Letter to Congress on World Tribunal on Iraq
The Hon. Kendrick Meek
1039 Longworth House Office Building
Washington DC 20515
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Dear Kendrick,
I hope that you have followed the proceedings of the World Tribunal on Iraq, which has been meeting in Istanbul and which issued its Preliminary Declaration yesterday. The Tribunal is a Jury of Conscience drawn from 10 countries to hear charges relating to the war of aggression being waged against the people of Iraq by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. The Tribunal has heard testimony from 54 witnesses and advocates, and this testimony should be helpful to U.S. Congressional committees that must eventually investigate many of the same charges. You can download the text of the Preliminary Declaration from http://www.worldtribunal.org/main/docs/jurystatement.rtf
The Tribunal was constituted in a similar format to a Grand Jury in the United States, and has handed down the following 13 charges against the United States Government:
1) Planning, preparing and waging the supreme crime of a war of aggression in contravention of the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles.
2) Targeting the civilian population of Iraq and civilian infrastructure.
3) Using disproportionate force and indiscriminate weapons systems.
4) Failing to safeguard the lives of civilians during military activities and during the occupation period thereafter.
5) Using deadly violence against peaceful protesters.
6) Imposing punishments without trial or charge, including collective punishment.
7) Subjecting Iraqi soldiers and civilians to torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
8) Re-writing the laws of a country that has been illegally invaded and occupied.
9) Willfully devastating the environment.
10) Actively creating conditions under which the status of Iraqi women has seriously been degraded.
11) Failing to protect humanity’s rich archaeological and cultural heritage.
12) Obstructing the right to information, including the censoring of Iraqi media.
13) Redefining torture in violation of international law, to allow the use of torture and illegal detentions.
Additional charges were established against the United Nations Security Council, the Governments of the “Coalition of the Willing”, the Governments of Other Countries, Private Corporations and the Major Corporate Media.
The Tribunal recognized “the right of the Iraqi people to resist the illegal occupation of their country and to develop independent institutions” and affirmed “that the right to resist the occupation is the right to wage a struggle for self-determination, freedom, and independence as derived from the Charter of the United Nations”.
Finally, the Tribunal made ten recommendations:
1) “The immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the coalition forces from Iraq.”
2) Payment of reparations and compensation to Iraq by the U.S. and the U.K.
3) “That all laws, contracts, treaties, and institutions established under occupation which the Iraqi people deem inimical to their interests, should be considered null and void”.
4) The closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison and all offshore U.S. military prisons.
5) “An exhaustive investigation of those responsible for crimes of aggression and crimes against humanity in Iraq.”
6) “A process of accountability” extending to journalists who lied, media outlets who promoted hatred, and CEOs of war-profiteering corporations.
7) Consumer action against war-profiteers.
8) That soldiers refuse to obey illegal orders or to participate in this illegal war, and that other countries provide them with political asylum.
9) Reinforcement of a campaign to dismantle all U.S. military bases abroad.
10) Opposition to the provision of material, logistical or moral support for the occupation of Iraq by any government.
Whether you or I support each of these recommendations or believe that the charges of the Tribunal are warranted, these serious charges and specific recommendations are now being disseminated to every country in the world, and will receive significant popular support in nearly all of them.
The failure of the United States Congress to act on behalf of the American people to protect us from a corrupt and manipulative Administration bent on worldwide aggression has brought our country to an unprecedented crisis in its foreign policy. The effects of this crisis extend beyond the world of diplomacy into the everyday lives of Americans in increasingly obvious ways:
a) The pain of thousands of families whose loved ones have been killed or maimed in Iraq and elsewhere;
b) The anguish of servicemen and women living with what they have done on the illegal orders of our unscrupulous leaders;
c) The failure to realistically address the looming energy crisis because of our delusional reliance on military force to solve this problem;
d) The growing divisions in our society created by a cynical propaganda machine that uses chauvinism, fear and religious and racial prejudice to mislead large segments of the population about the nature of the war;
e) The gradual undermining of our trade-based economy by isolation from the rest of the world coupled with unsustainable levels of public and private debt;
f) The lack of public funds to deal with the real problems of real people due to the military budget and the debts incurred to fund it.
I hope that the recent interest shown by some of your colleagues in discovering the truth behind the lies we have been told about our involvement in Iraq will bear fruit. However, we already know that this war did not begin on March 19th 2003 or end on May 1st 2003. It continues today under the same shroud of secrecy and false pretences under which it was launched in 2002. It must be stopped. Please help.
Yours sincerely
1039 Longworth House Office Building
Washington DC 20515
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Dear Kendrick,
I hope that you have followed the proceedings of the World Tribunal on Iraq, which has been meeting in Istanbul and which issued its Preliminary Declaration yesterday. The Tribunal is a Jury of Conscience drawn from 10 countries to hear charges relating to the war of aggression being waged against the people of Iraq by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. The Tribunal has heard testimony from 54 witnesses and advocates, and this testimony should be helpful to U.S. Congressional committees that must eventually investigate many of the same charges. You can download the text of the Preliminary Declaration from http://www.worldtribunal.org/main/docs/jurystatement.rtf
The Tribunal was constituted in a similar format to a Grand Jury in the United States, and has handed down the following 13 charges against the United States Government:
1) Planning, preparing and waging the supreme crime of a war of aggression in contravention of the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles.
2) Targeting the civilian population of Iraq and civilian infrastructure.
3) Using disproportionate force and indiscriminate weapons systems.
4) Failing to safeguard the lives of civilians during military activities and during the occupation period thereafter.
5) Using deadly violence against peaceful protesters.
6) Imposing punishments without trial or charge, including collective punishment.
7) Subjecting Iraqi soldiers and civilians to torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
8) Re-writing the laws of a country that has been illegally invaded and occupied.
9) Willfully devastating the environment.
10) Actively creating conditions under which the status of Iraqi women has seriously been degraded.
11) Failing to protect humanity’s rich archaeological and cultural heritage.
12) Obstructing the right to information, including the censoring of Iraqi media.
13) Redefining torture in violation of international law, to allow the use of torture and illegal detentions.
Additional charges were established against the United Nations Security Council, the Governments of the “Coalition of the Willing”, the Governments of Other Countries, Private Corporations and the Major Corporate Media.
The Tribunal recognized “the right of the Iraqi people to resist the illegal occupation of their country and to develop independent institutions” and affirmed “that the right to resist the occupation is the right to wage a struggle for self-determination, freedom, and independence as derived from the Charter of the United Nations”.
Finally, the Tribunal made ten recommendations:
1) “The immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the coalition forces from Iraq.”
2) Payment of reparations and compensation to Iraq by the U.S. and the U.K.
3) “That all laws, contracts, treaties, and institutions established under occupation which the Iraqi people deem inimical to their interests, should be considered null and void”.
4) The closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison and all offshore U.S. military prisons.
5) “An exhaustive investigation of those responsible for crimes of aggression and crimes against humanity in Iraq.”
6) “A process of accountability” extending to journalists who lied, media outlets who promoted hatred, and CEOs of war-profiteering corporations.
7) Consumer action against war-profiteers.
8) That soldiers refuse to obey illegal orders or to participate in this illegal war, and that other countries provide them with political asylum.
9) Reinforcement of a campaign to dismantle all U.S. military bases abroad.
10) Opposition to the provision of material, logistical or moral support for the occupation of Iraq by any government.
Whether you or I support each of these recommendations or believe that the charges of the Tribunal are warranted, these serious charges and specific recommendations are now being disseminated to every country in the world, and will receive significant popular support in nearly all of them.
The failure of the United States Congress to act on behalf of the American people to protect us from a corrupt and manipulative Administration bent on worldwide aggression has brought our country to an unprecedented crisis in its foreign policy. The effects of this crisis extend beyond the world of diplomacy into the everyday lives of Americans in increasingly obvious ways:
a) The pain of thousands of families whose loved ones have been killed or maimed in Iraq and elsewhere;
b) The anguish of servicemen and women living with what they have done on the illegal orders of our unscrupulous leaders;
c) The failure to realistically address the looming energy crisis because of our delusional reliance on military force to solve this problem;
d) The growing divisions in our society created by a cynical propaganda machine that uses chauvinism, fear and religious and racial prejudice to mislead large segments of the population about the nature of the war;
e) The gradual undermining of our trade-based economy by isolation from the rest of the world coupled with unsustainable levels of public and private debt;
f) The lack of public funds to deal with the real problems of real people due to the military budget and the debts incurred to fund it.
I hope that the recent interest shown by some of your colleagues in discovering the truth behind the lies we have been told about our involvement in Iraq will bear fruit. However, we already know that this war did not begin on March 19th 2003 or end on May 1st 2003. It continues today under the same shroud of secrecy and false pretences under which it was launched in 2002. It must be stopped. Please help.
Yours sincerely
posted by Nicolas Davies | 12:36 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home