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Here are a selection of articles which seem to point towards a worrying approach to US millitary activities in Afghanistan, and US government proposals for a millitary startegy to undermine the International Criminal Courts ability to try US servicemen.
Documentary of US 'war crimes' shocks Europe
June 12 2002 at 05:28PM
By Clive Freeman
Berlin - American soldiers have been involved in the torture and murder of captured Taliban prisoners, and may have aided in the "disappearance" of up to 3 000 men in the region of Mazar-i-Sharif, according to Jamie Doran, an Irish documentary film-maker.
Doran's latest film, Massacre At Mazar, was shown on Wednesday in in the Reichstag, the German parliament building in Berlin, and there were immediate calls for an international commission to be set up to investigate charges made in the documentary.
Andrew McEntee, a leading international human rights lawyer, who has viewed the film footage and read full transcripts, believes there is prima facie evidence of serious war crimes having been committed by American soldiers in Afghanistan.
'The Americans did whatever they wanted'
McEntee, who was in Berlin for Wednesday's special screening, said war crimes had been committed not just under international law but, also, "under the laws of the United States itself".
Much of the footage shown in Doran's 20-minute documentary was taken secretly, and although witnesses were said to be living in fear of reprisal from within Afghanistan itself they had all agreed to appear at any future international war crimes tribunal to give evidence, it was claimed.
One witness in the film claimed he had seen an American soldier break an Afghan prisoner's neck and pour acid on others. "The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them," he alleged.
Sometimes prisoners who were beaten up and taken outside had "disappeared", he said.
In other sequences witnesses, among them two men, claimed they had been forced to drive into the desert with hundreds of Taliban prisoners.
The living were then summarily shot while 30 to 40 American soldiers purportedly stood by, it was alleged. The prisoners had been taken there on the orders of the local American commander, according to the documentary.
In the film, an Afghan witness admitted to killing prisoners himself, and another officer, allegedly a senior officer in the army of deputy defence minister Dostum's forces, was said to have gone into hiding following threats to his life.
The far-left Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) arranged for the special showing of Massacre At Mazar in the Reichstag. Party chairman Roland Claus was cautious regarding its content but did spoke of its attempt at "authenticity."
Andre Brie, a PDS member of the European Parliament, concerned by reports of ill treatment of Taliban prisoners, said he would be in favour of an international commission looking into "disturbing" questions raised by the film.
At a press conference Brie said he had known of Doran's dangerous film activity in Afghanistan, and had helped to support him financially.
The PDS party faction had wanted to obtain authentic footage of the war in Afghanistan, he said.
The film was due to be screened at the European Parliament in Strasbourg later on Wednesday evening. - Sapa-DPA
US invasion proposal shocks MPs
10 June 2002
THE HAGUE — The Dutch parliament was shocked by a US legislative proposal giving an official green light to a US invasion of the Netherlands should it be deemed necessary to free US citizens from the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
A Volkskrant newspaper report said almost all Dutch political parties believed the US proposal undermined the authority of the court, which will officially become active from 1 July.
The parties demanded that caretaker Foreign Affairs Minister Van Aartsen persuade the US to drop the legislation, with VVD MP Terpstra claiming the US proposal was "bizarre and absurd".
Terpstra said the US refusal to sign the court's treaty was its right, but found the legislative proposal for military action went too far, the report said.
The proposal — called the American Services Members' Protection Act — is designed to prevent the International Criminal Court gaining judicial authority over US soldiers.
The government of President George W Bush and the US Congress is fiercely opposed to the court, claiming it violates US sovereignty.
GroenLinks demanded an immediate debate with Van Aartsen, while CDA foreign affairs specialist Karimi said the minister must inform the US ambassador to the Netherlands that the legislative proposal was unacceptable. Karimi also said the Dutch ambassador to the US should take preventative steps against the proposal.
The Volkskrant said both the LPF and the PvdA were also opposed to the US move.
Despite their opposition though, the parliament did not consider it a serious scenario that the US would make use of the legislation and a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman also said it was unlikely that US warships would be positioned off the Scheveningen coast.
Following articles found here
"We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them."
Murder, Incorporated
by Chris Floyd
While the lumbering giants of the American media make their clumsy bows of obeisance to the presidential paymaster filling their corporate goodie bags with tax cut candy and merger massage oil, a few snippets of unsalted truth about the real world continue to spill from the croker sacks of the lean and hungry provincial papers.
Last week, it was the Savannah Morning News unearthing an attempted terrorist bombing by a U.S. soldier in the gaterous moral swamp of Jeb Bush's Florida. This week, it's the Ithaca Journal in upstate New York, bringing news of Big Brother Georgie's old-fashioned approach to warfare:
Ordering soldiers to kill women and children.
This revelation--entirely unremarked by the larded lords of the Fourth Estate--came in a homely profile of young Army Private Matt Guckenheimer, just returned to the bosom of his family after a tour of service in Afghanistan. While retailing some of his experiences during the much ballyhooed "Operation Anaconda," Guckenheimer artlessly spilled what was surely meant to be a secret order from his superiors.
"We were told there were no friendly forces," Guckenheimer said. "If there was anybody there, they were the enemy. We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them."
Let that sink in for a moment: American soldiers were told to kill women and children. "Specifically." To kill a child. To put a bullet in the brain of, let's say, a two-year old girl. To hold the barrel of a rifle to her tiny temple and pull the trigger. To watch as the tender plate of her skull, the delicate bones of her face, her large bright inquisitive eyes were all obliterated in a burst of red mist. "We were told specifically to kill them." "Women and children." "To kill them."
So that's the kind of warfare being waged by those notorious two cowards, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. When their own generation was on the firing line, in Vietnam, both men ardently supported the war--but disdained to fight in it. For his part, Cheney was too busy with his long bootlicking rise to power: "I had other priorities," he has loftily proclaimed.
Meanwhile, Bush's daddy got his drink-addled little boy a cushy stateside berth in the Texas National Guard--but even then, Junior couldn't stick it. He bugged out for an entire year of his duty--desertion in wartime, a capital offense, if you're not rich and well-connected. Fortunately, his service records for that period were "scrubbed" by General Daniel James, former head of the Texas National Guard, who is now head of the entire nation's Air National Guard -- courtesy of his appointment by a grateful George W. Bush.
Now these two armchair warriors, Bush and Cheney, ensconced safely behind the greatest phalanx of personal protection ever seen in history, are sending out a new generation of young people to kill and die. Like their predecessors in the Vietnam War, they are twisting the faith and idealism of patriotic young soldiers and turning them into instruments of murder.
And for what? Certainly not to "bring the perpetrators of September 11 to justice," the ostensible purpose of the war. Those perpetrators are still roaming free--and are even more dangerous than ever, according to Cheney himself. No, the main reason why Private Guckenheimer and his comrades are being ordered to murder women and children could be found last week in a headline buried in yet another obscure province of the American Empire--a brief business story from the BBC:
"Afghan Pipeline Given Go-Ahead."
And there is more of this to come; much, much more. For even as Private Guckenheimer was making his quiet revelations, the Commander-in-Chief was loudly proclaiming a brand-new military doctrine for the United States:
Sneak attacks--like Pearl Harbor, like September 11.
Speaking at West Point military academy, Bush first praised the soldiers in Afghanistan "who have fought on my orders." (***"We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them."***) He then announced that from henceforth, the United States will "impose preemptive, unilateral military force when and where it chooses," the Washington Post reports.
For the first time in its history, America is now openly committed to offensive military aggression against any perceived threat designated by its leaders, the unelected White House occupant told the cadets. Bush said that "60 or more nations" presently lie under this dread edict--all potential targets of his "kill the women and children" orders.
What's more, Bush said this new military bellicosity will be accompanied by aggressive diplomacy aimed at forcing other nations to adopt American values--that is, the Enron-style "crony capitalism" foisted on the United States by a corrupt elite and their political bagmen. Bush called this pustulant system--now suppurating before our eyes, as corporation after corporation, including Cheney's own Halliburton, are caught cooking their books--"the single surviving model of human progress."
So there you have it. Just like bin Laden--another unelected leader who claims divine sanction for his actions--Bush will send his forces to strike without warning at anyone he believes is an enemy. Just like bin Laden, Bush considers innocent women and children to be legitimate targets of his holy wrath. Just like bin Laden, he seeks to impose his own limited, barbaric worldview on other nations, for his own power and profit.
What quadrant of hell is hot enough for such men?
Post Script
Guckenheimer has since qualified his disturbing revelation. Perhaps shaken at seeing his words in cold print (or shaken ***by*** someone who saw his words in cold print), Guckenheimer wrote a letter to the Ithaca Journal modifying his remarks. He now says the soldiers were ordered to kill only those women and children who showed unspecified manifestations of "hostile intent."
Fresh memories of war
Soldiers prepare for their second mission at the Bagram military base in East Afghanistan.
By KANDEA MOSLEY
Journal Staff
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ITHACA -- The stench of decaying flesh hung heavy in the air as soldiers passed blown-up bunkers and caves.
As they moved down an L-shaped corridor, the stiffened limbs of a Taliban soldier jutted from beneath piles of rock and dust in the sweltering afternoon air.
Ripped-up pages from the Koran, and booklets describing ways to kill Americans, littered the tree-lined valley that had been bombarded by U.S. air strikes before their arrival.
These recollections, marking the intensity of every hour of every day felt in combat, typify the memories that resurface for veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War and other military combat this Memorial Day weekend.
For Army Private Matt Guckenheimer, who recently returned home to Tompkins County after two missions in Eastern Afghanistan, processing these memories and readjusting to American life has just begun.
Guckenheimer, who helped clear the L-shaped valley near the border of Pakistan whose twists and turns are burned into his memory, explained the nature of his company's mission. In doing so, he spoke candidly about the reality of war.
In an April interview with The Ithaca Journal at his family's Cayuga Heights home, Guckenheimer, 22, shared his experiences during Operation Anaconda. He was sent on March 6 in a company of more than 100 soldiers to participate in the largest U.S.-led ground engagement in Eastern Afghanistan.
"We were told there were no friendly forces," said Guckenheimer, an assistant gunner with the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum. "If there was anybody there, they were the enemy. We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them."
Taliban al-Qaida soldiers had already been given about two weeks to surrender when U.S. soldiers were ordered to demolish their last strongholds and finish the operation, he said.
Guckenheimer said he loved learning about tanks and guns and watching battle scenes on TV when he was young.
As a teen-ager, he said, his desire to prepare himself to confront the challenges of war intensified despite his family's disapproval. After attending Ithaca High School his freshman year, he transferred to a boarding school in Bath, Maine.
His parents, Meredith Kusch and John Guckenheimer, attended Oberlin College in Ohio and the University of California at Berkeley during the Vietnam era. They used to joke that they would disown him if he ever joined the military, he said.
"They're just about the most passive people you could want," he said with a smile. "I just ended up not being that way."
Guckenheimer said he believed his parents had been indoctrinated with a skewed view of the Vietnam War that led them to undervalue war's place in defending the United States. But he said he has noticed a shift in their outlook since Sept. 11.
John Guckenheimer agreed, to an extent, with his son's assessment.
"I think it was necessary for the U.S. to respond militarily to the events of Sept. 11, but I don't feel completely comfortable with the way the war in Afghanistan is being conducted," he said.
He thinks that the United States is settling into a long and entrenched war in the region, and might repeat the mistakes the Russians made there.
As a Cornell math professor, he said, he has worked with members of the armed forces and has held them in high regard. Regarding the U.S. military as an institution, and his and his wife's opinion of it, he said, "I don't know that our attitudes in general have changed since Matt joined."
Matt Guckenheimer said his first combat experience in Afghanistan was enough.
"I know that I can get through it, so the challenge is gone," Guckenheimer said. "I don't think wanting to put yourself in that position is really healthy to begin with."
Because of the effectiveness of earlier U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, the number of Taliban soldiers killed during Guckenheimer's missions was minimal, he said. He knew of only about 10 enemy fighters who were killed, he said.
"Most of it (the difficulty of the missions) wasn't as much the enemy as it was the elements," he said.
Adjusting to the high altitude and low oxygen levels of the region was a struggle. Layers of Gortex and fleece couldn't shield them from the cold nights. They would wake up to find their canteens covered in ice, he said.
When he returned to the United States after spending a month either on missions or at the Bagram military base, Guckenheimer said, he remembered how alienated Americans are from each other. After living in a Third World country, where people he didn't know would smile or say hello to him on the streets, it was jarring to return home, where contact among strangers is mostly shunned.
"These people who lived through life, they seemed to be more grounded," he said. Coming home was like walking back into a "clueless" society where over-consumption is commonly regarded as the route to happiness, he said.
He said although he only interacted with Afghan men, those he spoke to looked forward to women re-entering public life. On the whole, he said, residents of the towns attached to the Bagram base had been able to achieve a measure of happiness despite living amid constant war.
Guckenheimer returned to Fort Drum on April 24. He said he looked forward to their next assignment and would like to serve in Sinai, Egypt.
Following article found here
Republicans in the US Congress are threatening once again to block payment of hundreds of millions of dollars that Washington owes the United Nations. They say they'll only release the money if the UN agrees that the permanent UN criminal court that's to be established in The Hague will not have jurisdiction over Americans. A bill linking the payments and the court is currently under consideration. But it has attracted criticism from President Bush, even though the president is himself a staunch opponent of the criminal court.
Critics sarcastically call it the "Hague Invasion Act". They are referring to legislation pushed by rightwing Republican members of Congress aimed at blocking the International Criminal Court.
The Republicans fear that American soldiers serving their country abroad will unjustly be hauled before the ICC in The Hague. Their "American Service Members' Protection Act" – that's the official name – would authorise the president to use force to free US military personnel held by the court. Which could, theoretically, lead to US commando teams raiding Dutch prisons in search of comrades under international indictment.
Immunity to Americans
An outlandish scenario, perhaps. But other elements of the legislative proposal by Republican leaders in the House of Representatives such as Speaker Dennis Hastert, International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde and Majority Whip Tom DeLay may have more directly serious consequences. Their bill would prohibit American troops from participating in UN peacekeeping operations unless the Security Council grants Americans blanket immunity from ICC jurisdiction.
The Republicans also aim to kill the international tribunal altogether by threatening any non-NATO country that ratifies the ICC treaty with a cut-off of American military support.
US Arrears to the UN
Their bill is an attachment to the appropriations bill that contains the largest portion – $582 million – of the money the US owes the UN in unpaid dues. The Republican rightwingers vow to hold up the release of this money unless they get their way in derailing the establishment of the International Criminal Court, or at least make it irrelevant as far as it concerns Americans.
President Bush opposes this tribunal as well. As any president before him, however, he does not want Congress to limit him in his foreign affairs decisions. He has also pledged to pay the US arrears to the United Nations. And he is fighting his quickly earned image as an isolationist in foreign affairs who is only concerned with American interests. All reasons why Bush does not support his Republican allies in Congress in their heavy-handed assault on one more international agreement. Still, his reputation on foreign affairs is such by now, that if Congress goes ahead and blocks payment of America's UN obligations once again, it will reflect negatively on president Bush as well.
JUNE 6, 2002
U.S. Senator Zell Miller, D-GA
American Service Member's Protection Act
Statement Delivered on the Floor of the U.S. Senate
Mr. President, I rise to support the American Service Member's Protection Act amendment.
I have worked on this legislation for the past year-and-a-half with Senator Helms, and I appreciate Senator Warner picking up the torch on his behalf.
Senator Helms' determined effort to pass this legislation is admirable and I commend his leadership.
I won't restate the details of this amendment since Senator Warner has already articulated it so well. However, there are a few points I would like to make.
Last December, the Senate passed legislation similar to this amendment as part of the 2002 Defense Appropriations' Bill. The final vote of 78-21 constituted a clear majority of the Senate.
Unfortunately, the Conference Committee missed an opportunity to have this protective legislation in place before the International Criminal Court was ratified earlier this year.
Now, the International Criminal Court becomes effective on July 1. American service members, officials, and citizens will then potentially be subject to a court to which we are not a party.
That is why this legislation is so important. We need some degree of protection for our men and women in uniform and for other officials who sacrifice so much for our nation.
This amendment is appropriately entitled the American Service Member's Protection Act because our war on terrorism will put our military at risk of politicized prosecutions by the International Criminal Court.
Other brave Americans who serve this country are also at risk, and this legislation will protect them as well.
As elected lawmakers, we are obligated to safeguard them from this potential threat just as we would from threats on the battlefield.
It is important for our military to know that Congress will not stand idly by while this questionable court comes into existence.
And make no mistake: Our service members are very aware of the importance of this pending legislation.
We must send them the clear message that they have our full support.
I guarantee you that if we don't get this done we will look back and regret our inaction.
I, for one, do not want to have to look a parent in the eye and explain why their son or daughter is being subjected to an international court on a trumped-up charge of war crimes.
The Administration supports this amendment and so should we. Let's do the right thing again like we did in December and pass this amendment
Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. |
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