LAP Online Exclusives

We recommend:

1. The immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Coalition forces from Iraq.

2. That Coalition governments make war reparations and pay compensation to Iraq for the humanitarian, economic, ecological, and cultural devastation they have caused by their illegal invasion and occupation.

3. That all laws, contracts, treaties, and institutions established under occupation, which the Iraqi people deem inimical to their interests, be considered null and void.

4. That the Guantánamo Bay prison and all other offshore US military prisons be closed immediately, that the names of the prisoners be disclosed, that they receive POW status, and receive due process.

5. That there be an exhaustive investigation of those responsible for the crime of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq, beginning with George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, those in key decision-making positions in these countries and in the Coalition of the Willing, those in the military chain-of-command who master-minded the strategy for and carried out this criminal war, starting from the very top and going down; as well as personalities in Iraq who helped prepare this illegal invasion and supported the occupiers.

6. That a process of accountability is initiated to hold those morally and personally responsible for their participation in this illegal war, such as journalists who deliberately lied, corporate media outlets that promoted racial, ethnic and religious hatred, and CEOs of multinational corporations that profited from this war;

7. That people throughout the world launch nonviolent actions against US and UK corporations that directly profit from this war. Examples of such corporations include Halliburton, Bechtel, The Carlyle Group, CACI Inc., Titan Corporation, Kellog, Brown and Root (subsidiary of Halliburton), DynCorp, Boeing, ExxonMobil, Texaco, British Petroleum. The following companies have sued Iraq and received reparation awards: Toys R Us, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Shell, Nestlé, Pepsi, Phillip Morris, Sheraton, Mobil. Such actions may take the form of direct actions such as shutting down their offices, consumer boycotts, and pressure on shareholders to divest.

8. That young people and soldiers act on conscientious objection and refuse to enlist and participate in an illegal war. Also, that countries provide conscientious objectors with political asylum.

9. That the international campaign for dismantling all US military bases abroad be reinforced.

10. That people around the world resist and reject any effort by any of their governments to provide material, logistical, or moral support to the occupation of Iraq.

We, the Jury of Conscience, hope that the scope and specificity of these recommendations will lay the groundwork for a world in which international institutions will be shaped and reshaped by the will of people and not by fear and self-interest, where journalists and intellectuals will not remain mute, where the will of the people of the world will be central, and human security will prevail over state security and corporate profits.

John Berger worried about memory turning into temporal atrophy. “The records are required to inspire still further the mounting opposition to the new global tyranny. The new tyrants, incomparably over-armed, can win every war - both military and economic. Yet they are losing the war (this is how they call it) of communication. They are not winning the support of world public opinion. More and more people are saying NO. Finally this will be the tyranny's undoing. But after how many more tragedies, invasions and collateral disasters? After how much more of the new poverty the tyranny engenders? Hence the urgency of keeping records, of remembering, of assembling the evidence, so that the accusations become unforgettable, proverbial on every continent. More and more people are going to say NO, for this is the precondition today for saying YES to all we are determined to save and everything we love.”

Berger, who merits a Nobel Prize for his voluminous literary and critical insight into the nature of the imperial culture (Ways of Seeing, Pig Earth etc…) may well have inspired the World Tribunal on Iraq that met for three days in Istanbul in late June, in a stone hall, that belongs to the Anthropology Museum, opposite the Topkapi palace. Previous sessions met in Brussels, Seoul and Tokyo.

But the idea of a war crimes tribunal came from the United States government. Indeed, after World War II Washington insisted that the German war criminals receive trials for what they had done. But, said Justice Robert Jackson, “we must make clear to Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it.”

Jackson, long dead, might have joined the campaign to impeach George W. Bush because, he said, stating the US position on August 12, 1945 “no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly denounced as an instrument of policy.”

No court indicted Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other criminal who resorted to aggressive war against Iraq – a war that had not even the thinnest façade of legality after the Security Council refused to vote for it.

Just as four decades ago a tribunal named after Sir Bertrand Russell began meeting to collect evidence on US atrocities in Vietnam, citizens around the world have acted to hold war makers accountable. The Istanbul sessions, organized by five Turkish women, brought an international jury to a country nearby the battleground to collect testimony. Jury chair, novelist Arandhati Roy from India set the tone by immediately shooing away the paparazzi and reminding them that this session “is not a cult of the personality.”

Richard Falk addressed the drastic implications of the US and British invasion and occupation of Iraq on international law and Barbara Olshansky addressed the civil liberties consequences of the Guantanamo prisoners – whom she represents for the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Also on the jury sat Eve Ensler, whose "The Vagina Monologues" has played through much of the world and Miguel Angel de los Santos, who represents the Zapatistas in Mexico. Alongside sat prestigious writers, scholars and lawyers from a variety of countries and a woman from Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who represent the disappeared people during Argentina’s dirty war.

Denis Haliday and Hans Von Sponeck testified about the pusillanimous behavior of the UN AND Dr. Robert Fasy of Mt. Sinai medical School offered his research about how the use of depleted uranium in bombs, shells and missiles has probably contributed to the skyrocketing index of cancer and leukemia among Iraqi children.

Journalists like John Ross, Dahr Jamail and Omer Medra had witnessed the atrocities and told the jury what they saw in gripping detail. But the backdrop of the testimony was the daily news report coming from Iraq itself.

Members of the jury and witnesses left Istanbul as the situation on the ground in Iraq had begun to “deteriorate,” according to US military sources. By late July and early August, the Iraqi Resistance had increased the rate of deterioration by stepping up its pace and more US soldiers fell along with those Iraqis called “collaborators.” Innocent people die as well in the bombings and other actions. And two kidnapped Algerian diplomats in Iraq were killed in July.

According to a July 28 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, the “insurgency” has seriously derailed reconstruction plans. US administrators had diverted “$1.8 billion intended for major electrical utilities and water projects during Fiscal Year 2004…to pay for security forces instead.” UPI July 30, 2005 In one year, more than one quarter of Congress’ $18.4 billion emergency funding for rebuilding Iraq, the GAO said, went to “unanticipated needs.”

In late July, UPI reported that Army Surgeon-General Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley told reporters that 30% of U.S. troops who had returned from Iraq had developed stress-related mental health problems three to four months after coming home. Ten times more combat veterans from Iraq suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder than they had previously thought. Suicide rates among soldiers had risen to unprecedented levels. Indeed, the military survey suggested that long-term psychiatric problems of the Iraq war vets will be more numerous and severe than anticipated.

The news carries little information about the 100 plus U.S. troops that get wounded each week (5,000 plus a year), many of whom lose limbs or suffer permanent damage. Before the war, the US media ignored law and history. It not only repeated White House lies about WMD and links to Al-Qaeda, but actually validated those dissembling charges. The NY Times put Judith Miller’s “Iraq-bio-weapons” stories on page 1 and now promote her as some kind of a hero for keeping quiet about the government officials who manipulated her – or did she manipulate them?

The Times never mentioned possible violations of international law during Bush’s push to war. At the Tribunal Richard Falk implored the jury and the large crowd of international and Turkish observers to retain international law as the foundation for the UN and for peace itself. British lawyer No Times or other major US media correspondents attended the Istanbul session. I suggested that if the organizers wanted coverage by the mass US media they should have invited Michael Jackson and his new twelve year old friend. Then, they might have also heard of the beyond shocking reports of torture and other human rights violations reported by Barbara Olshansky, who represented the Guantanamo prisoners and environmental scholar Joel Kovel’s disturbing evidence about how the 2003 invasion and occupation had contributed to the erosion of Iraq’s environment.

Iraqis who testified and those who simply attended and provided information to all who asked laid out a story that the US press has failed to report: the US occupiers have forced a privatization clause into the Iraqi constitution, have stolen its historic treasure and instigated the destruction of the nation’s integrity. Iraqis now call themselves Sunnis or Shias or Christians instead of Iraqis. And, according to Gazwan, an engineer who criticized Saddam, the Resistance grows daily in response to US atrocities.

As Washington pins its “exit strategy” on training more Iraqi police and soldiers, the Resistance becomes more effective in targeting the new recruits as “collaborators.” The Iraqi army and security forces, Bush promised, will soon assume the combat burden. But the judgment among Iraqi witnesses and journalists in Istanbul cast serious doubt on such rosy expectations.

So what do citizens of the world do when the most powerful nations violate the laws that their governments have agreed upon and the other governments lack the gumption to denounce and try the war makers? How many times has the United invaded or sent its CIA to alter the destiny of other people? Guatemala 1954, Bay of Pigs, Cuba, 1961, Dominican Republic 1965, Brazil, 1964, Chile, 1970-73, Haiti on innumerable occasions and backing a military coup in Venezuela 2002. The people of Latin America could use John Berger’s and the Istanbul’s jury’s words about their own lands.

“Iraq has been invaded, occupied, and devastated,” wrote the jury of the World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul. “The attack on Iraq is an attack on justice, on liberty, on our safety, on our future, on us all,’ wrote John Berger. “We, people of conscience, decided to stand up. We formed the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) to demand justice and a peaceful future. The legitimacy of the World Tribunal on Iraq is located in the collective conscience of humanity.”

When humanity does not have powerful governments to represent them what does it do? “The records have to be kept and, by definition, the perpetrators, far from keeping records, try to destroy them. They are killers of the innocent and of memory,” concluded Berger. The Istanbul Tribunal kept a record.