November 27, 2005
Just
before the U.S. forces attacked the town of Qaim, a thriving town of
150,000 people in western Iraq, they cordoned off the town, cut off
electricity, water and food supplies. Then they indiscriminately and
disproportionately carpet bombed the town from the ground and from the
air with artillery shells, cluster bombs and napalm bombs with the full
knowledge that civilians, particularly women and children, will be
killed. When it is all over, the U.S. marines entered the city to fight
(with air cover) those who still alive. Humanitarian aides and medical
supplies are prevented from entering the town – in gross violations of
international law and the Geneva Conventions. This cycle of criminal
process to legitimise the colonisation of Iraq is depicted by the
Bush-Blair axis as the "political process" towards "democracy".
In preparation for the so-called "referendum" on the
U.S.-crafted Iraqi constitution, U.S. forces besieged and attacked –
with conventional and chemical weapons – the city of Tel Afar, an
ethnically mixed ancient metropolis in western Iraq. For more than a
month, U.S. forces and their collaborators have terrorised the city
300,000 people. The deliberate and indiscriminate attacks, which began
just before the attacks on the town of Qaim, have destroyed Tel Afar
old centre (the Sarai) and killed hundreds of innocent people. Iraqi
news reports revealed, "'scores of casualties’ due to indiscriminate
bombing" by U.S. forces. Paralleling the atrocities committed in other
towns and cities, all of which savagely attacked and destroyed the
entire population of Tel Afar are now 'ethnically cleansed’ refugees.
The result of the "referendum" – like the January’s
2005 fraudulent elections – was a forgone conclusion rightly described
by Mr. Hussein al-Falluji, a prominent Iraqi politician, as "a fraud
conducted by an electoral commission that is not independent. It is
controlled by the occupying Americans and it should step down before
elections in December", the stage for which a criminal process is
already in full swing.
As I am writing these lines, the cycle of violence
continues. U.S. forces began their attacks against the city of Ramadi,
the capital of Anbar province, about 80km west of Baghdad. Consistent
with the U.S. strategy, the attacks are part of the December elections
campaign to force U.S. ideology on the Iraqi people by means of war and
violence. Families are continued to flee the city and swelling the large number of 'ethnically cleansed’ refugees. In October, two
days of U.S. bombings of the city caused heavy civilian casualties,
including 18 children in one air strike, according to Dr. Ahmed
al-Kubaissy, a senior doctor at Ramadi hospital. The grisly act was
revenge for the rejection of the U.S.-crafted constitution by the
people of Ramadi. Each attack is a reminder of the grisly crimes
against the people of Fallujah, the province second largest city.
This November marks the one year anniversary of the
fascist destruction of the vibrant city of Fallujah, where more than
6000 innocent men, women and children were deliberately massacred by
U.S. forces. The city, where some 50,000 civilians stayed in their
homes, including men aged 15 to 55 years (prevented from leaving before
the attack), was savagely attacked with chemical bombs, fire bombs
(fuel-air bombs), napalm and other non-conventional weapons (WMD).
Fallujah was a war crime committed in gross violation of the Geneva
Conventions and international law. However, because of disinformation
propagated by "embedded" journalists and filtered through the U.S. and
British mainstream media, we still don't know the exact number of
Iraqis killed and buried in the mass graves around the city. The 'spin’
of the media has always favoured the U.S.-Britain war crimes.
The mainstream media described these mass murders of
innocent Iraqi men, women and children as "caught up in air strikes"
designed as "necessary measures" for "spreading democracy". However,
U.S. soldiers seem to differ from the British propaganda. Jeremy
Hinzman, a former U.S. soldier seeking refugee status in Canada
accurately described the crimes against the Iraqi people. He said: "the
atrocious acts that are taking place in Iraq are not anomalies or
isolated incidents but part of a plan of attack". Hinzman rightly
added: "I didn’t want to be implicit in a criminal enterprise and hence
a war criminal… [It is] soldiers who pay the price for the policies
that come from on high. The U.S. policy is to use destructive violence
against defenceless people as an example of bullying other nations into
submission.
While the killing of Iraqi children by U.S. forces
continues, the extreme bias and racially-based double standard of the
West is evident here in Australia. The Australian media have become
obsessed with the story of an 87 years old Hungarian-born man fighting
extradition to Hungry to stand trial for allegedly shooting a (Jewish)
teenager more than fifty years ago. Justice must be served, read
the Australian media headlines. How many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
boys and girls were slaughtered in a premeditated criminal act of
aggression passed without a single word in the Anti-Muslims and racist
Australian media? Will the war criminals stand trial for the
murder of Iraqi children?
Under Article 23 of The Hague Regulations, public
and private property must be respected. Public and private property
must not be destroyed. The same principles were adopted in the Charter
of the International Military Tribunal. The indictment presented to the
Tribunal sitting in Berlin on 18th October, 1945, in the trial of major
Nazi war criminals, charged the defendants with having committed war
crimes in their wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages not
justified by military necessity.
It stated: "The defendants wantonly destroyed
cities, towns and villages and committed other acts of devastation
without military justification or necessity. These acts violated
Articles 46 and 50 of The Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs
of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the
criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the
countries in which such crimes were committed and Article 6 (b) of the
Charter".
Since March 2003, U.S. and British forces have
savagely attacked and obliterated countless Iraqi towns and cities,
leaving hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, mostly women and
children buried in mass graves. The UN and members of the
"international community" have failed to oppose and condemn U.S. war
crimes in Iraq. To the contrary, the UN and many of its member states
are complicit in the war crimes against the Iraqi people, and the
destruction of Iraq. The UN role in U.S. imperialism is accurately
described by American sociologist James Petras. Petras writes: "[T]he
[UN] has aided and abetted U.S. aggression against Afghanistan,
provided a legal cover for U.S. colonial occupation of Iraq by
recognizing the puppet regime, and refused to condemn Washington's
systematic use of torture and illegal and indefinite detention of Iraqi
[detainees and POWs]".
The UN certified fraudulent January’s elections
didn’t end the Occupation, but produced a puppet government, a
collection of Kurdish warlords and U.S./Iranian-trained thugs, totally
subservient to the U.S. agenda. After several months of infighting, the
façade of discredited quislings has not accomplished any tangible
improvement in Iraq living conditions. Their main service is to provide an "Iraqi face" and justification for the ongoing Occupation of the country.
A recent report by an Iraqi human rights group, Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq
reveals that: "Iraqi police sources revealed that till the end of March
2004 more than 1000 Iraqi scientists were shot. A report, which was
previously published by the U.S. State Department, confirmed the
killing of 350 scientists specialized in nuclear sciences, and 200
professors. The Network for Human Rights and Democracy in Iraq, had
previously accused the Israeli Secret Services [the Mossad] of the
assassination of tens of Iraqi Scientists". This week reports from Iraq
revealed that two professors in the School of Sciences and the head of
Biology Department at Baghdad University were murdered. In addition,
another prominent Iraqi leader, Sheikh Kadhim Sarhid al-Hemaiyem, and
his four sons were murdered in cold-blood in Baghdad on Wednesday.
Taking order from the White House and the Iranians,
the thugs have adopted a Gestapo-like tactics in terrorising the Iraqi
people on behalf of their masters. The death squads
– created, trained and nurtured by the U.S. and Iran – are torturing
and murdering not only innocent members of the former regime, but also
prominent Iraqi opposition leaders, Iraqi academics and professionals.
Even Iraqis who participated in the 1980s war to defend Iraq against
the Iranian hordes are targeted. The thugs are eliminating anything
looks like opposition. Iraq is in a criminal process of total
destruction and the U.S. Occupation is the catalyst.
Furthermore, to secure the next fraudulent elections
in December and on order from the Bush Administration, the Talabani and
Jaafari-Chalabi thugs are excluding Iraqis from public jobs on ethnic
and sectarian grounds and replacing them with their own
loyalists. In addition, to increase the level of corruption and
crimes, the U.S. and its loyal thugs are negotiating the "merger of
different death squads into the Iraqi Army and police without
considering the necessity of forming the army from independent
individuals who will only follow the orders of the government and not
the directions of their parties or who are affected by their parties'
policies", adds the MHRI report.
As long as the Occupation of Iraq continues,
elections are illegitimate. The U.S. does not have any right to force
elections on the Iraqi people. Iraq’s sovereignty still resides in
the hands of the Iraqi people and in the state known as the Republic of
Iraq, where it has always been, writes Professor Francis Boyle, an
internationally recognized expert in International Law at the
University of Illinois. The Iraqi state will continue to exist as long
as the U.S. remains the belligerent occupant of Iraq. Only when the
U.S. Occupation of Iraq is ended can the Iraqi people have the
opportunity to exercise their international legal right of sovereignty
by means of free, fair, and democratic elections.
Paragraph 353 of U.S. Army Field Manual
27-10 (1956) stated clearly that: "Belligerent occupation in a foreign
war, being based upon the possession of enemy territory, necessarily
implies that the sovereignty of the occupied territory is not vested in
the occupying power. Occupation is essentially provisional" and subject
to removal by the occupied people.
Finally, the U.S. and its Western allies have run
out of pretexts to justify the Occupation of Iraq. They are misleading
the world to serve their aim of permanent imperialist war. Iraq is not
a "heaven for terrorists", and Iraqis are not the U.S. enemies; the
U.S. is the enemy of itself. The Iraqi people are defending their
country against a Zionist-imperialist project designed to colonise Iraq
and dominate the world.
The Iraqi people have strongly
rejected the Occupation, and their Resistance against the occupying
forces is a legitimate right of all peoples, and within international
laws granting peoples the rights to self-defence against criminal war
of aggression. Under the Nuremberg principle, it is a war crime. The
Iraqi Resistance arose as a reaction to a war of aggression committed
by the U.S. and Britain in gross violations of international law and
humanity. U.S. forces and their mercenaries have no rights to be in
Iraq. The sooner the Occupation ends, the better for the peoples of
Iraq and the U.S.
The only moral and legitimate "political process"
available to the U.S. and Britain is to put an immediate end to the
Occupation. This will remove the cause of violence and allow Iraq to
progress toward full sovereignty and self-determination.
Global Research Contributing Editor Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia