OPEN LETTER FROM RAMSEY CLARK TO THE UN & GEORGE W. BUSH
----- Original Message -----
From: Malaika Kambon
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 4:10 AM
Subject: [unioNews] OPEN LETTER FROM RAMSEY CLARK TO THE UN & GEORGE W. BUSH
NEW AFRIKAN MILLENNIUM
1 FEBRUARY 2004
Forwarding...
The information contained in this letter is very useful to know.
How successful the letter itself might be in its objective
is another matter altogether.
m
From: [log in to unmask]
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 20:59:20 -0500
OPEN LETTER FROM RAMSEY CLARK
to UN Secretary General KOFI ANNAN, members of the UN
Security Council and President George W. Bush
Please post this open letter from Ramsey Clark widely. On
March 20, join Ramsey Clark and thousands of others in the
mass protest in New York City to demand "Bring the troops
home now," "End Colonial Occupation from Iraq to Palestine
and everywhere," and more.
* * * * *
January, 29, 2004
Dear Secretary General ANNAN,
U.S. President George W. Bush again confirmed his
intention to continue waging wars of aggression in his
State of the Union message on January 20, 2004.
He began his address:
"As we gather tonight, hundreds of thousands of American
service men and women are deployed across the world in the
war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed, and
delivering justice to the violent, they are making America
more secure."
He proclaimed:
"Our greatest responsibility is the active defense of the
American people... America is on the offensive against the
terrorists..."
Continuing, he said:
"...our coalition is leading aggressive raids against the
surviving members of the Taliban and Al QAEDA...Men who
ran away from our troops in battle are now dispersed and
attack from the shadows."
In Iraq, he reported:
"Of the top 55 officials of the former regime, we have
captured or killed 45. Our forces are on the offensive,
leading over 1,600 patrols a day, and conducting an
average of 180 raids a week...."
Explaining his aggression, President Bush stated:
"...After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it
is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. The
terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United
States and war is what they got."
Forget law. No more legal papers, or rights. Forget truth.
The claim that either Afghanistan, or Iraq declared war on
the U.S. is absurd. The U.S. chose to attack both nations,
from one end to the other, violating their sovereignty and
changing their "regimes", summarily executing thousands of
men, women and children in the process. At least 40,000
defenseless people in Iraq have been killed by U.S.
violence since the latest aggression began in earnest in
March 2003 starting with its celebrated, high tech,
terrorist "Shock and Awe" and continuing until now with
25, or more, U.S. raids daily causing mounting deaths and
injuries.
All this death-dealing aggression has occurred during a
period, Mr. Bush boasts, of "over two years without an
attack on American soil". The U.S. is guilty of pure
aggression, arbitrary repression and false portrayal of
the nature and purpose of its violence.
President Bush's brutish mentality is revealed in his
condemnations of the "killers" and "thugs in Iraq" "who
ran away from our troops in battle". U.S. military
expenditures and technology threaten and impoverish life
on the planet. Any army that sought to stand up against
U.S. air power and weapons of mass destruction in open
battle would be annihilated. This is what President Bush
seeks when he says "Bring 'em on."
President Bush declared his intention to change the
"Middle East" by force.
"As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny and
despair and anger, it will continue to produce men and
movements that threaten the safety of America and our
friends. So America is pursuing a forward strategy of
freedom in the greater Middle East. We will challenge the
enemies of reform, confront the allies of terror, and
expect a higher standard from our friends."
"...America is a nation with a mission... we understand
our special calling: This great republic will lead the
cause of freedom."
He extended his threat to any nation he may choose:
"As part of the offensive against terror, we are also
confronting the regimes that harbor and support
terrorists, and could supply them with nuclear, chemical
or biological weapons. The United States and our allies
are determined: We refuse to live in the shadow of this
ultimate danger."
President Bush's utter contempt for the United Nations is
revealed in his assertion that the United States and other
countries "have enforced the demands of the United
Nations", ignoring the refusal of the U.N. to approve a
war of aggression against Iraq and implying the U.N. had
neither the courage nor the capacity to pursue its own
"demands".
His total commitment to unilateral U.S. action, was
asserted by President Bush when he sarcastically referred
to the "permission slip" a school child needs to leave a
classroom:
"America will never seek a permission slip to defend the
security of our people".
President Bush intends to go it alone, because his
interest is American power and wealth alone, though he
prefers to use the youth of NATO countries and others as
cannon folder in his wars.
President Bush believes might makes right and that the end
justifies the means. He declares:
"...the world without Saddam HUSSEIN'S regime is a better
and safer place".
So U.S. military technology which is homicidal - capable of
destroying all life on the planet-will be ordered by
President Bush to make the world "a better and safer
place" by destroying nations and individuals he
designates.
President Bush presided over 152 executions in Texas, far
more than any other U.S. governor since World War II.
Included were women, minors, retarded persons, aliens in
violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
and innocent persons. He never acted to prevent a single
execution. He has publicly proclaimed the right to
assassinate foreign leaders and repeatedly boasted of
summary executions and indiscriminate killing in State of
the Union messages and elsewhere.
The danger of Bush unilateralism is further revealed when
he states:
"Colonel Qaddafi correctly judged that his country would
be better off, and far more secure without weapons of mass
murder. Nine months of intense negotiations involving the
United States and Great Britain succeeded with Libya,
while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did not."
Forget diplomacy, use "intense negotiations". If President
Bush believed it was "diplomacy", which maintained
genocidal sanctions against Iraq for twelve years that
failed, rather than an effort to crush Iraq to submission,
then why didn't he use "nine months of intense
negotiations" to avoid a war of aggression against Iraq?
He was President for nearly twenty seven months before the
criminal assault on Iraq, he apparently intended all
along. Iraq was no threat to anyone.
What President Bush means by "intense negotiations"
includes a threat of military aggression with the example
of Iraq to show this in no bluff. The Nuremberg Judgment
held GOERING'S threat to destroy Prague unless
Czechoslovakia surrendered Bohemia and Moravia to be an
act of aggression.
If Qaddafi "correctly judged his country would be better
off, and far more secure, without weapons of mass murder",
why would the United States not be better off, and far
more secure, if it eliminated all its vast stores of
nuclear weapons? Is not the greatest danger from nuclear
proliferation today without question President Bush's
violations of the Non Proliferation (NPT), ABM and Nuclear
Test Ban treaties by continuing programs for strategic
nuclear weapons, failing to negotiate in good faith to
achieve "nuclear disarmament" after more than thirty years
and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons,
small "tactical" weapons of mass murder, which he would
use in a minute? Has he not threatened to use existing
strategic nuclear weapons? The failure of the "nuclear
weapon State Party(s)" to the NPT to work in good faith to
achieve "nuclear disarmament these past 36 years is the
reason the world is still confronted with the threat of
nuclear war and proliferation.
None of the many and changing explanations, excuses, or
evasions offered by President Bush to justify his war of
aggression can erase the crimes he has committed. Among
the less invidious misleading statements, President Bush
made on January 20, 2004 was:
"Already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of
mass destruction-related program activities and
significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from
the United Nations."
Three days later, Dr. Kay told Reuters he thought Iraq had
illicit weapons at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War,
but that by a combination of U.N. inspections and Iraq's
own decisions, "it got rid of them". He further said it
"is correct" to say Iraq does not have any large
stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons in the
country. He has added that no evidence of any chemical or
biological weapons have been found in Iraq.
Iraq did not use illicit weapons in the 1991 Gulf war. The
U.S. did - 900 tons plus of depleted uranium, fuel air
explosives, super bombs, cluster bombs with civilians and
civilian facilities the "direct object of attack". The
U.S. claimed to destroy 80% of Iraq's military armor. It
dropped 88,500 tons of explosives, 7 1/2 Hiroshima's, on
the country in 42 days. Iraq was essentially defenseless.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians
perished. The U.S. reported 157 casualties, 1/3 from
friendly fire, the remainder non combat.
U.N. inspectors over more than 6 years of highly intrusive
physical inspections found and destroyed 90% of the
materials required to manufacture nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons. U.N. sanctions imposed August 6, 1990
had caused the deaths of 567,000 children under age five
by October 1996, the U.N. FAO reported. Twenty four
percent of the infants born live in Iraq in 2002 had a
dangerously low birth weight below 2 kilos, symbolizing
the condition of the whole population.
In March 2003 Iraq was incapable of carrying out a threat
against the U.S., or any other country, and would have
been pulverized by U.S. forces in place in the Gulf had it
tried.
More than thirty five nations admit the possession of
nuclear, chemical and/or biological weapons. Are these
nations, caput lupinum, lawfully subject to destruction
because of their mere possession of WMDs? The U.S.
possesses more of each of these impermissible weapons than
all other nations combined, and infinitely greater
capacity for their delivery anywhere on earth within
hours. Meanwhile the U.S. increases its military
expenditures, which already exceed those of all other
nations on earth combined, and its technology which is
exponentially more dangerous.
The U.N. General Assembly Resolution on the Definition of
Aggression of December 14, 1974 provides in part:
Article 1: Aggression is the use of armed force by a State
against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or
political independence of another State;
Article 2: The first use of armed force by a State in
contravention of the Charter shall constitute prima facie
evidence of an act of aggression;
Article 3: Any of the following acts ... qualify as an act
of aggression:
(a) The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State
of the territory of another State, or any military
occupation, however temporary, resulting from such
invasion or attack;
(b) Bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the
territory of another State or the use of any weapons by a
State against the territory of another State;
(c) The blockade of the ports or coasts of a State by the
armed forces of another State;
(d) An attack by the armed forces of a State on the land,
sea or air forces, or marine and air fleets of another
State.
If the U.S. assault on Iraq is not a War of Aggression
under international law, then there is no longer such a
crime as War of Aggression. A huge, all powerful nation
has assaulted a small prostrate, defenseless people half
way around the world with "Shock and Awe" terror and
destruction, occupied it and continues daily assaults.
President Bush praises U.S. soldiers' "...skill and their
courage in armored charges, and midnight raids." which
terrorize and kill innocent Iraqis, women, children,
families, nearly every day and average 180 attacks each
week.
The first crime defined in the Constitution annexed to the
Charter of the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg)
under Crimes Against Peace is War of Aggression. II.6.a.
The Nuremberg Judgment proclaimed:
"The charges in the indictment that the defendants planned
and waged aggressive war are charges of the utmost
gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its
consequences are not confined to the belligerent states
alone, but affect the whole world."
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an
international crime, it is the supreme international
crime...
The "seizure" of Austria in March 1938 and of Bohemia and
Moravia from Czechoslovakia in March 1939 following the
threat to destroy Prague were judged to be acts of
aggression by the Tribunal even in the absence of actual
war and after Britain, France, Italy and Germany had
agreed at Munich to cede Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to
Germany.
The first conduct judged to be a war of aggression by Nazi
Germany was its invasion of Poland in September 1939.
There followed a long list, Britain, France, Denmark,
Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, Yugoslavia, Greece.
The attack on the USSR, together with Finland, Romania and
Hungary, was adjudged as follows:
It was contended for the defendants that the attack upon
the U.S.S.R. was justified because the Soviet Union was
contemplating an attack upon Germany, and making
preparations to that end. It is impossible to believe that
this view was ever honestly entertained.
The plans for the economic exploitation of the U.S.S.R.,
for the removal of masses of the population, for the
murder of Commissars and political leaders, were all part
of the carefully prepared scheme launched on 22 June
without warning of any kind, and without the shadow of
legal excuses. It was plain aggression.
The United Nations cannot permit U.S. power to justify its
wars of aggression if it is to survive as a viable
institution for ending the scourges of war, exploitation,
hunger, sickness and poverty. Comparatively minor acts and
wars of aggression by the United States in the last 20
years, deadly enough for their victims, in Grenada, Libya,
Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Sudan, Yugoslavia,
Cuba, Yemen with many other nations threatened,
sanctioned, or attacked, some with U.N. complicity and all
without effective United Nations resistance, made the
major deadly wars of aggression against Afghanistan and
Iraq possible.
Failure to condemn the massive U.S. war of aggression and
illegal occupation of Iraq and any U.N. act providing
colorable legitimacy to the U.S. occupation will open wide
the gate to further, greater aggression. The line must be
drawn now.
The United Nations must recognize and declare the U.S.
attack and occupation of Iraq to be the war of aggression
it is. It must refuse absolutely to justify, or condone
the aggression, the illegal occupation and the continuing
U.S. assaults in Iraq. The U.N. must insist that the U.S.
withdraw from Iraq as it insisted Iraq withdraw from
Kuwait in 1990.
There must be no impunity or profit for wars of
aggression.
The U.S. and U.S. companies must surrender all profits and
terminate all contracts involving Iraq.
There must be strict accountability by U.S. leaders and
others for crimes they have committed against Iraq and
compensation by the U.S. government for the damage its
aggression has inflicted on Afghanistan and Iraq, the
peoples injured there and stability and harm done to world
peace.
This must be done with care to prevent the eruption of
internal divisions, or violence and any foreign domination
or exploitation in Iraq. The governance of a united Iraq
must be returned to the diverse peoples who live there,
acting together consensually in peace for their common
good as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Ramsey Clark
The identical letter has been sent to:
-Members of the UN Security Council
-The President of the UN General Assembly
-The Secretary General of the UN
-The President of the United States
* * * * * * * * * *
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