Many Americans Don't Realize Iraq War Is Illegal

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_sherwood_071013_many_americans_don_t.htm


Mistakenly, many Americans still believe President Bush's war on Iraq is justified because Congress supported it and funds it.

Yet, as international legal authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois points out, President Bush got congressional backing by lying that Hussein had W.M.D. and that Hussein was connected to 9/11.

That's fraud, probably the bloodiest, costliest lie in White House history.

Also, to start a war, a country needs UN Security Council approval, which Bush failed to get. Otherwise, a nation can fight only in self-defense when attacked.

By attacking Iraq, Bush violated the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, the UN Charter, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals, and the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles, Boyle said.

As all treaties become the supreme law of the land under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, the Bush-Cheney presidency is guilty of breaking all of the above, warmongering in spades.

In testimony defending U.S. soldiers who have refused to fight in Iraq, Boyle noted that, under Nuremberg, "a soldier has a right to absent himself or herself from committing international crimes."

In short, if given a criminal order, the defense used by Adolf Eichmann, Hitler's master killer, that he was only doing his job, is a phony.

Have you ever heard, during a Congressional hearing, anyone use the word "war"?

in a manner meeting all classic definitions of terrorism. Moreover, many don't give a diddledy-fuc* that torture is modus operandi, all of which says a lot about a large segment of we the people.

And a majority of that minority think that way for many reasons:

- are "victims" of false affirmations catapulted over and over until the propaganda sinks in...
- or just "not interested" in anything "politics"

well, OK, maybe that last segment is rather BIG (100 millions?), but still a minority in need of "educating" themselves...

Nor do they know what steps must be taken to officially get us into a war.

A war is clearly defined. This is what you call a conflict, an armed conflict.

nation. Wake up America, and soon.

they did not grant to congress the power to declare war while reserving to the president the power to entangle the country in an "armed conflict" on the other side of the planet.

our founders would not be pleased to see carefully constructed safeguards against this sort of thing evaded by semantics.

and how about the illegal wire tapping of American citizens (Qwest) before you knew about it. Put two and two together!

how often has the UN stopped one of the great powers from going to war? It kinda has no teeth.

I would disagree, Lyndon Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin Resolution resulted in a much bloodier and costlier war than this one. Doubt it was legal by international standards either.

While many more Americans died during the Vietnam Conflict I doubt it was anywhere near as expensive as what is taking place today and I am also not sure that the destruction caused in Iraq is less than that caused in Vietnam. Iraq was an industrialized country with electricity throughout the land, in every village. That was not the case in Vietnam. Are you positive more Vietnamese died than Iraqis? Was there more than four million refugees in Vietnam? Where did they end up going? Were there more Private Contracters in Vietnam than soldiers as is the case in Iraq? Private Contracters earning more than a thousand dollars a day. What is the cost of replacing a thatched roof "hooch" compared to an industrialized building? I don't buy your argument about costs but about the legality you may have a point.

Attest to the cost in blood of Americans. If you figure 3 or 4 wounded for each killed Thats 150,000 to 200,000 Americans walking around minus arms, legs, eyes or scared. Not to mention the PTSD victims. The Americans were involved in the killing in Viet Nam from the late 1950s to 1972. No, I do not know the numbers of Vietnamese killed. But if you look at the number killed and wounded in both North and South Viet Nam over 25 years or so, I suspect the numbers are considerably larger than than the 5 years of the current war. As private contractors are concerned. We used them in Viet Nam to some extent. Many of the roles filled by Backwater and other private contractors were filled by some of the hundreds of thousands of draftees conscripted to fight the war. I also suspect that if dollars and cents is the measurement of wars cost, WWII was a bargain.

"don't care" is more like it.

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war crimes....thats a fact, I am sure easy to look up.

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