posted 01-22-2004 05:56 AM            

Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Virginia, who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is currently working on a book about America's policy toward political Islam over the past 30 years.

Seemingly adrift from reality, President Bush last night firmly tied himself instead to a failed and sinking Iraq policy.

On one hand, the president told the nation that things were getting better and better in Iraq, that U.S. weapons specialists were finding more and more evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and that America doesn’t need no stinkin’ UN permission slip to wage war. On the other hand, his very own advisers were scrambling amidst UN diplomats, America’s Arab allies and Iraq’s swirling ethnic and religious factions to try to prevent Iraq from becoming completely undone. We can only hope that Jerry Bremer, Jim Baker, Colin Powell and Karl Rove weren’t listening to the speech.

Does the president know that Iraq is on the verge of coming unglued? That go-for-broke Kurdish warlords, angry Sunni sheikhs and turbaned, fundamentalist Iraqi Shiites are pushing the ruined nation to the brink of civil war? That the UN that he so cavalierly dismissed with a throwaway line of election rhetoric is America’s one last hope for salvaging a shaky political accord in Iraq? That our Arab allies—who didn’t support the war and who can help finance Iraq’s recovery—have nearly given up hoping that Washington will come to its senses? Listening to the speech, the answer has got to be: No.

Bremer knows. For the second time in two months, he’s rushed back to the United States with America’s post-war plans for Iraq in a shambles. It’s increasingly likely that the United States will have to abandon its vaunted June 30 deadline for Iraqi sovereignty, and Bremer knows that the pieces of Iraq’s political puzzle just don’t fit together. He’s trying to do his best to make them fit, but the task is way above his pay grade. Baker knows: The patrician eminence grise of the Republican realist circle is out there dealing with reality. First, talking to the Germans, French and Russians, he tried to win an agreement for them to write off the Iraqi debt they hold—and he seems to have been successful in getting the Pentagon’s mean-spirited ban on their participation in Iraqi reconstruction reversed. This week he’s engaged in an even tougher task: trying to do the same with the Arabs. Bush’s tough-guy rhetoric and rapturous vision of America as a "nation with a mission" and a "special calling" to remake the world in its image won’t help.

Powell knows. Powell and his disparaged diplomats are scrambling to convince the UN to come back to Iraq to help organize a political transition, or at least to talk some sense into the scowling, medieval Ayatollah Sistani and his benighted followers. We may not need the UN’s permission, but we do need their help now.

posted 01-22-2004 01:59 PM            

ICC to Get Evidence of Illegality of War --A strong case arguing the illegality of the invasion of Iraq will be handed soon to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The report prepared by eight leading international lawyers and professors of law drawn from four countries makes a strong case against the illegality of the way British and U.S. troops fought the war.

Read full article here:
http://legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

They are going down!

posted 01-22-2004 04:06 PM            

Excerpt:

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If the prosecutor orders a formal investigation, then the ICC would have wide-ranging powers to interview people. ”As a strong supporter of the ICC, Britain would be under enormous obligation to cooperate,” Bowring said. And given the precedent from Serbia that has brought former president Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague to face trial, British leadership would not be exempt, Bowring said.

The United States has stayed away from the ICC and can therefore claim immunity from any ICC procedures. ”But there remains the question of complicity in a joint enterprise,” Bowring told media representatives Tuesday. ”If Britain and the United States acted together, and if war crimes were committed, then there is a real question of war crimes committed by the United States that would be before the ICC.”

The legal team plans to make the United States liable by association by focusing its inquiries on the role of Britain, which played a strong role in supporting creation of the ICC.

The eight law experts gathered evidence from a wide range of sources, and also spoke directly to witnesses over two days in London in November. Evidence was gathered from witnesses on the ground such as Spanish medical teams, and from weapons experts.

The experts' report focused particularly on cluster bombs used by the British. The Ministry of Defence in London has admitted to dropping 70 cluster bombs from the air, each of them containing 147 'bomblets'. In addition, British artillery fired more than 2,000 shells, each containing about 40 smaller bombs.

The report, a full version of which is due to be released about two weeks from now, also takes a close look at the targeting of media by way of attacks on the offices of Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, and on Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

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