Talking of Robin Cook, Craig, do you class him also as a War Criminal? In December 1998 we bombed Iraq and this is what Cook told the Commons.

“The action has been taken with the full authority of repeated Security Council resolutions, supported by all members of the Security Council.”

Exactly the point I have been making, that 687 and 678 remained in force and were relevant to the subsequent 1441. Goldsmith stated that the combined weight of these three resolutins gave the invasion legality.

eddie

Michael Wood and Elizabeth Wlimshurst both answered this point. 687 and 678 were overtaken by 1441 which contained a specific need to return to the Security Council to consider further action.

There are also important questions of proportionality, or to put it bluntly the difference between killing a dozen and a million.

“serious consequences”?

Anyway, the legal advice from the government’s law adviser was that the invasion was legal, so whatever Wood and Wilmshurst said is irrelvant. I thought Goldsmith put on a brilliant show by the way.

I agree with you about proportionality, which is why it always puzzles me that your readers are so obsessed with Iraq where perhaps 98,000 have died and yet ignore tyrants who have murdered millions. It’s like living in a house which has broken wndows and being obsessed with a faulty door handle. Well I know why they are obsessed, anything to attack the USA. You still haven’t explained why you keep calling Blair a war criminal when he has neither been charged nor convicted of any crime, yet you are so keen to uphold the rule of law. Can’t you understand the hypocrisy of that position?

Eddie,

I won’t argue the low number with you, but it is right to be more agitated about people whose deaths we caused.

And your response to the “war criminal” point is?

Eddie

Of course Blair is a war criminal. A very well protected one. Karadzic was a war criminal while he was in hiding. Charles Taylor was like Blair a war criminal while actually in power. You don’t have to be in the Hague yet to be a war criminal.

“it always puzzles me that your readers are so obsessed with Iraq where perhaps 98,000 have died and yet ignore tyrants who have murdered millions”

Because it’s _our_ government, asserting that it does it in _our_ name.

Or should the people of the UK not expect to have any more connection with their government than the victims of ?

“Perhaps ” is good, if you want to talk about hypocrisy. People have tried to discuss this, but you simply make these assertions without showing any reasoning, or willingness even to acknowledge that anyone’s saying anything. Is this still the good old Iraqi Body Count ?

A number greater than two. A number that’s probably no greater than 15,792,035. Up to 100% of all known germs. Sheesh. Did you ever work in advertising ?

Aargh. “Any more connection with their government than the victims of bad goverment”. Also “Perhaps number”. It hides stuff in angle brackets, of course.

eddie..

The point though is about the integrity,provenance and circumstances which informed Goldsmith’s'advice.Was he co-erced? This is extremely important if we are to find out whether the advice was given in good faith-and therefore legitimate.

Also,where do you get the 98,000 stat?

Finally Craig is consistent.He rails against tyranny wherever he finds it,whether Blair,Taylor,Pol Pot,Saddam,Stalin,Hitler et al.

That’s certainly something worth travelling 140 miles to hear. Fingers crossed the weather is stays fine.

Ooops, of course there’s no ‘is’. Apologies.

What bother me is the noncholance displayed by Goldsmith and his American chum lawyers when considering the legality of such an attack.

Nobody in their legal considerations seem to have yaken the human rights of the Iraqi population into account.

If these clever lawyers knew what was proposed and if they knew of the lack of preparation for the aftermatch of the attack, non existent logistical and administrative consideration regards to the health and safety of Iraqs civilian population, then it is not quiet clear as to what accounts for more, 1441, written in sufficinetly rybberoid words to argue the toss, or the established human rights that apply to all who have signed the UN charter into their countries law structure.

Iraq was a signatory and these lawyers should have taken more than one aspect of law into account, as it stands their considerations were as narrow and simplistic as the plans to run Iraq.

Why is indiscriminate warfare against innocent civilians/third parties never an issue?

why was it partially a consideration in the second great unplesantness, we did fight Hitler because of his inhumane treatment of the jewish population in Europe, but not considered to be a warcrime to burn down Dresden and Hamburg, why was it OK for UK/US troops to starve german soldiers?

fact is that the law is a victors law and even our best intentions to fight for justice will fall at the ramparts of those who like vagueness and unaccountability.

Either civilians have the same right than agressors, or our international laws are worth jack squit.

Always baffles me why war-mongers and their apologists totally reject figures on excess deaths in Iraq from respected outfits such as the John Hopkins institute and the Lancet, just wave them away. Yet when the _same_ institutes provide figures for (say) Bosnia and Sierra Leone, suddenly they are unassailable! Of course, that’s when the figures are used as a case _for making_ a war.

Eddie – what part of the methodology used by JH/Lancet do you actually dispute? You should know they low-ball the figure by excluding sites of massive destruction and death (e.g. the massacre at Fallujah). So the figure is certainly a lot higher than this, yet you pitch your “only” figure at well under 1/10th of this.

Of course, this does not count the millions – millions! – displaced internally and driven abroad, nor the millions made orphans or widows. What a disgrace to just dismiss it so casually, and turn a “Blair ear” to the agony of a nation.

Craig

Not making any promises but may be there…Fingers crossed.

“You should know they low-ball the figure by excluding sites of massive destruction and death (e.g. the massacre at Fallujah).”

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/press-releases/9/

refers to one of the several. I really don’t have time or interest to go digging for others, sorry.

I see the Lancet’s in the news again today. *Bad* Lancet, publishing *bad* studies …

IBC says 98,000 – they are the most reliable and well researched of all the Iraq investigations. But we have had this debate before and it gets us nowhere.

Craig – a criminal is someone who has been convicted by due process of law. Your response is wrong in law and in principle. As I said before, if you keep saying things like that it does not add to your reputation as a serious commentator. Even “alleged war criminal” would be better.

@eddie – it is hard-going to believe you think the excess deaths in Iraq is under 100,000 – but we’ve debated this on another thread, to no effect. But it is not fair to bandy this figure about as if we believe it too – I prefer the Lancet figure for good reasons, as do many people here.

You’ve scoffed at the Lancet figure in the past, and have labelled the IBC figure as “more reasonable”, but – as per glenn’s post – I don’t think I have read anything substantial from you that makes a good case for preferring IBC over the Lancet. Meanwhile – as much as you dislike them – the eds of MediaLens have consistently made an excellent case for the Lancet figures, as well as explaining perhaps why they are not as well known as they should be. They simply are the more academically rigorous of the two.

Again, the canard of anti-Americanism pops up – you surely cannot “know” why I hold the views I do. I am already on record as picking this fight with the US government and not its people, so a hatred of all things American just wouldn’t explain it. In any case, it should be just as fine to criticise US culture as it would be to criticise British culture. Why would it not be?

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq “1,366,350″

—————————————-

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In U.S. War And Occupation Of Iraq 4,692

—————————————-

Number Of International Occupation Force Troops Slaughtered In Afghanistan : 1,608

—————————————-

Cost of War in Iraq & Afghanistan

$954,273,785,856

—————————————-

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

@Eddie: A war criminal is someone who violates international law during times of war. Crimes are defined in law and an individual doesn’t need to be convicted, tried, or even accused in order to commit one. In particular, a war crime is “excessive brutality during war, in contravention of an international treaty or convention”. What part don’t you understand?

This kind of semantic desperation shows you’re on the ropes again.

I am vehemently anti-American with a vengence. That is I really despise the mostly vile group of extremely rich and powerful aristocrats that run the country for their own narrow and selfish benefit, rob it blind, and have the gall to send the sons of the working-class to die in wars that have nothing to do with them.

My second wife was an American, so I can safely say that I love America. She was a very spoilt anarchist, born with a platinum spoon in her mouth, and she hated American foreign policy more than I did, so I suppose one could classify her as anti-American too, but of course that would be very stupid indeed wouldn’t it?

There are elements of the American ruling elite, the people with money and property, who matter; who are just as appalled at the way things are as other people, but from personal experience they tend to be very cynical about the entire system and try to ignore what’s happening around them, after all it’s not as if it’s going to change anytime soon. These more “liberal” circles utterly despise the “fascists” as I’ve heard them labelled, and think they are driving the country into the ground at extraordinary speed, but what’s one to do? There were reform minded people in Rome, but look what happend to Caesar? In France before the revolution not every aristocrat was a pampered fool, but things had gone too far down the wrong road and collapse was inevitable. Even in Czarist Russia and Imperial China, people in the elite knew things needed to change, only how to push through reforms before it was too late, that was the question, and it still is.

“Crimes are defined in law and an individual doesn’t need to be convicted, tried, or even accused in order to commit one.” What tosh. Why does the ICC exist if that is the case?

I’m actually half-American, now I come to think of it. America is in my DNA and I’m really satisfied about that. I also like the Jewish bit of me, and the Irish, Polish, German, English, bits as well, and that’s just me. When I think about my family, well, we’ve had our sticky little fingers in so many juicy pies all over the place. We seemed to have collected flags like other people collect stamps, though mine is black and red.

Numbers are not really that important anymore, except to the relativers of those that died.

But legitimacy is important. How come these lawyers could asses and rule on whether its lawfull to go to war, but in no way would they see the legal infringements on human rights through the planned lack of infrastructure? bombing of civilian targets, bombing of shepherds during the period of the no fly zone. The no fly zone has seen many flagrant mis interpretations of the rules governing it, people died due to gummy stretchy words and terms of engagements.

The lack of preparedness and calculated risk and collateral damage which could be soreseen has in no way ever played any considerations in weighing up the case for war, nobody could/wanted to see past removing the tyrant and it was deliberate, designed to be inefficient, chaotic.

shall have a little demo tommorrow in Norwich, 11-12 am at the forum, I will be making a case for Tony Blair receiving a fair trial in the Hague.

‘Am looking forward to hear him squirm tommorrow

Eddie

I would just observe that according to your criteria Hitler was not a war criminal. He was never tried or convicted for war crimes or genocide, so we must not be impolite about him and call him a genocidal murderous shit. Stalin, Pinochet and Idi Amin are similarly entirely innocent of any wrong-doing, by your standard. I’m not saying Blair is in the same class as those guys, but if we can meaningfully discuss their crimes without their having stood trial, we can meaningfully discuss Blair’s crimes as well.

In a way, stretching things a bit, and the law is made for stretching, Eddie is half-right, though which half is difficult to tell.

We have laws, mostly to protect property rights, one way or another. At least in the modern world. On one level laws reflect power relationships in society. I imagine that’s why it’s relatively easy to apprehend some dumb petty criminal, the system is geared-up for catching him, but the richer and more powerful one is, the harder it gets. For example, Tony Blair.

In principle everyone should be equal before the law, yet in practice this doesn’t happen. I for example can afford the very best legal defence and this radically improves my chances of getting off compared to some chap who doesn’t have tuppence to rub together. Forty years ago we were busted at a sex and drugs orgie, devils that we were, and those of us with a bit of cash only got our wrists slapped, others were less fortunate.

The law isn’t really there to protect the powerful, there power, in the final analysis, protects them. The law is to protect the weak from the powerful. It’s the same with countries and war.

This is especially true since modern warfare became so devilishly destructive and wasteful. Increasingly one has tried to limit the use of war to solve problems. This is a process. A work in progress. So one has tried to make starting wars as difficult as possible, especially agressive wars, unprovoked wars.

Even a tyrant like Hitler couldn’t get away with attacking Poland without a reason. Even Hitler was aware of the power of German and world opinion, hard as it may be to believe. Anyway he devised a plan, where Germans dressed in Polish uniforms attacked a German border position first, and then Germany, very reluctantly of course, was forced to defend itself against the outrage of Polish agression against the peace-loving people of Nazi Germany! And as the German people weren’t keen on war, Hitler continued to justify his wars by recourse to self-defence.

But when leading, respected, democratic nations like the US/UK, piss on the structures of international law, however imperfect, designed to make wars harder to start, this has serious consequences, because if the democratic nations, who supposedly are the world’s leading defenders of the rule of law, begin to shred the rules, and get away with it, then how on earth are we going to stop the undemocratic nations following their bad example?

That’s why holding our leaders to account, not hanging them from the nearest lamppost, though after Blair expressed his understanding of the way Saddam was butchered I almost changed my mind; we need to try them for their crimes, even give them fair trials, because otherwise we undermine the rule of law, and if these swine are allowed to exscape free and easy after such massive crimes, they won’t rest there, they’ll come after you and me eventually, because nothing can stop them doing whatever they want, certainly not the law, because they’ve just shredded it in principle and in practice.

And that’s the road we are going down. We are abandoning the concept of equality under the law. We are replacing it with the system that existed before the modern era. That might in itself was right. That the law was power, and the powerful made the law. It’s an almost fuedal concept we’re moving towards. That the monarch is above the law. That he is the law and only answerable to his conscience and his God. Does any of this begin to sound like we’ve heard it before somewhere?

Ingo

Wonder if they will do the same for Blair…

http://tinyurl.com/ybcnlsy

Ahh, professional Scots with ridiculous plummy English accents. Dontcha just love them?

alan

did your surname programme your attitudes from birth?

I hope your speech helps to encourage the right attitude towards torture in the Scottish parliament proper – complete rejection. I don’t support Scottish independence, though if the great majority of Scots were to want it, I wouldn’t stand in their way.

Abe Rene

“if the great majority of Scots were to want it, I wouldn’t stand in their way”

a sensible line in self preservation

@eddie: you’re confusing ‘criminal’ with ‘convict’. The police go out to catch ‘criminals’; the word is correctly applied to the culprits long before they appear in front of a jury. Some crimes go undetected: the perpetrators are still criminals, even though they’re never caught. What matters is that they have infringed a law. If Tony Blair infringed a law prohibiting war, he’s a war criminal. Simples.

You’re clearly attempting dissembling tactics once again, eddie: nobody can be as persistently dense as you without a motive.

January 27, 2010

“Secret detention may amount to crime against humanity: UN experts”…

http://tinyurl.com/ye44gwq

“if the great majority of Scots were to want it, I wouldn’t stand in their way”

– a sensible line in self preservation

Yes. An SNP Advocate General would no doubt have sent Goldsmith home tae think again.

Unfortunately, only Jack Straw and Condy Rice were allowed that kind of influence; and by God, they used it.

“if the great majority of Scots were to want it, I wouldn’t stand in their way”

– a sensible line in self preservation

Living on a traffic island in the middle of the old A6, I’m a bit worried about getting trampled in the northwards rush.

ingo – “Why is indiscriminate warfare against innocent civilians/third parties never an issue?”

That’s the bit I object to, the idea that death, destruction and misery to other people is just fine, so long as it gets you your own way. Collateral damage, in all its manifestations.

If all the people that think you can sort something out by fighting would just go away and do it, maybe on the back side of the moon, somewhere where they won’t trample anyone else’s roses, I’d object to nothing more than the idea that my taxes are supposed to pay for one of the teams.

Thing is, as soon as you’re prepared to accept that the locals are going to get fucked up in the process, you just blew the Humanitarian thing. If it’s all for their own good, the last thing you can do is harm anyone. *Anyone*. It shows you had other interests that were more important, really.

I have to laugh when buffoons like eddie talk about anti-americanism.

What’s wrong with criticising mass murderers?

It’s too much like claims of anti-semitism when you criticise Israeli murderers.

Do these people really think that they can hide behind some sort of perverse political correctness, to protect them from punishment for their crimes?

I suspect they do.

That’s how evil they are.

Do these people really think that they can hide behind some sort of perverse political correctness, to protect them from punishment for their crimes?

Definition of Politically Correct:

Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

“I don’t support Scottish independence, though if the great majority of Scots were to want it, I wouldn’t stand in their way.”

Gosh, that’s jolly decent of you, Abe.

Can anyone point to any part of the UN charter which allows member states to take it upon themselves to instigate war without Security Council approval?

Nice to see the UK legal system looking at bringing those involved in rendition and torture to justice.

Would expect quite a few american names excluded from being welcome in the UK? anyone to put together a list?

PS good luck craig with the speech

Thanks for that snippet george. No I don’t think that Tony Blair will get to be rescued by american troops should he ever stand for trial in the Hague, but I’d love to see them trying.

More to the point, would they take the human rights of the population of the Dutch into account when taking out such a rescue operation?

Thanks also to ‘for the restless’ you had me in stitches this morning.

I just switched on T Bliar at Chilcot.

Is it wishful thinking on my part, or does he look very strained/stressed?

He sounds a lot more nervous than he was when pushing his war … maybe it’s the group sitting behind him that are making him so jumpy …

I think he is going for ‘slightly humble and well-meaning’ but you can see the nastiness underneath. I echo the howls of disbelief on the Guardian blog when he linked 9/11 to Iraq. And was not even challenged.

ingo

More to the point, The sheer arrogance of them…Chilling.

“or does he look very strained/stressed?”

dreoilin

You would look “very strained/stressed?” if you spent night after night counting blood money and thinking up ways to hide it…

http://tinyurl.com/yzrzoem

George,

The follow-up:

“Mystery of Tony Blair’s money solved”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/17/mystery-tony-blairs-money-solved

hawley_jr

Thanks.

I wonder how it works out as to how many pounds he gets for each of his victims?. Last I heard he was getting £6.000 (I will repeat that £6,000) a minute. Wonder if Tessa Jowell is advising him on offshore accounts?, still no shortage of New Labour members who could do that…me thinks.

hawley_jr – Thanks, seconded.

Also, I’m struck by the Garudina’s technique; offer a prize for the best explanation and then follow peoples’ contributions up. A very neat use of available resources.

I remember the New Scientist doing something similiar when the news started coming out about the hideous poisongassing of poor sodding Iranian conscripts. (’84 ? ’85 ?). One suggestion was, leftover Brit. munitions. It was how I first learnt of that bit of history, though the actual suggestion doesn’t seem to have been borne out.

“since Robin Cook”

That would be the Robin Cook who, as Foreign Secretary, that it was our KLA employees not the Yugoslavs who were engaged ingenocide in Kosovo & then 2 months later was part of a criminal war to help them in their genocide & make extra from selling children to western brothels & cutting up adults while alive to sell in pieces to our hospitals.

Not something I would consider an example of moral completeness. Cook was a Nazi war criminal who should have been hung – & not alone.