
George W. Bush photographed with war crimes co-defendants in the Cabinet Room of the White House in December 2001. From left: Vice President Dick Cheney, George W Bush, National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House chief of staff Andrew Card, C.I.A. director George Tenet (seated), and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The U.S. war in Afghanistan began in 2001 as a war of aggression similar to the attack on Iraq. Prior to the start of that war on Oct. 7, 2001, the Taliban government in Kabul offered to hand over Osama Bin Laden, the US alleged al-Qaeda leader, if the U.S. provided proof he was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
Bush deemed Kabul’s response insufficient and he attacked without adequately seeking an alternative or peaceful way to resolve differences…and the UN was not given a proper role. This attack violated Article 2 of the UN Charter that states “All members shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity…of any state…”
Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq attacked the United States, so neither war was based on self-defense. Preemptive war is not an accepted form of self-defense under international law.
On June 5, 2006, reporter Ed Hass contacted the FBI Headquarters to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. He spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Ladens Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Ladens Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”
The list of U.S. war crimes committed in Afghanistan alone include the following:
# The U.S. bombed the children’s hospital in Kabul and a hospital in Herat, resulting in 100 deaths. This violated the Red Cross Convention of 1864 that established even military hospitals as “neutral” and that must be “respected by belligerents.”
# Clearly marked Red Cross warehouses were bombed on three occasions in the Afghan War during October 2001, a violation of the Geneva Convention of 1929 that protects “the personnel of Voluntary Aid Societies.”
# During its 2001 offensive in Afghanistan, at least 1,000 civilians were killed by U.S. carpet bombing. This violates Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions prohibiting “indiscriminate attacks” against civilians.
# While the Hague Convention of 1899 requires that prisoners be “humanely treated,” this was often not the case in Afghanistan where the conditions in the prisons were so shocking that Canadian forces stopped sending prisoners to the American-run prisons at the end of 2005, preferring to send them to facilities run by the Afghan government.
# Although the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbids “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds,” captives were murdered in Afghanistan’s prisons. Some were chained naked to the ceiling, cell doors, and the floor. One man, Ait Idr, had his face forced into a toilet that was repeatedly flushed. Another, Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel, was hit with his arms tied behind his back until his head began to bleed. Another, Ahmed Darabi, was hung by his arms and repeatedly beaten, though he survived—unlike (a) taxicab driver (named) Dilawar, who died from the same treatment.
# Prisoners of war “shall be lodged in buildings or in barracks,” says the POW Convention of 1929 but many cells at American-run prisons in Afghanistan lack windows and adequate ventilation. Some prisons lacked heat during cold weather so that prisoners died of exposure. What’s more, some prisoners have been held in solitary confinement for years.
# Where the Geneva Convention decrees sick or wounded prisoners “shall not be transferred as long as their recovery may be endangered by the journey,” some prisoners transferred in Afghanistan were thrown to the ground from helicopters and badly injured. Still others were kicked or beaten en route and others died while stuffed into sealed cargo containers. Not surprisingly, the deaths of some Afghan prisoners have never been recorded, another war crimes violation.
Aggressive war was first declared to be illegal when the U.S. and France coauthored and later ratified the multilateral Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, thus incorporating that document into what the U.S. Constitution calls ”the law of the land.” Furthermore, the U.S. is a signatory to both the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, and the Tokyo Charter of 1946.
The Nuremberg Charter, for example, defines crimes against peace as “planning, preparation, initiation or the waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties…,” a definition that fits U.S. actions in Afghanistan during 2001.
It is not only the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq whose rights have been trampled, for today the globe is being transformed into an unchecked superpower playpen where might appears to make right. Hundreds of years of human rights progress are in serious jeopardy as long as governmental war criminals live blissfully in the knowledge that they will never be accountable for their crimes.
The more the public observes reference in the news to possible war crimes violations, the more decision makers will be accountable. Otherwise, the impunity of former high Bush administration officials for the immense violations documented….threatens to turn back the clock on human progress by shredding the Magna Carta, the American Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, and similar agreements that have advanced humanity from barbarism toward civilized behavior.
Bush has accomplished a transformed United States where leaders have abandoned democratic principles and loyal citizens are profoundly ashamed of how the ideals of the country they love so much have been abandoned. Something must be done or Americans will believe that whatever Bush has done was right.
Bringing George W. Bush and his former administration to justice for war crimes is the most compelling way in which to dispel the fiction that what has been done was necessary and proper. Otherwise, the specter of war crimes will continue to haunt the world, and civilization itself will unravel helplessly.
On Oct. 7, 2001 the United States. launched a war of terror against Afghanistan. U.S. leaders are continuing a war that is now opposed by a majority of the American public. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released on Sept. 1 indicated that 57 percent of Americans questioned stated they oppose the Afghan war. The percentage in opposition to the war is the highest ever in CNN polling since the war began.
President Obama has repeatedly referred to Afghanistan as a “war of necessity.” The initial invasion was “justified” as a self-defense reaction to 9/11 according to the Bush regime. But a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) was submitted to the White House on September 9, 2001 that essentially outlined the same war plan that the United States put into play after the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11Commission Report stated that on Sept. 10, 2001, the Bush administration agreed on a plan to oust the Taliban regime by force if it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden. The 9/11 attacks served as a convenient excuse to do what the United States was already intent on doing—attacking Afghanistan.
What have nine years of war accomplished?
Thousands of Afghans have been killed and millions continue to be refugees —either within Afghanistan or in nearby nations. The Afghan economy is shattered and Afghanistan is among the poorest countries in the world. Women are still oppressed as they were under the Taliban. Last year the US installed Afghanistan legislature passed a law that requires Shi’ite women to get permission from their husbands to go to school, visit a doctor, to work, and to do other ordinary activities. US installed President Karzai who was originally hand-picked by the United States signed the legislation to advance his election chances within Shi’a areas. Government corruption is so extensive that even the U.S. State Department has condemned it. The recent “democratic” elections are to this day still being contested because of massive fraud. War and drug lords are part of the government. One of Karzai’s vice-presidential running mates, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, is a notorious human rights abuser. In many areas such as poverty rates, life expectancy, unemployment, child mortality, life expectancy, and lack of human rights, Afghanistan is near the worst in the world.
Afghanistan is number one in opium production, not under the Taliban rule but under US and NATO occupation. Entire US battalions are used to protect the Opium fields of Afghanistan - to ensure that the fields are not destroyed as the illegal drug trade has financed all CIA illegal black opts since Vietnam.
After taking office, Obama escalated the war by sending additional troops to Afghanistan, with 68,000 to be there by November. There are also 38,000 NATO troops present and Afghan conscripts include 216,000 police and soldiers. As of March 2009, the U.S. military also employed 68,000 “mercenaries” in Afghanistan. These mercenaries do not include other hired killers on the payrolls of the State Department or other U.S. agencies. And despite nearly 400,000 personnel working for the U.S. military, “The insurgents (resistance groups) control or contest a significant portion of the country,” according to General McChrystal.
Last September CIA Director Panetta announced that the CIA is adding extra bases in Afghanistan to support the military buildup in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since taking office, Obama has asked Congress for more funds to expand the U.S. ran prison in Bagram, which holds prisoners taken in the US war of aggression and terror in Afghanistan and those captured and kidnapped by U.S. forces and their allies from around the world. Bagram’s record of human rights abuses rivals Guantanamo’s.
In addition to escalating the Afghan war, Obama has expanded the war into neighboring Pakistan by launching frequent missile strikes that have killed countless numbers of civilians. The United States has pressured Pakistan to attack Islamic militants within the country and civil war has broken out in parts of the country as a result. Continuing to expand the war of terror into nuclear-armed Pakistan is a dangerous proposition.
U.S. military leaders openly admit that they are engaged in a “long war” in the Afghanistan region. Depending on which one you listen to, the war will last anywhere from 5 years to a few more decades. Obama claims the United States must fight this war so that the Taliban and al Queda can not retake control of the country. Supporting the U.S. government to defeat the Taliban and their allies will not advance the interests of the Afghan or American people. It was in the interest of the US government to put the Taliban in power after the Taliban and other Afghanistan nationalists groups successfully ousted the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, ending the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Now it is only in the interest of the US government to commit genocide against the very same people who liberated the Afghan people from the Soviet war of aggression and occupation. The US needs the Afghanistan opium to finance all their future illegal CIA operations of terror, sabotage and political assassinations using CIA recruited operatives called al Queda. If the US leaves Afghanistan the Taliban would surely wipe out the Opium drug trade, just as they did in March of 2001. The Taliban are not drug warlords the US imposed Afghanistan government is made up entirely of drug warlords - including US imposed Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The Taliban would also take back control of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (TAP or TAPI) that the US stole from them when the US illegally attacked Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.
This war must be ended, not escalated. The U.S. and NATO must withdraw its forces. We must deliver a powerful message to the world that people in the United States will not allow their government to commit war crimes in Afghanistan.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff,
v.
1. George Walker Bush,
3. Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney,
4. Donald Henry Rumsfeld, and
5. Barack Hussein Obama
Defendants.
VERDICT FORM
We, the jury, unanimously find the following:
Count 1
A) We, the jury, find the defendant George Walker Bush
GUILTY
of the crime of crimes against peace - planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing - against the sovereign nation of Afghanistan and its people.
B) We, the jury, find the defendant Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney
GUILTY
of the crime of crimes against peace - planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing - against the sovereign nation of Afghanistan and its people.
C) We, the jury, find the defendant Donald Henry Rumsfeld
GUILTY
of the crime of crimes against peace - planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing - against the sovereign nation of Afghanistan and its people.
D) We, the jury, find the defendant Barack Hussein Obama
GUILTY
of the crime of crimes against peace - planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing - against the sovereign nation of Afghanistan and its people.
Count 2
A) We, the jury, find the defendant George Walker Bush
GUILTY
of the crime of Crimes against humanity - Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against the Afghanistan civilian population, during the war, and the persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of International Law, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
B) We, the jury, find the defendant Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney
GUILTY
of the crime of Crimes against humanity - Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against the Afghanistan civilian population, during the war, and the persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of International Law, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
C) We, the jury, find the defendant Donald Henry Rumsfeld
GUILTY
of the crime of Crimes against humanity - Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against the Afghanistan civilian population, during the war, and the persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of International Law, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
D) We, the jury, find the defendant Barack Hussein Obama
GUILTY
of the crime of Crimes against humanity - Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against the Afghanistan civilian population, during the war, and the persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of International Law, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
Count 3
A) We, the jury, find the defendant George Walker Bush
GUILTY
of the crime of WAR CRIMES including violations of laws or customs of war. In subsection (c)(3), the term “grave breach of common Article 3” means any conduct (such conduct constituting a grave breach of common Article 3 of the international conventions done at Geneva August 12, 1949), as follows: Torture, Cruel or inhuman treatment, Murder, Mutilation or maiming, Intentionally causing serious bodily injury, Rape, Sexual assault or abuse, and Taking hostages.
B) We, the jury, find the defendant Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney
GUILTY
of the crime of WAR CRIMES including violations of laws or customs of war. In subsection (c)(3), the term “grave breach of common Article 3” means any conduct (such conduct constituting a grave breach of common Article 3 of the international conventions done at Geneva August 12, 1949), as follows: Torture, Cruel or inhuman treatment, Murder, Mutilation or maiming, Intentionally causing serious bodily injury, Rape, Sexual assault or abuse, and Taking hostages.
C) We, the jury, find the defendant Donald Henry Rumsfeld
GUILTY
of the crime of WAR CRIMES including violations of laws or customs of war. In subsection (c)(3), the term “grave breach of common Article 3” means any conduct (such conduct constituting a grave breach of common Article 3 of the international conventions done at Geneva August 12, 1949), as follows: Torture, Cruel or inhuman treatment, Murder, Mutilation or maiming, Intentionally causing serious bodily injury, Rape, Sexual assault or abuse, and Taking hostages.
D) We, the jury, find the defendant Barack Hussein Obama
GUILTY
of the crime of WAR CRIMES including violations of laws or customs of war. In subsection (c)(3), the term “grave breach of common Article 3” means any conduct (such conduct constituting a grave breach of common Article 3 of the international conventions done at Geneva August 12, 1949), as follows: Torture, Cruel or inhuman treatment, Murder, Mutilation or maiming, Intentionally causing serious bodily injury, Rape, Sexual assault or abuse, and Taking hostages.