Former IC Judge: Cheney Should Stand Trail For War Crimes
kawika Wed, 07/08/2015 - 7:50am
7 JUL 2015
Dick Cheney should — and eventually will — be tried as a war criminal: former International Court judge
The world’s most distinguished expert in international human rights law believes Dick Cheney should – and eventually will – stand trial for war crimes.
Thomas Buergenthal, who served as a judge at the International Court of Justice for the first 10 years of this century, said he believes the former U.S. vice president could be brought before the International Criminal Court, reported Newsweek.
“Some of us have long thought that Cheney and a number of CIA agents who did what they did in those so-called black holes should appear before the ICC...
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Dick Cheney a 'War Criminal' & George W. Bush a 'Mama's Boy'
Dick Cheney a 'War Criminal' & George W. Bush a 'Mama's Boy'
Published on Jul 8, 2015
Former vice president Dick Cheney should and will eventually be tried for Iraq war crimes, according to former judge on the International Court of Justice Thomas Buergenthal, who offered his opinion on the matter in an interview with Newsweek. Buergenthal also criticized George W. Bush saying that he decision to enter Iraq was an attempt to show off for his mother. Are hopes of bringing Bush administration criminals to justice a pipe dream? We discuss it on the Lip News with Jo Ankier and Nik Zecevic.
I like seeing stories like this.
Stories like this help to put awareness on 9/11 and on what these criminals have done.
Dick Cheney should and eventually will be tried as a war crimina
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/dick-cheney-should-and-eventually-will-be-tried-as-a-war-criminal-former-international-cou...
Dick Cheney should — and eventually will — be tried as a war criminal: former International Court judge
Travis Gettys
07 Jul 2015 at 11:53 ET
The world’s most distinguished expert in international human rights law believes Dick Cheney should – and eventually will – stand trial for war crimes.
Thomas Buergenthal, who served as a judge at the International Court of Justice for the first 10 years of this century, said he believes the former U.S. vice president could be brought before the International Criminal Court, reported Newsweek.
“Some of us have long thought that Cheney and a number of CIA agents who did what they did in those so-called black holes should appear before the ICC,” said Buergenthal, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp as a boy.
The 81-year-old was born in the former Czechoslovakia but is now a U.S. citizen and a professor of law at George Washington University.
“We (Americans) could have tried them ourselves,” Buergenthal said. “I voted for Obama, but I think he made a great mistake when he decided not to instigate legal proceedings against some of these people. I think – yes – that it will happen.”
Buergenthal said he had no insight into whether former British Prime Minister Tony Blair might also face a war crimes tribunal for his role in the Iraq War, and he dismissed former President George W. Bush as insignificant.
“(Bush was) an ignorant person who wanted to show his mother he could do things his father couldn’t,” Buergenthal said.
He said Richard Nixon – under whom Cheney served in the early 1970s – would never have been stupid enough to start a war with Iraq.
“(Nixon was) more intelligent,” Buergenthal said. “I don’t think Nixon would have got involved in Iraq.”
Not impressed by his take on Iraq war
'“(Bush was) an ignorant person who wanted to show his mother he could do things his father couldn’t,” Buergenthal said.'
That's just more of the same shallow analysis and smug, self-congratulatory liberal claptrap of the kind that enabled Reagan to skate on Iran-Contra, on the claim that he was ignorant and aloof from the affair, when he was anything but. The Iraq invasion was about economic and military interests, and it's foolish to attribute it to matters of personal psychology. I see no reason not to think that Bush was a witting participant, doing the PR work to sell a war that benefited his cronies.
Ditto for the claim that the Iraq invasion was a matter of the administration's 'stupidity.' Again, this is a typical characterization of those who bury their heads like ostriches rather than confront the reality that they live in an oligarchy and not a democracy. Iraq was prevented from shifting oil transactions from dollars to euros; and U.S. companies gained control of assets that otherwise would have gone to foreign companies that had already negotiated deals in the anticipation of the lifting of sanctions. Mission accomplished. The price for accomplishing all this was paid by the taxpayers, the fighting man and woman, and large numbers of Iraqi civilians. The few benefiting at the expense of the many--that's not 'stupidity,' that's just imperialism doing what it does.
The Hidden Costs
A recently published report has revealed that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was responsible for the deaths of approximately 1 million Iraqis, which is 5 percent of the total population of the country. The report also tallies hundreds of thousands of casualties in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Authors of the report, titled "Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the 'War on Terror,'" have told Truthout that other casualty reports, like the often-quoted Iraq Body Count (IBC), which has a high-end estimate at the time of this writing of 154,563, are far too low in their estimates, and that the real numbers reach "genocidal dimensions."
http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/body-count.pdf
Read more:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30164-report-shows-us-invasion-occupation-of-iraq-left-1-million-dead
More on IBC
Nafeez Ahmed has also written critically about IBC, and has taken some heat for it--from the likes of our old friend, George Monbiot:
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/george-monbiot-and-the-iraq-war-bullshit-brigade-6287c7bd5f1c
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/iraq-body-count-undercounting-death-with-pro-war-cash-b8ec232551a8
The War You Don't See--John Pilger
"During World War One 10% of of all casualties were civilians."
"During World War Two the number of civilian deaths rose to 50%."
"During the Vietnam War 70% of all casualties were civilians."
"In the war in Iraq, civilians account for 90% of all deaths."
See at mark 46:20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRKEBAE_P5U
Congratulations to all of you who support the evil machine. I do not.
RAW STORY
nuff said