Re: [A-List] US imperialism: the liberal excuse

["Christopher Black" <bar@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

So all the partisans and resistance fighters in Russia, France, Holland,
Poland, Czheckoslovakia, Italy, Yugoslavia etc who used such tactics to take
down Nazi soldiers and who are considered heroes for the past 60 years and
depicted in one Hollywood film after another are now to be condemned as war
criminals for killing those poor SS men. Remember the Dirty Dozen?

These people would be considered insane if not for their role as agents of
the US State Dept.

Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>
To: <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 3:24 AM
Subject: [A-List] US imperialism: the liberal excuse


> Iraqi leaders could face war crime trials over suicide attacks, rights
> groups warn
>
> Matthew Engel in Washington
> Tuesday April 1, 2003
> The Guardian
>
> Rights organisations supported the US government yesterday in condemning
the
> use of suicide bombings as a strategy in Iraq, saying they constituted a
> breach of the Geneva convention.
>
> Representatives of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said that
> the admission by senior Iraqi officials that they had encouraged such
> bombers made the attack on Saturday - when a man killed himself and four
> soldiers by blowing up his own car at a checkpoint outside Najaf - look
like
> a war crime.
>
> The relevant piece of international law is the ancient prohibition against
> "perfidy", which was codified in 1977 by an additional protocol to the
four
> main conventions, though this was never ratified by the US.
>
> "The focus on the suicidal nature of the attack is beside the point," said
> Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch. He added that it was also irrelevant
> that the killer might be defending his country or that he targeted
soldiers
> rather than civilians.
>
> "There is a distinction between perfidy and a ruse," Mr Roth said.
"There's
> nothing wrong with tricking the enemy. But if a suicide bomber gets to his
> target by pretending to be a civilian, that is a violation of humanitarian
> law because it endangers all civilians."
>
> "Deceit is the crucial issue. And if it's a governmental strategy, it's a
> war crime," said Neil Durkin of Amnesty. "If you feign surrender or injury
> or pretend to lay down your weapons, the same applies."
>
> The US government has been trying to rally support for the war over the
past
> few days by increasing mentions of the word "terror" to describe Iraqi
> activities. The Pentagon briefer, General Stanley McChrystal, said the
Najaf
> bombing "looks and feels like terrorism".
>
> The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has also initiated the use of the
> word "death squads" to describe Iraqi forces out of uniform, rather than
> more neutral words such as "Fedayeen", "irregulars", "paramilitaries" and
> "guerrillas". The language is a cunning reworking of a term previously
> favoured by leftwing activists to describe the operations of paramilitary
> forces hired by South American governments such as Colombia and Chile
under
> General Pinochet. Other American officials have called them "terror
squads".
>
> However, the rights organisations said the activities of these squads was
> not necessarily illegal even if they were not in uniform - provided they
> were clearly armed, and did not gain their enemy's confidence by
pretending
> to be non-combatants.
>
>
>
>
>