After reading this report, I am posting it but am overwhelmed with forboding and sorrow. America is, at the behest of its warmongering neocons and their allies, pushing forward in a war against its once staunch ally, Pakistan, knowing full well that they are flirting with international annihilation. China and Russia have already weighed in on American aggression to Pakistan, but the foolish American/Israeli Juggernaut rolls on, heedless of the consequences.
US DRONES LAUNCH CHEMICAL ATTACKS ON INNOCENT PAKISTANI CIVILIANS
June 8, 2011
Pakistani physicians and experts reported that the US uses chemical munitions in its drone attacks on the country's civilians. Given the fact that the Pakistani civilians who have come under the US drone attacks have been afflicted with different skin, optic and respiratory diseases, it can be concluded that Washington is using chemical weapons in its attacks in Pakistan, the physicians said,
“Since the missiles launched by the US drones contain dangerous chemical substances, a large number of the injured people in these attacks cannot be declared as dead or alive since they have been afflicted with complicated diseases due to the deadly chemical materials used in the missiles,”a Pakistani physician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told FNA. (pakistantime.net)
Should war crimes invariably committed by the state be in the same category as ‘terrorism’ invariably linked to insurgent groups or renegade states.
And is it the case that the world’s sole super power is the only one that has the political, legal and moral authority to define war crimes and terrorism, while exempting itself by silently invoking the doctrine of American Exceptionalism?
Wikileaks has now uncovered documents from 2002 to 2008, revealing that the Bush administration's 'War on Terror'" was itself a terrorist campaign at several levels. In addition to human rights violations of foreign nationals, the civil liberties of US citizens suffered in the process because government operated as a police state.Documented cases of allegations against US for war crimes (state-sponsored terrorism):
1. 1902: Lodge Senate Investigating Committee of US war crimes in the war against Philippines
2. 1943: Canicatti and Biscari massacres ~ US troops massacred Italian civilians in Biscari, Italy and German and Italian war prisoners in Biscari, but no one was ever charged.
General George Patton dismissed the massacres of dozens of people as exaggerations.
3. 1945: Dachau massacre ~ US troops killed German prisoners of war. General Patton dismissed the charges.
4. The Pentagon's Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files confirm US war 320 separate cases of war crimes, excluding My Lai Massacre of 350 unarmed men, children and women that US Army documented. A single conviction came out of that era.
5. Agent Orange ~ French-based International Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange violated the Hague Convention of 1907, Geneva Conventions of 1927 and 1949.
No one was ever held accountable. The US District Court of Brooklyn dismissed a law suit in the case in 2005 on the basis that:
"No treaty or agreement, express or implied, of the United States, operated to make use of herbicides in Vietnam a violation of the laws of war or any other form of international law until at the earliest April of 1975." The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later ruled that "Agent Orange and similar U.S. herbicides cannot be considered poisons banned under international rules of war."
6. NATO bombing of Yugoslavia: 1999 - 400-1000 civilians killed in deliberate targeting of civilians and infrastructure. No one prosecuted.
7. 2002: War on Terror - A presidential memorandum gave the right to interrogators to deny prisoners basic protections as stipulated by the Geneva Convention, thereby permitting violations resulting in war crimes.
On that basis, US personnel carried out torture of prisoners that the US classified as 'unlawful combatants', thus circumventing Geneva Convention rules. US Justice Department redefined the law to allow for war crimes to be committed and at the same time not be held accountable.
8. 2006: Human Rights Watch charged that Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld was criminally liable for his involvement in the abuse of a Guantanamo detainee. In November 2006, legal proceedings went ahead in Germany against Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet, and a number of other Bush administration officials.The Military Commissions Act of 2006, however, provided amnesty for war crimes for they were carried out against the War on Terror.
Both Tony Blair and George Bush were accused before the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Iraq, but the US has not signed the treaty that would have given jurisdiction to ICC. The UN Security Council could have charged Bush and Blair for well known crimes in Iraq, but US has veto power.
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