THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

Try this.........

Army War College study blasts U.S. war on terrorism

The Iraq invasion was "an unnecessary preventive war of choice" that has robbed resources and attention from the more critical fight against al Qaeda in a hopeless U.S. quest for absolute security, according to a study recently published by the U.S. Army War College.

The 56-page document written by Jeffrey Record, a veteran defense expert who serves as a visiting research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, represents a blistering assessment of what President George W. Bush calls the U.S. global war on terrorism.

Jeffery Record better watch his step; the government will look into his access and use of top secret information as they are doing to O'Neill.

I highly reccomend reading the full document. it is eye opening!

In addition, the essay goes further than many critics in examining the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism.

Record's core criticism is that the administration is biting off more than it can chew. He likens the scale of U.S. ambitions in the war on terrorism to Adolf Hitler's overreach in World War II. "A cardinal rule of strategy is to keep your enemies to a manageable number," he writes. "The Germans were defeated in two world wars . . . because their strategic ends outran their available means."

I highly reccomend reading the full document. it is eye opening!

Number of days between O'Neill 60 Minutes interview and announcement of investigation: 1 day.

Bush Flees Iraq Mess On The Campaign Express
Last Copter Out of Baghdad
by Rick Perlstein
January 14 - 20, 2004


(illustration: Ward Sutton)

George Bush is selling out Iraq. Gone are his hard-liners' dreams of setting up a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic republic, a light unto the Middle Eastern nations. The decision makers in the administration now realize these goals are unreachable. So they've set a new goal: to end the occupation by July 1, whether that occupation has accomplished anything valuable and lasting or not. Just declare victory and go home. The tyranny of Saddam Hussein will be over. But a new tyranny will likely take its place: the tyranny of civil war, as rival factions rush into the void. Such is the mess this president seems willing to leave behind in order to save his campaign.

"The Bush game plan is to have pictures of some U.S. troops leaving and the Iraqis opening their own government, the U.S. having presided over the birth of this new embryonic democracy," observes former Clinton White House adviser Sidney Blumenthal. The problem is, there will be no Iraqi democracy. There might not even be a viable Iraqi government. Instead, Baghdad will become Beirut: Iraq's three major religious and ethnic groups, the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds, will consolidate their respective positions in the center, south, and north of the country, recruit their militias, and get down to fighting for control of the power vacuum that is the post-war "peace."

the number of medical evacuations, as of mid December, is 10,854, most not reflected on the Pentagon's website.

Above the Law
Dahr Jamail, January 6, 2004

On Saturday a car was sprayed with gunfire from U.S. soldiers while trying to pass a convoy in Tikrit. According to Agence France Presse:

"Police in Tikrit and Salahaddin province, along with the car's sole survivor, have insisted a U.S. convoy opened fire on a blue Chevrolet Caprice as it tried to pass, riddling it with bullets and killing the driver, a second man, a woman and her nine-year-old child."

One month ago a tank drove over a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric in the Sadr City, a suburb of Baghdad and killed him. The CPA described this as a "traffic accident."

Forty Iraqi demonstrators throughout Iraq were shot dead by U.S. soldiers during the aftermath following the capture of Saddam Hussein.

During the brief Baghdad of Battle in April, an American tank shell hit the al-Jazeera bureau, killing one of the Qatar-based news network's star correspondents. On the same day, the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad was attacked and its cameraman was killed, along with a cameraman from Spain's Tele 5 channel.

How have the Coalition Forces in Iraq been getting away with killing Iraqi civilians, religious leaders, demonstrators, and foreign journalists with impunity? It's almost as if they are above the law.

CPA Order Number 17, which deals with the legal status of coalition personnel, states they are exactly that - above the law.

According to section 2 of this document, subheading number four, "All Coalition personnel shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of their Parent States and, they shall be immune from local criminal, civil, and administrative jurisdiction and from any form of arrest or detention…"

Just in case Coalition personnel commit an act for which there are no criminal sanctions in their Parent State, subheading five states, "…the CPA may request from the Parent State waiver of jurisdiction to try such act or acts under Iraqi law. In such cases, no Legal Process shall be commenced without the written permission of the Administrator of the CPA [currently L. Paul Bremer]."

How convenient.

Coalition contractors and sub-contractors enjoy many of these same 'immunity' benefits as well. Later in said document:

"In respect of acts or omissions of Coalition contractors and sub-contractors as well as their employees not normally resident in Iraq…no Iraqi or CPA Legal Process shall be commenced without the written permission of the Administrator of the CPA."

Section 6 of said document, pertaining to claims, states:

"Third party claims including those for property loss or damage and for personal injury, illness or death or in respect of any other matter arising from or attributed to Coalition personnel or any persons employed by them, whether normally resident in Iraq or not and that do not arise in connection with military combat operations, shall be submitted and dealt with by the Parent State whose Coalition personnel, property, activities or other assets are alleged to have caused the claimed damage, in a manner consistent with the national laws of the Parent State."

The inherent 'gray area' of whether a death is related to a military combat operation or not is always in question as well.

Here's the Catch 22: If an Iraqi suffers damages from Coalition personnel, or anyone working for the Coalition, then the claim must be taken up by their 'Parent State.' Since they're Iraqis, that would be Iraq. Yet the document says that Coalition personnel and people working for the Coalition are immune to Iraqi law.

So where can Iraqis file a claim?

The U.S. military has paid out nearly $2 million to Iraqi civilians who have complained to Coalition authorities that their family members were wrongfully killed. But because U.S. forces are immune from prosecution in Iraq courts, "commanders make payments from their discretionary funds, rarely even admitting liability," according to the UK Guardian. "Payouts average just a few hundred dollars and in some cases families have been asked to sign forms waiving their right to press for further compensation. In one area of south-western Baghdad, controlled by the 82nd Airborne Division, an officer said a total of $106,000 had been paid out to 176 claimants since July."

The CPA does have an official "human rights" bureau. It's called the "Office of Human Rights and Transitional Justice." It's located behind four heavily fortified military checkpoints, in the basement of the Baghdad convention center right down the hall from Bechtel. Iraqis can go there to file human rights claims. To qualify the abuse had to occur between February 1963 and April 2003, the years of Baath Party rule.

Dahr Jamail is a freelance journalist currently living in Baghdad.