Depleted uranium, cluster bombs and destroying cities are war crimes. Whoever commits them is a criminal, no matter which nationality he belongs to.
......................................
The use of depleted uranium is a war crime. Article 23 of the Geneva Convention IV is clear: "It is forbidden to employ poison or poisoned weapons, to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army, to employ arms, projectiles or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering." the Geneva Protocol of 1925 explicitly prohibits "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gasses, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices."
.
War Crimes From The Air
.
"The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or destruction not justified by military necessity." -- Nuremberg conventions, Principle VI
Combatants "shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and, accordingly, shall direct their operations only against military objectives." -- Geneva Conventions, part IV, Article 48
.
Under the Geneva Conventions and customary law, it is a war crime to launch indiscriminate attacks affecting the civilian population or civilian objects in the knowledge that such attacks will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects. The distinction between combatants and non-combatants is fundamental to all humanitarian law.
.
No Iraqi citizen who survived the air war in Iraq, especially the sustained six-day bombing of Baghdad, a city of 5 million people, will ever forget the devastation and terror of the "shock-and-awe" campaign against Iraq.
.
According to Peter Ford of the Christian Science Monitor, the air war over Iraq was "the deadliest campaign for noncombatants that U.S. forces have fought since Vietnam." Reports gathered from hospitals, homes, mosques and morgues show a level of civilian casualties that far exceeds the First Gulf War, which cost about 5,000 civilian lives. Nearly 100 villagers, for example, "were killed by U.S. bombing and strafing on April 5, including 43 in one house. 'There was no military base here,' said Hamadia. 'This is just a peasant village.' " (Christian Science Monitor, May 22)
.
The radiation produced by depleted uranium in battle is a poison, a carcinogenic material that causes birth defects, lung disease, kidney disease, leukemia, breast cancer, lymphoma, bone cancer, and neurological disabilities.
.
It is a war crime to launch "an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population in the knowledge that such an attack will cause an excessive loss of life or injury to civilians." Geneva Conventions, Article 85 "It is especially forbidden to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army." -- Hague Conventions, Article 23
.
"The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited" -- Hague Conventions, Article 22
.
The formal war in Iraq has ended, and most of the big guns have fallen silent. Yet the death toll continues to rise, not merely because of the brutality of occupation and the resistance, but because of one of the most heinous, unpredictable weapons of modern war -- the cluster bomb.
.
All over Iraq, unexploded cluster bombs, originally dropped by U.S. troops in populated areas, are still killing and maiming civilians, farm animals, wildlife -- any living thing that touches them by accident.
.
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/opin/pr_uswc.html#Anchor-Cluster-35882
