US Diary: school kids stage a mock trial trying Bush for war crimes, and the media go crazy

When War Crimes Are Impossible -- by Norman Solomon

Is President Bush guilty of war crimes?

To even ask the question is to go far beyond the boundaries of mainstream US media.

A few weeks ago, when a class of seniors at Parsippany High School in New Jersey prepared for a mock trial to assess whether Bush has committed war crimes, a media tempest ensued.

Typical was the response from MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, who found the very idea of such accusations against Bush to be unfathomable. The classroom exercise "implies people are accusing him of a crime against humanity," Carlson said. "It's ludicrous."

In Tennessee, the Chattanooga Times Free Press thundered in an editorial: "That some American 'educators' would have students 'try' our American president for 'war crimes' during time of war tells us that our problems are not only with terrorists abroad."

The standard way for media to refer to Bush and war crimes in the same breath is along the lines of this lead-in to a news report on CNN's "American Morning" in late March: "The Supreme Court's about to consider a landmark case and one that could have far-reaching implications. At issue is President Bush's powers to create war crimes tribunals for Guantanamo prisoners."

In medialand, when the subject is war crimes, the president of the United States points the finger at others. Any suggestion that Bush should face such a charge is assumed to be oxymoronic.

But a few journalists, outside the corporate media structures, are seriously probing Bush's culpability for war crimes. One of them is Robert Parry.

During the 1980s, Parry covered US foreign policy for the Associated Press and Newsweek; in the process he broke many stories related to the Iran-Contra scandal. Now he's the editor of the 10-year-old web site Consortiumnews.com, an outlet he founded that has little use for the narrow journalistic path along Pennsylvania Avenue.

"In a world where might did not make right," Parry wrote in a recent piece, "George W. Bush, Tony Blair and their key enablers would be in shackles before a war crimes tribunal at The Hague, rather than sitting in the White House, 10 Downing Street or some other comfortable environs in Washington and London."

Over the top? I don't think so. In fact, Parry's evidence and analysis seem much more cogent - and relevant to our true situation - than the prodigious output of countless liberal-minded pundits who won't go beyond complaining about Bush's deceptions, miscalculations and tactical errors in connection with the Iraq war.

Is Congress ready to consider the possibility that the commander in chief has committed war crimes during the past few years? Of course not. But the role of journalists shouldn't be to snuggle within the mental confines of Capitol Hill. We need the news media to fearlessly address matters of truth, not cravenly adhere to limits of expediency.

When top officials in Lyndon Johnson's administration said that North Vietnam had launched two unprovoked attacks on US vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, the press corps took their word for it. When top officials in George W. Bush's administration said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the press corps took their word for it.

We haven't yet seen any noticeable part of the Washington press corps raise the matter of war crimes by the president. Very few dare to come near the terrain that Parry explored in his March 28 article, "Time to Talk War Crimes."

That article cites key statements by the US representative to the Nuremberg Tribunal immediately after the Second World War. "Our position," declared Robert Jackson, a US Supreme Court justice, "is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions."

During a March 26 appearance on the NBC program "Meet the Press," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to justify the invasion of Iraq this way: "We faced the outcome of an ideology of hatred throughout the Middle East that had to be dealt with. Saddam Hussein was a part of that old Middle East. The new Iraq will be a part of the new Middle East, and we will all be safer."

But, in a new essay on April 3, Parry points out that "this doctrine - that the Bush administration has the right to invade other nations for reasons as vague as social engineering - represents a repudiation of the Nuremberg Principles and the United Nations Charter's ban on aggressive war, both formulated largely by American leaders six decades ago."

Parry flags the core of the administration's maneuver: "Gradually, Rice and other senior Bush aides shifted their rationale from Hussein's WMD to a strategic justification, that is, politically transforming the Middle East." He concludes that "implicit in the US news media's non-coverage of Rice's new rationale for war is that there is nothing objectionable or alarming about the Bush administration turning its back on principles of civilized behavior promulgated by US statesmen at the Nuremberg Tribunal six decades ago."

Although the evidence is ample that President Bush led the way to aggressive warfare against Iraq, the mainstream US news media keep proceeding on the assumption that - when the subject is war crimes - he's well cast as an accuser but should never be viewed as an appropriate defendant.

(Norman Solomon is the author of the new book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For information, go to: WarMadeEasy.com)


2. The President's War Madness -- by Derrick Z. Jackson

President Bush said he invaded Iraq to rid the world of a madman. It is ever-more clear Bush went mad to start it.

This week, The New York Times reported on a confidential memo about a meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Jan. 31, 2003. It was just before Secretary of State Colin Powell would go before the United Nations to convince the world of the planetary threat of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and ask for a second UN resolution to condemn him.

In his Feb. 5 presentation, Powell used excerpts of conversations and satellite photographs to paint a picture of an Iraq where Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction. Powell, whose credibility lay in his image as one of the few members of the Bush team to have actually fought in war, said, "We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails." He said Iraq's "sophisticated facilities" could produce enough biological agents in a single month "to kill thousands upon thousands of people."

Powell's punch line was, "Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions."

But Bush already had realized the sources were not panning out. According to a Times review of the entire Jan. 31 memo, written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, David Manning, it showed that "the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq."

With no weapons, Bush talked about provoking Hussein. "The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colors," the Times quotes the memo as saying. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

Bush had come up with an official start date of March 10 that, according to the memo, "was when the bombing would begin." The war actually began March 19. The memo summarized the president as assuming, "The air campaign would probably last four days, during which some 1,500 targets would be hit. Great care would be taken to avoid hitting innocent civilians."

Bush thought the air onslaught would ensure the early collapse of Hussein's regime. Bush thought the air strikes "would destroy Hussein's command and control quickly," Iraq's army would "fold very quickly," and Hussein's Republican Guard would be "decimated by the bombing." Bush also assumed in the rebuilding of Iraq that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups."

Even though his growing fears about finding no weapons of mass destruction had reached the incredible point of considering fakery to make it look like Hussein started the war, Bush had the gall to go before the press on Jan. 31 after his meeting with Blair and show no doubt. A reporter asked Bush, "Mr. President, is Secretary Powell going to provide the undeniable proof of Iraq's guilt that so many critics are calling for?"

Bush responded, "Well, all due in modesty, I thought I did a pretty good job myself of making it clear that he's not disarming and why he should disarm. Secretary Powell will make a strong case about the danger of an armed Saddam Hussein. He will make it clear that Saddam Hussein is fooling the world, or trying to fool the world. He will make it clear that Saddam is a menace to peace in his own neighborhood. He will also talk about Al Qaeda links, links that really do portend a danger for America and for Great Britain, anybody else who loves freedom."

Powell would deliver on Bush's boast five days later, saying: "There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. ... With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take their place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies."

The web spun by Bush has now cost the lives of 2,300 U.S. soldiers, another 200 British and coalition soldiers, and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Iraq is closer to civil war than stability. Three years later, it is the United States that is not disarming, with Bush admitting last week that our troops will be needed there past his presidency. We took out a madman with madness. At a minimum, there should be hearings, with Bush under oath. With any more details like this, the next step is impeachment.