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The War Crimes Times
WarCrimesTimes.org
“News a PressThat’s FreeWould Print”Anniversary Edition
Washington, DC:Some changeexpected withstorms continuing.
PUBLIC DEMANDS PROSECUTIONOF WAR CRIMINALS
Vol. I No. 2 March, 2009 Free (as the press should be)
On June 13, 1899 one of thelargest battles of the Philip- pine-American war took placeon the southern outskirts of Manila. After several hours of fierce fighting at the ZapoteRiver Bridge, 5000 poorlyarmed Philippine soldiers wereoutgunned and routed by 3000Americans.Including guerilla conflictand the Moro Rebellion thiswar dragged on for 14 years.By 1913, between 4,000 and5,000 American soldiers haddied. Estimates of Philippinemilitary deaths run from12,000 to 20,000. There weremassive civilian deaths fromstarvation and disease due toscorched earth campaigns andforced relocation. Estimates of civilian deaths in the Philip- pine-American war range from200,000 to 1,400,000.As the battle of Zapote Bridgeraged, the world’s first interna-tional peace conference was infull swing 10,000 kms away atThe Hague in Holland.On July 4, exactly threeweeks after the carnage near Manila, Andrew White, theUnited States Ambassador tothe Hague Peace Conference,laid a silver wreath at the tombof Hugo Grotius, the 17
th
cen-tury “father of internationallaw.” He said: “From thistomb of Grotius I seem to hear a message to go on with thework of strengthening peaceand humanizing war.”The contradiction involvedin the effort to apply law towar—the ultimate expressionof lawlessness—is so stark theenterprise sometimes seems bynature doomed to failure. AsAmbassador White uninten-tionally highlighted the gap between uplifting rhetoric and brutal reality, he could nothave expressed more suc-cinctly the enormous challengeinherent to the evolution of thelaw of war.As White noted, HugoGrotius was the first to expressa comprehensive and detailedvision of the regulation of armed conflict by internationallaw. In
 De jure belli ac pacis libritres (On the Law of War and  Peace: Three books) 1625
, he
 
 proposed that “…there is acommon law of nations whichis valid alike for war…” Con-duct discussed in
 De Jure
 ranges from fundamentalssuch as “The Right to Kill in aLawful War” where he advises“moderation in laying wasteand similar things” throughhostage-taking and care;
(See HISTORY on page 3)
 
Inside:
Media Action—page 5 PerspectivesThe Trial of Donald Rumsfeld — page 6 HistoryGross Injustice—page 10 LettersWar Crimes Made Personal — page 11 and more
Citizens Take Message to Congress
By Laurie Arbeiter
 
As the 111
th
Congress con-vened on January 6, 2009, ap- proximately 70 people gath-ered in the streets of Washing-ton, DC for the March of theDead, a demonstration to makevisible the mounting death tollfrom a U.S. foreign policy of illegal invasions and occupa-tions.Others delivered to the newCongress a strong and clear message of dissent by holding banners that read: “The Au-dacity of War Crimes— Afghanistan, Iraq and Pales-tine,” and “We Will Not BeSilent,” and reading aloud thenames of the dead from Af-ghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.Seventeen people were ar-rested and charged with“unlawful assembly, disor-derly conduct” or “unlawfulconduct.”
(See MESSAGE on page 5)
Urge Appointment of Special Counsel
More than one hundred groups endorse statement
Citizens actions groups andindividuals released the fol-lowing statement on February25:“We urge Attorney GeneralEric Holder to appoint a non- partisan independent SpecialCounsel to immediately com-mence a prosecutorial investi-gation into the most seriousalleged crimes of former President George W. Bush,former Vice President RichardB. Cheney, the attorneys for-merly employed by the De- partment of Justice whosememos sought to justify tor-ture, and other former top of-ficials of the Bush Admini-stration.“Our laws, and treaties thatunder Article VI of our Con-stitution are the supreme lawof the land, require the prose-cution of crimes that strongevidence suggests these indi-viduals have committed. Boththe former president and theformer vice president haveconfessed to authorizing atorture procedure that is ille-gal under our law and treatyobligations. The former presi-dent has confessed to violat-ing the Foreign IntelligenceSurveillance Act.“We see no need for these prosecutions to be extraordi-narily lengthy or costly, andno need to wait for the recom-mendations of a panel or ‘truth’ commission when sub-stantial evidence of the crimesis already in the public do-main. We believe the mosteffective investigation can beconducted by a prosecutor,and we believe such an inves-tigation should begin immedi-ately.”
Special Report to WCT—An OverviewOf the History of War Crimes
by Peter Dyer
Since he took office, Presi-dent Obama has institutedmany changes that break withthe policies of the Bush ad-ministration. The new presi-dent has ordered that no gov-ernment agency will be al-lowed to torture, that the U.S. prison at Guantánamo will beshuttered, and that the CIA’ssecret black sites will beclosed down. But Obama isnon-committal when askedwhether he will seek investiga-tion and prosecution of Bushofficials who broke the law.“My view is also that nobodyis above the law and, if thereare clear instances of wrong-doing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordi-nary citizen,” Obama said.“But,” he added, “generallyspeaking, I'm more interestedin looking forward than I amin looking backwards.” Obamafears that holding Team Bushto account will risk alienatingRepublicans whom he stillseeks to win over.Obama may be off the hook,at least with respect to investi-gating the lawyers who ad-vised the White House on howto torture and get away with it.The Office of ProfessionalResponsibility (OPR) has writ-ten a draft report that appar-ently excoriates former JusticeDepartment lawyers John Yooand Jay Bybee, authors of theinfamous torture memos, ac-cording to
 Newsweek’s
Mi-chael Isikoff. OPR can reportthese lawyers to their state bar associations for possible discipline,
(See PROSECUTE on page 4)
War Criminals, Including TheirLawyers, Must Be Prosecuted
by Marjorie Cohn
 
 
War Crimes Times ● WarCrimesTimes.org
NEWS & VIEWS
 
March 2009 2
the length of the Iraq occupa-tion and increases troop levelsin Afghanistan, we as citizensmust come to grips with our first realization about U.S. war crimes. They are the crimes of  both parties, joined together inthe belief that America has aright to slaughter millions inthe pursuit of corporate profitsand geopolitical advantage.The involvement of both political parties in war crimes brings us to the second hurdlein understanding our country'sdescent. Just when did Amer-ica start committing war crimes? Was it under GeorgeW. Bush with his Middle Eastinvasions, or was it under BillClinton with his bombings of Iraq and Yugoslavia? Or was itRonald Reagan attacking Nicaragua and invading Gra-nada? President Carter armedand funded the Indonesianmilitary for its genocidal as-sault on East Timor, an inva-sion that President Ford gave permission for. President Nixon secretly bombed theneutral country of Cambodia,while presiding over the kill-ing of two to three millionVietnamese. It was a criminaloccupation, pursued in varyingdegrees of intensity by histhree predecessors.Are we to accept WilliamBlum's definition (in
 RogueState: A Guide to the World'sOnly Superpower 
) of whenthings started to go wrong? Hecites the U.S. involvement inthe Chinese civil war from1945 to 1948.Perhaps we are to agree withStephen Kinzer's conclusion(in
Overthrow: America's Cen-tury of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
) that the 1893invasion of what is now our fiftieth state was the begin-ning.In 1902, Mark Twain de-nounced the "water cure" tor-ture being used to make Filipi-nos confess during the U.S.occupation of that country. Infact, it doesn't take much read-ing of American history tounderstand that Bush and com- pany were only the mostrecent war criminals in a longline of invaders, occupiers,and torturers.So why single out Bush andhis murderous regime for  prosecution? Do we have tocover up Democratic complic-ity in war crimes to make acompelling case? And mustwe simply forget U.S. imperi-alism over the last 100 years?Perhaps the answer lies inthe Bush administration's bla-tant disregard for even the pre-tense of following the U.S.Constitution or internationallaw. Far from hiding his war crimes, Bush claimed the rightto commit them: America'sfirst imperial presidency. AsArundhati Roy describedBush:He has achieved whatwriters, activists andscholars have striven toachieve for decades. Hehas exposed the ducts.He has placed on full public view the work-ing parts, the nuts and bolts of the apocalypticapparatus of the Ameri-can empire.Simply put, if we the peoplecan't resist this recent andmost blatant manifestation of war crimes by the leaders of our country, there is very littlehope of restoring democracyand the rule of law. The prose-cution of Bush and Cheney isour best chance for changingthe direction of America. Itmay also be our last.
 Fred Nagel is a filmmaker and  political activist. He is a US Veteran who devotes his time toa radio show, peace organizing,and Palestinian rights.
The last eightyears have taughtthe American people a lot aboutwar crimes. Aswe have wit-nessed our coun-try's invasionsand occupationsin the Middle East, we haveturned to legal and moral prin-cipals from outside our own political system for guidance.The actions of our presidentand our Congress have so be-trayed us, that we have ex- plored the Geneva Conven-tions, The Nuremberg Princi- ples, and the Universal Decla-ration of Human Rights.Perhaps it is the Internet thathas given us so many particu-lars of U.S. wartime atrocities.We can now watch the heart- breaking admissions of our own Iraq War veterans asgiven during their 2008 Winter Soldier Testimony in DC. Per-haps it is the slippery nature of those digital photos from AbuGhraib prison. Uploaded once,those images of beaten men ondog leashes are on all our computer screens, on all theworld's computer screens. Andthey represent not only the barbarism of America's mili-tary power, but also the abro-gation of our vaunted Consti-tution and rule of law.So we seek to understandhow our political system withits fine checks and balancescould lead us to this. How our  political parties could sign onto illegal and immoral militaryassaults against foreign coun-tries. How politicians in the"opposing" party, like NancyPelosi, could approve the useof tortures like water- boarding.There are two major impediments to under-standing our country'sdescent into commit-ting war crimes. Thefirst is the DemocraticParty itself. We mustremember that therewas very little opposi-tion to the invasion of Iraqfrom Democratic leaders.Senator Hillary Clinton,Obama's selection for secre-tary of state, said she was"fooled" by inaccurate infor-mation about weapons of massdestruction. But anyone fol-lowing the debate closelycould not have been fooled.Chief United Nations weaponsinspector Scott Ritter had beencasting doubts on Iraq'sWMD's since the 1990s, whenthis same excuse was beingused by President Clinton for the military blockade of Iraq.It was not until the successof Howard Dean runningagainst the war that the De-mocrats were suddenly con-verted to the party of peace.John Kerry, who became theDemocratic nominee that year,referred to himself as the"real" peace candidate. Thisdespite the fact that he too hadaccepted the WMD rationalfor the invasion.I believe that a deadly arse-nal of weapons of massdestruction in his handsis a threat, and a gravethreat, to our securityand that of our allies inthe Persian Gulf region.In truth, the DemocraticParty did very little to stop theU.S. invasions of Afghanistanand Iraq. And it has voted tofund these occupations timeand time again, even after ittook control of Congress inJanuary 2007. It has evenfailed to demand a significantdebate. Yet, Obama ran andwon in part because a largenumber of peace activists sup- ported him. If he now extends
Must We Forget U.S. History to Successfully ProsecuteBush and Cheney?
by Fred Nagel
WCT 
 
is partially funded by
Veterans for Peace(veteransforpeace.org),
which is not responsiblefor opinions expressed within.
VFP has re-solved to see that Bush and Cheney are prosecutedfor war crimes no matter how long it takes. Thereis no statute of limitations on war crimes.
The War Crimes Times
is published by VFPChapter 099 (Asheville, NC).Contact:editor@WarCrimesTime.org
 Send donations to VFP(memo: Vets DirectAction) c/o BaltimoreVeterans For Peace,325 E. 25th Street,Baltimore, MD 21218.
WCT Editorial Team:Kim Carlyle, Mike Ferner,Clare Hanrahan,Tarak Kauff, Fred Nagel,and Ann Wright
 
 
War Crimes Times ● WarCrimesTimes.org
NEWS & VIEWS
 
March 2009 3
truces; “ruses and falsehoods”and the right of safe passage ina section on good faith be-tween enemies, even includingsafe conduct of baggage.There was plenty of war, butfew subsequent advances inthe law of war until the mid-19
th
century.In 1859, Swiss businessmanJean Henri Dunant witnessedthe gruesome aftermath of thesavage battle at Solferino in present day northern Italy. Hisefforts to establish an interna-tional organization for relief and care of those wounded in battle, regardless of national-ity, led to the establishment of the International Red Cross.This was formalized on Au-gust 22, 1864 by the first inter-national humanitarian lawtreaty—the Geneva Conven-tion for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Woundedin Armies in the Field.While the Red Cross wasemerging out of Europeanconflict, the American CivilWar gave rise to the Lieber Code. In April 1863, Colum- bia University Professor Fran-cis Lieber prepared“Instructions for the Govern-ment of Armies of the UnitedStates in the Field” at the re-quest of Union General HenryHalleck. The Lieber Code wasessentially a working manualthat aimed to provide a practi-cal framework for day-to-dayethical conduct of war. In thissense, its focus was considera- bly more broad than that of theGeneva Convention.Unlike the Geneva Conven-tion, the Lieber Code pre-scribed specific punishmentfor violations, including death.And although it allowed star-vation of unarmed belligerents
(Continued from page 1)
(Article 17), the Lieber Codewas noted for its general ethi-cal treatment of civilian popu-lations and prisoners of war.It seems highly likely that Lieber,a scholar of law and ethics, bornand educated in Germany, wasinfluenced by the work of Grotius. For example, Article40 refers to “… that branch of the law of nature and nationswhich is called the law andusages of war on land.”The Hague Conventions of 1899and 1907 were the first interna-tional agreements to specifi-cally prohibit a wide range of weapons and tactics in war.Poisons—especially poisongas—were forbidden. “Arms, projectiles, or material of anature to cause superfluousinjury”; “bullets which expandor flatten easily in the human body” and projectiles and ex- plosives launched from bal-loons also made the list.As Ambassador White noted,the work at The Hague built on foundationslaid by Grotius. It islikely that the Lieber Code played a role aswell. Humane treat-ment of prisoners of war was a priority.Specific situations andtactics were either per-mitted (such as ruses)or prohibited (such as pillage).In addition the Hague Con-ventions specifically incorpo-rated the 1864 Geneva Con-vention.The Hague Conventions seemto have brought together anddeveloped further the bulk of themost enduring contemporary principles of the law of war.The result was a significantadvance in international law.One important principle, how-ever, was absent: Professor Lieber’s perspective of viola-tions as crimes with corre-sponding punishments.Because the legal authorityof the Conventions was seenas flowing from their status astreaties between states, theonly responsibility for treatyviolations on the agenda wasthe collective responsibility of the State. So, despite the terri- ble personal and communalviolence that was the subjectmatter of the Conventions, theonly remedies envisioned weresimilar to those provided incontract law: mediation, com-missions of inquiry and a per-manent court of arbitration.Given the issues of state sov-ereignty arising from a multi-national pact, this is not sur- prising. But even with theremedies available, consistentand fair enforcement dependedentirely on the willingness of the most powerful nations tosubmit to the will of those less powerful.In other words, there were noteeth. It was easy for powerfulnations to proclaim dedicationto the rule of law and to thehighest humanitarian princi- ples, whatever the reality.And no persons of any rank,low or high, were to be heldresponsible for any of the out-rages the Hague Conventionsaspired to prevent.Less than seven years after the 1907 Hague Conventionwas signed, the industrialslaughter of World War I be-gan. The shock of 15,000,000military and civilian deathsundoubtedly contributed towhat was probably the firstuse of the language of crimi-nal law in the internationallaw of war.Articles 227 of the 1919Versailles Treaty, which for-mally ended the war, calledfor no less than the arrest and public trial before an interna-tional tribunal of the defeatedGerman Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, for “a supremeoffence against internationalmorality and the sanctity of treaties.” and to “fix the punish-ment whichit considersshould beimposed.”In addi-tion, Article228 calledfor the trial“before mili-tary tribu-nals of per-sons accusedof havingcommittedacts in viola-tion of thelaws andcustoms of war. Such personsshall, if found guilty, be sentencedto punish-ments laiddown bylaw.”However, Holland, home of the Hague Conventions, re-fused to extradite the Kaiser and he was never tried.Although a few Germansof lesser rank were even-tually tried under Article228 by German courts inLeipzig, the process wascrippled by controversyamong Allied observersand widespread, vehe-ment German opposition.A good portion of thiscontroversy sprang fromthe radically new idea of indi-vidual criminal responsibilityfor acts of war.Ten years after the fightingstopped the trauma of the “war to end all wars” was still fresh.In 1928 fifteen nations, includ-ing Germany, signed the Gen-eral Treaty for the Renuncia-tion of War (Kellogg-BriandPact or Paris Pact).The Paris Pact was short,clear and unqualified. It con-demned “recourse to war for the solution of internationalcontroversies.”Although there were nosanctions provided for viola-tion, the treaty can be seen as perhaps the first significanteffort to go beyond variousacts of war and address thesource of all such acts: aggres-sive war.Seventeen years later in1945, 50 million more deathsfrom another World War  brought a momentous leap inlaw. Aggressive war (alongwith war crimes and crimesagainst the peace) was for-mally criminalized, withindividual responsibility, inthe charter of the first interna-tional criminal tribunal—theInternational Military Tribunalat Nuremberg, Germany.Twenty-two of the most powerful Nazis were tried. Nineteen were convicted of one or more of the IMT Char-ter crimes. Twelve receiveddeath sentences.Delivered on October 1, 1946,the Tribunal judgment invoked both the Paris Pact and the 1907Hague Convention, essentiallyestablishing violations of thesetreaties as crimes. “In theopinion of the Tribunal, thesolemn renunciation of war asan instrument of national pol-icy necessarily involves the proposition that such a war isillegal in international law.”World War II and Nurem- berg provided a catalyst for afew years of accelerated devel-opment of the law of war. Justten weeks after the Nuremberg judgment, the United NationsGeneral Assembly passedResolution 95(1) “Affirmation of the Principles of International LawRecognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal.”The next year, the GeneralAssembly adopted resolution174 (II) establishing the Inter-national Law Commission(ILC) for the “promotion of the progressive developmentof international law and itscodification.”In December 1948 the Gen-eral Assembly passed Resolu-tion 260 (III), the GenocideConvention, recognizing thatgenocide is an international
(Continued on page 4)
HISTORY: War Crimes Overview
In 1945, fifty million more deathsfrom another World War broughta momentous leap in law. Aggres-sive war, war crimes, and crimesagainst peace were formallycriminalized.
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