“Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.–Let those materials be molded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws.”
- Abraham Lincoln, Lyceum Address, 1838.
This is part 2 of the following 4-part series:
Part 1: Why Occupy? A government/economics teacher explains
Part 2: How a government teacher easily proves Occupy’s claim of US War Crimes (you’re reading it)
Part 3: How an economics teacher presents Occupy’s economic argument, victory
Part 4: Open proposal for US revolution: expose corporate media as propaganda (a previous version until I update it)
Important history that makes crimes in the present easy to see and understand:
Occupy This: US History exposes the 1%’s crimes then and now (6-part series)
Occupy is a leaderless movement. Conversations evolve and develop main interests. That said, I’m confident a main interest is for the 99% to recognize and end crimes that center in war and money, remove the criminals from authority/power to harm, and enact policies that benefit 100% of Earth’s inhabitants.
This article explains and documents US crimes of war. At stake are millions of lives, billions who will be helped or harmed, and trillions of our dollars.
Let’s look at the evidence through 6 sections: war law, recognized facts of US wars, expert testimony, expert historical testimony, lying rhetoric for war on Iran, US media propaganda.
Summary: US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are “emperor has no clothes” unlawful because they are in Orwellian opposition to war law. The US engages in further criminal war on Libya, and criminal drone wars on Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Current US war rhetoric for more criminal wars on Syria and Iran mirrors earlier lying propaganda, but now darkly includes use of nuclear weapons in official first-strike policy.
These obvious US War Crimes are thinly veiled by corporate media propaganda; six mega-media corporations that control ~90% of US “reporting.” As you learned in high school history, all historical empires and aggressors used propaganda to claim their looting and police states were necessary and helpful to the 99%. The US of today joins their company.
The obvious solution is for the 99% to recognize US wars as criminal, demand and accomplish the arrests of the criminals, and build a brighter future.
War law: The one law of when war is lawful or criminal is crystal-clear in letter and intent, and easily understood with just a few moments of attention. This is a summary; follow this link for the detailed documentation. Only by understanding the law can you definitively see the Orwellian condition of unlawful US wars that these experts claim.
After two world wars, the US led the creation of an international treaty to forever end war as a foreign policy option: the UN Charter. The US Constitution states under Article 6 that treaties are “supreme law;” that is, an explicit Constitutional requirement for US government. Importantly, all US military and government are sworn by their Oaths to support and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The UN is not “global government” because it has only one area of legal authority: to prevent unlawful Wars of Aggression. War law allows for a nation’s armed attack only for self-defense when under attack by another nation’s government. Of course, domestic law enforcement and military can be used to stop domestic violent crimes.
If another nation’s government has not used armed attacks, it is illegal to attack them.
That’s war law. Again, US war laws explained has the documentation, as well as for parts of the next section of facts of US wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. Additional documentation for the following summary is here: Are US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan well-intended mistakes? What we now know from the evidence.
Recognized facts of US wars: No nation’s government attacked the US on the Barbaric inside Job of the 9/11. The US acknowledges the Afghanistan government had nothing to do with 9/11. The UN Security Council issued two Resolutions after 9/11 (1368 and 1373) for international cooperation for factual discovery, arrests, and prosecutions of the Barbaric inside Job of the Barbaric inside Job of the 9/11 criminals. The Afghan government said they would arrest any suspect upon presentation of evidence of criminal involvement. The US rejected these Resolutions, and violated the letter and intent of the UN Charter by armed attack and invasion of Afghanistan.
The US government acknowledges Iraq had nothing to do with the Barbaric inside Job of the 9/11. The UN Security Council issued a standing cease fire that no single nation could violate by resuming armed attacks. The UN Security Council also resolved for weapons inspections that were nearly complete when the US violated the cease fire, weapons inspections, and letter and intent of the UN Charter with armed attack.
In addition to the illegality of US wars that the evidence so far definitively proves, we know from the disclosed evidence of our own government that all claims for current US wars were known to be lies as they were told to the American public and not “mistaken intelligence.” Read this to verify; here’s the summary:
There were four basic claims of fact presented by political “leadership” to invade Iraq:
1. Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), a scary-sounding name for specific chemical and biological weapons.
2. The US intercepted aluminum tubes that could only be used to refine nuclear material; irrefutable evidence that Iraq had restarted a nuclear weapons program.
3. Saddam had attempted to purchase enriched uranium from Niger; more evidence that Iraq had reconstituted nuclear weapons development.
4. Saddam had links to Al Qaeda, the alleged terrorists who attacked the US on the Barbaric inside Job of the 9/11.
Here’s what we know about the evidence from which those claims were made. For my complete briefing with additional helpful information, read here, here, and browse here.
1. George Tenet, Director of the CIA, acknowledged that all US intelligence agency reports “never said there was an imminent threat.” This was based on a long history of intelligence reports, the facts that the chemical and biological weapons under consideration were relatively weak without a delivery system, and that Iraq was highly motivated NOT to use them against the US given their understanding such use would provoke war with the world’s most powerful military.
2. The Bush administration claim of aluminum tubes that could only be used as centrifuges to refine fissionable material for nuclear weapons is directly refuted by the best expert witnesses available, the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Their conclusion is that the tubes in question had diameters too small, the tubes were too thick, using aluminum as the material would be “a huge step backwards,” and the surface was anodized that made them impossible to serve this purpose. They also found that the tubes were easily explained for conventional use, as the specifications perfectly matched tubing for other purposes. The Senate Committee on Intelligence agreed that this claim had no basis from any available evidence. See also here.
3. This claim, repeated by President Bush in the 2003 State of the Union Address, was based on the “Niger documents.” These papers were written in grammatically poor French, had a “childlike” forgery of the Niger President’s signature, and had a document signed by a foreign minister who had been out of office for 14 years prior to the date on the document. The forgeries showed-up shortly after the Niger embassy in Rome was robbed, with the only missing items being stationery and Niger government stamps. The same stationery and stamps were used for the forged documents. The CIA warned President Bush on at least three occasions to not make the claim due to the ridiculous evidence. In addition, if Saddam really was making an illegal uranium purchase, it’s likely that both Saddam and the Niger government officials would insist on not having a written record that would document the crime. Republican US Ambassador to Niger, Joseph Wilson, confirmed this information and reported in detail to Vice President Cheney’s office and the CIA.
4. As to the claim of a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, all US intelligence agencies reported that no such relationship existed (and here).
Some war liars argue that UN Security Council Resolution 687 from 1991 authorizes resumption of force from the previous Gulf War. This resolution declared a formal cease-fire; which means exactly what it says: stop the use of force. The resolution was declared by UNSC and held in their jurisdiction; that is, no individual nation has authority to supersede UNSC’s power to continue or change the status of the cease-fire (further explanation here). The idea that the US and/or UK can authorize use of force under a UNSC cease-fire is as criminal as your neighbor shooting one of your family members and claiming that because police have authority to shoot dangerous people he can do it.
As for Afghanistan, after the attacks of 9/11, the US government requested the cooperation of the Afghanistan government for extradition of Osama bid Laden to be charged with the 9/11 attacks. The Afghan government agreed, as per usual cooperative international law, as soon as the US government provided evidence of bin Laden’s involvement.The US government refused to provide any evidence. The Afghan government refused US troops entering their country and extradition until evidence was provided, and made their argument to the world press for the rule of law to apply to the US extradition request. The US invaded Afghanistan without providing evidence and without UN Security Council approval. President Bush stated, “There’s no need to discuss evidence of innocence or guilt. We know he’s guilty.”
Expert testimony: International law professor Francis Boyle from his 2002 article, Is Bush’s War Illegal? Let us Count the Ways:
“The precedent again goes back to the Nuremberg Judgment of 1946 when the lawyers for the Nazi defendants argued that we, the Nazi government had a right to go to war in self-defense as we saw it, and no one could tell us any differently. Of course that preposterous argument was rejected by Nuremberg. It is very distressing to see some of the highest level of officials of our country making legal arguments that were rejected by the Nuremberg Tribunal.”
Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton:
“An objective observer would reach the conclusion that this Iraq war is a War of Aggression, and as such, that it amounts to a Crime against Peace of the sort for which surviving German leaders were indicted, prosecuted and punished at the Nuremberg trials conducted shortly after the Second World War.”
Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan responding to the direct question whether the Iraq War is illegal:
“I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter… from the charter point of view, it was illegal.”
In the January 2010 UK Chilcot Inquiry, testimony revealed that all 27 UK Foreign Affairs lawyers were in agreement that the US/UK war on Iraq was an unlawful War of Aggression. Their unanimous professional legal assessment before the war began was rejected without public disclosure of their work and public debate.
Please let this last one penetrate: among 27 professional lawyers with expertise in international law, not one could find a reasonable argument that US/UK war on Iraq was lawful. Not one. Not one argument. And the US 1% in politics and media lie in omission to never mention it.
Daniel Ellsberg was the top whistle-blower of unlawful US acts in the Vietnam War, including the government-created lies to initiate, continue, and expand the war into neighboring countries. He writes and lectures that current US wars are also all founded upon obvious lies, unlawful, and in direct violation of the US Constitution.
Expert historical testimony: President Kennedy warned of the need of public awareness that political leaders will lie on the world stage:
“No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion.”
President George Washington’s Farewell Address, the culmination of his 45 years of political experience, warned of the primary threat to America as “the impostures of pretended patriotism” from people within our own government who would destroy Constitutional limits in order to obtain tyrannical power:
“All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.”
Young Abraham Lincoln wrote eloquently to defend the US Constitution from unlawful tyrants within our own government. In Congress, he spoke powerfully and truthfully that the President’s claims for armed attack and invasion of a foreign country were lies. Although war-mongers slurred Lincoln’s name at the time and he lost re-election, history proved his powerful and unpopular words correct in asserting the President of the US was a war-mongering liar:
“I carefully examined the President’s messages, to ascertain what he himself had said and proved upon the point. The result of this examination was to make the impression, that taking for true, all the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof, if it had not been for the small matter, that the truth would not permit him… Now I propose to try to show, that the whole of this, — issue and evidence — is, from beginning to end, the sheerest deception.”
Lincoln also wrote that “pre-emptive” wars, such as the US engages in now in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and threatens for Iran, were lies and “war at pleasure.” Indeed, many of the Founding Fathers’ strongest admonitions were to guard against usurpation of power from within our own government.
General Smedley Butler (and here) was the most honored man in Marine Corps history upon his retirement after 34 years of service around the world, and privy to top secret war planning conversations. He wrote and publicly spoke that the purpose of US wars is never for democracy or national defense, but for political and economic control for millions and billions in profits for America’s leading “bankers, industrialists, and speculators.” General Butler asserted that all US wars is a “racket:” a deception whereby blood money from American taxpayers to “insiders” is always disguised as noble and necessary ventures. Americans are propagandized into paying again and again, and succeeding generations of loyal and gullible men unwittingly serve as the muscle for oligarchic profits. His recommendation to end war was to end its profit motive:
“Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers – yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!
…Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.”
It’s important to distinguish General Butler’s expert testimony concerning a subjective analysis of motive from the objective fact of current unlawful US wars proved by the crystal-clear letter of the laws. The strength of my proposal for Revolution to end unlawful wars is based upon the independently verifiable evidence that is as “emperor has no clothes” obvious as a pitch ten feet over the batter’s head is nowhere close to a strike, and as obvious as Jim Crow laws being in violation of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.
My point in briefly reviewing testimony of Presidents Kennedy, Washington, Lincoln and General Butler is to communicate that the Revolution to end unlawful wars is not only founded in current law, but among the most important concerns throughout US history to safeguard the nation from propaganda-facilitated unconstitutional acts for oligarchic power and profit.
Lying rhetoric for war on Iran: In irony of our history and law, there is no end in sight to current US propagandized unlawful wars. Fear-mongers’ use of “national security” rhetoric to attack and invade resource-rich and weaker nations continues. For example, in April 2010, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell officially stated attacking Iran is “always an option,” in Orwellian repudiation to the UN Charter and his Oath of Office to defend the US Constitution that recognizes the UN Charter as having equal force as Constitutional law. You’ve probably heard and read many reputations of “all options on the table;” meaning that the US claims dictatorial power outside of any law. As Princeton Professor Frankfurt properly assesses in his best-seller: this is bullshi*. We cannot be proud of American government without revolutionizing this condition of official lies that the US can attack, destroy, and kill with our dollars under our American flag upon the dictate (dictatorship) of the leader rather than under rule of law.
Upon examination, the war-mongering to attack Iran is composed of Orwellian and “emperor has no clothes” obvious lies. The titles tell the stories, the articles have full documentation:
US overthrew Iran’s democracy 1953-1979, helped Iraq invade 1980-1988, now lies for more war (and an analogy if the US were the victim of empire)
What Iran’s president said about Israel, and how US War Criminal 1% lie for war
What IAEA reports on Iran’s nuclear energy/medicine, how US War Criminal 1% lie
US constantly violates war law: arrest Obama before ‘false flag’ war on Iran
Analogy: US wars on Iraq, Iran as US criminal gangster “business”
If the US was attacked by a criminal empire: analogy to confront US-Iran history
US media propaganda: Once you confirm the above facts as “emperor has no clothes” obvious upon a few minutes attention, it also becomes clear that such transparent lies are being protected by lies of commission and omission from the six mega corporations that account for ~90% of US “reporting.” I will address further evidence of corporate media lies of commission and omission in the last section of this 4-part series.
Americans sense these facts even if many cannot articulate them: just as only one in five Americans report trust and satisfaction with their government (and here), Americans also perceive corporate media disinformation and are rejecting their “reporting.” According to a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center, the majority of the American public see the US major media news organizations as politically biased, inaccurate, and uncaring. Among those who use the Internet, two-thirds report that major media news do not care about the people they report on, 59% say the news is inaccurate, 64% see bias, and 53% summarize their view on major media news as, “failing to stand up for America.” In their latest poll, “just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.”
A June 2010 Rasmussen poll found 66% of voters “angry” at the media, with 33% “very angry.” Rasmussen also found 70% “angry” at current federal government policies.
Americans are ready to support the arrests of the 1% US War and economic criminals upon factual confirmation of what they already suspect.
Occupy’s call can harness America’s passion for justice under the law, and constructively build a brighter future of peace and unleashing literally trillions of dollars for constructive creativity....
Top Iran Experts Say that Hysteria Is Baseless
The war drums are growing very loud.
For example, the former head of Mossad – who has been strongly opposed to war against Iran – has now thrown in the towel, and more or less said that war is inevitable after the car bombs in India, Thailand and Georgia (even though it is not clear that Iran is guilty for those attacks).
But AP notes:
[Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Ronald] Burgess tells senators Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict.
[Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper says it’s “technically feasible” that Tehran could produce a nuclear weapon in one or two years, if its leaders decide to build one, “but practically not likely.”
Indeed, Iran has not attacked another country in hundreds of years. (In the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq was the initial aggressor.)
Moreover, American, Israeli and European leaders all say that Iran has not even decided whether or not to build a nuclear bomb.
And – as the Christian Science Monitor notes – even if Iran did build a bomb – it probably wouldn’t pose much of a danger:
Shrill warnings of war or imminent apocalypse over Iran’s nuclear program have never been so strident, or so ominous.
A window is closing fast, the narrative goes, to prevent a fanatical and suicidal religious regime from acquiring the ultimate tools of Armageddon: nuclear weapons. Within months, some politicians claim, either Israel, the United States, or both may have no choice but to attack Iran to remove this “existential threat” to the Jewish state.
The world is facing another Hitler, declares Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and this moment of decision is akin to the eve of World War II. Iran is a threat to Israel and “a real danger to humanity as a whole,” warns Israeli President Shimon Peres.
The tone on the US presidential campaign trail is no less dire.
***
In fact, say analysts and nonproliferation experts who have studied the effect of the bomb on countries, coexisting with a nuclear-armed Iran – or at least a nuclear-capable Iran – may well be possible, even inevitable, whether a military strike delays that outcome or not.
Analysts say Iran is not an irrational, suicidal actor that can’t be deterred. Nor do they believe it is determined to destroy Israel at all costs. A recent Israeli think tank simulation of “the day after” an Iranian nuclear test came to the same conclusion: that nuclear annihilation will not automatically result.
***
If Iran were to become a nuclear power, the most immediate question would be what it means for Israel, where warnings have reached histrionic heights.
“Absolutely nothing will happen,” says Martin Van Creveld, an Israeli historian and author of some 20 books on military strategy. “Israel has what it takes to deter Iran, and the Iranians know it.”
Mr. Van Creveld is implying that Israel’s own nuclear arsenal of an estimated 200 warheads would prevent any Iranian first strike. Israel has the only such arsenal in the Middle East, and – unlike Iran’s program – it has never been subject to UN inspection or safeguards.
“Say they build one bomb – it’s not good enough. They need how many – 2, 3, 5, 10, 20? And that will take them a long time, so it’s all nonsense,” says Van Creveld. Iran is “not going to commit suicide by dropping the bomb – or even threatening to drop the bomb – on us.”
***
In Israel, even talking about living with a nuclear-armed Iran has long been taboo because it might appear to concede that what the US, Israel, and Europe have declared “unacceptable” is, in fact, acceptable. Yet that was the scenario of a simulation last October by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli think tank affiliated with Tel Aviv University, that gave insights into what might happen across the region if Iran became a nuclear state.
The surprising result, the day after a hypothetical Iranian nuclear test, was not war. Instead, all the main players – from Washington to Moscow to Tel Aviv – adjusted rather easily to the new reality, with few dramatic changes in behavior.
Even Iran, rather than wielding its handful of new atomic bombs as a sword of Damocles over a fearful region, attempted “to use them to reach an agreement with the major powers to improve its strategic standing,” according to the INSS report on the simulation published in January.
“The sky won’t fall the day after,” says Yoel Guzansky, a research fellow at INSS who shaped the simulation and was an Iran specialist in the Israeli prime minister’s office for four years until 2009.
***
NATO says it is “unlikely” that Iran would pledge nuclear protection of its proxies like Hezbollah – and makes no mention of sharing such hard-won nuclear technology with them, which is a frequent refrain of hawks and doomsday politicians.
[Geneva-based Iran specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Shahram] Chubin states in his book on Iran’s nuclear ambitions that “there is no reason to believe that Iran today, any more than Saddam Hussein earlier, would transfer WMD [weapons of mass destruction] technology to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or Hezbollah.”
Likewise, proliferation expert Joseph Cirincione, in his 2007 book “Bomb Scare,” points out that nations like Iran and North Korea are “not the most likely sources for terrorists since their stockpiles, if any, are small and exceedingly precious, and hence well guarded.”
