ‘We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait."27 And on July 31, 1990, two days before the Iraqi invasion, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs John Kelly reiterated that the U.S. was uninterested. Questioned by Rep. Lee Hamilton in Congress, “If Iraq. .. charged across the border into Kuwait—what would be our position with regard to theProvoking iraq 67 use of U.S. forces? . . . Is it correct to say, however, that we do not have a treaty commitment which would obligate us to engage U.S. forces there?” Kelly's answer was, “That is correct.’”8 Iraq was monitoring these discussions carefully and was well aware of these official pronouncements. USS. officials went as far as to punish senior CIA official Charles Eugene Allen for repeatedly warning that Iraq would invade Kuwait. Warning was Allen’s job; his actual title “National Intelligence Officer for Warning” meant that he had to take seriously his prediction of an invasion. Yet two of Alien’s government colleagues assert he was stripped of his authority because of his warning. His bi-weekly report on developing trouble spots ‘was suspended and his staff at the Pentagon and National Intelligence Council shrunk.?9 Kuwait’s government behaved much the same way. On March 7, 1991, Kuwaiti officials broke up a press conference at which a Kuwaiti military attaché based in Iraq before the invasion accused his government of ignoring his repeated warnings in July 1990 that an Iraqi invasion was imminent.2° Kuwait and the U.S. seemed to have something to hide regarding why the warnings of Iraq's imminent invasion were ignored. It is clear that some serious warning to Iraq by the U.S. that an invasion of Kuwait would meet with U.S. military opposition would have deterred Hussein. The Iraqi president seems to gone out of his way to find out whether or not the U.S. would respond before giving the signal to begin the invasion. While Hussein did have a complaint against Kuwait, he did not have any reason for wanting to provoke the U.S. Clearly, the U.S. war with Iraq was not sparked by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Rather, through cooperation with Kuwait that included economic pressure, provocation and deceit, the U.S. worked to create the invasion as a pretext for a war against Iraq—a major war which General Norman Schwarzkopf had been planning and simulating for at least a year before it actually occurred. Thirty Years of Anti-Iraq Covert Action Since Iraq gained independence through the revolution in 1958, the US. has consistently engaged in covert operations designed to destabilize it. And these operations continue even now after the war has officially ended. In the Middle East the pattern is familiar. The democratic government of Iran in 1953 was overthrown by the CIA because it had nationalized its oil fields, Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh was over thrown and the former Shah of Iran, Muhammad Reza Pahlevi, returned to his throne as a U.S, puppet, embarking on a 25-year reign of U.S. financed repression and torture. In 1958 Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem replaced the royal family’s Premier Nuri Said as the Iraqi leader. Soon the CIA had formed the Health68 Guatam Biswas and Tony Murphy Alteration Committee, euphemistically named for the planned assassination of Kassem. Dr. Sidney Gottlieb of the CIA’s technical services division mailed a monogramed, poisoned handkerchief to “an Iraqi calonel.” The CIA told the Church Committee that the ploy did not work—but that the target had “suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad.”92 That is an accurate description of Kassem’s death; he was killed by the Ba’athist coup in 1963.33 As the U.S. became embroiled in Vietnam, its destabilization program against Hussein lagged. In 1972, Nixon found reason to renew the campaign. On June 1, 1972, Iraq had announced the nationalization of this oil industry.34 The Ba’ath Party’s slogan—Arab Oil for Arabs’”—just did not sit well with the U.S. On May 31, 1972, Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger planned with the Shah of Iran to arm Kurds in northern Iraq.35 Uncovered by the House Select Committee on Intelligence which published its findings in the suppressed Pike Report, the plan called for $16 million in arms to the Kurds in a program so secret that the State Department was not even told about it.3¢ The stated goal of the program was to weaken Iraq, but neither the U.S. nor the Shah wanted the Kurds to win autonomy. The Pike Report states: “Neither the foreign heads of state (the Shah] nor the President and Dr. Kissinger desired victory for our clients (the Kurds). They merely hoped to insure that the insurgents would be capable of sustaining a level of hostility just high enough to sap the resources of the neighboring state.’’37 The Report goes on to say that “the strategy was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to continue fighting. Even in the context of covert action, ours was a cynical enterprise.”38 In 1975 the Shah of Iran and Hussein reached an agreement whereby Tran would stop arming the Kurds in exchange for territorial concessions by Hussein; namely, the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. All aid to the Kurds was cut off, and Iraq's military launched a search-and-destroy mission in Kurdish Iraq. U.S. strategies to weaken Iraq came to a temporary halt with the tise of Islamic fundamentalism and the overthrow of the Shah in February 1979, But the U.S. soon found a way to continue its covert war with Iraq, even as it supported Iraq in the war against Iran. U.S. arms sales to both sides of the war were undertaken, using Oliver North’s secret weapons supply team.“9 Setting the stage for the U.S. war with Iraq, the U.S, helped Iran by sharing intelligence on Iraq and assistance in trying to depose Saddam Hussein, The Congressional report on the Iran-Contra scandal states: The United States simultaneously pursued two contradictory foreign policies—a public one and a secret one. . . . The public one was to improve relations with Iraq. At the same time, the United States secretly shared military intelligence on Iraq with Iran, and North told the Iranians in contradiction to United States policy that the UnitedProvoking traq 69 States would help promote the overthrow of the Iraqi head of government. . . . As the negotiations continued, North returned to the fate of President Hussein. He declared that ‘[We] also recognize that Saddam Hussein must go,’ and North described how this could be accomplished.#! North elaborates during a conversation with Iran-Contra players Richard Secord, Albert Hakim, and an Iranian government official in Frankfurt in 1985: One of the things that we would like to do is that we would like to become actively engaged in ending this war [Iran-Iraq] in such a way that it becomes very evident to everybody that the guy who is causing the problem is Saddam Husain [sic]. . . . If I were to talk to any other Moslem leaders, they wouldn’t say Saddam Husain [sic] is the problem. They'd say Iran is the problem... . What we’re talking about is a process by which all the rest of the Arab world comes very quickly to realize that Iran is not a threat to them. Iran is not going to overrun Kuwait. Iran is not going to overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia. That the real problem in preventing peace in the region is Saddam Husain [sic], and we'll have to take care of that.42 North’s statements underscore the role of the demonization campaign launched against Hussein after the invasion of Kuwait. One of the effects of this campaign was to obscure to the U.S. public the true nature of Hussein’s relationship with other Arab states. Jordan's King Hussein corrects that image in an interview about his stand on the Gulf War with author Michael Emery: -.. Various leaders of the Arab states—even the Saudis—were worried about Iraq's strength. . . . But J went and brought this question up with every single one of them: ‘Look, had this country not defended you [from Iran] these last many years, the whole situation would be different. Their strength is for you.’43 Saddam Hussein was seen as beneficial to the region, not a threat. The U.S. portrayal of Iraq as ready to invade Saudi Arabia—the justification for the first deployment of troops there—must be seen in the light of North’s and King Hussein’s statements. Defense Secretary Richard Cheney in a December 1990 speech explained that had Bush not “moved aggressively as he did last August . . . Saddam Hussein would control not only Kuwait, but, my own firm conviction is, he’d also control the eastern province of Saudia Arabia.’’44 Yet, a USS. official who was closely monitoring intelligence reports from the CIA during the early part of the crisis concluded that, while the Iraqis possessed the capability of moving into Saudi Arabia, they never had70 Gautam Biswas and Tony Murphy the intention of doing so.45 Another intelligence official receiving daily intelligence briefings on the Persian Gulf crisis told New York Newsday ‘on August 9, 1990 that the CIA was “questioning whether they've got the intention. I tend to agree with them [the CIA]. I don’t think it was their intention from Day One to invade Saudia Arabia.""46 But U.S. administration officials claimed Iraqi troops were actually massing on the Saudi Border. However, when independent sources examined satellite pictures of the border they could find no evidence of troop buildup. When Defense Department officials were questioned about the discrepancy and asked to produce photographs showing the buildup, they refused.” It appears that the portrayal of Hussein as a threat had to be consciously manufactured by the U.S. in its latest phase of anti-Iraq activity. With the end of the Iran-Iraq war and the concomitant decline of the Soviet Union as a military presence, the U.S. was able to pursue its deceptive policy of encouragement/provocation in earnest. The U.S. was absolutely adamant about using force against Iraq. Any hint of compromise was summarily rejected. The Soviets proposed a plan whereby Iraq was to withdraw unconditionally, and in return the Soviets would guarantee that Iraq would maintain its present borders. In addition, there would be a comprehensive Middle East conference on the Palestinian question. According to the Soviet plan, after the pullout, there would be no sanctions levied against Iraq, and Saddam Hussein would not be punished. The Bush administration was not moved, It steadfastly maintained that unconditional withdrawal or war were the only two possible resolutions.*8 The evidence suggests, then, that the war against Iraq was pre-planned and pre-meditated, Far from being waged solely in reaction to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. war against Iraq was a continuation of a 30-year policy. The policy to weaken Iraq has been waged through covert activity, provocation, and dishonesty. The timing of the war has to do with the reduced role in the world of the Soviet Union as a military power. Many critics of the war with Iraq focus on western dependence on oil as the reason for U.S. dishonesty about its motives in the Gulf. Indeed, the U.S. under Bush has weakened programs for the investigation of alternatives sources even more than when Reagan was president.49 But some argue that a more general U.S. policy of control of ‘Third World resources—whether in Iraq or Latin America—is the mative; that the decline of the Sovict Union as a military power has given the U.S. freer reign in the Third World as an imperialist power and caused the U.S. military industry to reformulate its reason for existence—a re-focusing from east- west conflict to north-south conflicts. In fact, Professor Michael Klare has documented the debate in 1989 that occurred as Gorbachev dismantled the Warsaw Pact. The military high command in the Pentagon saw the “peace dividend” as coming out of their pockets, The changes in the USSR prompted an intense discussion amongProvoking Iraq 71 members of the Pentagon, White House, and conservative think tanks as to how to maintain control over government funding.°° It is important to note that one of the biggest products of the U.S. is military hardware. The Pentagon’s spending on hardware and supplies represents more that twenty percent of U.S. manufactured goods.5! In his article, “Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Gulf Crisis,” journalist William Greider notes that Since the beginning of the cold war, the defense budget has always served as a kind of back door socialism for patriots. Though no one would admit this, the federal government used national defense as the unassailable cover for massive intervention in the private economy—both by stimulating the economy through heavy spending and by choosing certain industries for subsidy and growth.52 Two camps emerged from the debate over what to do with the money that had previously subsidized cold war weapons. One side said that $300 — 500 billion a year should be given to private enterprise in order to strengthen productivity and competition with Germany and Japan. The other side, whose argument won out with Pentagon planners, said that military subsidies should be maintained but that military policy should be redefined.53 The U.S. military will now be geared toward low-intensity conflict fighting capability. This will mean that the Pentagon’s new mission is to protect continued access to strategic raw materials which are needed by northern industrial states, including the Soviet Union. Speaking in Santa Barbara about Michael Klare’s research, Daniel Sheehan of the Christic Institute describes the stance of the northern industrial states: “It is the northern industrial states that believe that they have the right to privileged access to these resources, to pull through their industry, to manufacture, and then to sell to the world.”’54 He then cites strategic papers—the U.S. Army's “A Strategic Force for the 1990s and Beyond” {January 1990) and the Air Force's “Global Reach, Global Power’ (June 1990): “These are the documents,” Sheehan states, “that in the early period before Saddam Hussein had made any moves whatsoever, specifically designated the Persian Gulf and explicitly named Iraq and Saddam Husscin as ‘likely candidates’ for the . . . new mission of the military,”55 Notes 1. Covert Operations, the Persian Gulf, and the New World Order (Washington, DC: Christic Institute, 1991), p. 8. 2, Ralph Schoenman, “How the U.S. Set Up Iraq's Invasion of Kuwait,” Socialist Action Magazine, December 1990: p. 4. 3. “Covert Operations,” Christic Institute, p. 8. 4. Ibid.72 Gautam Biswas and Tony Murphy 5. Ibid. 6. Jonathan Broder, “U.S. Stuck for Bad Iraq Loans,” San Francisco Examiner, November 21, 1990: Al. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid 10. Helga Graham, “Exposed: Washington’s Role in Saddam's Oil Plot,” London Observer, October 21, 1990. 11. Ibi 12. teal : 13. See Schoenman, above. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. See Graham, above. 17. See “Covert Operations,” Christic Institute. . 18. Michael Emery, “How the U.S. Avoided Peace,” Village Voice, March 3, 1991: 22. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Murray Waas, “Who Lost Kuwait?” Village Voice, January 22, 1990. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. “Covert Operations,” Christic Institute. 25. Christopher Ogden, “In From the Cold,” Time, April 1, 1991: 6. 26. Elaine Sciolino, “Envoy’s Testimony on Iraq is Assailed,” New York Times, July 13, 1991. 27. “Covert Operations,” Christic Institute. 28. See Waas, above. 29. Michael Wines, “CIA Sidelines Gulf Cassandra,” New York Times, January 24, 1991: D22. 30. William Claibome, “Envoy Recounts Warning in July of Invasion: Kuwaitis Cut Him Off,” Washington Post, March 8, 1991: A26. 31. “Covert Operations,” Christic Institute. 32. David Wise, “A People Betrayed,” Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1991: Ml. 33. Ibid. 34. “Violence and Sorrow: The History of the Kurds,” Covert Action Information Bulletin, Summer 1991: 36. 35. Gerard Chaliand and Ismet Seriff Vanly, People Without A Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan (London: Zed Press, 1980}, p. 184. 36. Daniel Schorr, “1975: Background to Betrayal,” Washington Post, April 7, 1991: D3. 37. Christopher Hitchens, “Minority Report,” The Nation, May 6, 1991: 582. 38. Ibid. 39. See Schorr, above. 40. “Covert Operations,” Christic Institute. 41. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1987), p. 42. Ibid, Volume 1, Appendix A: Source Documents, Frankfurt MeetingProvoking Iraq 73 Tape 12, page 1500. 43. Michael Emery, “Jordan’s King Hussein on the Gulf War,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 13, 1991: Z-3. 44. Knut Royce, “A Trail of Distortion Against Iraq,” New York Newsday, January 21, 1991. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Jean Heller, “Public Doesn’t Get the Picture with Gulf War Satellite,” In These Times, February 27 - March 19, 1991: 7. 48, Serge Ridgeway, “Gorbachev Gives Iraqi a Peace Proposal,” New York Times, February 19, 1991: Al. 49. James Ridgeway, “Repo Job for Iraq,” Village Voice, April 16, 1991: 19. 50. Daniel Sheehan, “The Persian Gulf War: Covert Operations and the New World Order,” (speech), Santa Barbara, CA, March 21, 1991. 51. Ibid. 52. William Greider, “Learning Wrong Lessons from the Mideast Crisis,” Rolling Stone Magazine, October 4, 1990: 53. 53. See Sheehan, above. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. “Provoking Iraq” was presented at the San Francisco Commission of Inquiry of the International War Crimes Tribunal and originally published in the Commission’s report: High Crimes and Misdemeanors: U.S, War Crimes in the Persian Gulf by the Research Committee, 2489 Mission Street, #28, San Francisco, CA 94110. A report on Palestinians in Kuwait will be published soon. Contact the Research Committee for information.U.S. Conspiracy to Initiate the War Against Iraq Brian Becker Even before the first day of the Persian Gulf crisis George Bush and the Pentagon wanted to wage war against Iraq. What was the character of this war? Iraq neither attacked nor threatened the United States. We believe that this was a war to redivide and redistribute the fabulous markets and resources of the Middle East, in other words this was an imperialist war. The Bush administration, on behalf of the giant oil corporations and banks, sought to strengthen its domination of this strategic region. It did this in league with the former colonial powers of the region, namely Britain and France, and in opposition to the Iraqi people’s claim on their own land and especially their natural resources. As is customary in such wars, the government is compelled to mask the truth about the war—both its origin and goals and the nature of the “enemy’’—in order to win over the people of this country. That's why it is important to get the facts. There is ample evidence that the U.S. was eagerly planning to fight the war even before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. With its plans in tact, we must determine if it is possible that the U.S. government actually sought a pretext for a military intervention in the Middle East. Information that has come to light suggests that the United States interfered in and aggravated the Iraq-Kuwait dispute, knew that an Traqi military response against Kuwait was likely, and then took advantage of the Iraqi move to carry out a long-planned U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. This evidence includes: 1) The tiny, but oil-rich sheikdom of Kuwait became the tool of a U.S- inspired campaign of economic warfare designed to weaken Iraq as a regional power once the Iran-Iraq war ended. During 1989-1990, the Kuwaiti monarchy was overproducing and driving down the price of oil, a policy that cost Iraq $14 billion in lost revenue.! Iraq also complained that the Kuwaitis were stealing Iraqi oil by using slant drilling technology into the gigantic Rumaila oil field, most of which is inside Iraq. Kuwait also refusedU.S. Conspiracy to Initiate War Against Iraq 75 to work out arrangements that would allow Iraq access to the Persian Gulf. In May of 1990 at an Arab League meeting, Saddam Hussein bitterly complained about Kuwait’s policy of “economic warfare” against Iraq and hinted that if Kuwait’s over-production didn’t change Iraq would take military action. Yet the Emir of Kuwait refused to budge. Why would an OPEC country want to drive down the price of oil? In retrospect, it is inconceivable that this tiny, undemocratic little sheikdom, whose ruling family is subject to so much hostility from the Arab masses, would have dared to remain so defiant against Iraq (a country ten times larger than Kuwait) unless Kuwait was assured in advance of protection from an even greater power—namely the United States. This is even more likely when one considers that the Kuwaiti ruling family had in the past tread lightly when it came to its relations with Iraq. Kuwait was traditionally part of Iraq's Basra Province until 1899 when Britain divided it from Iraq and declared Kuwait its colony. Coinciding with Kuwait's overproduction of oil, Iraq was also subjected to the beginning of de facto sanctions, instituted incrementally by a number of western capitalist governments. Hundreds of major scientific, engineering, and food supply contracts between Iraq and western governments were canceled by 1990.2 2) The USS. policy to increase economic pressure on Iraq was coupled with a dramatic change in U.S. military doctrine and strategy toward Iraq. Starting in the summer of 1989, the Joint Chiefs of Staff revamped U.S. military doctrine in the Middle East away from a U.S.-Soviet conflict to target regional powers instead. By June 1990—two months before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait—General Norman Schwarzkopf was conducting sophisticated war games pitting hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops against Iraqi armored divisions.3 3) The Bush administration lied when it stated on August 8, 1990, that the purpose of the U.S. troop deployment was “strictly defensive’ and necessary to protect Saudi Arabia from an imminent Iraqi invasion. King Hussein of Jordan reports that U.S. troops were actually being deployed to Saudi Arabia in the days before Saudi Arabia “invited” U.S. intervention.4 Hussein says that in the first days of the crisis Saudi King Fahd expressed support for an Arab diplomatic solution. King Fahd also told King Hussein that there was no evidence of a hostile Iraqi build-up on the Saudi border, and that despite American assertions, there was no truth to reports that Iraq planned to invade Saudi Arabia.5 The Saudis only bowed to U.S. demands that the Saudis “invite” U.S. troops to defend them following a long meeting between the king and Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. The real substance of this discussion will probably remain classified for many, many years. On September 11, 1990, Bush also told a joint session of Congress that “following negotiations and promises by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein not76 Brian Becker to use force, a powerful army invaded its trusting and much weaker neighbor, Kuwait. Within three days, 120,000 troops with 850 tanks had poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. It was then. Idecided to act to check that aggression.” However, according to Jean Heller of the St. Petersburg Times (of Florida}, the facts just weren’t as Bush claimed. Satellite photographs taken by the Soviet Union on the precise day Bush addressed Congress failed to show any evidence of Iraqi troops in Kuwait or massing along the Kuwait-Saudi Arabian border. While the Pentagon was claiming as.many as 250,000 Iraqi troops in Kuwait, it refused to provide evidence that would contradict the Soviet satellite photos. U.S. forces, encampments, aircraft, camouflaged equipment dumps, staging areas and tracks across the desert can easily be seen. But as Peter Zimmerman, formerly of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Reagan Administration, and a former image specialist for the Defense Intelligence Agency, who analyzed the photographs for the St. Petersburg Times said: We didn’t find anything of that sort [i.e. comparable to the U.S. buildup] anywhere in Kuwait. We don’t see any tent cities, we don’t sce congregations of tanks, we can’t see troop concentrations, and the main Kuwaiti air base appears deserted. It’s five weeks after the invasion, and from what we can see, the Iraqi air force hasn’t flown a single fighter to the most strategic air base in Kuwait. There is no infrastructure to support large numbers of people. They have to use toilets, or the functional equivalent. They have to have food. .. . But where is it? On September 18, 1991, only a week after the Soviet photos were taken, the Pentagon was telling the American public that Iraqi forces in Kuwait had grown to 360,000 men and 2,800 tanks. But the photos of Kuwait do not show any tank tracks in southern Kuwait. They clearly do show tracks left by vehicles which serviced a large oil field, but no tank tracks. Heller concludes that as of January 6, 1991, the Pentagon had not provided the press or Congress with any proof at all for an early buildup of Iraqi troops in southern Kuwait that would suggest an imminent invasion of Saudi Arabia. The usual Pentagon evidence was little more than “trust me.” But photos from Soviet commercial satellites tell quite a convincing story. Photos taken on August 8, 1990, of southern Kuwait—six days after the initial invasion and right at the moment Bush was telling the world of an impending invasion of Saudi Arabia—show light sand drifts over patches of roads leading from Kuwait City to the Saudi border. The photos taken on September 11, 1990, show exactly the same sand drifts but now larger and deeper, suggesting that they had built up naturally without the disturbance of traffic for a month. Roads in northern Saudi Arabia during this same period, in contrast, show no sand drifts at all, having been swept clean by heavy traffic of supply convoys. The former DIA analyst puts itU.S. Conspiracy to Initiate War Against Iraq 77 this way: “In many places the sand goes on for 30 meters and more.” Zimmerman’s analysis is that They [roads] could be passable by tank but not by personnel or supply vehicles. Yet there is no sign that tanks have used those roads. And there’s no evidence of new roads being cut. By contrast, none of the roads in Saudi Arabia has any sand cover at all. They've all been swept clear.”6 It would have taken no more than a few thousand soldiers to hold Kuwait City, and that is all satellite evidence can support. The implication is obvious: Iraqi troops who were eventually deployed along the Kuwait- Saudi Arabian border were sent there as a response to U.S. build up and were not a provocation for Bush’s military action. Moreover, the manner in which they were finally deployed was purely defensive—a sort of Maginot Line against the massive and offensive mobilization of U.S. and Coalition forces just over the border with Saudi Arabia. A War to Destroy Iraq as a Regional Power That the Bush administration wanted the war is obvious by its steadfast refusal to enter into any genuine negotiations with Iraq that could have achieved a diplomatic solution. Iraq’s August 12, 1990, negotiation proposal, which indicated that Iraq was willing to make significant concessions in return for a comprehensive discussion of other unresolved Middle East conflicts, was rejected out of hand by the Bush administration.” So was another Itaqi offer made in December that was reported by Knut Royce in Newsday. President Bush avoided diplomacy and negotiations, even refusing to send Secretary of State Baker to meet Saddam Hussein before the January 15, 1991 deadline as he had promised on November 30, 1990. Bush also rejected Iraq's withdrawal offer of February 15, 1991, two days after U.S. planes incinerated hundreds of women and children sleeping in the al- Ameriyah bomb shelter. The Iraqis immediately agreed to the Soviet proposal of February 18, 1991—that is four days before the so-called ground war was launched—which required Iraq to abide by all UN resolutions. The U.S. ground war against Iraqi positions’ resulted in the greatest number of casualties in the conflict. As many as 50,000 to 100,000 Iraqi soldiers may have died after the Iraqi government had fully capitulated to all U.S. and UN demands. It is thus obvious that the U.S. government did not fight the war to secure Iraq's eviction from Kuwait but rather proceeded with this unparalleled massacre for other foreign policy objectives. These objectives have never been defined for the broader public but only referred to euphemistically under the rubric of the New World Order. What is the New World Order, what does the U.S. expect to get out of it and what is the “new thing” in the world that makes a new order78 Brian Becker possible? It is Bush’s assumption that the Soviet Union is willing, under the Gorbachev leadership, to support U.S. foreign policy in the Third World. The U.S, figures that if the Soviets are willing to abandon Iraq and their other traditional allies in the Third World then the U.S. and other western capitalist countries can return to their former dominant position in various areas of the world. How the U.S. conducted the war shows that the permanent weakening of Iraq is a key part in the New World Order.$ Although the Soviet role has changed dramatically, the goals of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East have remained basically the same, with some shifts in tactics based on varied conditions. The basic premise of U.S. policy has been to eliminate or severely weaken any nationalist regime that challenges U.S. dominance and control over the oil-rich region. The military strategy employed against Iraq not only aimed at military targets, but the “bombing raids have destroyed residential areas, refineries, and power and water facilities, which will affect the population for years.’? As early as September 1990, the administration, according to a speech by Secretary of State James Baker, changed the strategic goals of the U.S. military intervention to include not only the “liberation of Kuwait” but the destruction of Iraq's military infrastructure.10 lran-lraq War and U.S. Strategy That the U.S. sought to permanently weaken or crush Iraq, as a regional power capable of asserting even a nominal challenge to U.S. dominance over this strategic oil-rich region, fits in with a longer historical pattern. Since the discovery of vast oil deposits in the Middle East, and even earlier, the strategy of the U.S. and other European colonial powers was to prevent the emergence of any strong nationalist regime in the region. The U.S. has relied on corrupted and despised hereditary monarchies and dictatorships in the Middle East, Such regimes have served as puppets for U.S. interests in exchange for U.S. protection. When the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979 by a massive popular revolution, it came as a complete shock to US. oil companies, the CIA, and the Pentagon, which used the hated Shah as a pro-U.S. policeman of the Gulf region. The Iran-Iraq war was seen as a new opportunity to recoup U.S. losses from the Iranian revolution. Starting in 1982 the U.S. encouraged and provided arms and satellite information to the Iraqi government in its fight against Iran—the Reagan/Bush administration’s principal goal was to weaken. and contain Iran in order to limit its regional influence. The Iran-Iraq war did indeed weaken Iran, squandering much of the human and material resources of the revolution. Having weakened Iran, the goal was then to weaken Iraq and make sure that it could not develop as a regional power capable of challengingU.S. Conspiracy to Initiate War Against Iraq 79 U.S. domination. After the war ended, U.S. policy toward Iraq shifted, becoming increasingly hostile. The way U.S. policy shifted is quite revealing; it bears all the signs of a well-planned conspiracy. The cease-fire between Iran and Iraq officially began on August 20, 1988. On September 8, 1988, Iraqi Foreign Minister Sa’dun Hammadi was to meet with U.S. Secretary of State George Schulz. The Iraqis had every feason to expect a warm welcome in Washington and to begin an era of closer cooperation on trade and industrial development. Instead, at 12:30 p.m., just two hours before the meeting and with no warning to Hammadi whatsoever, State Department spokesman Charles Redman called a press conference and charged that “The U.S. Government is convinced that Iraq has used chemical weapons in its military campaign against Kurdish guerillas, We don’t know the extent to which chemical weapons have been used but any use in this context is abhorrent and unjustifiable. ... We expressed our strong concern to the Iraqi Government which is well aware of our position that the use of chemical weapons is totally unjustifiable and wnacceptable./11 Redman did not allude to any evidence at all nor was the Iraqi government warned of the charges by the State Department. Rather, when Hammadi arrived at the State Department two hours later for his meeting with Schulz, he was besieged by members of the press asking him questions about the massacre. Hammadi was completely wnable to give coherent answers. He kept asking the reporters why they were asking him about this. Needless to say the meeting with Schulz was a dismal failure for Iraq's expectations of U.S. assistance in rebuilding after the Iran-Iraq war. Within twenty-four hours of Redman’s press release, the Senate voted unanimously to impose economic sanctions on Iraq which would cancel sales of food and technology. Following September 8, 1988 is a two year record that amounts to economic harassment of Iraq by the American State Department, press, and Congress. Saddam Hussein alluded to this period many times during the lead-up to the war and the war itself. On February 15, 1991, in the preamble to his cease-fire proposal, he said The years 1988 and 1989 saw sustained campaigns in the press and other media and by other officials in the United States and other imperialist nations to pave the way for the fulfillment of vicious aims [i.e., the present war].!2 The Washington Post's story on the cease-fire proposal of February 15,1991 was titled simply: “Baghdad’s Conspiracy Theory of Recent History.”!3 Some conspiracies theories just happen to be true! The Bush administration has never presented any evidence whatsoever for its charges that Iraq used poison gas on its own citizens. Rather it has simply repeated the charges over and over in the press. This event is analyzed in considerable detail in a study published by the Army War College called, Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East. The authors of that study conclude that the charges were false but used by the U.S. government to change public opinion toward Iraq. They even go so far as to suggest a80 Brian Becker conspiracy against Iraq: “The whole episode of seeking to impose sanctions on Iraq for something that it may not have done would be regrettable but not of great concern were this an isolated event. Unfortunately, there are other areas of friction developing between our two countries.’”14 If the first part of the strategy was to create hostility and economic hardships, then the war was the second phase. The massive bombardment of Iraq coupled with the continued economic sanctions after the war completes a two-part strategy designed to leave Iraq both in a weakened state and dependent on western aid and bank loans for any reconstruction effort. The U.S. will want to have a puppet government in Baghdad, and even if it is impossible to impose a Shah-type government on the Iraqi people, the Bush administration assumes that a war-ravaged country that is economically dependent on the U.S. and European capitalist powers or on. UN humanitarian aid will be forced into a subservient position. The New World Order and Big Oil We believe that the real goal of the United States war against Iraq is to return to the “good old days” when the U.S. and some European countries totally plundered the resources of the Middle East. Five of the twelve largest corporations in the United States are oil monopolies. Before the rise of Arab nationalism and the anti-feudal revolutions that swept out colonialist regimes in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries in the 1950s and 1960s, US, British, and Dutch oil companies owned Arab and Iranian oil fields outright. Between 1948 and 1960 U.S. oil companies received $13 billion in profit from their Persian Gulf holdings. That was half the return on all overseas investment by all U.S. companies in those years. In recent decades U.S. companies no longer directly own the oil fields of the Middle East, but they still get rich from them. That is because the royal families of the oil-rich Arabian peninsula, who were put on their thrones by the British empire and are kept there by the U.S. military and the CIA, have loyally tured their kingdoms into cash cows for Wall Street banks and corporations. This is one way it works. Money spent on Saudi Arabian oil, for example, once went into the accounts of Rockefeller-controlled oil corporations at the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank. Now it is deposited in the Saudi king’s huge account at Chase Manhattan which reinvests it at a hefty profit to the Rockefellers. Chase Manhattan also manages the Saudi Industrial Development Fund and the Saudi Investment Bank. Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, which is linked to Mobil and Texaco, has a representative on the Board of the Saudi Monetary Authority and controls another big chunk of the kingdom’s income. Citicorp handles much of the Emir of Kuwait's $120 billion investment portfolio.!5 The total