Friday, June 02, 2006

Further widely confirmed reports of U.S. war crimes committed against innocent Iraqi civilians.

As reported by WMR on May 30, there are now further widely confirmed reports of U.S. war crimes committed against innocent Iraqi civilians. In addition to the Nov. 2005 Haditha massacre of civilians, including women and children, there is now a report that U.S. troops massacred civilians in the town of Ishaqi in March of this year. Ishaqi is 10 miles north of Balad. The Bush White House and Pentagon have responded to these war crimes by ordering specialized training for U.S. troops before they deploy to Iraq.

In addition to U.S. political and military leaders, international law provides for the indictment of propagandists who stoke the flames of hate by supporting war crimes and the unlawful actions of governments during wartime. William Joyce (nicknamed Lord Haw Haw), an Irish-American broadcaster for Nazi Germany, was hanged for treason on 1946. Mildred Sisk (nicknamed Axis Sally), an American who broadcasted messages to Allied troops on Radio Berlin, was convicted of one count of treason following the war. U.S. citizen Iva Toguri D'Aquino ("Tokyo Rose"), a broadcaster for Japanese radio during World War II, was convicted of treason. She was pardoned by President Gerald Ford in a deal that Ford's Chief of Staff, Dick Cheney, was involved. Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, broadcasters for Rwanda's Radio Milles Collines, were indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda for airing anti-Tutsi messages in 1994. Broadcasters like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and other venal broadcasters who are acting on behalf of the Bush administration in defending war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Iraq, may find themselves subject to future International Criminal Court investigations.