The Nuremberg Charter defines "Crimes Against Peace" as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war 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." Bush's war on Iraq is a war of aggression, and thus constitutes a Crime Against Peace.

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Excerpted from "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law."

 

Image, PBS.org

Although Bush marketed the war in Iraq as necessary to protect us from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD), his decisions had less to do with self-defense than with dominating the oil-rich Middle East.    Some evidence for this conclusion can be found in a September 2000 report prepared by the neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC).  The report, commissioned by Dick Cheney, outlines a plan "to maintain American military preeminence that is consistent with the requirements of a strategy of American global leadership." It notes that while "the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Another document produced for Vice President Cheney's secret Energy Task Force included a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals as well as charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects and "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." That document was dated March 2001, six months before 9/11 and two years before Bush invaded Iraq.

After 9/11, the Bush administration attacked Afghanistan and removed the Taliban from power. But the primary target all along was Iraq.  To sell the war to the American people, the administration made two claims and repeated them like a mantra.  First, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  Second, it had ties with al-Qaeda and was thus complicit in the 9/11 attacks.  Although the administration argued that both reasons justified the use of force against Iraq, it was advised repeatedly that neither claim was valid. 

No Weapons of Mass Destruction

An August 2006 report prepared at the direction of Rep. John Conyers, Jr. found that "members of the Bush Administration misstated, overstated, and manipulated intelligence with regards to linkages between Iraq and Al Qaeda; the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iraq; the acquisition of aluminum tubes to be used as uranium centrifuges; and the acquisition of uranium from Niger." The report also noted that "[b]eyond making false and misleading statements about Iraq's attempt to acquire nuclear weapons, the record shows the Bush Administration must have known these statements conflicted with known international and domestic intelligence at the time." Finding that the administration had also misstated or overstated intelligence information regarding chemical and biological weapons, the report concluded that "these misstatements were in contradiction of known countervailing intelligence information, and were the result of political pressure and manipulation." In short, the Bush gang misrepresented the WMD threat to justify its planned invasion of Iraq.

No Connection Between Iraq and al Qaeda

On September 21, 2001, Bush was told in the President's Daily Brief that the intelligence community had no evidence connecting Saddam Hussein's regime to the 9/11 attacks.  Furthermore, there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with al Qaeda. This was no surprise.  Al Qaeda is a consortium of intensely religious Islamic fundamentalists, whereas Hussein ran a secular government that repressed religious activity in Iraq. 

Undeterred, Bush and his people continued to tout the connection.  Although the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) determined in February 2002 that "Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful [chemical or biological weapons] knowledge or assistance," Bush proclaimed one year later, "Iraq has also provided al-Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training." And although the CIA concluded in a classified January 2003 report that Hussein "viewed Islamic extremists operating inside Iraq as a threat," Cheney claimed the next day that the Iraqi government "aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda."

To support their claims that Iraq was training al-Qaeda members, Bush, Cheney, and Colin Powell repeatedly cited information provided by Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda prisoner captured shortly after 9/11. An ex-FBI official told Newsweek that the CIA "duct-taped [al-Libi's] mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for some "more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations" in violation of U.S. law prohibiting extraordinary rendition. Al-Libi's account proved worthless.  The February 2002 DIA memo reveals al-Libi provided his American interrogators with false material suggesting Iraq had trained al-Qaeda to use weapons of mass destruction. Even though U.S. intelligence thought the information was untrue as early as 2002 because it was obtained by torture, al-Libi's information provided the centerpiece of Colin Powell's now thoroughly discredited February 2003 claim before the United Nations that Iraq had developed WMD programs.

The March to War

Bush poked his head into Condoleezza Rice's office and said, "f*ck Saddam.  We're taking him out."

In August 2002, Cheney cautioned that Saddam Hussein could try to dominate "the entire Middle East and subject the United States to nuclear blackmail."  He added, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." The same month, the Bush administration quietly established the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) to lead a propaganda campaign to bolster public support for war with Iraq.

A week before WHIG began its work in earnest, the Sunday Times of London broke the story of the "Downing Street Memo," which contained the secret minutes of a July 2002 meeting with Tony Blair and Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of British intelligence.  Dearlove reported that Bush had already decided to go to war and was making sure "the intelligence and facts" about Iraq and WMD "were being fixed around the policy" of war on Iraq.

Shortly after WHIG convened, White House officials told the New York Times there was a meticulously planned strategy to sell a war against Iraq to the American people.  But the White House decided to wait until after Labor Day to kick off the plan.  The reason, as explained by White House chief of staff Andrew Card, seemed straight from the pages of George Orwell's 1984:  "From a marketing point of view," Card said, "you don't introduce new products in August." The new product was introduced the following month by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who warned, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The same week, on the anniversary of 9/11, Bush declared the United States would "not allow any terrorist or tyrant to threaten civilization with weapons of mass murder." The next day, in an address to the United Nations, Bush reiterated that Iraq was a "grave and gathering danger."

T  Congress gave Bush the "Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq." The White House wanted to pass the resolution while many in Congress were facing reelection; those who opposed Bush's war on Iraq would be painted as soft on terror. The resolution said Iraq posed a "continuing threat to the national security of the United States" by "continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability" and "actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability." It authorized the President to use the Armed Forces to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and to "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq."   the Bush gang's hyperbole and intense pressure.  Some legislators 

In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush famously claimed, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." It was pure fiction. 

In February 2001, a month after Bush's inauguration, White House officials discussed a memo called "Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq," which described troop requirements, establishing war crimes tribunals, and dividing up Iraq's oil wealth." Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was astonished to discover that actual plans "were already being discussed to take over Iraq and occupy it - complete with disposition of oil fields, peacekeeping forces, and war crimes tribunals - carrying forward an unspoken doctrine of preemptive war." According to O'Neill, a preemptive attack on Iraq and the prospect of dividing the world's second largest oil reserve among the world's contractors "made for an irresistible combination."

The Self-Defense Argument

 military capability had been severely weakened by the Gulf War, years of punishing sanctions and intrusive inspections, and almost daily bombing raids by the United States and Britain over the "no-fly zones."    

Bush made little pretense that Iraq constituted an imminent threat.  Rather, he invoked his own doctrine of "preemptive war" to justify his attack.  He unveiled that doctrine in a speech at West Point in June 2002.  "We must take the battle to the enemy," Bush said, "disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge." The international community was unmoved.  Quite simply, the U.S. invasion of Iraq wasn't self-defense because it didn't respond to an armed or imminent attack. 

The Security Council Never Authorized War

Bush was never interested in achieving a diplomatic solution in Iraq. Bush tried mightily to arrange a Security Council resolution that would authorize his war, but the Council refused.  Bush then cobbled together prior resolutions to rationalize his invasion.  None of them, however, individually or collectively, constituted authorization for his use of force against Iraq. 

Faced with Iraq's increasing cooperation with weapons inspectors in the weeks leading up to the invasion, Bush's rationale for disarming Iraq morphed into "regime change" to bring democracy to the Iraqi people.  But forcible regime change violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a treaty ratified by the United States and therefore part of our domestic law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.               

Shock and Awe--and the Consequences

Despite the absence of Security Council authorization, a quarter million troops from the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq in March 2003.  Delivering on their promise to "shock and awe," the "coalition forces" dropped several 2,000-pound bombs on Baghdad in rapid succession, in what the New York Times dubbed "almost biblical power."

The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War (Geneva IV) classifies "willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health" as a grave breach. The US War Crimes Act punishes grave breaches of Geneva as war crimes. The Bush administration is committing war crimes with its use of these weapons.

The Greatest Menace of Our Times

The Nuremberg Charter defines "Crimes Against Peace" as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war 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." Bush's war on Iraq is a war of aggression, and thus constitutes a Crime Against Peace.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In his opening statement in 1945, Justice Jackson wrote, "No political, military, economic, or other considerations shall serve as an excuse or justification" for a war of aggression. "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would be unwilling to have invoked against us."

Authors Website: http://www.marjoriecohn.com

Authors Bio:

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and a member of the National Advisory Board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. See http://marjoriecohn.com/ . .