Jimmy Carter sent on A Hostage Run

I skimmed what you posted. ... As an aside, I think I would be ridiculed mightily if I posted something like you did from a source that was comparable to the World Traveler. Not saying the guy is wrong, just saying it is not exactly a source to exudes confidence.

So let me get this straight. You are saying that it is proof of war crimes by Reagan (what JTT is arguing) because this happened on Reagan's watch and he claimed he had no knowledge of it? Yep, you got me convinced now. Reagan is a war criminal who only escaped being branded one because he said he had no knowledge of the Iran-Contra scandal.

In 1971, Telford Taylor, the chief US prosecutor at the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal, cited the "Yamashita" case as grounds for indicting Westmoreland.

Following the war, a US Army Commission had sentenced Japanese General Tomayuki Yamashita to be hung for atrocities committed by his troops in the Philippines. The Commission held that as the senior commander, Yamashita was responsible for not stopping the atrocities.

The same ruling could of course apply to General Powell and General Schwarzkopf.

Yamashita, in his defense, presented considerable evidence that he had lacked the communications to adequately control his troops; yet he was still hung. Taylor pointed out that with helicopters and modern communications, Westmoreland and his commanders didn't have this problem.


http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/OurWarCriminals_RS.html

Our War Criminals

excerpted from the book

Rogue State

A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

by William Blum

Common Courage Press, 2000



Any number of countries would be justified in issuing a list of Americans barred from entry because of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity". Such a list might include the following:

William Clinton, president, for his merciless bombing of the people of Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights, taking the lives of many hundreds of civilians, and producing one of the greatest ecological catastrophes in history; for his relentless continuation of the sanctions and rocket attacks upon the people of Iraq; and for his illegal and lethal bombings of Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan and Afghanistan.

General Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, for his direction of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia with an almost sadistic fanaticism..."He would rise out of his seat and slap the table. 'I've got to get the maximum violence out of this campaign-now!"

George Bush, president, for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including many thousands of children, the result of his 40 days of bombing and the institution of draconian sanctions; and for his unconscionable bombing of Panama, producing widespread death, destruction and homelessness, for no discernible reason that would stand up in a court of law.

General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for his prominent role in the attacks on Panama and Iraq, the latter including destruction of nuclear reactors as well as plants making biological and chemical agents. It was the first time ever that live reactors had been bombed, and ran the risk of setting a dangerous precedent. Hardly more than a month had passed since the United Nations, under whose mandate the United States was supposedly operating in Iraq, had passed a resolution reaffirming its "prohibition of military attacks on nuclear facilities" in the Middle East. In the wake of the destruction, Powell gloated: "The two operating reactors they had are both gone, they're down, they're finished." He was just as cavalier about the lives of the people of Iraq. In response to a question concerning the number of Iraqis killed in the war, the good general replied: "It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in."

And for his part in the cover up of war crimes in Vietnam by troops of the same brigade that carried out the My Lai massacre.

General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command, for his military leadership of the Iraqi carnage; for continuing the carnage two days after the cease-fire; for continuing it against Iraqis trying to surrender.

Ronald Reagan, president, for eight years of death, destruction, torture and the crushing of hope inflicted upon the people of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Grenada by his policies; and for his bombings of Lebanon, Libya and Iran. He's forgotten all this, but the world shouldn't.

Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State under Reagan, for rewriting history, even as it was happening, by instituting Iying as public policy. He was indispensable to putting the best possible face on the atrocities being committed daily by the Contras in Nicaragua and other Washington allies in Central America, thus promoting continued support for them; a spinmeister for the ages, who wrestled facts into ideological submission. "When history is written," he declared "the Contras will be folk heroes."

Casper Weinberger, Secretary of Defense for seven years under Reagan, for his official and actual responsibility for the numerous crimes against humanity perpetrated by the United States in Central America and the Caribbean, and for the bombing of Libya in 1986. George Bush pardoned him for Iran-Contra, but he should not be pardoned for his war crimes.

Lt. Col. Oliver North, assigned to Reagan's National Security Council, for being a prime mover behind the Contras of Nicaragua and for his involvement in the planning of the invasion of Grenada, which took the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians.

Henry Kissinger (who has successfully combined three careers: scholar, Nobel peace laureate, and war criminal), National Security Adviser under Nixon and Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford, for his Machiavellian, amoral, immoral roles in the US interventions into Angola, Chile, East Timor, Iraq, Vietnam and Cambodia, which brought unspeakable horror and misery to the peoples of those lands.

Gerald Ford, president, for giving his approval to Indonesia to use American arms to brutally suppress the people of East Timor, thus setting in motion a quarter-century-long genocide.

Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, a prime architect of, and major bearer of responsibility for, the slaughter in Indochina, from its early days to its extraordinary escalations; and for the violent suppression of popular movements in Peru.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/OurWarCriminals_RS.html

I asked, in another thread if this stuff from you is naivete. It seems to go far beyond that, CR, but we shan't delve into that right now.

"The 50 covert actions - these are secret, but that has been leaked to us by members of the oversight committee of the Congress. "

Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm sure you will) but does this not indicate that Congress was aware of the covert actions and thus complicit in those operations? So again, why is Reagan the war criminal?

A month after the announced withdrawal, Secretary of State Shultz suggested, and President Reagan later confirmed in a press conference, that the goal of U.S. policy was to overthrow the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua (see N.Y. Times, Feb. 22, 1985, at A10, cols. 1, 3). Although this was what Nicaragua had alleged to be the U.S. goal, while the case was actively pending, the United States could not concede that goal without serious risk of undermining its litigating position.

...

Third witness: Professor Michael Glennon
Mr. Glennon testified about a fact-finding mission he had conducted in Nicaragua to investigate alleged human rights violations committed by the contra guerrillas, sponsored by the International Human Rights Law Group, and the Washington Office on Latin America. Glennon conducted the investigation with Mr. Donald T. Fox who is a New York attorney and a member of the International Commission of Jurists.
They traveled to Nicaragua, visiting the northern region where the majority of contra military operations took place. The two lawyers interviewed around 36 northern frontier residents who had direct experience with the contras. They also spoke with the U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, and with senior officials of the U.S. Department of State in Washington after returning to the United States.
No hearsay evidence was accepted. Professor Glennon stated that those interviewed were closely questioned and their evidence was carefully cross-checked with available documentary evidence. Doubtful "testimonies" were rejected, and the results were published in April 1985. The conclusions of the report were summarized by Glennon in Court:
"We found that there is substantial credible evidence that the contras were engaged with some frequency in acts of terroristic violence directed at Nicaraguan civilians. These are individuals who have no connection with the war effort-persons with no economic, political or military significance. These are Individuals who are not caught in the cross-fire between Government and contra forces, but rather individuals who are deliberately targeted by the contras for acts of terror. "Terror" was used in the same sense as in recently enacted United States law, i.e. "an activity that involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that Is a violation or the criminal law, and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to Influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping".

In talks with U.S. State Department officials, at those in Managua U.S. Embassy, and with officials in Washington, Professor Glennon had inquired whether the U.S. Government had ever investigated human rights abuses by the contras. Professor Glennon testified that no such investigation had ever been conducted, because in the words of a ranking State Department official who he could not name, the U.S. Government maintained a policy of "intentional ignorance" on the matter. State Department officials in Washington- had admitted to Glennon that "it was clear that the level of atrocities was enormous". Those words "enormous" and "atrocities" were the ranking State Department official's words.[16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States

You have me on ignore because you are a spineless little chickenshit.

Ditch "Intrepid", it just ain't you.

Clearly political ideology has nothing to do with whether someone is a war criminal or not. A war criminal is someone who has committed crimes of war. Acting outside your constitutional authority to authorize acts of war without the knowledge of Congress would be an example.

To use JTT's favorite word concerning me, I would be naive to think that war crimes do not happen in times of conflict.

That doesn't in any way absolve Reagan

Are you pretty sure this is a definition of war crime?

But that proof would include democrat and republican congressmen along with Reagan. So why are you so hepped up on only stating that Reagan is the war criminal? I can only deduce it is because you wish to prove how evil republicans are. Sorry, I'm not playing that game. I wouldn't play that game if you were a conservative trying to prove that democrats are evil. It makes no sense in either case.

You're such a spineless little chickenshit that you have not once pointed out anything that was "bullshit and nonsense".