Make Wars History

Warmongers Of The World, Unite by John Pilger

05 May, 2010
Newstatesman.com

Is there any difference between Australia’s leaders and the three front-runners in Britain’s election when it comes to attitudes to war?

Staring at the vast military history section of the airport shop, I had a choice: the derring-do of psychopaths or scholarly tomes with their illicit devotion to the cult of organised killing. There was nothing I recognised from reporting war. Nothing on the spectacle of children's limbs hanging in trees and nothing on the burden of shit in your trousers. War is a good read. War is fun. More war, please.

On 25 April, the day before I flew out of Australia, I sat in a bar beneath the great sails of the Sydney Opera House. It was Anzac Day, the 95th anniversary of the invasion of Ottoman Turkey by Australian and New Zealand troops at the behest of British imperialism. The landing was an incompetent stunt of blood sacrifice conjured by Winston Churchill, yet it is celebrated in Australia as an unofficial national day. The ABC evening news always comes live from the sacred shore at Gallipoli, where, this year, as many as 8,000 flag-wrapped Antipodeans listened, dewy-eyed, to the Australian governor general, Quentin Bryce, who is the Queen's viceroy, describe the point of pointless mass killing. It was, she said, all about a "love of nation, of service, of family, the love we allow ourselves to receive. [It is a love that] rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And it never fails."

You'll be a man, my son

Of all the attempts at justifying state murder I can recall, this drivel of DIY therapy, clearly aimed at the young, takes the blue riband. Not once did Bryce honour the fallen with the two words that the survivors of 1915 brought home with them: "Never again." Not once did she refer to a truly heroic anti-conscription campaign, led by women, that stemmed the flow of Australian blood in the First World War, the product not of a gormlessness that "believes all things", but of anger in defence of life.

The next item on the TV news was the Australian defence minister, John Faulkner, with the troops in Afghanistan. Bathed in the light of a perfect sunrise, he made the Anzac connection to the illegal invasion of Afghanistan in which, on 12 February last year, Australian soldiers killed fivechildren. No mention was made of them. On cue, this was followed by an item that a war memorial in Sydney had been "defaced by men of Middle Eastern appearance". More war, please.

In the bar of the Opera House, a young man wore campaign medals that were not his. That is the fashion now. Smashing his beer glass on the floor, he stepped over the mess, which was cleaned up by another young man who the TV newsreader would say was of Middle Eastern appearance. Once again, war is a fashionable extremism for those suckered by the Edwardian notion that a man needs to prove himself "under fire" in a country whose people he derides as "gooks" or "ragheads" or simply "scum". (The current public inquiry in London into the torture and murder of an Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, by British troops has heard that "the attitude held" was that "all Iraqis were scum".)

There is a hitch. In this, the ninth year of the thoroughly Edwardian invasion of Afghanistan, more than two-thirds of the home populations of the invaders want their troops to get out of where they have no right to be. This is true of Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada and Germany. What this says is that, behind the media façade of politicised ritual - such as the parade of coffins through Wootton Bassett - millions of people are trusting their own critical and moral intelligence and ignoring propaganda that has militarised contemporary history, journalism and parliamentary politics - Australia's Labor prime minister, Kevin Rudd, for instance, describes the military as his country's "highest calling".

Here in Britain, Polly Toynbee anoints the war criminal Tony Blair as "the perfect emblem for his people's own contradictory whims". No, he was the perfect emblem for a liberal intelligentsia prepared cynically to indulge his crime. That is the unsaid of the British election campaign, along with the fact that 77 per cent of the British people want the troops home. In Iraq, duly forgotten, what has been done is a holocaust. More than a million people are dead and four million have been driven from their homes. Not a single mention has been madeof them in the entire campaign. Rather, the news is that Blair is Labour's "secret weapon".

All three party leaders are warmongers. Nick Clegg, the darling of former Blair lovers, says that, as prime minister, he will "participate" in another invasion of a "failed state" provided there is "the right equipment, the right resources". His one reservation is the standard genuflection towards a military now scandal­ised by a colonial cruelty of which the Baha Mousa case is but one of many.

For Clegg, as for Brown and Cameron, the horrific weapons used by British forces, such as cluster bombs, depleted uranium and the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of its victims' lungs, do not exist. The limbs of children in trees do not exist. This year alone, Britain will spend £4bn on the war in Afghanistan. That is what Brown and Cameron almost certainly intend to cut from the health service.

Edward S Herman explained this genteel extremism in his essay "The Banality of Evil". There is a strict division of labour, ranging from the scientists working in the laboratories of the weapons industry, to the intelligence and "national security" personnel who supply the paranoia and "strategies", to the politicians who approve them. As for journalists, our task is to censor by omission and make the crime seem normal for you, the public. For, above all, it is your understanding and your awakening that are feared.

Held to Account: Political and Military Leaders Should be Subject to Trial in England for Alleged War Crimes Committed Abroad

Chaired by

Joshua Rozenberg

One of Britain’s best-known media commentators on the law. BBC’s legal correspondent for 15 years until 2000 and then editor of the

Daily Telegraph’s legal coverage until 2008. Trained as a solicitor he is frequently called on to chair or address legal conferences.

Thursday 27th May 2010 at 6.00pm at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 6DR

Click here for more details and booking form...

Stage Being Set For a 'Dirty Bomb' False Flag Attack

 “CHATTER” FLOWING IN FROM EVERYWHERE

“SUITCASE” NUKE SAID TO BE IN PLACE

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Rumors of an upcoming terror attack to be blamed on Iran are moving around the world, “backchannel chatter.”  The primary suspect is Israel who is said to have a number of small “suitcase” type nuclear weapons, some primarily “dirty bombs,” possibly supplied secretly by a previous US administration.  These devices are in the “40 ton” range, highly radioactive, extremely small and can be engineered to leave the signature of a primitive device.  They were originally designed for use against Soviet armor and troop concentrations in Europe if a massed attack on NATO were to occur.  Current conventional systems have made this type of weapon obsolete.

We have been told that federal authorities have interviewed, on video, a prominent individual with specific knowledge of the possession of this type of weapon.

This won’t be in the news.  All that “every day folks” will see is a story here or one there that don’t make sense.  Why would “ultra-Liberal” Senator Chuck Schumer, nightmare “anti-gun” nut, extreme lefty and staunch New York democrat turn on the president?  In fact, why are extreme liberals and conservatives all attacking President Obama and, less visibly, our military leaders, all at the same time?  Who is orchestrating this oddest turn of political events in recent history?  Why would the Pentagon ban Reverend Billy Graham’s son from a prayer breakfast as an “Islamophobe?” 

Dad, the famous Reverend Billy Graham, primary spiritual advisor to every American president since Harry Truman held different views.

Rev. Billy Graham openly voiced a belief that Jews control the American media, calling it a “stranglehold” during a 1972 conversation with President Richard Nixon, according to a tape of the Oval Office meeting released Thursday by the National Archives.

 

“This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain,” the nation’s best-known preacher declared as he agreed with a stream of bigoted Nixon comments about Jews and their perceived influence in American life.

 

“You believe that?” Nixon says after the “stranglehold” comment.

 

“Yes, sir,” Graham says.

 

“Oh, boy,” replies Nixon. “So do I. I can’t ever say that but I believe it.”

 

“No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something,” Graham replies.

Consider this report as a form of “innocualtion,” meant to prevent an unseemly accident.

EVER WONDER WHY OVER 80% OF AMERICAN’S DON’T TRUST CONGRESS?

FACE THE FACTS

Israel has never been in more trouble today, not from any imaginary Arab armies or a “holocaust” from Iran, a country with only minor defensive weaponry, a 4th rate military power, for those who really pay attention to these things.  Israel has gotten in trouble because of “chickens coming home to roost.”  Americans and Europeans have been conditioned by the press, yes, Israel controls the press in the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, to ignore ethnic cleansing and war crimes in Palestine.  Years of news and “infotainment” along with movies and TV series, always depicting Palestinians as crazed murders has done its job, covered mass murder in ways that Josef Goebbels could never do for Hitler.

Things started to go wrong for Israel when top military leaders became increasingly suspicious of 9/11.  None will openly admit to it, but as years have gone on, and Iraq and Afghanistan could no longer be called real security issues for the US, an unspoken movement toward lending a suspicious eye to Israeli involvement in 9/11 has festered.  Israel’s hand in propagandizing our news has become too obvious for trained observers to miss, with the direction not “pro-Israel” but looking more like a country covering for crimes. 

This is the potential list:

• Possible complicity in some part of 9/11 with or without help from groups in the US and one other Middle Eastern nation known to secretly finance Israeli operations but pretending to be a “blood enemy” of the Jews
• Israeli complicity in massive financial crimes in the US, including engineering of the sub-prime mortgage collapse as an operation meant to destabilize the United States.  That current financial reforms meant to prevent a repeat of this, pushed by President Obama (and military leaders) is opposed by groups financed by the Israeli lobby is a “smoking gun.”
• Terrorist attacks in Iraq, Russia, Iran and Pakistan carry clear signs of involvement of one or more intelligence agencies being involved, among them Israel.
• Israeli political machinations backed by a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign attempting to justify an unprovoked attack on Iran, disinformation including “holocaust” rhetoric and clearly falsified intelligence on Iran’s non-existent nuclear program are an almost perfect repeat of the same operation that pushed the Bush administration to mistakenly attack Iraq.  Note this classic example of disinformation propaganda, conditioning “the west” to expect a dirty bomb attack:  Debka/Israel Hoax and, more “cover” still from Israeli stooge Mikhail Saakashvili. 
• The “Israel Project” actually has run ad advertisement warning of exactly such an attack.  You can see an RT (Russia Television) video about this video, labeled “crazy” and “propaganda.”  A national survey mentioned indicates that 70% of the American people because of Israeli propaganda, now believe Iran currently has nuclear weapons.  Many prominent lawmakers advise “the Israel Project,” a group with no other purpose than to condition Americans to expect terror attacks and to “pre-blame” Iran.
• Nuclear threats made by “extremists” in Israel against Western Europe went unheeded and the desired outcry of support for an attack on Iran never materialized.  Israel would never have allowed prominent sources in its defense establishment to voice “crazy threats” to “nuke Rome” unless some purpose were served.
• Highly orchestrated attacks on the Obama administration, now finally working in close association with top military leaders, is meant to destabilize the US.  Moving threats against the US, the engineering of a new market collapse by Goldman Sachs, an ineffective attack by Israel on Iran, cutting off all oil to the west or attempts by Israeli controlled media giants to forment civil unrest in the US are all “on the table” and being pushed forward.

AMERICAN POLITICIANS, PRESIDENT OBAMA INCLUDED ARE “SWORN” TO KEEP ISRAEL’S VAST NUCLEAR ARSENAL THE WORLD’S “WORST KEPT SECRET”

HOW AMERICA’S MILITARY HAS CHANGED

The deteriorating situation in Iraq and Afghanistan have tied down so many resources that our defense capabilities, the contingency response that our defense planners have spent years creating and over a trillion dollars financing is a shambles.  We are trucking supplies hundreds of miles through enemy territory to resupply in Afghanistan, that and flying everything thousands of miles across Russia followed by more trucking, hundreds of miles across enemy territory again.  In the process, we are paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to our own enemies, simply to keep ourselves in Twinkies and Ho Hos.

America is saddled with an incompetent and corrupt ally who has hopelessly embroiled us in his endless and ineffective plots, all with a massive subtext of drug dealing, selling weapons to the enemy and double dealing with foreign intelligence services.

How we got here is no secret and military leaders are unhappy.  America got herself led into these disasters for the good of, not Israeli security but a series of intrigues, more like a chess match, playing country against country, while raking in cash selling weapons to everyone, including the US and India, but, less overtly, to Iran and the Taliban as well.  These are some of the worst kept secrets in the world.  Even President Obama knows, heaven forbid.

ONLY A NEW 9/11 CAN BAIL ISRAEL OUT

With massive control of news organization, half our top retired military leaders taking regularly paid “junkets” to Israel and 363 members of congress indicating an “unbreakable bond” with Israel, no matter what they are caught doing, and they have been caught so many times, starting with the 1956 Suez/Sinai invasion, the 1967  USS Liberty attack,  which helped Israel sell the idea that they were attacked when quite the opposite is true, the belief is that that a new “false flag” attack can be covered easily.

Who could blame Israel, poor beleaguered country, the only “democracy” in the Middle East surrounded by vicious and dirty Arabs trying to sneak in and cut throats of small children in school?

We have already seen the stories about Iran’s planned “holocaust’ and how they are going to invade Israel, a technical impossibility” and set up gas chambers, start making soap and lamp shades out of Jews.  If anything warns America that an attack is coming, hearing both “holocaust” and seeing Charles Schumer attacking a democratic president should be warning enough.

The rumors are that the weapons are in place in Europe and the US.  “The usual suspects,” Arabs, Persians, Pakistanis, some kind of Islamic terrorist group has either been recruited, invented or is being thawed out.  News stories are in place and with 9/11, film crews are ready to be onsite.  Witnesses will be briefed, all to say, “yes it was an Arab dirty bomb, we saw them, Middle Eastern looking, they must have bought it from North Korea.”

That kind of story would hit the news within seconds from “stunned survivors” who will suddenly disappear, returning quickly to “you know where.”

Glenn Beck will cry.

LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES HAVE ALWAYS GOTTEN MARCHING ORDERS FROM TEL AVIV

Americans have the rare privilege of seeing the GOP, NRA, Fox News and the Tea Baggers aligned with 250 or is it 300 or 400, we aren’t sure, members of congress that have signed a letter promising to support Israel, in this case, against the interests of the United States.  The names of those involved is difficult to find.  A search of 100 stories on this subject has failed to give a list.  Blog after blog is requesting the list of those who signed the letter but even Israeli papers don’t print it.

Sites claiming to list the members signing now show “FORBIDDEN” or “NO LONGER AVAILABLE.”

What we do know is that congress’s most liberal members, those most outspoken for gun control and all of those listed by the Tea Bag movements and GOP as the most liberal and “unpatriotic” of our politicians are now lined up with the supporters of Goldman Sachs and all, the most conservative and most liberal, are signed up against the President and the Pentagon, aligned with Israel.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the entire “liberal” and “conservative” political hoopla of the last few years is turning out to be a subterfuge to keep Americans from uniting together to regain control of their own country, a control that, for awhile, ran our military, our intelligence services and even the oval office.

Now it runs only Congress, no party, just those addicted to AIPAC/Israeli funding more than allegiance to the United States of America.

What they may earn us through this “moral flexibility” and indifference to allegiance to their own country is another major terrorist attack.  These same members of congress will receive the call, be told how to vote, what to say and exactly what they get in return, same as with Iraq.

Ah, the foibles of living in a democracy for sale to the highest bidder!

SOURCE

Blair's Fight to Keep His Oil Cash Secret

 

 

Tony Blair waged an extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq.

The former Prime Minister tried to keep the public in the dark over his dealings with South Korean oil firm UI Energy Corporation.

Mr Blair - who has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007 - also went to great efforts to keep hidden a £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq's neighbour Kuwait.

In an unprecedented move, he persuaded the committee which vets the jobs of former ministers to keep details of both deals from the public for 20 months, claiming it was commercially sensitive. The deals emerged yesterday when the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments finally lost patience with Mr Blair and decided to ignore his objections and publish the details.

News of the secret deals fuelled fresh accusations that Mr Blair is 'cashing in on his contacts' from the controversial Iraq war in what one MP called 'revolving door politics at its worst'.

They will increase concerns that Mr Blair is using his role as the West's Middle East envoy for personal gain.

The revelations also shed fresh light on his astonishing earnings, which include lucrative after-dinner speaking, consultancies with banks and foreign governments, a generous advance for his forthcoming memoirs, as well as the pension and other perks he enjoys as a former Prime Minister.

The full extent of his income is cloaked in secrecy because he has constructed a complex web of shadowy companies and partnerships which let him avoid publishing full accounts detailing all the money from his commercial ventures.

Critics also point out that a large proportion of his earnings comes from patrons in America and the Middle East - a clear benefit from forging a close alliance with George Bush during his invasion of Iraq.

Last night Tory MP Douglas Carswell said of Mr Blair's links to UI Energy Corporation: 'This doesn't just look bad, it stinks.

'It seems that the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has been in the pay of a very big foreign oil corporation and we have been kept in the dark about it.

'Even now we do not know what he was paid or what the company got out of it. We need that information now.

'This is revolving door politics at its worst. It's not as if Mr Blair has even stepped back from politics, because he is still politically active in the Middle East.

'I'm afraid I have no confidence at all in the committee that vets these appointments. It's no good telling us these deals may be commercially sensitive - we are talking about the appointment of our former Prime Minister and the public interest, rather than any commercial interests, must come first.'

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said: 'These revelations show that our former Prime Minister is for sale - he is driven by making as much money as possible.

'I think many people will find it deeply insensitive that he is apparently cashing in on his contacts from the Iraq war to make money for himself.'

The committee said yesterday that Mr Blair had taken a paid job advising a consortium of investors led by UI Energy in August 2008. The exact nature of the deal is unknown, but UI Energy is one of the biggest investors in Iraq's oil-rich Kurdistan region, which became semi-autonomous in the wake of the Iraq war.

Mr Blair's fee has not been disclosed but is likely to have run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The secrecy is particularly odd because UI Energy is fond of boasting of its foreign political advisers, who include the former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke and several prominent American politicians.

Mr Blair successfully persuaded the committee that the appointment was 'market sensitive' and could not be made public.

The committee agreed to suspend its normal practice and keep the deals secret for three months. Mr Blair then asked for a further extension.

When this ran out last year the committee repeatedly 'chased' Mr Blair about the issue without hearing anything. Eventually the committee's chairman, former Tory Cabinet minister Lord Lang, reviewed the papers and ordered the deal to be made public, along with a separate deal with Kuwait which had been kept secret at the request of the Kuwaiti government.

The decision to keep the deals secret will fuel concerns about the effectiveness of the committee, which has been repeatedly criticised for its failure to halt the revolving door between politics and industry.

The committee is supposed to ease public concerns about former public servants using their contacts for private gain.

Ministers have to have all jobs vetted within two years of leaving office. But the committee is packed with former politicians and Whitehall grandees and is thought never to have banned a former minister or senior civil servant from taking up a lucrative job in the private sector.

Earlier this month the Government quietly rejected calls for the committee to be beefed up with more figures from outside the world of politics.

Gordon Brown has so far refused to answer questions about whether Mr Blair's arrangements breach his responsibilities under the ministerial code.

A spokesman for Mr Blair said last night: 'Mr Blair gave a one-off piece of advice in respect of a project for UI Energy in August 2008.

'He sought, and received, approval from the Committee on Business Appointments before undertaking this project.

'It was UI Energy who requested of the committee that they delay public announcement, for reasons of market sensitivity.'

The Daily Mail

The 'Srebrenica Genocide': A Totem for the New World Order

 The events at Srebrenica in July 1995 enjoy a special status in international criminal law. Uniquely among the many clashes which occurred during the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, those events have been formally characterised as genocide by both the ICTY and the ICJ at The Hague.

It is notable that no court, not even the ICTY Prosecutor, has ever characterised the events in Kosovo in 1999 as genocide, even though it was precisely on the basis that genocide was occurring there that NATO attacked Yugoslavia that spring.[1]

The history of this accusation of genocide is important. It was first levelled formally on 20 March 1993, when the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina initiated proceedings at the ICJ against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948. The case was eventually ruled on in 2007 but the timing of the initial filing is key: it came within weeks of the vote of UN Security Council Resolution 808 (22 February 1993) which had called for the creation of an international criminal tribunal to prosecute war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. The ICTY at The Hague was indeed quickly brought into being with a further Security Council resolution, 827, passed on 25 May 1993. This use of the criminal law to intervene in the wars of Yugoslav succession was unprecedented. Never before had an international criminal tribunal been created with such intrusive powers, or as a peace-keeping measure. American judges at Nuremberg in 1947, acting under the terms of the Charter of the original International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, had specifically ruled out such judicial interventionism. Their own power, they said, flowed only from the fact that Germany had no government of her own because she had surrendered unconditionally in May 1945: 

Within the territorial boundaries of a state having a recognised, functioning government presently in the exercise of sovereign power throughout the territory, a violator of the rules of international law could be punished only by the authority of the officials of that state… In Germany an international body has assumed and exercised the power to establish judicial machinery for the punishment of those who have violated the rules of the common international law, a power which no international authority without consent could assume or exercise within a state having a national government presently in the exercise of its sovereign powers.[2]

This lack of either precedent or consent by the states concerned did not bother the advocates of a new world order. The ICTY was itself only one part of an intense and general UN interventionism in the Yugoslav wars. In the 18 months following the outbreak of fighting in Bosnia on April 2, 1992, no fewer than 47 Security Council Resolutions were adopted; 42 statements were issued by the President of the Council. No issue in the UNSC has ever generated so many resolutions and statements over a comparable period.

The interventionism was both judicial and military. The UN force, UNPROFOR, having been despatched in 1992, the spring of 1993 also saw the adoption of Security Council Resolution 819 (on 16 April 1993) which proclaimed the creation of a UN protected “safe area” around the town of Srebrenica. At that time the military balance of power had shifted in favour of the Bosnian Serbs and the area controlled by Muslims around Srebrenica had been greatly reduced. Srebrenica linked the northern and southern parts of Serb controlled territory and thus had a great strategic importance. 

The creation of a “safe area” there – which, as even the ICTY admits,[3] the Muslims then used as a base for launching three years of raids on the surrounding Serb villages – was key to preventing the Serbs from realising their goal of seceding from Bosnia-Herzegovina with a viable state. The same status of “safe area” was later accorded to a number of other Muslim-held towns in Bosnia by Security Council Resolution 824, passed on 6 May 1993. In other words, the accusation of genocide formally lodged with the ICJ in March 1993 was made at a critical time. The Bosnian Muslims had suffered heavy military defeats and were on the point of losing the war. Their international strategy was to seek foreign moral and military support on the basis that Yugoslavia was practising genocide against them.[4]

When the International Court of Justice finally ruled on the Bosnian suit in 2007, it threw out every single accusation of genocide except where Srebrenica was concerned. This was partly its own reading of events and partly that of the ICTY, whose rulings it felt it could not disregard. In the intervening 14 years, the ICTY had entered convictions for genocide in Srebrenica against Radislav Krstic in 2001 and Vidoje Blagojevic in 2005.

The original suit used the most inflammatory language to argue that genocide was being committed.[5] This makes it all the more perplexing that the original claims of a vast genocide allegedly perpetrated against an entire people have been whittled down so far that only Srebrenica remains. In the ordinary meaning of the word, genocide is a massive state-sponsored programme. The Nazis’ persecution of the Jews provides the paradigm: certainly, it was with the Nazi genocide in mind that the father of the Genocide Convention, Raphael Lemkin, proposed the original draft and the authors drew up the final version. 

In contrast to the Naz program of extermination which involved massive logistical planning, huge amounts of manpower and materials, more than a decade of ideological racism, and implementation over a period of several years, the mass executions which occurred after the fall of Srebrenica took place in little over a week in July 1995, and in a sporadic and impromptu fashion. Whereas Hitler’s anti-Semitism had been publicly expressed in Mein Kampf, published in 1925, and whereas he had threatened “the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe” in a speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, i.e. nearly three years before he finally gave the order physically to murder the Jews[6], the ICTY judges say that the genocidal plan at Srebrenica did not come into being until on or around 13 July 1995, i.e. spontaneously in the heat of battle.[7] And whereas the Nazis targeted all Jews, the genocidal plan supposedly conceived by the Bosnian Serbs did not target the Bosnian Muslims as a whole but only, according to the ICTY, “the Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica”.[8]

There have been complaints about this ruling, largely on the basis that the findings are exaggerated and unsubstantiated, that the figure of 7-8,000 is far too high, that most of the victims of executions were combatants. These arguments fail to grasp that we are dealing not so much with an anti-Serb bias in the practice of international criminal justice, but rather with a program of international interventionism, based on dangerously weak legal reasoning and disregard for due process, of which the Serbs happen to be the guinea-pigs. 

Srebrenica has been raised to the legal status it now enjoys partly because the town’s fall in 1995 to Bosnian Serb forces represented a defeat not only for the Bosnian Muslims but also for the international community as a whole – not only its policy of creating safe areas but also, and more generally, of the interventionism practised by various parts of the “international community” ever since the EU interposed itself between the parties to the conflict in July 1991. Srebrenica was important – at least for the supporters of interventionism - because the UN was there, not just because it was a Muslim enclave. The United Nations as an institution, it must be remembered, had embarked in the 1990s on an aggressive policy of military, political and judicial interventionism in both Iraq and Yugoslavia; it continued to apply the highly intrusive sanctions regime against Iraq throughout the decade and into the 21^st century, and of course was happy to become the administrator of Kosovo after 1999. Its own credibility, and that of the states which dictated its policies, was destroyed when the enclave fell. 

The activists of judicial and military supranationalism are therefore determined to make the genocide charge stick somewhere. Perhaps they want revenge for the military defeat of 1995. Genocide offers two key legal advantages in pursuit of the goal of creating a new international system no longer based on state sovereignty. These advantages are in addition to the rhetorical advantage which derives from putting the Bosnian Serbs into the same category as the Nazis.

The first legal usefulness of the genocide charge is that, according to the questionable way in which international criminal law is currently formulated, the threshold of proof required to secure a conviction for genocide is lower than it is for crimes against humanity. To secure a conviction for crimes against humanity the Prosecution must prove that the acts were “widespread or systematic”.[9] No such condition applies for genocide. Moreover, crimes against humanity can be committed only against civilians, whereas genocide can include the killing of military personnel as well.[10] In other words, spontaneous or disparate acts involving the killing of military personnel can be classified as “genocide”; this is exactly what has happened in the case of Srebrenica.

The second legal advantage of genocide - from the point of view of the project of creating a system of supranational coercive criminal law which can constrain states and convict their leaders - is that genocide, unlike crimes against humanity, is the subject of a binding international treaty, the 1948 Genocide Convention. To be sure, the normal rules of international behaviour have been severely distorted in recent years by the antics of the Security Council and the United Nations in general in creating international criminal tribunals which, in the case of the ICTY, the ICTR and the ICC, have all indicted heads of state or government who would normally enjoy sovereign immunity. This is especially the case with President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, a country which has not signed the Rome Statute but who was nonetheless indicted by the ICC in March 2009. International judicial activists can more or less do what they like these days. However, they are on stronger ground when there is actually a treaty in existence which forbids genocide and requires states to prevent and punish it.

The importance of the existence of a treaty, as opposed to the existence of a norm in mere “customary international law” – i.e. whatever judges or even academics say they think the law is – was illustrated with the landmark ruling in the British House of Lords against General Pinochet, issued on 24 March 1999 (the day the bombs started raining down on Yugoslavia). Activists for universal jurisdiction ratione materiae were very excited by this ruling because it seemed to confirm that even heads of state could be put on trial when certain kinds of crimes were alleged against them. However, their victory was less decisive than they sometimes pretend. It is true that the House of Lords overruled the principle of sovereign immunity, but it did so only on the basis that Chile itself – which claimed the immunity for Pinochet – had in fact consented, in 1988 when Pinochet was himself head of state, to the terms of the 1985 UN Convention by signing and ratifying it. The noble Lords deduced from this that Chile had earlier revoked its own immunities in this area and that its revocation remained in force because it had never subsequently denounced the Convention.

The status of genocide as a crime prohibited by treaty law, rather than customary international law, was also raised in the ruling given by the ICJ in the Bosnia v. Serbia case in February 2007. Article 9 of the Genocide Convention gives the ICJ the power to rule on whether it is being respected or not. This part of the Genocide Convention was extensively discussed in the ruling, specifically the question whether the responsibility of states could be incurred under its terms. The Court concluded that the responsibility of states could be so incurred, a finding which represents a departure from the classical rules of international law according to which states are the upholders of the criminal law and, as such, not the subjects of it.[11] Many states derogated from this provision, Article 9, when they ratified the Genocide Convention. They entered reservations saying they did not accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ. However, Bosnia has entered no such reservation and although Yugoslavia did, it agreed to litigate the case before the ICJ in 1993. In other words, the principle is now established that genocide can be litigated at international level in Bosnia, and that the responsibility of states can be engaged.

There is a final point, weaker than the previous two. Some international lawyers argue that there is no right of secession for states which have committed massive violations of human rights. They also claim that there does exist a right of secession when self-determination is violently suppressed. Such arguments may obviously be invoked against Republika Srpska which could be branded un État génocidaire if it tried to secede, or to resist fresh attempts to dissolve its autonomy.

The positive law on this is thin, as it is indeed on secession in general: the only real text which can be adduced is Resolution 2625 adopted at the 25^th General Assembly of the United Nations on 24 October 1970.[12] The reference is vague and indirect; consequently some authors deny that it exists as a principle of customary international law. But it is a feature of recent international legal practice that the pronouncements of law lecturers are invoked as sources of law itself. Moreover, as the abuses of due process often committed by the ICTY and other tribunals show[13], international criminal law is currently in a dangerously fluid state. The first conviction under the Genocide Convention was that of Jean Kambanda, the former Prime Minister of Rwanda, in 1998: this is all very recent law, as is shown by the quotation by the ICTY of very new precedents in its rulings on Srebrenica.[14] It can be easily pressed this way or that according to the political imperatives of the day, and according to the institutional self-interest of international judges, who take decisions free of any meaningful oversight.

The convictions for ‘genocide’ at Srebrenica may be used as a stick with which to beat Republika Srpska. The ICTY has declared an explicit link between the July 1995 events in Srebrenica and the existence of RS itself. In 2004, the Appeals Chamber upheld the Trial Chamber’s 2001 finding that, “without Srebrenica, the ethnically Serb state of Republica Srpska they (the Bosnian Serbs) sought to create would remain divided into two disconnected parts, and its access to Serbia proper would be disrupted”:

The capture and ethnic purification of Srebrenica would therefore severely undermine the military efforts of the Bosnian Muslim state to ensure its viability, a consequence the Muslim leadership fully realized and strove to prevent. Control over the Srebrenica region was consequently essential to the goal of some Bosnian Serb leaders of forming a viable political entity in Bosnia…[15]

This paragraph is specifically a justification for the Appeal Chamber’s finding that genocide did occur: the judges are seeking to justify their ridiculously baroque finding that a massacre of a tiny percentage of a “protected group” (the Bosnian Muslims) can be proof of genocidal intent. Aware that their rulings on genocide appear to cheapen the concept so far that it becomes nugatory, they say that the importance of the Muslim community of Srebrenica “is not captured solely by its size” but instead by this strategic importance and by the fact that the town was a UN protected safe haven for Muslims. It is for this reason, argue the judges, that the destruction of the “Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica” was “emblematic”[16] of the Bosnian Muslims as a whole and therefore evidence of full genocidal intent. 

Srebrenica, then, is an existential issue, not as much for Republika Srpska as for those activists who seek to consolidate once and for all that outcome which the former ICTY Prosecutor, Louise Arbour, said she had achieved in 1999: “We have passed from an era of cooperation between states to an era in which states can be constrained.”[17]

---

   [1] Prime Minister Tony Blair said, “It is no exaggeration to say that what is happening in Kosovo is racial genocide.” My pledge to the refugees, BBC News Online, 14 May 1999.

[2] Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Volume III, “The Justice Case” (1947), Washington DC, 1951, pp. 970-971.

[3] ICTY, Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic, Trial Chamber Judgement, 2 August 2001, par. 24.

[4] The claim of genocide was supported by various academics in the West. See Norman Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia, The Policy of “Ethnic Cleansing”, (Texas A&M University Press, 1995), reviewed by Noel Malcolm in The Sunday Telegraph on 11 June 1995: “If you want just one work which explains the real nature of this war, you should read this one.” Yet Srebrenica is nowhere mentioned in that book because the events of July 1995 still lay in the future: the accusation of genocide, once again, long pre-dated them.

[5] The opening paragraph of the Application (20 March 1993) reads: “Not since the … revelations of the horrors of Nazi Germany's ‘Final Solution’ has Europe witnessed the utter destruction of a People, for no other reason than they belong to a particular national ethnical, racial, and religious group as such. The abominable crimes taking place in the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina at this time can be called by only one name: genocide. Genocide is the most evil crime a State or human being can inflict upon another State or human being. The sheer enormity of this crime requires that the nations of the world stand together as one, and with a single voice stop the destruction of the Bosnian People.”

[6] Edouard HUSSON, “Nous pouvons vivre sans les juifs”, Novembre 1941, Quand et comment ils décidèrent de la solution finale (Paris: Perrin, 2005).

[7] ICTY Trial Chamber, Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic, 2 August 2001, par. 573.

[8] ICTY Appeals Chamber, Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic, Judgement, 19 April 2004, par 19, and Trial Chamber Judgement, 2 Auust 2001, pars 560 and 561.

[9] The phrase “widespread or systematic” appears in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The relevant Article 5 of the ICTY Statute does not contain the phrase but the Trial Chamber determined in its very first trial that the acts “must be undertaken on widespread or systematic basis and in furtherance of a policy”. See Trial Chamber judgement in Prosecutor v. Dusko Tadic, 7 May 1997, par. 626.

[10] Article 5 of the ICTY Statute specifies that crimes against humanity are directed “against any civilian population”, a phrase repeated in the relevant Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the ICC. See also John Quigley, The Genocide Convention, An International Law Analysis, (London: Ashgate, 2006), p.12.

[11] See paragraphs 155 – 182 of the ICJ ruling, 27 February 2007.

[12] “Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations,” esp. provisions in the section entitled “The Principle of Equal Rights and Self-Determination of Peoples”.

[13] See my books Travesty: the Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice (London: Pluto Press, 2007) and A History of Political Trials from Charles I to Saddam Hussein (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008).

[14] ICTY Trial Chamber judgement, Prosecutor v; Radislav Krstic, 2 August 2001, par 571.

[15] ICTY Appeals Chamber, Prosecutor v. R. Krstic, Judgement, 19 April 2004, par.15.

[16] par. 16.

[17] Le Monde, 6 August 1999.

 

TheLord Byron Centre For Baltic Studies

Author

John Laughland

Gordon Brown Seeks To Change Law In Order To Further Support Israeli War Crimes

'British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is defending his decision to change the law allowing private people to demand arrest warrants against foreign leaders and officers visiting Britain.

The government’s decision to change the law was made following an arrest warrant issued against Israeli Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni, who was scheduled to visit London last year.

The former Israeli foreign minister reportedly cancelled a trip to Britain in December for fear of being arrested after a court issued the warrant following an application by Palestinian activists.

The affair acutely embarrassed the British government and Brown pledged to change the law that allows judges to consider a case for an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes suspects brought by any individual.

According to a Daily Telegraph report on Thursday, the British government is to announce plans to stop politically-motivated campaign groups using British courts to secure arrest warrants for visiting foreign officials.

Under the proposals, the Crown Prosecution Service will take over responsibility for prosecuting war crimes and other violations of international law. It will end the current system in which magistrates are obliged to consider a case for an arrest warrant presented by any individual.

Writing for The Daily Telegraph, Brown said he would set out proposals to put the CPS in sole charge of judging the merits of any case brought under international law. “The only question for me is whether our purpose is best served by a process where an arrest warrant for the gravest crimes can be issued on the slightest of evidence,” he said.

According to Brown, the introduction of the right to prosecute international crimes in Britain had been right and necessary but that the process had been abused by activists.

“As we have seen, there is now significant danger of such a provision being exploited by politically-motivated organizations or individuals who set out only to grab headlines knowing their case has no realistic chance of a successful prosecution. Men and woman can then be held in prison on the basis of ‘information’, when the serious nature of such cases means that in any event they can only proceed to prosecution with the consent of the attorney general.”

Brown, who did not specifically address the warrants issued against Livni or other Israeli officials, hinted that “there is already growing reason to believe that some people are not prepared to travel to this country for fear that such a private arrest warrant – motivated purely by political gesture – might be sought against them.

“These are sometimes people representing countries and interests with which the UK must engage if we are not only to defend our national interest but maintain and extend an influence for good across the globe.”

Attorney General for England and Wales and Northern Ireland Baroness Patricia Scotland visited Israel recently and said that Britain sees an urgent need to change the policy allowing arrest warrants to be issued against senior Israeli officials.

A London court last year issued a warrant for the arrest of Livni over her role in Israel’s 22-day war against the Gaza Strip, launched at the end of 2008 in which more than 1400 Palestinians were killed, including 420 children and over 5300 others were injured. Livni was foreign minister at the time.

Livni was not the only one to be hurt by the legal situation in the United Kingdom. A similar request for an arrest warrant was filed in the past few months against Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, but was rejected. Vice Premier Moshe Yaalon called off a visit to the kingdom for fear of being arrested. Major-General (Res.) Doron Almog avoided getting off a plane in 2005 after being informed that he would be arrested in London.

Judges in Britain can issue arrest warrants for war crimes suspects around the world under the Geneva Convention Act 1957, without any requirement to consult public prosecutors.

Livni on Thursday welcomed the proposed changed and attacked the original decision to issue the warrant as “absurd”. “The current situation in (Britain) enables the more cynical elements to take advantage of the system. The warrant that was issued against me according to the legislation was an absurd use of this law,” she told the paper. '

Political Theatrics

Brown Defends Basis for Iraq War

' The Prime Minister said today that Britain made the "right decision for the right reasons" to go to war in Iraq.

Opening his evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry, Gordon Brown expressed his sadness for the loss of life in the conflict.

But he insisted that it had been necessary for the international community to confront Saddam Hussein.

"I think this is the gravest decision to go to war," he said. "It was the right decision and it was for the right reasons."

Mr Brown paid tribute to the "sacrifice" of the British troops who had lost their lives in the conflict while acknowledging the scale of the civilian losses.

"Any loss of life is something that makes us very sad indeed," he said.

Unlike Tony Blair when he appeared in January, Mr Brown entered the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, where the inquiry is being held, by the front entrance.

Only a small knot of protesters had gathered to mark his arrival.

Mr Brown said there were three areas he particularly wanted to raise with the inquiry panel.

He said it was vital to have "proper structures of decision-making" in Government for fighting wars, to manage conflicts better and to improve how states work together in conflicts.

Mr Brown said: "There will be interventions in the future, and international co-operation has got to be far greater than it was.

"Global problems require global solutions, and I would particularly draw attention to the importance in all this of the strongest possible relationship between Europe and America, something that I am determined to build up and continue to make stronger in the future."

Mr Brown told the inquiry that terrorists and "rogue states" were the "two risks to the post-Cold War world" and had to be tackled.

He said he was involved in Cabinet discussions before the invasion and was convinced that Iraq posed a threat.

"I met the intelligence services on a number of occasions during the course of 2002 and early 2003," he said.

"I was given information by the intelligence services which led me to believe that Iraq was a threat and had to be dealt with by the actions of the international community."

But he told the panel that he had wanted to secure international agreement to avoid war.

"What we wanted was a diplomatic route to succeed," he said. "Right up to the last minute, right up to the last weekend, I think many of us were hopeful that the diplomatic route would succeed."

Mr Brown said he told Mr Blair in mid-2002 that money would be no object if Britain launched military action against Saddam Hussein.

The former chancellor said he understood that some options for a war were more expensive than others, but pledged to fund whichever option was "right for our country".

Mr Brown said he was involved in discussions with then-defence secretary Geoff Hoon about a possible conflict with Iraq from June 2002.

He told the inquiry: "I said immediately to the prime minister that the military options that were under discussion, there should be no sense that there was a financial restraint that prevented us doing what was best for the military."

He added: "I told him that I would not - and this was right at the beginning - I would not try to rule out any military option on the grounds of cost, quite the opposite."

Mr Brown insisted that throughout the build-up to war, the Cabinet had been kept fully informed of developments.

"I cannot see the argument that says the Cabinet were not informed. We were informed fully about the process of the negotiations," he said.

He said that throughout the discussions, he had been adamant that military action should only be a last resort.

"I was very clear that we had to exhaust all the diplomatic avenues before we could conclude that it was inevitable or impossible to avoid a decision about war," he said.

However, he said that he did not see private correspondence between Mr Blair and US President George Bush.

"I would not expect to see private letters between Mr Blair and the president," he said.

Mr Brown conceded that he had "regrets" over not being "more successful" in convincing America of the need for better post-conflict planning.

"It was one of my regrets that I wasn't able to be more successful in pushing the Americans on this issue - that the planning for reconstruction was essential, just the same as planning for the war," he said.

He said there had been a Cabinet meeting in March 2003 that discussed "reconstruction issues".

Mr Brown told the inquiry that he had offered to "prepare a paper" to send to the United States on the issues that would have to be faced in post-war Iraq.

But he spoke of his frustration that dealing with the problems of the war-torn country were not dealt with "more quickly" after the initial invasion.

"I wish it had been possible to follow it through much more quickly in the aftermath," he said.

Mr Brown admitted that one lesson of the war was that spy chiefs had to be "more sure" about the nature of the intelligence they receive.

Claims that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that he could deploy within 45 minutes were discredited when thorough searches after the invasion failed to discover any such devices.

Mr Brown said he received five "very full" intelligence briefings about Iraq's alleged WMD in the lead-up to war, on March 4 2002, December 9, December 13, February 6 2003 and February 24.

He said: "The information I was given was that there was evidence that was known to many countries, not just our country, about the weaponry that the Iraqi government held.

"And, of course, at that time there was a greater certainty amongst the intelligence community that this weaponry was there.

"I think we have learned that intelligence can give us insights into what is happening, but we have got to be more sure, as people have recognised, about the nature of the intelligence we were receiving from certain people."

The inquiry heard that Mr Brown was not shown an "options paper" drawn up by the Cabinet Office in March 2002 to outline various choices for dealing with Iraq, from continuing sanctions to launching regime change.

The Prime Minister said: "I don't recall seeing that paper. My main involvement in looking at the options started from June."

He added: "I don't think I needed to see every paper."

Previously, the inquiry heard evidence from former No 10 communications director Alastair Campbell that Mr Blair had pledged to America that Britain would "be there" in the event of an invasion - several months before the decision was made to go to war.

Panel member Sir Roderic Lyne asked a "yes or no" question about whether Mr Brown was aware of letters Mr Blair had sent to US president George Bush indicating Britain's support.

Mr Brown responded: "I had regular conversations with Tony Blair and we talked about those issues but I do not have copies of those letters and I don't know the exact conversation - and he wouldn't expect me to."

Mr Brown acknowledged that he had not been present at a number of key meetings held by Mr Blair in the build-up to the invasion, but insisted that he was kept fully informed.

"I didn't at any point (feel) that I lacked the information that was necessary," he said.

"My role in this was to second guess military decisions or options. My role in this was not to interfere in what were very important diplomatic negotiations.

"My role in this was, first of all as chancellor of the exchequer, was to make sure that the funding was there for what we had to do."

Mr Brown insisted he and other senior Cabinet members were kept fully informed about developments in the months before the invasion.

He said: "There is no sense in which I felt that I had inadequate information.

"Obviously, the intelligence information has had to be re-assessed as a result of what we have now learned.

"But there was no sense in which we were denied information that was necessary for us making a decision."

The Independent

Blair Warned in 2000 Iraq War was Illegal

' An invasion of Iraq was discussed within the Government more than two years before military action was taken – with Foreign Office mandarins warning that an invasion would be illegal, that it would claim "considerable casualties" and could lead to the breakdown of Iraq, The Independent can reveal.

The extent of Whitehall opposition to the policy eventually backed by Tony Blair emerges just three days before Gordon Brown will appear at the Iraq Inquiry, where he will be asked to explain his role in the Government's decision to invade.

Secret Foreign Office strategy papers drawn up by senior civil servants at the end of 2000 have been obtained by this newspaper and are published for the first time today. The Iraq: future strategy document considers options for dealing with the belligerent Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. It is one of the key documents that Sir John Chilcot's Iraq Inquiry has declined to release.

A policy of "regime overthrow" is proposed, but roundly condemned. In an eerily portentous assessment of the consequences of taking military action, it states: "Such a policy would command no useful international support. An overt attempt to be successful would require a massive military effort, probably including a land invasion: this would risk considerable casualties and, possibly, extreme last-ditch acts of deterrence or defiance by Saddam."

The mandarins add: "It would also be illegal. Covert attempts, on the other hand, seem very unlikely to succeed and run the risk of fragmenting Iraq, which runs clearly contrary to our wider interests in the region." Iraq descended into violence in the wake of the March 2003 invasion. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed in the aftermath, as well as more than 100 British troops.

The document also calls into question Mr Blair's claim that using troops to bring down Saddam Hussein was only discussed after the 9/11 terror attacks on New York – and will increase pressure on the inquiry to call Mr Blair back to give further public evidence this summer.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats' leader, said it was "yet more damning evidence" against Mr Blair's decision to take Britain to war in Iraq. He also warned that the fact that the document had not been published by the Chilcot inquiry raised "serious questions" about its powers to reveal sensitive material. The Government has retained the power to veto publication of classified documents. Protocols agreed between the Chilcot team and Whitehall hand the final say on publication of disputed documents to the head of the Civil Service, Sir Gus O'Donnell.

Requests to secure the document using the Freedom of Information Act were initially refused. However, the Foreign Office eventually agreed to release a redacted version – with the views of the United States and other countries blacked out – after The Independent demanded an internal review. "Releasing the paper would make Government more accountable and increase trust," the Foreign Office conceded. "There is public interest in being able to assess the quality of advice being given to ministers and subsequent decision-making."

Critics of the decision to go to war pounced on the document. "Days before Gordon Brown will try to defend his role at the heart of the Government that took us to war, this is yet more damning evidence against the attempt to justify the invasion of Iraq," Mr Clegg said. "The Foreign Office was clearly advising against regime change as illegal and counter to our national interest."

The strategy paper was commissioned by Sir William Patey, then head of Middle East policy at the Foreign Office, ahead of the November 2000 presidential election which brought George Bush to the White House.

It states that a 1999 United Nations resolution, demanding that weapons inspectors be given access to Iraq, was "beginning to fray at the edges", and would soon "lose credibility" should Saddam fail to co-operate with inspectors. However, it recommends that the policy of "containing" Saddam, and perhaps loosening the sanctions imposed on the Baghdad regime, remained "the best option for achieving our policy objectives towards Iraq". It concludes: "Other alternatives remain unattractive at this stage."

Read more...

Triggers For Further Inquiries by Chilcot

Jack Straw was recalled to the Chilcot inquiry to clarify his position over the legal advice on the Iraq war (Cabinet did not need to hear legal doubts, 9 February). The US and UK were the co-sponsors of UN resolution 1441. At the time of it was adopted the US ambassador, John Negroponte, assured the world that: "This resolution contains no 'hidden triggers' and no 'automaticity' with respect to the use of force. If there is a further Iraqi breach ... the matter will return to the [security] council for discussions as required in paragraph 12."

The British ambassador said: "We heard loud and clear ... the concern that on a decision so crucial we should not rush into military action; that on a decision so crucial, any Iraqi violations should be discussed by the council."

Jim McCluskey

Twickenham, Middlesex

• Since 1993, regime change by the use of force has been deemed an act of terrorism in UK law. Section 2(2) of the Reinsurance (Acts of Terrorism) Act 1993 states: "In this section 'acts of terrorism' means acts of persons acting on behalf of, or in connection with, any organisation which carries out activities directed towards the overthrowing or influencing, by force or violence, of Her Majesty's government in the United Kingdom or any other government de jure or de facto." The notion is carried forward into section 1(1)(b) of the Terrorism Act 2000. I explain the legal rationale in greater detail on the Chilcot's Cheating Us blog (chilcotscheatingus.blogspot.com). Given that Tony Blair readily admits to leading regime change in Iraq, Blair leaves himself open to prosecution under section 56 of the Terrorism Act 2000, for which the punishment, on conviction, is life imprisonment. You have to ask why Peter Goldsmith didn't warn him. That's a great question for Chilcot to ask him.

Andrew Watt

Aberdeen

• I saw it all with Suez in 1956. I believe, as then, we all knew we were going to invade, well before the war started. If anyone read the intelligent newspapers, it was obvious from the government's desperate haste to assemble enough evidence to justify an invasion, and to disparage contrary facts and arguments. The only problem was where to find and how to present a sufficient excuse.

So why did so very few public figures make a stand against it? Lord Bingham provides an answer (The G2 interview, 8 February). Apparently it is the duty of public officers to stay quiet and compliant at times of national crisis, but OK to denounce Blair now that it is both safe and useless to do so. "It is not the job of good judges to thwart bad governments, but of good people"... Actually, Lord Bingham, we did try. Two million of us marched against the Iraq Invasion. What more should we have done?

John Bird

London

The Guardian

Israeli War Criminal Livni to Test UK Law With Visit

Britain is braced for a diplomatic row after a senior Israeli politician warned that she was preparing to travel to the UK, where she faces an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli Foreign Minister and now the leader of the Opposition, said that she wanted to test promises by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, that he would change the law to ensure that she was not arrested for her role in last year’s Gaza offensive.

In December, a London court agreed to a request by pro-Palestinian groups to issue a warrant over alleged war crimes during the military operation, which took place when she was Foreign Minister. The court rescinded the warrant when it became clear that she was not on British soil.

At the time, Gordon Brown and Mr Miliband pledged to prevent this happening again and the Government has since been considering various ways of changing the law.

One plan would see a ban on arrest warrants for alleged war crimes, while another could give immunity to former ministers.

Ms Livni has set a deadline of February 23, after which she told The Jewish Chronicle that she planned to visit “within weeks”. Any change to the law would be made in the Crime and Security Bill going through Parliament, which is in the committee stage until that date.

Ms Livni said: “I will do this not for me, not for provocation, but for the right of every Israeli to travel freely. I am not going to be restricted by extremists because I fought terror.”

The British system was, she said, “being abused by extremists for political reasons. Belgium and Spain have changed their laws, and the British know that they have to do so”.

Despite a Tory pledge to support the change, a motion against a new law preventing her arrest has gathered 108 backbench signatories.

The Times