Global Research

“The U.N. Charter charges the Security Council with the task of preserving international peace and security. To do so, the Security Council must maintain its credibility by ensuring full compliance with its resolutions. We cannot allow a dictator to systematically violate those resolutions. If they are not complied with, the Security Council will lose its credibility and world peace will suffer as a result. We are confident that the Security Council will face up to its responsibilities.” –Text of a letter published in The Wall Street Journal, the Times of London and other newspapers on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2003, by the prime ministers of Spain, Portugal, Italy and Britain, the president of the Czech Republic and the prime ministers of Hungary, Poland and Denmark.

“It is a war crime to launch “an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population in the knowledge that such an attack will cause an excessive loss of life or injury to civilians.” -Geneva Conventions, Article 85

“It is especially forbidden to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army.” — Hague Conventions, Article 23

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The United States and its coalition allies have perpetrated serious violations of international law including the breaching of the UN Charter and multiple violations of the Geneva Conventions, the US Army Field manual, and the Hague Conventions. [1]

Over 600,000 civilians are estimated to have died as a direct consequence of US President George W. Bush’s war against Iraq and its mythical ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ [2] Depleted Uranium munitions has caused birth defects on a massive scale, and will plague this ancient civilization for millennia to come.

Amply documented, torture was employed by US troops under the authorization of US Officials like Vice President Richard Cheney, who comes to Canada in late October.

This installment of the Global Research News Hour features a look at US and allied war crimes and more particularly, the need for accountability for those crimes.

Denis Halliday is the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq ( September 1, 1997 until 1998.) He resigned from a 34 year career at the United nations in protest to what he saw as the ‘genocidal’ economic sanctions carried out against the Iraqi people through the UN Security Council. Halliday is intensely critical of the UN for aiding and abetting the US and UK in their criminal aggression of 2003 and beyond. He is also critical of the World Health Organization for likewise assisting the imperial Western Giants by suppressing its own report on the effects of the use by US forces of Depleted Uranium on the Iraqi civilian population. He outlines in this interview what he thinks the UN could have done, and still can do, to restore some credibility. Denis Halliday has been an occasional contributor to Global Research. This is his first interview for the Global Research News Hour.

Some soldiers such as Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejía and Joshua Key did their duty under international law and refused to return to service in the Iraq War.

Professor Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and an internationally recognized expert in his field. In 2007, Boyle publicly denounced what he called the “ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by the Bush Jr. administration and its nefarious foreign accomplices in allied governments such as in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Georgia, etc.” Boyle is the author of Protesting Power: War, Resistance, and Law. He will explain the legal obligations of countries like the US and Canada to respect the right of soldiers to refuse to participate in this war.

While the Canadian government is turning away Iraq War resisters, they are welcoming credibly accused Iraq war criminals into the country. Mere weeks before Vice- President Cheney is to give a speech in Toronto, we will hear from Gail Davidson of Lawyers Against The War about the legal obligation of the Canadian government to deny the former Vice President admittance into Canada or place him under arrest upon entry.

Be sure to check out the Global Research Iraq War Reader for more in depth coverage of US/NATO War Crimes in Iraq.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Length (59:36)
Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour, hosted by Michael Welch, airs on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg Fridays at 1pm CDT.
The programme is also broadcast weekly (Monday, 5-6pm ET) by the Progressive Radio Network in the US, and is available for download on the Global Research website.

We welcome our new partner CHLY in Nanaimo, British Columbia! The Global Research News Hour is now broadcast on CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C every Thursday at 1pm PST!

References

1) Francis A. Boyle, December 15, 2005, text of Presentation to the Perdana Global Peace Forum; http://www.globalresearch.ca/iraq-and-the-laws-of-war/1588
2) Burnham G. et al, Oct. 21, 2006, Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey; The Lancet