This video from the USA is called John Conyers learns of Bush crimes on Democracy Now! Part 1.
Part 2 is here.
From Juan Cole in the USA:
Why was Strauss-Kahn Arrested but W. & Cheney went Free?Posted on 05/15/2011 by Juan
What is it about the United States that makes for harsh prosecutions over sex crimes but lets leaders off the hook when it comes to war crimes? New York police rushed to arrest Dominique Strauss-Kahn , the head of the international Monetary Fund, on Saturday on learning of charges against him by a hotel maid of sexual assault. This quick action against a wealthy and powerful individual, seeking justice for a person at the bottom rung of the American social hierarchy, is praiseworthy. It affirms the principle that no one is above the law.
But the widows and orphans of Iraq cannot hope that the New York police would similarly frog-march George W. Bush off his first-class flight and arrest him for crimes against humanity.
Glenn Greenwald argues that the lessons of the Nuremberg trials have been forgotten and that Bush and other members of his administration should be tried for war crimes. His piece builds on earlier journalism on this subject, such as that of Jan Frel. Not only should Bush and his cronies be tried for launching an aggressive war, but many jurists want them tried for crimes against humanity such as torture, in which they have admitted engaging.
The US and other United Nations members are signatories to the United Nations Charter, which as a treaty has the force of law. Chapter 7 of the UN charter forbids war except under two conditions: 1) Self-defense or, 2) a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing war against a regime that is posing a threat to international order.
Juan Cole continues after this part of his blog post, with which I basically agree, and to which I added hyperlinks as usually on this blog, with another, wrong, part. He defends the NATO war against Libya. The difference between Bush’s Iraq war and the present Libya war, he says, is that the latter is based on a United Nations security council resolution.
That is one difference, but definitely not enough to see the Libya war as “humanitarian” instead of neo-colonial, which it is, basically like the Iraq war. The UN resolution was about a no-fly zone in Libya. A United States general, interviewed on television, said that NATO countries’ air forces basically achieved the no-fly zone within one day. Then, the NATO countries made the war escalate beyond its official no-fly zone intention into a war of “regime change”, and of changing the original Libyan anti-dictatorship, anti-privatisation rebellion into a puppet appendix of pro-privatisation, pro-Big Oil imperialism.
The NATO aircraft did not bother any more about pro-Gadaffi aircraft, but killed little girls, Muslim clerics, an apolitical son of Gadaffi along with children in his house, other civilians, and anti-Gadaffi fighters. Meanwhile, more and more NATO countries’ special forces “military advisers” (like in the beginning of the Vietnam war) mean more and more “boots on the ground” escalation.
No mention of this by Juan Cole, transformed from anti-Iraq war liberal into cruise missile liberal.
Anti-war campaigners will protest outside Downing Street this [Monday] evening, calling for an end to the Nato bombardment of Libya: here.
TORTURE, STATE EXECUTIONS AND ILLEGAL IMPRISONMENT! – the US human rights record: here.
