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Learning to Love — and Use — the Bomb

By Jonathan Marshall | Consortium News | January 23, 2016

At a time when America’s public sector is apparently too strapped financially even to provide safe drinking water for some of its residents, the Obama administration plans to commit the nation to spending at least $1 trillion over the next three decades to improve our ability to fight a nuclear war. That’s right — an almost unthinkable war that would end up destroying much of the habitable portion of the globe.

That wasn’t the message President Obama conveyed in April, 2009 when he declared in Prague, “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. … Generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light. … Just as we stood for freedom in the Twentieth Century, we must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the Twenty-first Century.

“And as . . . the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. … So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

How times change. Today, warns former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, “we are now on the verge of a new nuclear arms race” based on a return to Cold War thinking. “Moreover, I believe that the risk of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War — and yet our public is blissfully unaware of the new nuclear dangers they face.”

Russia shares some of the blame, with its ostentatious talk of developing new weapons like a giant nuclear-tipped torpedo designed to “cause guaranteed devastating damage to the country’s territory by creating wide areas of radioactive contamination.”

But a far greater risk to global security is the Obama administration’s so-called nuclear “modernization” program, which the Pentagon is promoting at the same time U.S. policymakers are incessantly demonizing Russia as the chief threat to the United States and its allies.

In theory, the administration aims merely to ensure that America’s nuclear deterrent remains “robust” — that is, credible enough to dissuade any other nuclear power from contemplating an attack on U.S. forces, or installations, or cities.

But U.S. nuclear forces are currently sized with only one potential enemy in mind: Russia. The United States has an estimated 1,900 nuclear weapons deployed, versus 1,780 for Russia. The next largest nuclear power is France, with just 290 deployed weapons. The total U.S. nuclear stockpile of 7,200 warheads is 28 times bigger than China’s.

Apparently all that isn’t enough to let top Pentagon officials sleep at night. President Obama’s new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last year that he believes Russia poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security — “an existential threat” no less. “If you look at their behavior, it’s nothing short of alarming,” he declared.

Curtis LeMay Redux

Lest Russia launch an all-out attack, for reasons unknown, the Obama administration proposes building 12 new nuclear-armed submarines, 100 long-range strategic bombers armed with a new class of bombs, 400 silo-based ballistic missiles, and 1,000 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. It’s almost as if Air Force General Curtis LeMay were still running the show.

An authoritative study by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies estimates the full cost of this program over 30 years at more than $1 trillion — with no allowance for cost overruns, delays, or clean-up and decommissioning costs.

But cost may be the least of the problems with Obama’s agenda. One common if disguised element of these “modernization” programs is their ability to make nuclear “war-fighting” more, not less, conceivable by increasing the targeting flexibility of these weapons and, in some cases, reducing their yield so they resemble very large conventional weapons rather than the all-or-nothing nukes of old.

For example, as the New York Times reported, the recently tested B61 Model 12 nuclear bomb has steerable fins that permit pin-point accuracy and configurable yields to as little as two percent of the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima. General James E. Cartwright, retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former head of the United States Strategic Command, said “what going smaller does is to make the weapon more thinkable.”

Similarly, the proposed new Long-Range Stand-Off weapon, a vastly upgraded nuclear cruise missile, “is designed for nuclear warfighting,” states Stephen Young, a senior analyst in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Unfortunately, for that very reason, deploying this weapon will actually make the United States less secure.”

Moving to a nuclear war-fighting capability violates the official U.S. policy outlined in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which called for steps to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attack, with the objective of making deterrence of nuclear attack on the United States or our allies and partners the sole purpose of US nuclear weapons.”

Once policymakers start seriously considering “limited war” scenarios in which nuclear weapons might come in handy, the risk of war shoots way up. At the same time, the acquisition of war-fighting capabilities will prompt the other side to follow suit.

Easing into Nuclear War

As James Doyle, a former nonproliferation analyst at Los Alamos National Laboratory, put it, “Lowering the threshold of nuclear war poses the very real threat of rapid escalation in a conflict potentially resulting in the use of many, more destructive nuclear weapons.”

Russia certainly views the Obama administration’s current nuclear program as upsetting the stability of traditional deterrence. Following a recent test of the new B61-12 bomb, Russia’s deputy defense minister, Anatoly Antonov, denounced it as “irresponsible” and “openly provocative.”

Russia is also gravely concerned about another development that could, in theory, make the United States contemplate a “limited” nuclear war: the expansion of the U.S. ballistic missile defense network in Europe. President Vladimir Putin called that “an attempt to undermine the existing parity in strategic nuclear weapons and essentially to upset the whole system of global and regional stability.”

The biggest risk from all these developments isn’t a planned nuclear war, but an unplanned nuclear exchange triggered by a false alarm in an atmosphere of mutual paranoia. Both the United States and Russia have hundreds of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, ready to “launch on warning” lest they be destroyed in a sneak attack. Our survival thus far is thanks in part to luck; scholars have documented at least 20 accidents that might have started an accidental nuclear war in years past.

There’s no guarantee that our luck will hold out, however. Thanks to growing fears of being wiped out without warning by stealthy U.S. weapons, “Russia has shortened the launch time from what it was during the Cold War,” according to Bruce Blair, a nuclear security expert at Princeton. “Today, top military command posts in the Moscow area can bypass the entire human chain of command and directly fire by remote control rockets in silos and on trucks as far away as Siberia in only 20 seconds.”

The priority of U.S. nuclear policy today should not be investing in staggeringly expensive new technology that makes us less secure by making nuclear war more thinkable and thus more unpredictable. It should be overwhelmingly focused on nuclear risk reduction: lowering the threats perceived by each nuclear power, eliminating launch-on-warning policies, and exploring other confidence-building measures. Our greatest security task is to modernize our thinking about nuclear weapons, not our nuclear weapons technology.

January 24, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US & Turkey eyeing military operation in Syria against ISIS if peace talks fail

RT | January 23, 2016

US Vice President Joe Biden says the US and Turkey are prepared for military solutions in Syria if a political settlement cannot be found. He added that Washington recognizes the Kurdistan Workers’ Party is as much of a threat to Ankara as Islamic State.

“We do know it would better if we can reach a political solution but we are prepared …, if that’s not possible, to have a military solution to this operation and taking out Daesh,” Biden said at a news conference after a meeting with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, as cited by Reuters. ‘Daesh’ is an Arabic term for Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS/ISIL).

A US official later clarified that Biden was talking about a military solution to IS, not Syria as a whole.

Biden added that he discussed with Davutoglu how the two allies could try and work together to support Syrian rebel groups who oppose President Bashar Assad. The US vice president backed Ankara in its battle with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), saying it was as much of a threat to Ankara as Islamic State, and that Turkey must do everything necessary to protect its citizens.

However, the pair disagreed about the status of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in northern Syria, with Biden saying there is a difference between the PYD and PKK.

“To say that these [groups] are separate, one should be unaware that those [PKK] guns are coming to [Turkey] from Syria,” Davutoglu said, according to Reuters.

Ankara believes the Syrian Kurds are looking to create a corridor along the northern border with Turkey, which would cut off Turkey from sharing a boundary with Syria.

“The PYD is a terrorist organization that cooperates with the Syrian regime. Struggling against Daesh does not grant them legitimacy,” the Turkish prime minister said.

Turkey has carried out attacks on Kurdish forces in northern Syria. In late July, the Kurds said they had been bombed at least four times, with civilians being among the casualties. Ankara maintained its airstrikes were aimed at members of the PKK.

Kurdish fighters have proved to be some of the most effective forces in helping to combat Islamic State in northern Syria, while borders in territories under its control have been sealed to stop the flow of foreign IS militants into Syria.

On Friday, Biden said Turkey’s intimidation of the media, curtailing of internet freedom and accusations of treason made against academics was not setting a good example in the Middle East.

“The more Turkey succeeds, the stronger the message sent to the entire Middle East and parts of the world who are only beginning to grapple with the notion of freedom,” Biden mentioned.

“But when the media are intimidated or imprisoned for critical reporting, when internet freedom is curtailed and social media sites like YouTube or Twitter are shut down and more than 1,000 academics are accused of treason simply by signing a petition, that’s not the kind of example that needs to be set,” he said.

January 23, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Red lines and dollar signs: the business of the Syrian War

The Rant Foundry | January 23, 2016

A damning report on the conflict of interests in the Syrian Crisis debate identified numerous corporate and defense industry ties of experts and think tanks who commented on potential military intervention. Much of the debate over Syria got underway in 2013, when not only were the conflicts-of-interest and military-industrial complex ties of these “consultants” and “experts” rarely disclosed, but the ideas they expressed were mere permutations of an ideologically narrow spectrum of U.S. and Western neo-conservative interventionism.

As US official sources are now claiming that ISIS is developing chemical weapons those same experts and think tanks are back with a vengeance.

The conflict-of-interest report by the Public Accountability Initiative (http://public-accountability.org) offers a new look at an issue raised by David Barstow’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series on the role military analysts played in promoting the Bush Administration’s narrative on Iraq. In addition to exposing coordination with the Pentagon, Barstow found that many cable news analysts had industry ties that were not disclosed on air.

During the public debate around the question of whether to attack Syria, Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to George W. Bush, made a series of high-profile media appearances. Hadley argued strenuously for military intervention in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV, and authored a Washington Post op-ed headlined “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad.” The phrase “red line” has been used numerous times in reference to Syria and its President Bashar al-Assad, particularly in attempt to establish the legal intervention of Russian forces in Syria as a crossing of those lines. It was also used in 2014 by those in favor of forcible ‘regime change’ in Syria when rockets with sarin filled warheads landed in rebel-held residential areas in Ghouta, Syria, killing hundreds and injuring thousands.  Each side naturally blamed the other, with western intelligence agencies providing evidence supporting the opposition, and Russian intelligence supporting the regime. Both sides issued biased reports with cherry-picked evidence, only adding to the confusion.  An analysis of all evidence relating to the August 21st chemical attack indicate it was carried out by opposition forces. According to the most likely scenario, they used looted incendiary rockets, refilled them with sarin they manufactured themselves, and launched them from a rebel-held territory 2 km north of Zamalka.

Stephen Hadley’s television audiences were never informed that he serves as a director of Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer that makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were widely cited as a weapon of choice in a potential strike against Syria. Hadley earns $128,500 in annual cash compensation from the company and chairs its public affairs committee. He also owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate ($77.65 on August 23, making Hadley’s share’s worth $891,189). Despite this critically important financial stake, Hadley was presented to his audience as an experienced, independent national security expert.

Though Hadley’s undisclosed conflict is particularly egregious, it is not unique. The following report documents the industry ties of Hadley, 21 other media commentators, and seven think tanks that participated in the media debate around Syria. Like Hadley, these individuals and organizations have strong ties to defense contractors and other defense- and foreign policy-focused firms with a vested interest in the Syria debate, but they were presented to their audiences with a veneer of expertise and independence, as former military officials, retired diplomats, and independent think tanks.

think-tank-map

A pentagonal network: think tank-defense industry ties [image via public-accountability.org]

If the recent debate around Syria is any guide, media outlets have done very little to address the gaps in disclosure and abuses of the public trust that Barstow exposed. Some analysts have stayed the same, others are new, and the issues and range of opinion are different. But the media continues to present former military and government officials as venerated experts without informing the public of their industry ties – the personal financial interests that may be shaping their opinions of what is in the national interest. This report details these ties, in addition to documenting the industry backing of think tanks that played a prominent role in the Syria debate. It reveals the extent to which the public discourse around Syria was corrupted by the pervasive influence of the defense industry, to the point where many of the so-called experts appearing on American television screens were actually representatives of companies that profit from heightened US military activity abroad. The threat of war with Syria may or may not have passed, but the threat that these conflicts of interest pose to public discourse – and democracy – is still very real.

January 23, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UK PM calls for limiting war legal claims

Press TV – January 22, 2016

British Prime Minister David Cameron says he wants to stamp out what he called spurious legal claims against war veterans.

He said ministers had been asked to draw up plans to restrict claims, including by curbing financial incentives for “no win, no fee” cases.

The statements come as about 280 UK veterans are currently being investigated over alleged abuse by soldiers during the Iraq War.

Lawyers said no-one was above the law, and many abuse cases had been proven.

The Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) was established to investigate allegations of murder, abuse and torture against Iraqi civilians by UK military personnel between 2003 and 2009.

According to media reports, IHAT has considered at least 1,515 possible victims – of whom 280 are alleged to have been unlawfully killed – and lawyers are continuing to refer cases of alleged abuse. The head of the inquiry, Mark Warwick, has said there are “lots of significant cases” and that discussions would be held over whether they met a war crimes threshold.

Earlier, Cameron said he feared people were being “solicited by lawyers” enticing them into making accusations, and was concerned many of them were fabricated.

“Our armed forces are rightly held to the highest standards – but I want our troops to know that when they get home from action overseas this government will protect them from being hounded by lawyers over claims that are totally without foundation,” Cameron said, adding he had ordered the National Security Council to produce “a comprehensive plan to stamp out this industry.

“It is very important that all forces should be responsible within the law,” a London-based political analyst Rodney Shakespeare told Press TV.

He said the UK society needs to uphold the principals of decent behavior adding this is disgraceful that the government is now putting heavy efforts into stopping the trend.

January 22, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

IRAQ: The War Legacy and the ‘Staggering’ Suffering of Its Civilian Population…

The Burning Blogger Of Bedlam | January 22, 2016

‘Staggering’ is how the UN has described the depth and nature of civilian suffering in post-war Iraq; citing over 18,000 civilians having been killed in the space of just this last year-and-a-half.

According to the report, conducted by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, an approximate 3.2 million people have also been displaced internally over this same period of time.

The UN report confirms the brutality of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ group, with its unprecedented levels of gruesome, rampant violence and criminality. But contrary to popular portrayal, the violence in Iraq isn’t limited to ISIS/ISIL, but includes various crimes committed by Iraqi troops, militiamen and Kurdish forces, as recorded in the UN report.

The UN also acknowledges that the recorded 18,802 civilians killed (and 36,245 wounded) between the beginning of 2014 and the end of 2015 could be much higher; the figures will  logically be higher, because there are multiple no-go areas for journalists and activists, where crimes can’t be investigated.

Among the most brutal of the many brutal crimes committed by the foreign-backed ‘ISIS/ISIL’ was an incident in Mosul where victims were forced to lay down in front of a crowd while a bulldozer was driven over them, and the militants executing 19 women for refusing to submit to sex with ISIL fighters. Up to 900 children have also been reported abducted in Mosul and subjected to forced indoctrination and military training. The report also highlights the extent to which women and children have been subjected to sexual violence, and highlights the plight of some 3,500 people, mostly women and children from the Yazidi community, currently being held as slaves.

Read also, the UN Report on the Protection on Civilians in the Armed Conflict in Iraq, May – October 2015.

And yet for all the instability and horrors of Iraq, some 245,000 desperate Syrians have reportedly crossed into Iraq to escape the horrors of neighbouring Syria; Syrians too have been paying the price for the invasion of Iraq and the destabilisation of the entire region. These horrors are inter-related, as is what is happening in Libya.

All of the horrors highlighted in the report, however, are simply from the passed year or so. The suffering of the Iraqi people and the humiliation and destruction of Iraqi society had already been going on a long time before this and before even the rise of the horrendous, foreign-funded ISIS/ISIL proxy army.

iraq-warcrimes1

The governments of the US/UK and NATO essentially already committed genocide against the Iraqi people between 1990 and 2012, killing an estimated 3.3 million, including 750,000 Iraqi children through either sanctions or war.

The illegal invasion and occupation from 2003 is estimated to have led to approximately 189,000 direct war deaths, but this doesn’t also include the hundreds of thousands more who died over the course of the invasion and occupation in general. This includes victims of displacement, victims of terrorism, and the many, many Sunni victims of the US-backed Shia ‘Death Squads’, and of course the many subsequent victims of the Sunni ‘ISIS/ISIL’, which many regard as a direct response  to those US-backed Shia militias.

In every respect, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ owes its existence to its foreign patrons and to the illegal invasion of Iraq. As mass graves continue to be discovered, the UN has outright accused ISIS/ISIL of ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ in Iraq. Whether that means scores of individual jihadists and European teenagers are going to eventually be tried in an international court (the leader or ‘caliph’ of ISIL – the elusive Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – will probably never be tried, as he probably doesn’t exist), it’s a fair bet that the real funders and enablers of this ultra-violent sectarian nightmare will never face charges and neither will the governments, officials and corporations whose illegal warfare has created all of this suffering and death.

Whichever way we look at it – either by American/Western incompetence or by deliberate design; and there’s a massive case to be made for both – what we now know as ‘ISIS/ISIL’ is the monster-child of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Watch this video of an Iraq War veteran, and now-activist, recounting some of the horrific behaviour of invading American troops during the war, as he openly admits “I Helped Create ISIS”. Or examine the reality of the ISIS/ISIL ‘leadership’ and see where the organisation came from.

Aside from the invasion having been entirely illegal and aside from the false pretexts under which it was carried out, at least $75 billion was made in profit by American subcontracting companies alone, including Blackwater, CACI and Titan. United States’ Vice-President Dick Cheney’s company, Haliburton, made an approximate $39.5 Billion from the Iraq War alone.

Concerning the current situation, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said the latest study “illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee to Europe and other regions. This is the horror they face in their homelands”. Go back now and re-watch the old footage of Bush, Rumsfeld and the rest of the mafia of War Criminals/Profiteers talking about the need to invade Iraq; worse, go back and watch them smugly declaring ‘Mission Accomplished’.

Better yet, go re-watch this interview with former American ally and CIA asset, Saddam Hussein, on the eve of the invasion and listen to him talking passionately and proudly about the history, heritage, culture and unity of the Iraqi nation (no sectarian talk, no Sunni/Shia divide, no terrorism), and see if you can get through it without either goosebumps or feeling sick to the pit of your stomach for what was to follow. And for what is still following even now, all these years later.

January 22, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

U.S. snubs its Canadian ally over electoral promise to withdraw fighter jets from Middle East

New Cold War | January 21, 2016

The lead, Western warmaking/regime-change countries intervening in northern Iraq and Syria held a strategy conference of their ministers of war in Paris on January 20. The meeting made waves in Canada because Ottawa was not invited to attend.

The meeting of ministers of the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands discussed ongoing plans for intervention in Syria and Iraq. Canada is fully engaged in that intervention, more so than some of the other countries attending in Paris. For example, neither Italy or Germany have fighter aircraft engaged in bombings. But Canada was not invited to the party because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a promise during the national election campaign of October 19, 2015 that, if elected, his government would withdraw its six fighter-bomber jets from the U.S.-led warmaking alliance and instead focus on ground operations, including training of allied Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

The decision not to invite Canada was likely taken by U.S. Secretary of Defense (sic) Ashton Carter. Never mind that the new Trudeau government is not keeping its electoral promise or that, to the contrary, it has promised to step up its military presence in northern Iraq. No, for the U.S. government, any deviation from its lead in the imperialist war agenda is punishable by shunning.

The U.S. views the Canadian electoral promise as a weak-kneed sop. It cares not a whiff about the war-weary Canadian public, repelled by Canada’s failed military intervention in Afghanistan. That intervention goes back to late 2001. 158 Canadian soldiers died in combat in Afghanistan. At least 59 of those who served have killed themselves upon their return, while, shamefully, the previous Conservative government in Ottawa did all it could to reduce to a minimum disability payments to injured, returned soldiers.

The U.S. snub is intended as a warning to the Trudeau government just in case any of its members are actually considering keeping their election promise. It needn’t worry, there is no evidence that any are doing so. Also, importantly, the snub is serving as a rallying cry for pro-war ideologues in Canada who never liked the election promise in the first place and now want it definitively buried.

The enclosed opinion article in the Globe and Mail is exactly the kind of knee-jerk, pro-war backlash that the U.S. government wanted to foment. The writer, David Bercuson, is a well-known military academic in Canada. He directs his criticisms not at the United States government for snubbing its loyal ally but at the Trudeau government for giving the U.S. a reason to do so.

Bercuson wrote a commentary last month in the Globe saying that Prime Minister Trudeau was asking for trouble with his allies by making flaky election promises over war and intervention in the Middle East.

Columnist Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation newspaper, provides a different view of the snub in a January 18 column. He calls it a “welcome snub”. He says, “Trudeau’s Liberals won power on a pledge to end Canada’s combat mission in Iraq and Syria — in the air and on the ground. If they are serious about this, why should we expect the Americans to include Ottawa in their combat deliberations?

“More to the point, why should we want to be included?”

Ottawa is lucky to have carte blanche, more or less, in working out the subtleties of its desired intervention in Iraq and Syria. The two large opposition parties in Parliament support military intervention in the Middle East, differing only on how that should be done. Meanwhile, antiwar forces are weak and marginalized. Years of confusion over the regime change agenda of the imperialist countries in the in Africa and the Middle East (Mali, Libya, Egypt, Syria) combined now with utter disarray in the face of the anti-Russia drive of NATO have left antiwar forces marginalized.

January 22, 2016 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who is Responsible for the Suffering of Yemen?

By Martin Berger – New Eastern Outlook – 22.01.2016

183323358As noted by numerous commentators on the Middle East, the situation in Yemen remains very grave. The country has been devastated by the armed conflict being waged between the Houthis and the troops of ousted President Mansour Hadi, which in turn are being heavily supported by the air forces of the so-called Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia.

The ongoing airstrikes claim civilians lives, leave districts in ruin, and destroy the country’s infrastructure. Earlier this month at least three people were killed in an air raid on the hospital of Doctors Without Borders in the governorate of Saada. It’s been reported that hospitals are closing their doors, unable to operate under the current circumstances.

This is not the first medical facility to be bombed in Yemen – the so-called Arab coalition has even destroyed the Center for Care and Rehabilitation of the blind in the Yemeni capital Sana’a. Moreover, the international Human Rights Watch organization reported that the coalition was using cluster bombs to destroy certain facilities in Sana’a back in January.

One should note that massive civil unrest began in Yemen in 2011 as the direct result of so-called the Arab Spring, orchestrated by the US and its allies. In 2014, Shia tribesmen that are known today as the Houthis started fighting government forces and consequently managed to capture a significant part of the country due to the massive support that was shown for them by the Yemeni population. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia launched its first airstrikes against the Houthis, which were, according to various human rights organizations, badly coordinated and resulted in massive civilian casualties.

Concerned by the grave state of affairs in Yemen, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein announced at a meeting of the UN Security Council back in December that it is the so-called Arab coalition that is responsible for the absolute majority of attacks on residential areas and civilian targets in Yemen. According to Reuters, the UN High Commissioner announced that he:

“observed with extreme concern heavy shelling from the ground and air in areas of Yemen with a high concentration of civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools.”

It is curious to note that in pursuit of its criminal goals in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has been using weapons that were bought from the UK in 2012. Moreover, it keeps on restocking its supply of deadly British-made weapons. For this reason, at the end of last year, leading British diplomats and lawyers warned David Cameron that he was running the risk of facing an international tribunal for war crimes due to the fact that the weapons that his government supplies to Saudi Arabia are being extensively used against civilian targets in Yemen.

According to The Independent :

“Advisers to Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, have stepped up legal warnings that the sale of specialist missiles to the Saudis, deployed throughout nine months of almost daily bombing raids in west Yemen against Houthi rebels, may breach international humanitarian law…

… thousands of Yemeni civilians have been killed, with schools, hospitals and non-military infrastructure hit. Fuel and food shortages, according to the United Nations, have brought near famine to many parts of the country.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other NGOs, claim there is no doubt that weapons supplied by the UK and the United States have hit Yemeni civilian targets. One senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) legal adviser told The Independent: “The Foreign Secretary has acknowledged that some weapons supplied by the UK have been used by the Saudis in Yemen. Are our reassurances correct – that such sales are within international arms treaty rules? The answer is, sadly, not at all clear.”

Yet, The Guardian notes that Saferworld and Amnesty released a legal opinion from Professor Philippe Sands QC and a number of other lawyers, according to which the sales of British arms to Saudi Arabia in the light of its military intervention and bombing of Yemen violate national, European and international laws. The lawyers are pointing out that in the period of 9 months before July 2015 the UK supplied 9 million pounds worth of rockets and bombs, while in the next three months this number hit a staggering one billion pounds. Additionally, there’s clear evidence that those weapons were used against hospitals, schools, markets, warehouses, ports, and camps for displaced persons, turning Yemen into a nightmare. The Saferworld human rights organization is convinced that there’s a direct link between the increase in sales of ammunition and bombings in Yemen.

Many British observers, including those from The Guardian, have been pointing out that days after David Cameron’s statements about his attempt to “initiate a political process in Yemen,” and remarks that “there could be no military solution in Yemen,” the data released by the government showed that UK officials approved the sale of a billion pounds worth of bombs to Saudi Arabia.

Under these circumstances the only natural question is: Will international human rights organizations and the international community as a whole, all those who failed to say a resounding “NO” to Western military interventions in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, that were only profitable for arms sellers, carry on watching silently the destruction of Yemen? How many Yemenis do we need to see die before we start solving conflicts within a political framework? How many lives should be spared? Do we ever bring to justice those responsible for such massacres? Or will we rather allow politicians, the likes of Cameron, to call for peace, while selling huge amounts of deadly weapons behind our backs with impunity?

Martin Berger is a Czech-based freelance journalist and analyst.

January 22, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

MSF paramedic, civilian first responders killed in Saudi double-tap airstrike in Yemen

RT | January 22, 2016

Almost two dozen people, including civilian rescuers and an ambulance driver from an MSF-affiliated hospital, have reportedly been killed after Saudi-led coalition planes carried out repeated airstrikes on the same target in Sa’ada province, Yemen.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) confirmed the fatal air raids in Sa’ada, saying the “planes went back to bomb areas already hit.”

“An ambulance driver from an MSF hospital [was] killed,” the NGO wrote, explaining that the first responders at the scene had been trying to help those wounded in the first round of strikes.

The ambulance had just picked up the victims when a direct strike killed everyone inside it, said the director of the Jumhuriya Hospital in Sa’ada province, according to the New York Times.

Yemen’s Health Ministry has strongly condemned the coalition’s actions as a “heinous massacre” that first targeted a residential building in Sa’ada, Saba news agency reports, citing ministry spokesperson Dr. Nashwan Attab.

According to reports, at least 20 people were killed and another 35 wounded, in what the medics claim was a deliberate attack. Following the initial air raid in the Dhahyan district of Sa’ada, first responders rushed to the scene to care for the wounded. But the planes soon returned to strike again in an attempt to “completely eliminate the few remaining medical staff in the province,” Dr. Attab said.

WARNING! DISTURBING VIDEO, VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED!

“There are still people under the rubble and it is difficult to get them as a result of targeting by Saudi aggression of paramedics and medical personnel in the region,” he added.

Earlier this week, MSF said that the Saudi coalition continues to engage civilian targets on the ground, in particular medical treatment facilities, noting that over 100 hospitals have witnessed attacks since the Saudi-led intervention began last March.

The constant bombing of health clinics in Yemen has created conditions in which locals fear for their lives and try to avoid hospitals at all costs, MSF said. The United Nations has criticized the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen for the disproportionate number of civilian deaths and the destruction of infrastructure.

The UN estimates that the violence has resulted in a dramatic increase in civilian casualties, with more than 5,800 people killed in Yemen since March.

READ MORE:

Yemeni hospitals seen as targets, people ‘avoid them as much as possible’ – MSF

January 22, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Drone Protestor Heads to Jail

Reporting by Gail Ablow and John Light | Moyers & company | January 20, 2016

Mary Anne Grady Flores

(Video still from Mary Anne Grady Flores’ press conference before reporting to jail. Via YouTube.)

Mary Anne Grady Flores is in jail today and American citizens everywhere can surely breathe a sigh of relief that we are safe from her criminal behavior at least for the next six months.

That’s the length of the sentence this 59-year-old peace activist in upstate New York began on Tuesday — one day after the United States honored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for his commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience. If he were here today, the martyred Dr. King would surely be shaking his head that America still has a problem with peaceful dissenters of conscience.

And what exactly did Grady Flores do to warrant spending the next six months in jail? She photographed a peaceful protest outside Hancock Field Air National Guard Base near Syracuse, New York. The base is where the US trains pilots to launch drone strikes in the Middle East, particularly in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. It wasn’t a crime for her to be taking pictures of the demonstration, but when she briefly and unintentionally — yes, unintentionally — stepped onto a road that belongs to the base, she violated what authorities called “an order of protection,” which had been issued in 2012 to forbid protesters from approaching the home or workplace of Col. Earl Evans, a commander of the 174th Attack Wing of the Air National Guard. She had never met Evans, never threatened him, never showed any intention of harming him.

Nonetheless, a town justice, David Gideon, issued the order to “protect” the Colonel from the activists. That’s right — the commander of a major military operation, piloting drones on lethal missions half-way around the world, requested a court order of protection against a group of mostly gray-haired demonstrators whom he had never met. In stepping briefly on the roadway at the base, Grady Flores violated that order, despite the fact that, as she says, “We weren’t at the security gate. We were out at the roadway.”

Now get this: The order issued by Judge Gideon was of the sort commonly used against victims of sexual or domestic abuse. “The legal terms ‘victim’ and ‘witness’ have been expanded in this case in a way that’s new and unique in the state of New York,” said attorney Lance Salisbury at a press conference yesterday before Grady Flores was hauled off to jail.

Grady Flores had protested outside the base before. She belongs to The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, which has criticized the drone program since 2010, calling for a change in policy to uphold life and law.

President Obama and the Pentagon insist that using drones in pursuit of terrorists causes minimal civilian casualties and protects American troops, but Grady Flores takes issue with that justification. She told us she had been moved, in particular, by reports of the staggering numbers of civilians killed by US drones, and she says her fears were confirmed by documents recently leaked to journalists at The Intercept revealing that during one five-month stretch, 90 percent of those killed in one part of Northeastern Afghanistan were not the intended target.

Grady Flores says she was also shaken by the 2013 testimony before Congress of a family from Pakistan that had suffered a drone strike in North Waziristan. A grandmother of three herself, Grady Flores listened as Rafiq ur Rehman recounted his mother’s death in the presence of her grandchildren. “She was out in the fields picking okra with the kids around and a drone strike happened, and she was sent to four winds… now the kids live in terror,” Grady Flores recalls.

“That’s why citizens are at the gates of Hancock,” says Grady Flores. “That’s why we’re there.”

Grady Flores was arrested in 2012, when she and 16 others blocked the entrance to the base, prompting the request from the military for the order of protection. When she was arrested again a year later — not for protesting herself but for stepping on the road outside the base and taking pictures of others who were protesting — she was found to be in violation of that protection order. And the protestors she was photographing? They were acquitted.

Justice David Gideon threw the book at her. He sentenced her to a year, claiming in his five-page ruling that he didn’t buy her First Amendment argument. Instead, he thought she “was willing to ‘break the law’ to seek publicity for her cause.” After an appeal, her sentence was shortened to six months.

Before she went to jail yesterday she told us: “I asked my grandchildren, ‘Do you know where I’m going?’ and they said, ‘yeah, you’re going to jail, Nana.’” She told us that it is difficult to leave her 88-year-old mother who is ailing, but that her mother appreciates her carrying on in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King and the iconic Catholic activist Dorothy Day, with whom her mother once worked. Day famously said, “No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”

Grady Flores says her mother’s good-bye shared that sentiment, “Mom said to me, ‘I’ll pray for you, I’ll be with you in that cell.’ She said it in a whisper, but she’s grateful that I’m continuing the work.”

January 21, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Terrorists in Syria’s Aleppo Got Reinforcements from Turkey: Russia

Al-Manar | January 21, 2016

Terrorists have increased their activities ahead of the next week’s inter-Syrian talks, with terrorists in the Syrian province of Aleppo receiving reinforcements from Turkey, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.

The much-anticipated talks between the Syrian government and different opposition groups are scheduled to take place in the Swiss city of Geneva on January 25.

“Unfortunately, in recent days, it’s especially noticeable that ahead of the planned start of the inter-Syrian negotiations in Geneva the activities of terrorist groups have intensified. Obviously, they’re trying to turn the tide in their favor on the battlefield,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing in Moscow.

According to Zakharova, attempts to launch counter-attacks against the government forces were performed by Al-Nusra Front and Ahrar ash-Sham groups, which “got serious reinforcements from Turkey.”

The increased activity of the terrorists was witnessed in several suburbs of Damascus, Homs and Idleb provinces of Syria, she added.

Russia will continue providing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population in Syria, Zakharova stressed.

She reiterated that Russia’s Emergencies Ministry has performed 30 flights “not only to Syria, but also to Lebanon and Jordan” in January, delivering 600 tons of food and essentials for those affected by the conflict.

Besides humanitarian assistance, “Russia has also been involved in evacuation of citizens who want to leave dangerous areas,” she added.

Zakharova said that Moscow was “surprised” by recent comments from Washington, in which “representatives of the US State Department said that they don’t see Russia’s efforts in regard to providing humanitarian aid to Syria.”

“This is very strange, especially since the State Department allegedly sees everything, including Russian tanks that are being flown in or crawling into the territory of other states, but there’s no humanitarian aid in sight,” she said.

January 21, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Democrats in ‘Group Think’ Land

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | January 19, 2016

A curious reality about Official Washington is that to have “credibility” you must accept the dominant “group thinks” whether they have any truth to them or not, a rule that applies to both the mainstream news media and the political world, even to people who deviate from the pack on other topics.

For instance, Sen. Bernie Sanders may proudly declare himself a “democratic socialist” – far outside the acceptable Washington norm – but he will still echo the typical propaganda about Syria, Russia, Iran and other “designated villains.” Like other progressives who spend years in Washington, he gets what you might called “Senate-ized,” adopting that institution’s conventional wisdom about “enemies” even if he may differ on whether to bomb them or not.

That pattern goes in spades for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other consciously “centrist” politicians as well as media stars, like NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Lester Holt, who were the moderators of Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate. They know what they know based on what “everybody who’s important” says, regardless of the evidence or lack thereof.

So, you had Mitchell and Holt framing questions based on Official Washington’s “group thinks” – and Sanders and Clinton responding accordingly.

Regarding Iran, Sanders may have gone as far as would be considered safe in this political environment, welcoming the implementation of the agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program but accepting the “group think” about Iran’s “terrorism” and hesitant to call for resumption of diplomatic relations.

“Understanding that Iran’s behavior in so many ways is something that we disagree with; their support of terrorism, the anti-American rhetoric that we’re hearing from their leadership is something that is not acceptable,” Sanders said. “Can I tell you that we should open an embassy in Tehran tomorrow? No, I don’t think we should.”

Blaming Iran

In her response, Clinton settled safely behind the Israeli-preferred position – to lambaste Iran for supposedly fomenting the trouble in the Middle East, though more objective observers might say that the U.S. government and its “allies” – including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – have wreaked much more regional havoc than Iran has.

“We have to go after them [the Iranians] on a lot of their other bad behavior in the region which is causing enormous problems in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere,” Clinton said.

Yet, how exactly Iran is responsible for “enormous problems” across the region doesn’t get explained. Everybody just “knows” it to be true, since the claim is asserted by Israel’s right-wing government and repeated by U.S. pols and pundits endlessly.

Yet, in Iraq, the chaos was not caused by Iran, but by the U.S. government’s invasion in 2003, which then-Sen. Clinton supported (while Sen. Sanders opposed it). In Yemen, it is the Saudis and their Sunni coalition that has created a humanitarian disaster by bombing the impoverished country after wildly exaggerating Iran’s support for Houthi rebels.

In Syria, the core reason for the bloodshed is not Iran, but decisions of the Bush-43 administration last decade and the Obama administration this decade to seek another “regime change,” ousting President Bashar al-Assad.

Supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers, this U.S.-backed “covert” intervention instigated both political unrest and terrorist violence inside Syria, including arming jihadist forces such as Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al-Sham and – to a lesser degree – Al Qaeda’s spinoff, the Islamic State. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.“]

The desire of these Sunni powers — along with Israel and America’s neoconservatives — was to shatter the so-called “Shiite crescent” that they saw reaching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Since Assad is an Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam, he had to be removed even though he was regarded as the principal protector of Syria’s Christian, Shiite and Alawite minorities. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Money Seal Saudi-Israeli Alliance?’]

However, while Israel and the Sunni powers get a pass for their role in the carnage, Iran is blamed for its assistance to the Syrian military in battling these jihadist groups. Official Washington’s version of this tragedy is that the culprits are Assad, the Iranians and now the Russians, who also intervened to help the Syrian government resist the jihadists, both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s various friends and associates. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Climbing into Bed with Al Qaeda.”]

Blaming Assad

Official Washington also accepts as undeniably true that Assad is responsible for all 250,000 deaths in the Syrian civil war – even those inflicted by the Sunni jihadists against the Syrian military and Syrian civilians – a logic that would have accused President Abraham Lincoln of slaughtering all 750,000 or so people – North and South – who died in the U.S. Civil War.

The “group think” also holds that Assad was behind the sarin gas attack near Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, despite growing evidence that it was a jihadist group, possibly with the help of Turkish intelligence, that staged the outrage as a provocation to draw the U.S. military into the conflict against Syria’s military by creating the appearance that Assad had crossed Obama’s “red line” on using chemical weapons.

Mitchell cited Assad’s presumed guilt in the sarin attack in asking Clinton: “Should the President have stuck to his red line once he drew it?”

Trying to defend President Obama in South Carolina where he is popular especially with the black community, Clinton dodged the implicit criticism of Obama but accepted Mitchell’s premise.

“I know from my own experience as Secretary of State that we were deeply worried about Assad’s forces using chemical weapons because it would have had not only a horrific effect on people in Syria, but it could very well have affected the surrounding states, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey. …

“If there is any blame to be spread around, it starts with the prime minister of Iraq, who sectarianized his military, setting Shia against Sunni. It is amplified by Assad, who has waged one of the bloodiest, most terrible attacks on his own people: 250,000-plus dead, millions fleeing. Causing this vacuum that has been filled unfortunately, by terrorist groups, including ISIS.”

Clinton’s account – which ignores the central role that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and outside support for the jihadists in Syria played in creating ISIS – represents a thoroughly twisted account of how the Mideast crisis evolved, But Sanders seconded Clinton’s recitation of the “group think” on Syria, saying:

“I agree with most of what she said. … And we all know, no argument, the Secretary is absolutely right, Assad is a butcher of his own people, man using chemical weapons against his own people. This is beyond disgusting. But I think in terms of our priorities in the region, our first priority must be the destruction of ISIS. Our second priority must be getting rid of Assad, through some political settlement, working with Iran, working with Russia.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Blind Eye Toward Turkey’s Crimes.”]

Sanders also repeated his talking point that Saudi Arabia and Qatar must “start putting some skin in the game” – ignoring the fact that the Saudis and Qataris have been principal supporters of the Sunni jihadists inflicting much of the carnage in Syria. Those two rich countries have put plenty of “skin in the game” except it comes in the slaughter of Syrian Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other religious minorities.

Blaming Russia

NBC anchor Lester Holt then recited the “group think” about “Russian aggression” in Ukraine – ignoring the U.S. role in instigating the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Holt also asserted Moscow’s guilt in the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 despite the lack of any solid evidence to support that claim.

Holt asked: “Secretary Clinton, you famously handed Russia’s foreign minister a reset button in 2009. Since then, Russia has annexed Crimea, fomented a war in Ukraine, provided weapons that downed an airliner and launched operations, as we just did discuss, to support Assad in Syria. As president, would you hand Vladimir Putin a reset button?”

While noting some positive achievements from the Russian “reset” such as a new nuclear weapons treaty, help resupplying U.S. troops in Afghanistan and assistance in the nuclear deal with Iran, Clinton quickly returned to Official Washington’s bash-Putin imperative:

“When Putin came back in the fall of 2011, it was very clear he came back with a mission. And I began speaking out as soon as that happened because there were some fraudulent elections held, and Russians poured out into the streets to demand their freedom, and he cracked down. And in fact, accused me of fomenting it. So we now know that he has a mixed record to say the least and we have to figure out how to deal with him. …

“And I know that he’s someone that you have to continuingly stand up to because, like many bullies, he is somebody who will take as much as he possibly can unless you do. And we need to get the Europeans to be more willing to stand up, I was pleased they put sanctions on after Crimea and eastern Ukraine and the downing of the airliner, but we’ve got to be more united in preventing Putin from taking a more aggressive stance in Europe and the Middle East.”

In such situations, with millions of Americans watching, no one in Official Washington would think to  challenge the premises behind these “group thinks,” not even Bernie Sanders. No one would note that the U.S. government hasn’t provided a single verifiable fact to support its claims blaming Assad for the sarin attack or Putin for the plane shoot-down. No one would dare question the absurdity of blaming Assad for every death in Syria’s civil war or Putin for all the tensions in Ukraine. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “MH-17’s Unnecessary Mystery.”]

Those dubious “group thinks” are simply accepted as true regardless of the absence of evidence or the presence of significant counter-evidence.

The two possibilities for such behavior are both scary: either these people, including prospective presidents, believe the propaganda or that they are so cynical and cowardly that they won’t demand proof of serious charges that could lead the United States and the world into more war and devastation.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

January 20, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Australia and the War in Syria: Continuing Obfuscation

By James O’Neill | New Eastern Outlook | January 19, 2016

On 16 November 2015 the present writer published an article in Australia’s New Matilda magazine. The article had two main objectives. The first was a discussion of the legal bases upon which one State could attack another State. The second purpose was to provide an outline of my attempts to obtain a copy of the legal advice that the Australian government said it would seek before announcing a decision on whether or not to join the United States bombing campaign in Syria.

The content of that advice was of considerable interest. The majority of international lawyers doubted that Australia had any legal basis to intervene militarily in Syria. If the government’s legal advisers had a different opinion, then that would represent a minority view and lawyers would have an interest in the basis of their legal reasoning.

The Australian government had announced on 24 August 2015 that it would be seeking that legal advice. The clear inference was that no decision would be made pending receipt of that advice.

The request under the Freedom of Information Act was refused, but the schedule of relevant documents that were provided (but I was not allowed to see the actual documents) showed that the legal advice had been given to the government on 24 September 2014, eleven months before the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced that the advice would be sought.

The decision that Australia was going to join the American bombing campaign was announced in early September 2015 and the first bombing was carried out over the weekend of 12 and 13 September 2015. No legal basis was advanced on which this decision had been made. There was no debate in Parliament, but even if there had been it is unlikely that the Labor Opposition would have opposed it given their supine position on all matters relating to “national security”.

The only opposition in Parliament came from Senator Richard di Natale, the Green Party leader, and Senator Scott Ludlum, also of the Greens.

On 16 November 2015, the day the New Matilda article was published, Ms Bishop appeared on ABC National Radio to announce that the decision to join the US bombing was made in response to a request from the Iraqi government pursuant to the collective self-defence provisions of Article 51 of the UN Charter. That it took two months to even proffer a reason was interesting in itself.

What Ms Bishop claimed was the reason for the military intervention, that it was at the request of the Iraqi government, contradicted what the government had itself said in August 2015. According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald the government of then Prime Minister Tony Abbott had “pushed for Washington to request that Australia expand its air strikes against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria.”

In acknowledging in August 2015 that the “invitation” was solicited, there was no mention then of any legal considerations that the government would have to consider. The further issue of how it was legally possible, under international law, for the United States to have any basis of inviting any country to join its bombing campaign in Syria, was never mentioned.

It exemplifies the arrogance characteristic of western foreign policy that simply assumes the right to bomb countries, and invite others to do so.

Ms Bishop in her radio interview of 16 November 2015 never referred to any American request, or that her former leader had solicited such a request. She preferred instead to claim that the invitation had come from the Iraqi government. For the reasons given below, that claim was in all probability untrue.

Ms Bishop’s explanation in that radio interview might have answered the query about the claimed legal basis upon which Australia was going to bomb another sovereign nation put to her by the interviewer. But there were further problems for Ms Bishop and the Australian government.

On 20 November 2015 the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2249. Despite some ill-informed media comment in the mainstream press about this resolution, it was manifestly not an authorization to attack Syria.

The operative part of the Resolution required all Member States to “take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular the UN Charter… on the territory under the control of ISIL also known as Daesh, in Syria and Iraq.”

The Australian government’s first problem then, is that it purports to rely on international law, and in particular Article 51 of the UN Charter. UN Security Council Resolution 2249 did not authorise action outside the terms of the UN Charter. That means that any action would have to be either in self-defence or by resolution of the Security Council. Neither condition exists. That leaves only the notion of collective self-defence.

This is the lingering fig leaf of legal respectability that the government clung to, as set out by Ms Bishop in her interview of 16 November 2015. She claimed that Australia was acting at the purported request of the Iraqi government.

Confirmation of the Australian government’s reliance upon the alleged request by the Iraqi government is found in the letter sent by the Australian government to the Security Council on 9 September 2015. Such a letter of notification of military action against another sovereign State is required under the terms of the UN Charter.

The letter stated that the Syrian government was “unable or unwilling” to prevent attacks from its territory upon Iraq. This is a highly contentious claim, and one that has no foundation in international law. Only two States, The United States and the United Kingdom have officially endorsed the “unwilling or unable” doctrine and their self-interest in doing so is readily apparent.

Among the many reasons for its rejection as a doctrine in international law is that it would open the floodgates to the extraterritorial use of force against non-state actors. That it should appear in an official letter from the Australian government to the UN Security Council is surprising. In effect the doctrine is a back door route to avoiding the restrictions imposed by Article 51 of the UN Charter that force must be utilized only in legitimate self-defence or with the consent of the Security Council.

The letter went on to say “in response to the request for assistance by the government of Iraq, Australia is therefore undertaking necessary and proportionate military operations against ISIL in Syria in the exercise of the collective self-defence of Iraq.”

The further problem for the Australian government however, was that the Office of the Prime Minister of Iraq issued an official statement on 3 December 2015. That statement renewed the Iraqi government’s “emphasis on the lack of need for foreign troops in Iraq and that the Iraqi government is committed to not allowing the presence of any ground forces on the land of Iraq, and did not ask any side, whether regional or from an international coalition to send ground troops to Iraq.”

The Prime Minister of Iraq’s statement went on to repeat the Iraqi government’s position that it had asked for air support for Iraqi forces operating within Iraq. It further demanded that no activity be undertaken without the approval of the Iraqi government. It would appear that the Iraqi government has a firmer grasp of the limitations on military actions imposed by international law than does the Australian government.

That Iraqi government statement is a direct rebuttal of the claims made by Ms Bishop on behalf of the Australian government that the bombing of Syria was at the request of the Iraqi government. Thus, the Iraqi government demolished the remaining tiny element of potential legality for Australia’s actions.

This is not the end of the Australian government’s legal problems. The International Court of Justice has on at least two occasions in recent years pronounced that the concept of “collective self-defence” does not apply when the “defence” is against non-State actors.

ISIS is not a State in any meaningful sense of the word, so if Iraq had asked for such help against ISIS in Syria, (which as we have seen it did not) such a request would have had no legal basis.

The Australian mainstream media had given a small amount of space to Ms Bishop’s original announcement about Australia intending to bomb Syria. There was also some coverage of the fact that Australian warplanes had carried out operations in Syria when those operations commenced in September 2015.

Almost no coverage was given to the doubts about the legality of the air operations after they had commenced. There was no coverage given to the government’s letter to the Security Council and therefore on the contentious claims made in that letter. Neither was any coverage given to the statement from the Office of the Prime Minister of Iraq. To do so would of course have fatally undermined the editorial support for the government’s actions.

But there was a further significant development that should have been disclosed by the government and given extensive coverage by the media, and that is the extent of the actual bombing in Syria undertaken by the Australian Air Force.

The Department of Defence issues, via its website, the activities of the Air Task Group as it is known, in Iraq and Syria. These data reveal that the F/A-18 fighter-bomber used by the Australian Air Force flew 18 sorties in Syria in September 2015 for a total of 143 operational hours. This was the month the operations commenced.

It was also however, the month that the operations initially ended. The Department of Defence figures show that zero sorties were flown in Syria in the months of October and November and 10 in December.

Some obvious questions are posed by these data. The first question is why did the bombing cease after the same month it began? The second question is why, given the controversies that surrounds the bombing, were the government and the media totally silent on the fact that the bombing had ceased in October and November?

An obvious question is why did the Foreign Minister, in her interview on 16 November 2015, not mention the fact that the bombing she claimed was legally justified had in fact ceased more than six weeks previously? The impression that she strongly sought to convey was that the bombing was both legal and continuing pursuant to the various claims that she was making.

The answers to those questions are necessarily speculative, as the government does not see fit to announce to the people to whom it is accountable, what they are doing on such a vital issue. The mainstream media are doing what they always do, which is to avoid printing any material that does not accord with their pre-determined agenda.

We do know however, that the American bombing of Syria had been singularly ineffective in diminishing ISIL’s operational capacity. Some commentators have suggested that was precisely the point. Whether Australia wished to continue being a party to that charade is an interesting point, and one that an Opposition and a media interested in the truth should pursue.

There was another development at the end of September 2015 however, that has been a singular game-changer in the Syrian theatre of operations. The Russian military intervened in the Syrian conflict. Completely unlike the position of the US “coalition”, the Russians intervened at the specific request of the Syrian government. There was therefore no doubt in international law that the Russian intervention was legally permissible.

The Russian intervention, while on a relatively small scale, has been devastatingly effective. Not only were the ISIL forces obliged to seek cover from air attacks, having enjoyed apparent immunity from the Americans and their allies during the preceding 15 months, there was also major disruption of their supply lines.

As a result of Russian air reconnaissance and satellite images, it has been established beyond doubt that ISIL was transporting stolen Iraqi and Syrian oil across the Turkish border. That oil was sold on the black market through a company with close links to President Erdogan of Turkey. Military supplies were in turn being shipped back across the Turkish border into Iraq and Syria.

There is also good evidence that wounded ISIL fighters are being treated in Turkish and Israeli hospitals. They are also trained in Turkish and Jordanian camps among other places. Both President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have pointed out the financial and other support ISIL receives from other countries in the region.

The Australian media have chosen to give only minimal coverage to some of these disclosures and certainly no analysis of their implications. Those interested in discovering what is actually happening in Syria and related theatres of war are obliged to seek that information elsewhere.

The Russians have also installed the sophisticated S400 air defence system in Syria. This gives them, and their Syrian allies, the capacity to shoot down any unauthorized aircraft in Syrian air space. Again it is purely speculative, but that may also be a reason why Australian Air Force bombing of Syria, which is manifestly unauthorized, ceased for two months after the Russian intervention.

There has now been another new development. The former Defence Minister, Kevin Andrews, sacked when Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister in September, complained that Australia should not have rejected a request from the Americans for a greater commitment of troops to Syria. It appears that the replacement Defence Minister, Marise Payne, had rejected such a request.

Typically, neither the fact of the request nor that it had been refused were known to the public until Mr Andrews complained. Equally typically, the issue of the legal right of the US to make such a request was never discussed.

The fact that it was the Americans who were driving the push for a greater military commitment by Australia did not form part of the letter to the Security Council, and neither was it mentioned by Ms Bishop on 16 November 2015 when she told the ABC why Australia was going to join the bombing of Syria.

To stop the illegal bombing was undoubtedly correct from many points of view, not least from the standpoint of international law that Australia has increasingly disregarded in recent years. The great pity is that the Australian government had neither the moral fortitude nor sufficient faith in the Australian people to inform them of the decision to even temporarily withdraw from a war they had no business in pursuing in the first place.

Neither have we been given an explanation as to why this manifestly illegal bombing has recommenced, whether it is intended to continue, and if so on what possible legal basis. The original purported justifications have been comprehensively demolished by the subsequent revelations. Whether Mr Turnbull can resist the inevitable pressure from the Americans at his forthcoming meeting with President Obama will be closely watched.

James O’Neill is an Australian-based Barrister at Law.

January 19, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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