Racismo como strategia politica de destabilizacion social.
Parte 1
Parte 2
Friday, December 26, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
DynCorp: The Blackwater of Latin America.
U.S. Mercenaries in Colombia
by Ignacio Gómez
When the first details of the FARC guerrillas' attack at Miraflores in August 1998 emerged, the Colombian Armed Forces and government grew deeply concerned. They realized that the assault's principal target was a group of 20 to 30 U.S. veterans employed by the U.S. company DynCorp as pilots and ground crew for the aircraft at the San José del Guaviare anti-narcotics base. DynCorp's pilots were widely known to land at Miraflores for refueling, though, according to the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, the pilots were not authorized to set down in Miraflores and, at the time of the FARC attack, they had no reason to be there.
After the attack, a headcount back at the San José base raised fears that two U.S. pilots had gone missing. When the pair eventually turned up, it was confirmed that they had been out flying over the jungle in one of the five Vietnam-era OV-10 Broncos recently brought to Colombia by DynCorp. The use of the OV-10s has attracted criticism--even among U.S. observers--over their real efficacy in the aerial fumigation campaigns aimed at thwarting the cultivation of illicit crops in Colombia.
For its part, the U.S. State Department has been hesitant about the role of DynCorp's U.S. pilots and technicians in Colombia. Nevertheless, the company's $600 million contract has powerful supporters, among them the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Representative Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), a war veteran and member of the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association (see, The Propaganda of Benjamin Gilman).
DynCorp was formed at the behest of President Truman in 1946 for the purpose of putting surplus World War II equipment to use and providing jobs for ex-combatants. Today, the company is the foremost employer in the Washington D.C. area, the third largest employee-owned business in the United States, and a member of the Fortune 500. From its initial inception as California Eastern Airways, DynCorp has become a major player in aerospace research, including involvement in the development of U.S. missile programs, and in air services, such as in its prominent role at Fort Rucker, Virginia, the principal base for pilot training and maintenance of combat aircraft in the United States.
DynCorp's contract for the Andean drug war is but a tiny part of its operations, though the hardly miniscule sum of $600 million requires the active support of its associates (the majority of whom are Vietnam veterans) located in the most strategic positions of the government. Among its myriad current activities, DynCorp employs 50 to 80 retired U.S. soldiers in Colombia.
In July 1998, the mercenary industry's magazine, Soldier of Fortune, ran a cover feature on the DynCorp pilots, which, under the suggestive title "Pray and Spray," examined their work in the Guaviare region--work they perform knowing full well they constitute the FARC's primary military target. The article, much like the discourse of Rep. Gilman, repeatedly refers to the FARC as "narco-guerrillas."
Written by Soldier of Fortune chief foreign correspondent Steve Salisbury, the article covered Colombian soldiers' questions for the DynCorp teams and portrays the relationship between the 7th Anti-narcotic Company (of Guaviare) and the U.S. veterans who work in the region as a cordial one. Soldier of Fortune reported that only one Colombian knew how to fly the OV-10, which requires two crewmen, and that the number of DynCorp's U.S. participants fluctuated between 50 and 80 men. Between one third and one half of them were pilots, while the rest were mechanics, and over 30 were stationed in San José del Guaviare, rotating in and out for 15 day periods.
Soldier of Fortune also reported that DynCorp had planes at the Mariquita and Santa Marta anti-drug bases, and that on at least a few separate occasions its aircraft have flown to the Puerto Asís base in the Putumayo region of southern Colombia where much of the territory is controlled by the FARC.
Officially, Colombian police have claimed to appreciate DynCorp's services, but in private they have made their reservations about the U.S. mercenaries known to the State Department via the Bogotá embassy's Narcotics Affairs Section. According to a Colombian police officer speaking on condition of anonymity, the U.S. pilots fail to comply with even such basic norms of security as dispersing the aircraft at the base in order to limit potential damage in the event of a guerrilla attack. He goes on to claim that DynCorp's pilots fly when they feel like it, don't fill out flight logs, and fail to complete their pre-planned flight routes.
A Colombian soldier from one of the military's anti-drug patrols, who spoke only after removing his name from his uniform, complained that, "[The DynCorp pilots] fly in bermuda shorts, smoke wherever they want, and drink whiskey almost everyday." At the San José del Guaviare base, continued the soldier, the DynCorp men have a barracks with all the comforts--even satellite television. A Colombian national guardsman near the base complained that, "A Vietnam veteran does not subordinate himself to a Colombian police officer, and that's why there have been problems."
Through a contract with the U.S. State Department (the text of which was denied to the Washington Post for reasons of national security), DynCorp took charge of the supply and maintainence of the helicopters used for the interdiction of "drugs at their source" in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, and of the fixed-wing aircraft employed in aerial fumigation efforts aimed at illicit crop production in Colombia.
The initial batch of aircraft consisted of 11 Ayres Turbo-Thrushes, noted for their maneuverability and range. The Turbo-Thrush has armor that leaves only its nose exposed to ground fire, and a hit there, though highly unlikely, could down the plane. Because Turbo-Thrushes have to fly at an altitude of 300 feet during fumigation, where they are vulnerable from guerrilla fire, DynCorp's helicopters have to "secure the ground" before each mission.
In 1998, Rep. Gilman procured a shipment of Blackhawk attack helicopters that can hover and fire their machine guns as the airplanes spray. The Blackhawks have to be maintained and flown by DynCorp's pilots until they complete the training of Colombian counterparts. Gilman's foremost justification for the helicopters was the kidnapping of U.S. birdwatchers in Colombia. "The Colombian National Police need these high-capacity helicopters… in order to get out there with enough armed police to rescue our citizens," said the Congressman.
No other U.S. Congressman has visited Colombia more times than Gilman. And each time he visits, he sets aside time to talk with the U.S. pilots at the Guaviare base. He has repeatedly, and successfully, argued for the extension of DynCorp's contract and has been a prominent supporter of the Clinton Administration's $1.3 billion aid package that will provide 18 more Blackhawk helicopters, which implies increased revenues for DynCorp from maintenance of these new aircraft and training of the pilots.
U.S. Army Southern Command chief General Charles Wilhelm, cited by Rep. Gilman in Congress, stated that 90 percent of the operations of the Colombian Anti-narcotics Police involve helicopters, and that hostile fire had been received during 40 percent of the missions. According to the Colombian police, between January 1994 and November 1997, three police airplanes and five helicopters were shot down. Planes were hit on 67 occasions, and helicopters were struck 74 times, resulting in 44 deaths and 72 injuries to anti-drug police. Perhaps the most startling statistic is that there have been three DynCorp "civilian" casualties and the complete loss of two Turbo-Thrushes in incidents where the police have ruled out the guerrillas as suspects.
Nonetheless, DynCorp has been experimenting with five twin-motored OV-10 Broncos, which were used as reconnaissance planes in Vietnam and on occasion for the dropping of napalm. In contrast to napalm (the incendiary powder that destroyed whole villages in Vietnam and Cambodia), glyphosate--the chemical herbicide nicknamed "round-up" that's being used against coca and poppy crops--is liquid and evaporates quickly. This is why, given the high speeds the OV-10s fly and the low altitudes required for aerial fumigation, one must question the real reason behind the deployment of both the OV-10s and DynCorp's disobedient pilots.
Ignacio Gómez is an investigative reporter with the Bogotá daily, El Espectador. He is currently living in exile as a result of threats to his life. A different version of this article previously appeared in El Espectador. Translated from Spanish by Eric Fichtl.
This article originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).
(Source: http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia19.htm)
by Ignacio Gómez
When the first details of the FARC guerrillas' attack at Miraflores in August 1998 emerged, the Colombian Armed Forces and government grew deeply concerned. They realized that the assault's principal target was a group of 20 to 30 U.S. veterans employed by the U.S. company DynCorp as pilots and ground crew for the aircraft at the San José del Guaviare anti-narcotics base. DynCorp's pilots were widely known to land at Miraflores for refueling, though, according to the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, the pilots were not authorized to set down in Miraflores and, at the time of the FARC attack, they had no reason to be there.
After the attack, a headcount back at the San José base raised fears that two U.S. pilots had gone missing. When the pair eventually turned up, it was confirmed that they had been out flying over the jungle in one of the five Vietnam-era OV-10 Broncos recently brought to Colombia by DynCorp. The use of the OV-10s has attracted criticism--even among U.S. observers--over their real efficacy in the aerial fumigation campaigns aimed at thwarting the cultivation of illicit crops in Colombia.
For its part, the U.S. State Department has been hesitant about the role of DynCorp's U.S. pilots and technicians in Colombia. Nevertheless, the company's $600 million contract has powerful supporters, among them the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Representative Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), a war veteran and member of the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association (see, The Propaganda of Benjamin Gilman).
DynCorp was formed at the behest of President Truman in 1946 for the purpose of putting surplus World War II equipment to use and providing jobs for ex-combatants. Today, the company is the foremost employer in the Washington D.C. area, the third largest employee-owned business in the United States, and a member of the Fortune 500. From its initial inception as California Eastern Airways, DynCorp has become a major player in aerospace research, including involvement in the development of U.S. missile programs, and in air services, such as in its prominent role at Fort Rucker, Virginia, the principal base for pilot training and maintenance of combat aircraft in the United States.
DynCorp's contract for the Andean drug war is but a tiny part of its operations, though the hardly miniscule sum of $600 million requires the active support of its associates (the majority of whom are Vietnam veterans) located in the most strategic positions of the government. Among its myriad current activities, DynCorp employs 50 to 80 retired U.S. soldiers in Colombia.
In July 1998, the mercenary industry's magazine, Soldier of Fortune, ran a cover feature on the DynCorp pilots, which, under the suggestive title "Pray and Spray," examined their work in the Guaviare region--work they perform knowing full well they constitute the FARC's primary military target. The article, much like the discourse of Rep. Gilman, repeatedly refers to the FARC as "narco-guerrillas."
Written by Soldier of Fortune chief foreign correspondent Steve Salisbury, the article covered Colombian soldiers' questions for the DynCorp teams and portrays the relationship between the 7th Anti-narcotic Company (of Guaviare) and the U.S. veterans who work in the region as a cordial one. Soldier of Fortune reported that only one Colombian knew how to fly the OV-10, which requires two crewmen, and that the number of DynCorp's U.S. participants fluctuated between 50 and 80 men. Between one third and one half of them were pilots, while the rest were mechanics, and over 30 were stationed in San José del Guaviare, rotating in and out for 15 day periods.
Soldier of Fortune also reported that DynCorp had planes at the Mariquita and Santa Marta anti-drug bases, and that on at least a few separate occasions its aircraft have flown to the Puerto Asís base in the Putumayo region of southern Colombia where much of the territory is controlled by the FARC.
Officially, Colombian police have claimed to appreciate DynCorp's services, but in private they have made their reservations about the U.S. mercenaries known to the State Department via the Bogotá embassy's Narcotics Affairs Section. According to a Colombian police officer speaking on condition of anonymity, the U.S. pilots fail to comply with even such basic norms of security as dispersing the aircraft at the base in order to limit potential damage in the event of a guerrilla attack. He goes on to claim that DynCorp's pilots fly when they feel like it, don't fill out flight logs, and fail to complete their pre-planned flight routes.
A Colombian soldier from one of the military's anti-drug patrols, who spoke only after removing his name from his uniform, complained that, "[The DynCorp pilots] fly in bermuda shorts, smoke wherever they want, and drink whiskey almost everyday." At the San José del Guaviare base, continued the soldier, the DynCorp men have a barracks with all the comforts--even satellite television. A Colombian national guardsman near the base complained that, "A Vietnam veteran does not subordinate himself to a Colombian police officer, and that's why there have been problems."
Through a contract with the U.S. State Department (the text of which was denied to the Washington Post for reasons of national security), DynCorp took charge of the supply and maintainence of the helicopters used for the interdiction of "drugs at their source" in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, and of the fixed-wing aircraft employed in aerial fumigation efforts aimed at illicit crop production in Colombia.
The initial batch of aircraft consisted of 11 Ayres Turbo-Thrushes, noted for their maneuverability and range. The Turbo-Thrush has armor that leaves only its nose exposed to ground fire, and a hit there, though highly unlikely, could down the plane. Because Turbo-Thrushes have to fly at an altitude of 300 feet during fumigation, where they are vulnerable from guerrilla fire, DynCorp's helicopters have to "secure the ground" before each mission.
In 1998, Rep. Gilman procured a shipment of Blackhawk attack helicopters that can hover and fire their machine guns as the airplanes spray. The Blackhawks have to be maintained and flown by DynCorp's pilots until they complete the training of Colombian counterparts. Gilman's foremost justification for the helicopters was the kidnapping of U.S. birdwatchers in Colombia. "The Colombian National Police need these high-capacity helicopters… in order to get out there with enough armed police to rescue our citizens," said the Congressman.
No other U.S. Congressman has visited Colombia more times than Gilman. And each time he visits, he sets aside time to talk with the U.S. pilots at the Guaviare base. He has repeatedly, and successfully, argued for the extension of DynCorp's contract and has been a prominent supporter of the Clinton Administration's $1.3 billion aid package that will provide 18 more Blackhawk helicopters, which implies increased revenues for DynCorp from maintenance of these new aircraft and training of the pilots.
U.S. Army Southern Command chief General Charles Wilhelm, cited by Rep. Gilman in Congress, stated that 90 percent of the operations of the Colombian Anti-narcotics Police involve helicopters, and that hostile fire had been received during 40 percent of the missions. According to the Colombian police, between January 1994 and November 1997, three police airplanes and five helicopters were shot down. Planes were hit on 67 occasions, and helicopters were struck 74 times, resulting in 44 deaths and 72 injuries to anti-drug police. Perhaps the most startling statistic is that there have been three DynCorp "civilian" casualties and the complete loss of two Turbo-Thrushes in incidents where the police have ruled out the guerrillas as suspects.
Nonetheless, DynCorp has been experimenting with five twin-motored OV-10 Broncos, which were used as reconnaissance planes in Vietnam and on occasion for the dropping of napalm. In contrast to napalm (the incendiary powder that destroyed whole villages in Vietnam and Cambodia), glyphosate--the chemical herbicide nicknamed "round-up" that's being used against coca and poppy crops--is liquid and evaporates quickly. This is why, given the high speeds the OV-10s fly and the low altitudes required for aerial fumigation, one must question the real reason behind the deployment of both the OV-10s and DynCorp's disobedient pilots.
Ignacio Gómez is an investigative reporter with the Bogotá daily, El Espectador. He is currently living in exile as a result of threats to his life. A different version of this article previously appeared in El Espectador. Translated from Spanish by Eric Fichtl.
This article originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).
(Source: http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia19.htm)
Could Bush Be Prosecuted?
Bush Seeks Immunity for War Crimes !! Pardons Himself !!!
Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
By Jan Frel, AlterNet
Posted on July 10, 2006, Printed on December 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/
The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.
While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.
From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn recently described this as our "inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior."
Most Americans firmly believe there is nothing the United States or its political leadership could possibly do that could equate to the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. The Nazis are our "gold standard of evil," as author John Dolan once put it.
But the truth is that we can, and we have -- most recently and significantly in Iraq. Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.
Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."
Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:
"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."
It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law," and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003. Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive."
Writing for the United Kingdom's Guardian, shortly before the 2003 invasion, international law expert Mark Littman echoed Ferencz: "The threatened war against Iraq will be a breach of the United Nations Charter and hence of international law unless it is authorized by a new and unambiguous resolution of the Security Council. The Charter is clear. No such war is permitted unless it is in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council."
Challenges to the legality of this war can also be found at the ground level. First Lt. Ehren Watada, the first U.S. commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq, cites the rules of the U.N. Charter as a principle reason for his dissent.
Ferencz isn't using the invasion of Iraq as a convenient prop to exercise his longstanding American hatred: he has a decades-old paper trail of calls for every suspect of war crimes to be brought to international justice. When the United States captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003, Ferencz wrote that Hussein's offenses included "the supreme international crime of aggression, to a wide variety of crimes against humanity, and a long list of atrocities condemned by both international and national laws."
Ferencz isn't the first to make the suggestion that the United States has committed state-sponsored war crimes against another nation -- not only have leading war critics made this argument, but so had legal experts in the British government before the 2003 invasion. In a short essay in 2005, Ferencz lays out the inner deliberations of British and American officials as the preparations for the war were made:
U.K. military leaders had been calling for clear assurances that the war was legal under international law. They were very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government. Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff, was quoted as saying "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in The Hague."
Ferencz quotes the British deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry who, in the lead-up to the invasion, quit abruptly and wrote in her resignation letter: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution … [A]n unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."
While the United Kingdom is a signatory of the ICC, and therefore under jurisdiction of that court, the United States is not, thanks to a Republican majority in Congress that has "attacks on America's sovereignty" and "manipulation by the United Nations" in its pantheon of knee-jerk neuroses. Ferencz concedes that even though Britain and its leadership could be prosecuted, the international legal climate isn't at a place where justice is blind enough to try it -- or as Ferencz put it, humanity isn't yet "civilized enough to prevent this type of illegal behavior." And Ferencz said that while he believes the United States is guilty of war crimes, "the international community is not sufficiently organized to prosecute such a case. … There is no court at the moment that is competent to try that crime."
As Ferencz said, the world is still a long way away from establishing norms that put all nations under the rule of law, but the battle to do so is a worthy one: "There's no such thing as a war without atrocities, but war-making is the biggest atrocity of all."
The suggestion that the Bush administration's conduct in the "war on terror" amounts to a string of war crimes and human rights abuses is gaining credence in even the most ossified establishment circles of Washington. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in the recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling by the Supreme Court suggests that Bush's attempt to ignore the Geneva Conventions in his approved treatment of terror suspects may leave him open to prosecution for war crimes. As Sidney Blumenthal points out, the Court rejected Bush's attempt to ignore Common Article 3, which bans "cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
And since Congress enacted the Geneva Conventions, making them the law of the United States, any violations that Bush or any other American commits "are considered 'war crimes' punishable as federal offenses," as Justice Kennedy wrote.
George W. Bush in the dock facing a charge of war crimes? That's well beyond the scope of possibility … or is it?
Jan Frel is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/
Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
By Jan Frel, AlterNet
Posted on July 10, 2006, Printed on December 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/
The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.
While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.
From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn recently described this as our "inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior."
Most Americans firmly believe there is nothing the United States or its political leadership could possibly do that could equate to the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. The Nazis are our "gold standard of evil," as author John Dolan once put it.
But the truth is that we can, and we have -- most recently and significantly in Iraq. Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.
Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."
Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:
"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."
It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law," and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003. Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive."
Writing for the United Kingdom's Guardian, shortly before the 2003 invasion, international law expert Mark Littman echoed Ferencz: "The threatened war against Iraq will be a breach of the United Nations Charter and hence of international law unless it is authorized by a new and unambiguous resolution of the Security Council. The Charter is clear. No such war is permitted unless it is in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council."
Challenges to the legality of this war can also be found at the ground level. First Lt. Ehren Watada, the first U.S. commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq, cites the rules of the U.N. Charter as a principle reason for his dissent.
Ferencz isn't using the invasion of Iraq as a convenient prop to exercise his longstanding American hatred: he has a decades-old paper trail of calls for every suspect of war crimes to be brought to international justice. When the United States captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003, Ferencz wrote that Hussein's offenses included "the supreme international crime of aggression, to a wide variety of crimes against humanity, and a long list of atrocities condemned by both international and national laws."
Ferencz isn't the first to make the suggestion that the United States has committed state-sponsored war crimes against another nation -- not only have leading war critics made this argument, but so had legal experts in the British government before the 2003 invasion. In a short essay in 2005, Ferencz lays out the inner deliberations of British and American officials as the preparations for the war were made:
U.K. military leaders had been calling for clear assurances that the war was legal under international law. They were very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government. Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff, was quoted as saying "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in The Hague."
Ferencz quotes the British deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry who, in the lead-up to the invasion, quit abruptly and wrote in her resignation letter: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution … [A]n unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."
While the United Kingdom is a signatory of the ICC, and therefore under jurisdiction of that court, the United States is not, thanks to a Republican majority in Congress that has "attacks on America's sovereignty" and "manipulation by the United Nations" in its pantheon of knee-jerk neuroses. Ferencz concedes that even though Britain and its leadership could be prosecuted, the international legal climate isn't at a place where justice is blind enough to try it -- or as Ferencz put it, humanity isn't yet "civilized enough to prevent this type of illegal behavior." And Ferencz said that while he believes the United States is guilty of war crimes, "the international community is not sufficiently organized to prosecute such a case. … There is no court at the moment that is competent to try that crime."
As Ferencz said, the world is still a long way away from establishing norms that put all nations under the rule of law, but the battle to do so is a worthy one: "There's no such thing as a war without atrocities, but war-making is the biggest atrocity of all."
The suggestion that the Bush administration's conduct in the "war on terror" amounts to a string of war crimes and human rights abuses is gaining credence in even the most ossified establishment circles of Washington. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in the recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling by the Supreme Court suggests that Bush's attempt to ignore the Geneva Conventions in his approved treatment of terror suspects may leave him open to prosecution for war crimes. As Sidney Blumenthal points out, the Court rejected Bush's attempt to ignore Common Article 3, which bans "cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
And since Congress enacted the Geneva Conventions, making them the law of the United States, any violations that Bush or any other American commits "are considered 'war crimes' punishable as federal offenses," as Justice Kennedy wrote.
George W. Bush in the dock facing a charge of war crimes? That's well beyond the scope of possibility … or is it?
Jan Frel is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/
Monday, December 8, 2008
Blackwater: Mercenaries of the U.S. government
Blackwater: Mercenaries Outnumber U.S. troops!
BBC NEWS
Outsourcing the war
By Neil Arun
BBC News Online
The murder of four Americans by a mob in the Iraqi town of Falluja has focused attention on the private security contractors operating in the country.
For the US press, this image bore grim echoes of an earlier mission gone wrong.
In 1993, an angry crowd paraded the battered remains of an American special-forces soldier through the streets of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
But in the 11 years since that US raid in Mogadishu ended in disaster, a telling difference has emerged - the men who died in Falluja this week were civilians, not soldiers.
They were the employees of Blackwater, one of many privately-owned firms taking over the conflict-zone security work that was once the preserve of soldiers.
Partner in war
What were they doing in Iraq?
Blackwater declined to be interviewed by BBC News Online, but a press release issued by the firm said it is "a US government subcontractor providing convoy security for food deliveries in the Falluja area".
Defence experts have described Blackwater as a formidable player in the field of private firms that serves America's security needs in the "war on terror".
Bodyguards trained by Blackwater protect the top US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.
In Afghanistan, the firm's employees have provided security to countless foreign civilians involved in the post-war reconstruction effort.
'Helicopter' tower
The firm's sprawling training facility has even been used by the US military and FBI, according to former soldier John Roos, who now edits the Armed Forces Journal.
It is this "state-of-the-art" complex in North Carolina that most impressed Mr Roos, whose publication rents the site for an annual gathering.
He told BBC News Online the ranch is a soldier's dream, catering for almost every type of combat situation.
"They outfit their people with the best weapons, the best equipment," he said, describing how no expense is spared in testing new technology - often to destruction.
He offered an example of how a contract to train US coast guards in the fight against drug-smuggling led to the construction of a special tower alongside a small lake.
In training, operatives would take up positions on the tower before taking aim at a moving target on the water.
The object of the exercise, according to Mr Roos, was to simulate a helicopter raid on a boat carrying narcotics.
Flying high
Blackwater's priority, he says, is to improve its logistics - in particular, the ability to deploy its personnel at speed, anywhere in the world.
It already has access to at least one helicopter and is "looking around for a fixed-wing airplane".
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper in March, Blackwater Security chief Gary Jackson spoke of how the firm "has grown 300% over each of the past three years".
He also confirmed that the firm had recently recruited scores of commandos from Chile for work in Iraq.
Short-term, high-risk
Typical recruits to firms like Blackwater are elite soldiers that have retired from military special-operations units.
The risks are high, but so are the salaries, drawing in men who have seen action in hotspots around the world.
The swelling ranks of private security staff in Iraq is said to total over 10,000 and includes Fijians, Nepalese Gurkhas, Englishmen, Americans, Serbs, Bosnians and of course, some Iraqis.
According to Mark Whyte, from UK-based company, Pilgrims Security, most of these men are not directly employed by the firms, but are rather hired as freelance "consultants".
The contracts are usually short-term and responsibility for any risks taken - and for paying taxes - rests with the individual.
Violence in the balance
According to Dr David Capitanchick, a UK-based expert, security firms are set to prosper in the current climate.
As far as governments are concerned, "mercenaries are low-risk" fighters, he said.
The public knows that, unlike regular soldiers, private guards are usually very highly paid. Faced with casualties such as the recent deaths in Falluja, said Dr Capitanchick, "people tend to say - well, that's the risk they take".
Thus as the perceived threat against foreigners working in conflict zones increases, the demand for private protection will remain healthy.
But, warns Mr Whyte, that logic too has its limits.
If the violence truly gets out of control, the foreign civilians involved in reconstruction will begin to pull out - and the client-base for the security firms could well dry up.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3591701.stm
Published: 2004/04/02 07:35:58 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
(Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3591701.stm)
BBC NEWS
Outsourcing the war
By Neil Arun
BBC News Online
The murder of four Americans by a mob in the Iraqi town of Falluja has focused attention on the private security contractors operating in the country.
For the US press, this image bore grim echoes of an earlier mission gone wrong.
In 1993, an angry crowd paraded the battered remains of an American special-forces soldier through the streets of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
But in the 11 years since that US raid in Mogadishu ended in disaster, a telling difference has emerged - the men who died in Falluja this week were civilians, not soldiers.
They were the employees of Blackwater, one of many privately-owned firms taking over the conflict-zone security work that was once the preserve of soldiers.
Partner in war
What were they doing in Iraq?
Blackwater declined to be interviewed by BBC News Online, but a press release issued by the firm said it is "a US government subcontractor providing convoy security for food deliveries in the Falluja area".
Defence experts have described Blackwater as a formidable player in the field of private firms that serves America's security needs in the "war on terror".
Bodyguards trained by Blackwater protect the top US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.
In Afghanistan, the firm's employees have provided security to countless foreign civilians involved in the post-war reconstruction effort.
'Helicopter' tower
The firm's sprawling training facility has even been used by the US military and FBI, according to former soldier John Roos, who now edits the Armed Forces Journal.
It is this "state-of-the-art" complex in North Carolina that most impressed Mr Roos, whose publication rents the site for an annual gathering.
He told BBC News Online the ranch is a soldier's dream, catering for almost every type of combat situation.
"They outfit their people with the best weapons, the best equipment," he said, describing how no expense is spared in testing new technology - often to destruction.
He offered an example of how a contract to train US coast guards in the fight against drug-smuggling led to the construction of a special tower alongside a small lake.
In training, operatives would take up positions on the tower before taking aim at a moving target on the water.
The object of the exercise, according to Mr Roos, was to simulate a helicopter raid on a boat carrying narcotics.
Flying high
Blackwater's priority, he says, is to improve its logistics - in particular, the ability to deploy its personnel at speed, anywhere in the world.
It already has access to at least one helicopter and is "looking around for a fixed-wing airplane".
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper in March, Blackwater Security chief Gary Jackson spoke of how the firm "has grown 300% over each of the past three years".
He also confirmed that the firm had recently recruited scores of commandos from Chile for work in Iraq.
Short-term, high-risk
Typical recruits to firms like Blackwater are elite soldiers that have retired from military special-operations units.
The risks are high, but so are the salaries, drawing in men who have seen action in hotspots around the world.
The swelling ranks of private security staff in Iraq is said to total over 10,000 and includes Fijians, Nepalese Gurkhas, Englishmen, Americans, Serbs, Bosnians and of course, some Iraqis.
According to Mark Whyte, from UK-based company, Pilgrims Security, most of these men are not directly employed by the firms, but are rather hired as freelance "consultants".
The contracts are usually short-term and responsibility for any risks taken - and for paying taxes - rests with the individual.
Violence in the balance
According to Dr David Capitanchick, a UK-based expert, security firms are set to prosper in the current climate.
As far as governments are concerned, "mercenaries are low-risk" fighters, he said.
The public knows that, unlike regular soldiers, private guards are usually very highly paid. Faced with casualties such as the recent deaths in Falluja, said Dr Capitanchick, "people tend to say - well, that's the risk they take".
Thus as the perceived threat against foreigners working in conflict zones increases, the demand for private protection will remain healthy.
But, warns Mr Whyte, that logic too has its limits.
If the violence truly gets out of control, the foreign civilians involved in reconstruction will begin to pull out - and the client-base for the security firms could well dry up.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3591701.stm
Published: 2004/04/02 07:35:58 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
(Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3591701.stm)
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