Final, cataclysmic Third World War.

Here is fantastic interview with prof Francis Boyle, recorded 31 May 2006.
If you haven't listened to this interview, do so soon.

http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=18388
(222 people have downloaded the interview as of today)

Summary: Prof. Boyle explains Democrats failure to impeach Bush, the role and history of neocons, PNAC, and preventive war, the anthrax link to 9-11 and US biowarfare programme.

However, if you want to a comical mad rant by a harvard professor, try today's Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881965352&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull Dec. 24, 2006 15:29 | Updated Dec. 24, 2006 17:17 Jews for Ahmadinejad By ALAN DERSHOWITZ click here to complain to the editors of JPOST over this slanderous fevered writings. Just because it is a blog, its not kosher to publish infantile slander. or SKIP THIS futile exercise and read some excellent BOYLE WRITINGS: The following is the first post of a new JPost.com blog featuring leading American attorney and stalwart defender of Israel Alan Dershowitz By this time, everyone knows that Jews for Jesus are not really Jews. They are Christians using the cover of their Jewish origin to fool people into coming to their proselytizing services. But many people still think that the seven bearded enemies of Israel - members of an extreme cult called Neturei Karta - who accepted an invitation from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to come to Iran's Holocaust denial festival, are also real Jews. Still others believe that supporters of Hizbullah and Holocaust minimizers like Norman Finkelstein - who uses his Jewish birth to cover for his anti-Semitism - are real Jews. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I now propose a new vocabulary for describing these imposters. From now on, the Neturei Karta should be known as Jews for Ahmadinejad, and Norman Finkelstein and his ilk should be known now as Jews for Hizbullah. The Neturei Karta describe themselves as part of the "Orthodox Jews United Against Zionism." In reality, they are a tiny sect that is unwilling to recognize Israel's right to exist as a secular state. According to the Neturei Karta, Jews may not reoccupy Jerusalem until the Messiah arrives and God explicitly allows the establishment of a Jewish nation grounded in halacha, or Jewish religious law. The Neturei Karta are so incensed by a secular Israel that their principal mission is to align themselves with people and organizations such as Yasser Arafat, Hizbullah, and Ahmadinejad in order to do whatever they can to help eliminate Israel. They number no more than a few thousand people. Noam Chomsky probably deserves a category all his own. In light of his having written an introduction to a book by Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson - who also spoke at the Iranian hate-fest - Chomsky should now be known as a Jew for Holocaust Deniers. Chomsky has claimed that he was only defending Faurisson's freedom of speech, but that defense rings hollow. In the first place, Chomsky is not remotely a civil libertarian. Civil libertarians defend everyone's freedom of speech and conscience, whether they agree with the content of that speech or not. Chomsky, on the other hand, defends only those with whom he agrees. Second, Chomsky did, in fact, defend the substance of Faurisson's Holocaust denial. He called Faurisson as "a sort of relatively apolitical liberal," praised his "extensive historical research," and characterized his assertions about the Holocaust as historical "findings." He also said that he did not see any "hint of anti-Semitic implications" in Faurisson's claim that the so-called Holocaust was a fraud perpetrated by the Jewish people. Finkelstein's wholehearted hatred of Jews and support for Hizbullah is well documented and easily accessible. He is a denouncer of all Holocaust victims -calling survivors "frauds" and "hucksters" - while appropriating Nazi language himself when he characterizes American Jews as "parasites." He wears his vileness on his sleeve. For a quick overview of his positions, please see a chapter of my book The Case for Peace. Just like consumers of food and tobacco products must be warned by labels, so too, consumers of propaganda should be warned by appropriate labeling. And just as a person can renounce his citizenship by deed or word, so too can a person renounce his ethnicity in the same manner. I hope my labeling of anti-Semites of Jewish heritage will put to rest any misconceptions that these fringe hate-mongers are representative of or speak for anyone but themselves. Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard. His most recent book is Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways (Norton, 2006).

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Draft Impeachment Resolution Against President George W. Bush

by FRANCIS A. BOYLE
professor of law, University of Illinois School of Law

January 17, 2003

http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle01172003.htm

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University Press, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press. He can be reached at: FBOYLE{-a-}LAW.UIUC.EDU

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Interesting talk on Hawaii Sovereignty (transcript and audio download):
http://www.hawaii-nation.org/boyle-transcript-2004.html

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another interview

Talk Nation Radio Interview with Law Professor Francis A. Boyle on 4 Square Impeachment, the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and Attorney General

Posted on Friday 5 May 2006

Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment, I’m Dori Smith.

“We were in dire straights under Nixon in Vietnam and we impeached Nixon, ended up with Gerald Ford, and the Vietnam War was wound down. So I don’t think we can ever give up hope but we really have no alternative.”

Intro: International law expert Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois is our guest this time to discuss Iran, presidential powers, the Plame Affair, the President’s decision to override 750 laws, and the professor’s draft impeachment resolution against President George W. Bush written back in January of 2003. In debates held at that time with administration officials Attorney Boyle came under sharp criticism for maintaining that the President and others in the administration made false statements that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. As Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle struggle to evaluate any illegality on the part of the President and others in his administration, Professor Boyle’s warnings about the direction the government was moving in now seem prophetic.

Dori Smith: Professor Boyle, welcome to Talk Nation Radio.

Francis A. Boyle Thank you very much for having me on and my best to your listening audience.

Dori Smith: You wrote your draft impeachment resolution against President Bush back in January of 2003 and in the time since we have learned a lot more about pre-war intelligence manipulation and the various kinds of disinformation provided to the American people about Iraq. Just talk about the ongoing effort to impeach since your resolution in 2003. Do you think enough is known for impeachment to proceed and can we get there?

Francis A. Boyle: Yes, I think those of us in the peace movement in the fall of 2002 were publicly stating that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and this was just a bald faced lie and propaganda to generate momentum towards war. And I think we have now been proven to be correct. Where the impeachment campaign stands now; I have to review just a little bit of history.

On 13 March 2003, that is just before the outbreak of the war against Iraq, Congressman John Conyers, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, convened an emergency meeting of 40 to 50 of his top advisors, most of whom were lawyers, to put in emergency bills of impeachment against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and at that time Ashcroft, to head off the impending war.

He invited me and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark in to debate the issue in favor of impeachment. The debate lasted two hours. We had my draft resolution on the table and Ramsey also had his draft resolution; we don’t disagree at all in how we see the issues. And to make a long story short the lawyers there did not disagree with me and Ramsey that Bush merited impeachment for what he had done and was threatening to do so far.

The main objection was political expedience and in particular John Podesta was there. He had been Clinton’s White House chief of staff. He stated he was appearing on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and that as far as the DNC was concerned it was going to hurt their ability to get whoever their candidate was going to be in 2004 elected President if we put in these bills of impeachment. I found that argument completely disingenuous when the Democrats had no idea who their candidate was going to be in 2004 as of March 2003. We had no idea.

In any event I’m a political independent so I didn’t argue that point. It was not for me to tell Democrats how to get their candidates elected. I just continued to hammer on on the merits of impeachment. Now, Ramsey, as you know he’s a lifelong Democrat so he did argue that issue and Ramsey’s argument was the he didn’t think it was going to hurt and it might help to put in these bills of impeachment immediately. Unfortunately, the Podesta argument prevailed and those draft bills of impeachment are still sitting there at the House Judiciary Committee. I’ve been updating impeachable offenses since then sending it in there to the House Judiciary Committee.

So the main problem we have now is political. That the Democratic leadership in the House where the bill must originate and also the Democratic honchos at the DNC are opposed to putting in bills of impeachment against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and now Gonzales. So this is not a drafting problem, a substantive problem. We’ve already debated these and Ramsey and I won the arguments. And as time has gone on since I drafted my bill and this debate before Congressman Conyers, more and more evidence has come out of the lies, propaganda, disinformation, and further crimes that the Bush Jr. administration has engaged in. –Recently; spying on the American people in violation of the 4th Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which is a felony so obviously another impeachable offense that Gonzales approved.

So that’s where we stand. So far we need one member of the House of Representatives with courage, intelligence, integrity, principle, and a safe seat, willing to put in a bill of impeachment or bills of impeachment against the four of them. Right now we do not have that member of Congress because the leadership of the Democratic Party is taking the position that this would be politically counter productive as far as they are concerned.

Dori Smith: You mentioned the NSA spy program. There is also the right now Patrick Fitzgerald is working on involving leaks of the name, Valerie Plame Wilson, who as we know was a CIA agent. We have many documents that have been coming out and so I want to talk with you about that. And finally, I do want to touch on the more recent story about the President quietly assuming the authority to disobey 750 laws since he took office. This is a story by the Boston Globe’s Charles Savage, April 30, 2006.

So taking them one at a time, you mentioned the NSA spy program. Are we on the verge of seeing a bipartisan effort to question Bush on that program and could that possibly bring up the issue of impeachment if the President is unwilling to listen, say, even to the head of the U.S. Senate

Francis A. Boyle: Well it would be nice if we were on the verge but Senator Specter was making some noises that he was going to do something and maybe have some hearings but so far we don’t have them. I really don’t know what to say. Again, the issues you mentioned all involve impeachable offenses. There’s more than enough there on the substantive merits across the board to impeach these four individuals but I regret to say I just don’t think the Democrats have the guts to do it. (See update in breaking story Thursday, May 4, 2006, one day after this program aired that Senator Specter has called for hearings on the President’s failure to obey 750 laws. Hearings Update

My conclusion is that basically the incumbent Democrats have pretty much been complicit with everything Bush has done since September 11, 2001. In the NSA spying scandal it came out that the leadership of the Democratic Party, the 14 top leaders in the House and the Senate, knew full well that Bush was spying on the American people and said nothing at all to the American people.

It was the New York Times as you know who broke the story, but they sat on it for a year. Well let’s put the New York Times responsibility aside, the Democratic leadership who knew should have said something. Now they gave the lame excuse saying well the information was classified. That’s baloney. In the Constitution there is what is known as the speech and debate clause that gives any member of Congress absolute immunity from both civil and criminal proceedings to say anything he or she wants to say from the floor of the House or the floor of the Senate. This happened in the impeachment campaign against Bush Senior where I was counsel to Congressman Henry B. Gonzales and did the first draft of his impeachment resolution that was introduced January 16, 1991, and in support of that resolution as matters went on Congressman Gonzales repeatedly got up on the floor of the House and released classified information.

Of course Bush Sr. went irate. He sicked the CIA to investigate Congressman Gonzales but nothing could be done because of the speech and debate clause. As long as the member of Congress only talks on the floor of the House or the Senate they can say what they want. They can’t go back and have a press conference on classified information.

So everyone knows this and in my opinion my reading then went with the NSA spy scandal it came out that the Democratic leadership has simply been complicit with Bush. They were complicit on the war against Afghanistan. They were complicit in the war against Iraq. We in the peace movement told the leadership of the Democratic Party that there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction for those of us who also have been following this matter for 20 years. You know, these are intelligent people, they had access to the same information I did and Ramsey Clark did and others. So, the problem is we have a leadership in the Democratic Party that has been complicit in all of these Constitutional violations being inflicted by the Bush Administration.

I think we are going to have to elect people; men and women of good faith whatever party, who are willing to put in bills of impeachment because otherwise we are quickly degenerating here into a dictatorship. You mentioned that story in the Boston Globe. The President is just ignoring laws or issuing these signing statements saying he is not going to enforce them. Well the President has an obligation under the Constitution to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. If he believes they are unconstitutional he has to go to the Supreme Court and get the Supreme Court to strike them down.

He has also taken an oath to uphold the Constitutional laws of the United States as required by the Constitution. So this behavior, this pattern of behavior rises to the level of an impeachable offense. The test is subversion of the Constitution and clearly you have over 700 laws that the President has said he is not going to enforce.

Dori Smith: In terms of which laws we are looking at his unwillingness to adhere to laws recently passed, since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. And now this has gone to issues like torture. He has said he can bypass the torture ban. There are other laws involving the Military, armies, the ability to declare war, make rules for captured enemies, make rules for government and regulation of the land and Naval forces and also regulate the Military; and this is traditionally a role that Congress does play.

Francis A. Boyle: That’s correct. If you read the Constitution Congress is given all sorts of powers with respect to the conduct of warfare and most importantly the power to declare war, not the President. Look what we have in operation here is the Fhurer principle that was rejected by the Nuremberg Charter judgment and principles that the President is above the law, he’s above the Constitution, he’s above international law, he can do whatever he wants. He can take United States citizens, strip them of their rights, and throw them into Military brigs. We have to remember that in the first draft of the USA Patriot Act that was done by a Federalist Society lawyer for Ashcroft, in the first draft they tried to have in there the suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus which is all that stands between us and a police state. -It’s your ability if you are detained by any law enforcement official to have a lawyer go into court and the judge you know produce the body, a person appears in court, and then the government has to explain what is the legal authority for this person to be detained and if there are any problems with condition of detention, I.e., torture or something like that.

John Ashcroft and his Federalist Society lawyers tried to get Congress to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus for all of us U.S. citizens. Fortunately a Congressional staffer saw that and it was struck out. But clearly that is their ultimate objective; to set up a police state.

Dori Smith: Well now you say that, a lot of the laws that were ignored did turn out to be military rules and regulations, but also there were Affirmative Action provisions, requirements Congress be told about immigration service problems, whistle blower protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. We could look at any one of those and find lots of stories to work on, but let’s talk about the nuclear aspect because I know you have looked at that as well and we do see a new nuclear arms race going on where the White House is now working on how to describe programs that are already underway, we are already looking at testing, we are already looking at development and replacement with some of the weapons systems and various kind of new technologies; and an emphasis on new weapons that may be “usable” under the new sort of description of a nuclear conflict, which is the old traditional label of “Low Intensity Conflict” that has to do with these surgical strikes again with a nuclear warhead.

Francis A. Boyle: That is correct. As you know in December of 2002 they put a new policy on the White House web site, a new National Security Policy that supplemented the one they had done earlier that fall in September endorsing preventive warfare. And in the December 2002 policy and I discuss this in my book, Destroying World Order they made it clear that they were prepared to use weapons of mass destruction to carry out that policy. And now it has come out from the Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker that they are prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran they say low yield, but we are talking of orders of a little bit less than Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Just recently President Bush and Secretary of State Rice were asked about the use of nuclear weapons with that name, by the way, with respect to Iran, and both the President and the Secretary of State said “all options are on the table.”

If you look at the Pentagon policy manual on war fighting, which I have reviewed, that came out I believe a year ago, implementing then the December 2002 policy on weapons of mass destruction, and they are currently integrating nuclear weapons with conventional weapons all up and down their operational policy. So this is going on now as we speak.

As you know at Nevada they have this, Nevada test site, this Operation Divine Strike, that is again going to simulate bunker busters, and it’s clear they are getting ready there to resume nuclear testing. So if you add it all up it looks horrendous and of course then you don’t want nuclear whistle blowers going out and trying to tell the American people what’s really going on. But if you make a very close examination of what’s already out there in the public record it is startling and extremely disturbing.

If Bush were to go ahead and actually do what Seymour Hersh says he is going to do we could be witnessing the outbreak of the third world war. And I know Noam Chomsky has recently taken the same position on that independently of me.

Dori Smith: That brings us to CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson again but it turns out that she was working on Iran at the time she was outted by this White House, then we see that her husband Joseph Wilson had been in Niger on a mission to determine the degree of any validity to this suggestion that Saddam Hussein was trying to get nuclear material from Niger, that turned out to be false and of course he said so in his OP-ED piece that is now so famous. So here we see two people who did try to in a way warn us back at the time that this was all starting to come out and now we see that every argument they made is being legitimized if you will with more and more of the documents that are coming out through the Special Prosecutor as he proceeds with his case.

Francis A. Boyle: You know Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon Papers has publicly stated that it is in the interest of the preservation of our republic that people inside the government who have this information have to start leaking because otherwise I’m afraid the Bush people are going to lead us into a total catastrophe. It could be a nuclear catastrophe.

As to Mr. Fitzgerald my reading of him is he is not an Archibald Cox or Leon Jawarski. Remember he was appointed as U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois by President Bush himself. So he is not really independent of anything and it seems to me he is pretty much going with their play book which is to narrow his focus as much as possible and zero in on underlings and avoid the responsibility of the people on the top. So I’m afraid we really can’t rely on Mr. Fitzgerald to do the right thing. He might. I’m not discounting him. But he’s no Archie Cox he’s no Leon Jawarski. He is a creature of this administration.

Again, it’s really going to be up to us, the American people, to take a stand here because otherwise the Bush people I’m afraid will lead us over a precipice with this purely concocted crisis with Iran. It’s the exact same playbook they used on Iraq. It appears they are timing it to coincide with the November elections, again, Karl Rove at work again. It looks like the Republicans are afraid they are going to lose control of either one of both houses. And what better way to keep that control than to manufacture this crisis with Iran, distract attention from all their other problems that they have, and try to hold on to the House and the Senate, to prevent a bill of impeachment or investigation or whatever. So this is the dilemma we are in as American people.

Dori Smith: I just want to ask again about the potential to use impeachment as a remedy for the present crisis in Washington; a crisis of economics, a crisis of leadership, and as it turns out a crisis of just plain old honesty because we have seen again and again corruption at the highest levels of the land and so often we can trace that directly to the doors of multinational corporations. Let me just ask you if the American people are ready to hear that they need to stand up for impeachment and if we can translate that into a state by state effort.

Francis A. Boyle: First of all it did work with Nixon so we have a very powerful precedent there. Now, I admit at that time the Democrats controlled Congress, it was a different party. But even eventually most of the Republicans came along to the need to get rid of Nixon just for the good of the country. So we have that precedent.

Number two, we have the precedent of what happened all over this country for immigration reform. We’ve had hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets all over to advocate in a peaceful nonviolent way for human rights, for undocumented aliens in this country. So there is an enormous potential out there that the peace movement is going to have to mobilize. As I see it we are going to have to sit down and figure out how did the immigration reform movement turn all those people out and we are going to have to start turning out similar numbers for impeachment of Bush and trying to stop the war in Iraq, it’s killed now over 2400 U.S. service members, all needlessly killed, we have no idea how many Iraqis, probably 200,000 at least, and to head off what could be a nuclear catastrophe in Iran.

Dori Smith: Finally, you have written about Obliterating Fallujah and what the U.S. Military did there. And we have had as a guest on our program Dahr Jamail who drew a very devastating picture of what was going on in Fallujah, as did a few others who had been there and spoke with us about that, Jo Wilding and Rahul Mahajan

We get the impression that not much has been done there by way of reconstruction so we see this city basically destroyed, and we see other cities in Iraq getting to the point of destroyed, and we see lots of refugees being created from the cities; To what extent do you think that this is going to have such an impact in the region that that too could provoke more war and wider war?

Francis A. Boyle: Fallujah will probably be like Grozny which is completely demolished and almost uninhabitable over in Chechnya. What I was pointing out in that essay was the legal principles of State; you have to go back to the Nuremberg Charter that said quite clearly that the wanton devastation of a city, town, or district, is a war crime. And what I pointed out was to obliterate an entire city like Fallujah or Grozny, these are Nazi crimes to try to put them into perspective. That we prosecuted, convicted, and executed Nazis at Nuremberg for doing this type of behavior. Now, I’m against the death penalty for anyone including Bush and the rest of them. I believe they should be impeached, they should be indicted and they should be prosecuted, but not executed. -I wrote that piece to try to put this behavior into perspective and right now as you saw Senator Biden making the proposal that Iraq should be carved up into three pieces? Well that’s been their policy all along is to destroy Iraq as a viable state. And I am very afraid then that this will be implemented and you could see a massive convulsion of civil war in Iraq that could draw in, even against their best wishes, the neighboring states particularly Turkey, Iran, and others. It’s a very volatile situation over there. You have Russia arming Iran, China pretty much supporting them. You have close to two thirds of all the oil and gas supplies in the world at stake there. I don’t think I or Professor Chomsky have underestimated the potential cataclysm that could happen if the Bush Administration continues on its campaign.

But look, we were in dire straights under Nixon in Vietnam and we impeached Nixon, ended up with Gerald Ford, and the Vietnam War was wound down. I don’t think we can ever give up hope. But we really have no alternative.

Dori Smith: We see Israel in the press now relating to Iran. The latest being that Israel announced the sale of some rockets from North Korea to Iran, I believe these were scud type missiles, and Iran has been talking about the destruction of Israel and has said some very harsh things about the Holocaust. -A very inflammatory situation. Just talk about Israel under the new leaders and where we stand in that regard.

Francis A. Boyle: Well I have to agree with the study by Professors Walt and Mearsheimer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. If you look at the record here in the United States, the only people pushing for war against Iran are the Israel lobby people, their sources, assets in the news media, and also in Congress. I don’t detect any great sentiment here on the part of the American people to go to war against Iran.

It’s clear under the philosophy of the Neo-Conservatives that they wrote Clean Break –(”A Clean Break: a New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, By Douglas J. Feith and Richard Perle) and everything; they want the United States to take out Iran as a favor to Israel and so I think we have to be aware of these strategies and who is mongering for war against Iran. Again, that’s not just my reading of it. That’s also what Professor’s Walt and Mearsheimer have stated in their article in the London Review of Books with all of the footnotes at the Harvard Kennedy School. I agree with them.

Dori Smith: Francis A. Boyle teaches law at the University of Illinois. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School. He has advised numerous international bodies in the areas of human rights, war crimes, genocide, nuclear policy, and bio warfare. Professor Boyle also serves as counsel for Bosnia Herzegovina in application of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide pending before the International Court of Justice. He also represents associations of citizens within the country and has been instrumental in developing the indictment against Slobdon Milosovich for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He received a PHD in political science from Harvard University. You can find Professor Francis A. Boyle’s writing online at Counterpunch.org.

Some of Professor Boyle’s Books:

The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence

World Politics and International Law

Destroying World Order: U.S. Imperialism in the Middle East Before and After September 11th

Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations 1898-1921

For Talk Nation Radio, I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced in the studios of WHUS at the University of Connecticut. WHUS.org to listen live Wed. at 5 pm. talknation.org and talknationradio.org for transcripts and discussion. Our music is provided by Fritz Heede

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US Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada calls Iraq war illegal, refuses order to go

Officer likely to refuse Iraq call

A Fort Lewis soldier is poised to become the first U.S. military officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq, his supporters said Monday.

http://tinyurl.com/ka4ws


From Information Clearing House

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Francis A. Boyle Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (voice)
217-244-1478 (fax) fboyle@law.uiuc.edu
(personal comments only)


-----Original Message-----
From: Boyle, Francis
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 8:25 AM
To: nyt@blythe.org
Subject: FW: seattletimes.com: Officer at Fort Lewis calls Iraq war illegal, refuses order to go

Statement On Behalf Of Lt. Ehren Watada
By Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
7 June 2006

One generation ago the peoples of the world asked themselves: Where were the "good" Germans? Well, there were some good Germans. The Lutheran theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the foremost exemplar of someone who led a life of principled opposition to the Nazi-terror state even unto death. Today the peoples of the world are likewise asking themselves: Where are the "good" Americans? Well, there are some good Americans. They are getting prosecuted for protesting against illegal U.S. military interventions and war crimes around the world. First Lieutenant Ehren Watada is America's equivalent to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Wei Jingsheng, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others. He is the archetypal American Hero whom we should be bringing into our schools and teaching our children to emulate, not those wholesale purveyors of gratuitous violence and bloodshed adulated by the U.S. government, America's power elite, the mainstream corporate news media, and its interlocked entertainment industry. In international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, because of its formulation and undertaking of wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany. As a consequence, American citizens and soldiers such as Lieutenant Watada possess the basic right under international law and the United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance in order to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by U.S. government officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism. If not so restrained, the Bush Jr. administration could very well precipitate a Third World War.


-----Original Message-----
From: fboyle@law.uiuc.edu
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 8:22 AM
Subject: seattletimes.com: Officer at Fort Lewis calls Iraq war illegal, refuses order to go


Officer at Fort Lewis calls Iraq war illegal, refuses order to go Full story: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003044627_nogo7m.html

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

In a rare case of officer dissent, a Fort Lewis Army lieutenant has refused orders to head out to Iraq this month to lead troops in what he believes is an illegal war of occupation.

1st Lt. Ehren Watada's Stryker brigade is scheduled to make its first deployment to Iraq this month. His refusal to accompany these troops puts him at risk of court-martial and years of prison time.

"I feel that we have been lied to and betrayed by this administration," Watada said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Fort Lewis. "It is the duty, the obligation of every soldier, and specifically the officers, to evaluate the legality, the truth behind every order -- including the order to go to war."

In making his decision, Watada has reached out to peace groups, including clergy, students, some veterans opposed to Iraq and others. Some war critics are raising money for his legal defense as they seek to galvanize broader opposition to Bush administration policy in Iraq.

"There has been an outpouring of support in the Puget Sound area," said David Solnit, who works with the anti-war group Courage to Resist. The group and others are helping organize a press conference today in Tacoma to launch the support campaign.

Watada met over the weekend with Olympia peace activists, and had hoped to attend the press conference. But after a Tuesday meeting with an Army colonel, he was given written orders not to attend during duty hours between 6:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Instead, he expects to offer a video statement.

Watada's actions also may become a lightning rod for others in the debate about the Iraq war.

"He has an obligation to fulfill, and it is not up to the individual officer to decide when he is going to deploy or not deploy," said Jerry Newberry, a Vietnam veteran and director of communications for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "Some other officer will have to go in his place. He needs to think about that."

Watada, a member of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, is unsure what charges he might face. But he is concerned that his decision to go public will cause the Army to pile on numerous offenses, such as disobeying an order, missing a troop movement and unauthorized absence.

"I think they will do their best to make an example of me," Watada said.

Though some U.S. commissioned officers refused to deploy in the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War, it is unclear how many -- if any -- have balked at deployment in the Iraq war. Pentagon officials said they had no such statistics available.

A Fort Lewis spokesman, Joe Hitt, also had no knowledge of any other commissioned officer refusing to deploy. He declined to comment on Watada.

Among the enlisted ranks at Fort Lewis, Sgt. Kevin Benderman is serving a 15-month sentence at a base correctional facility for refusing a second tour of duty in Iraq. Benderman, an Army mechanic for 10 years, served in Iraq in 2003 but refused to board a plane for a return trip in January 2005.

There is also a much broader category of military personnel who for a wide range of reasons have not fulfilled their service obligations.

Since the beginning of the war, more than 7,900 members of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force have deserted, a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands who have served. Pentagon statistics indicate that desertions have declined as the war has progressed. They dropped from
3,678 in 2003, the first year of the war, to about 2,000 in 2005. The desertions typically involve enlisted personnel, not officers.

Watada has not deserted, since he remains on post in Fort Lewis.

Watada, 28, is a native of Hawaii, and an Eagle Scout who graduated from Hawaii Pacific University with a finance degree.

His father -- Robert Watada, a retired Hawaii state official -- was opposed to the war in Vietnam, and was able to do alternative service in the Peace Corps in Peru.

And Robert Watada said he laid out the "pros and cons" of military service as his son considered joining the service in the spring of 2003 as the invasion of Iraq was launched.

"He knew very well of my decision not to go to Vietnam, and he had to make his own decision to join the Army," Robert Watada said. "It was very noble. He felt like he wanted to do his part for his country."

After the younger Watada enlisted, he was sent to officer-training school in Georgia. Watada said he supported the war at that time because he believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

"I had my doubts," he said. "But I felt like the president is our leader, and he won't betray our trust, and he would know what he was talking about, and let's give him the benefit of the doubt." Over the past year, his feeling changed as he read up on the war and became convinced that there was "intentional manipulation of intelligence" by the Bush administration.

In January, Watada told his commanders that he believed that the war was unlawful, and therefore, so were his deployment orders. He did not, however, consider himself a conscientious objector, since he was willing to fight in wars that were justified, legal and in defense of the nation.

Watada was told that he could submit his resignation, but that the Army would recommend disapproval. That resignation was rejected in May, he said.

In a court-martial proceeding, Watada, who has retained civilian counsel, said he would try to mount a case about the legality of the war under international law and American law. But he is aware that a military court might not allow him to make that case.

Peace activists say they hope more military personnel will refuse to go war.

"We plan a national campaign to try to make sure that he is not punished for what he is doing," Solnit said.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581.

Seattle Times reporter Alex Fryer contributed to this story.

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A Call to Support U.S. Military Officer to Refuse Illegal Iraq War

Thank you LT for standing up for international, US and military law by refusing to deploy to Iraq in support of the ongoing illegal war and occupation.

http://www.thankyoult.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1


From Information Clearing House

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U.S. Army officer declares Iraq war resistance
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4618/

Lt. Ehren Watada interviewed on his refusal to deploy to 'illegal war'
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4619/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

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First Officer Publicly Resists War

"Yesterday, US Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada became the first officer to publicly state his refusal to obey an order to deploy to Iraq," writes Marjorie Cohn. "Lt. Watada asked me to speak about the legality of the war at his press conference."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060806J.shtml

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Lt. Ehren Watada's June 7 press conference in Tacoma, WA
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4623/

Michael Honey refutes *News Tribune* editorial on Lt. Watada
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4624/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

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Military Officer Gains National Support for Resisting Deployment

When 27-year-old US Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada announced his refusal to deploy to Iraq yesterday, he did so surrounded by veterans, military family members, and members of the religious and anti-war communities. News of Watada's intent to refuse his orders to deploy to Iraq has galvanized anti-war communities around the country.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060806R.shtml

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Army Lieutenant Becomes First Commissioned Officer to Refuse Deployment to Iraq

Interview: Audio and transcript: On Wednesday U.S. Army 1st Lieutenant Ehren Watada announced his intention to disobey what he says are illegal orders to deploy to Iraq. We speak with 1st Lieutenant Watada and his lawyer, Legrand Jones.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13538.htm

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Military attempts to stop Lt. Watada from speaking against illegal war

Lt. Watada confirmed, “I have a legal and ethical obligation to speak out against, and refuse to fight, this patently illegal war in Iraq. This has not changed.”

http://tinyurl.com/ogefp


From Information Clearing House

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Lieutenant Watada's War Against the War

"While ongoing media coverage of the protest debates whether Watada's action is one of cowardice or conscience, so far the seriousness of his legal claims have been largely ignored," write Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith. "Watada's position is different from that of conscientious objectors, who oppose all wars."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061306N.shtml

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Is the US Army Trying to Silence Lt. Watada?

Sarah Olson asks, "What are the speech rights for members of the military? Do they have legal rights to speak publicly about a war they think is illegal or just plain wrong? Currently, the Army is investigating Lieutenant Watada for speaking 'contemptuously' about the president."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061406R.shtml



Lt. Watada's right and obligation to speak out
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4661/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

rudkla - 7. Jun, 12:42

The Architects Of War: Where Are They Now?

President Bush has not fired any of the architects of the Iraq war. In fact, a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded – not blamed – for their incompetence.

http://thinkprogress.org/the-architects-where-are-they-now/


From Information Clearing House

rudkla - 7. Jun, 12:41

If we knew more about Ireland, we might never have invaded Iraq

Loach's film about the Irish independence war is being rubbished because it tells the other side of the occupation story.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1791178,00.html


From Information Clearing House

rudkla - 7. Jun, 12:40

Government Investigates Iraq Contracting Fraud

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has 78 open investigations into fraud and corruption in the Coalition Provisional Authority.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5453477

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PERDANA GLOBAL PEACE FORUM 2006
PUBLIC LECTURE
“THE MIDDLE EAST AGENDA: OIL, DOLLAR HEGEMONY & ISLAM”
PUTRA WORLD TRADE CENTRE,
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA
JUNE 22nd, 2006
PROFESSOR FRANCIS A. BOYLE

[Moderator; Dato’ Mukhriz Mahathir]
…. now I have the pleasure of introducing Professor Francis Boyle who is a scholar in the areas of the International Law and human rights. He has written and lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on the relationship between international law and politics. From 1991 to 1993, Professor Boyle was a legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Professor Boyle is currently attorney of record for the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. And recently, he has been on the vanguard of the movement to impeach U.S. President George W. Bush. May I now invite Professor Boyle to take the rostrum.

[Prof. Francis A Boyle]
Assalamu’alaikum. Dr. Mahathir, Mrs. Mahathir, distinguished Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. Little has changed in the imperialist tendencies of American foreign policy since the founding of the United States of America in seventeen eighty-nine. The fledgling United States opened the nineteenth century by stealing the continent of North America from the Indians, while in the process ethnically cleansing them and then finally deporting the pitiful few survivors by means of death marches (a la Bataan) to Bantustans, which in America we call reservations, as in instance of America’s manifest destiny to rule the world.

Then, the imperial government of the United States opened the twentieth century by stealing a colonial empire from Spain - in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, then inflicting a near-genocidal war against the Filipino people. While at the same time, purporting to annex, the kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the native Hawaiian people to near-genocidal conditions from which they still suffer today- all in the name of securing America’s so-called place in the sun.

And today at the dawn of the twenty first century, the world witnesses the effort by the imperial government of the United States of America to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Moslem states and peoples, surrounding central Asia and the Persian Gulf under the pretext of fighting a war against international terrorism or eliminating weapons of mass destruction or promoting democracy which is total nonsense.

For the past two hundred and sixteen years, the imperialist foreign policy of the United States of America since its foundation, has been predicated upon racism, aggression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes and outright genocide. At the dawn of the third millennium of humankind’s parlous existence, nothing has changed about the operational dynamics of American imperial policy. And we see this today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and what appears to be an illegal attack upon Iran.

Now the topic today is the Middle East Agenda : Oil, Dollar Hegemony and Islam. So, I’m only going to limit my comments to that subject. We have to begin the story with the Arab oil embargo in nineteen seventy-three. As you know in nineteen sixty-seven, Israel launched an illegal and preventive war against the surrounding Arab states, stole the land and ethnically cleansed the people. But eventually Egypt offered a Peace Treaty to Israel which Israel rejected and the Egyptians and the Arab states decided then to use force to recover their lands.

Israel almost collapsed, the United States and Europe came to their support by providing weapons and in reaction the Arab states imposed an oil embargo on the United States and Europe, and brought their economies to their knees. Whereupon, the then U.S Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger threatened them and said, this will never happen again, and if you do, we will prevent it. And it was not just a threat. The United States government then at that time, planned, prepared and conspired, to steal the oil of the Persian Gulf. They did not have the military capability to do this at that time, to carry out the Kissinger threat, which was also then repeated by the Ford administration, and the Carter administration under Harold Brown and Brzezinski.

So they put into planning an interventionary force, designed expressly for the purpose of stealing Arab oil fields, and that was called the rapid deployment force. And it took ten years of training, planning, positioning, and supply to build that interventionary force of that capability and eventually it was called the U.S. Central Command. The purpose of the U.S. Central Command is to steal and control and dominate the oil and gas resources of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. And that’s exactly what the U.S. Central Command proceeded to do in the Bush Sr. war against Iraq, their first military expedition.

And as we know, that war exterminated probably two hundred thousand Iraqis. Half of them innocent civilians. Simply wiped out in a bombing campaign and a military expedition of unprecedented dimensions. But remember, it took fifteen years for the Pentagon and three different administrations both Republicans and Democrats to get the capability to do this. And then, when that genocide or conflict was over, what happened? The United States carved Iraq up into three pieces with their air force, the so-called no-fly zones, a zone for the Kurds in the North, a zone for the Shi’ah in the South, and the Sunni in the middle. Why? To destroy Iraq as an effectively viable state.

In his book, Clash of Civilizations, Huntington from Harvard who advised the Pentagon and advised the state department pointed out that the only Arab state with the capability to lead the Arab world and challenge the United States and Israel was Iraq. And so Iraq had to be destroyed, to maintain the domination of the United States and its proxy, Israel. And remember after nineteen seventy-three, whatever it was before then, Israel is nothing more than a catspaw of the United States. They do what America tells them to do. Otherwise Israel is nothing more than a failed state.

In addition then, to destroying Iraq as a state, carving it up into three pieces, was the decision to debilitate and destroy the Iraqi people. And so they continued the genocidal economic sanctions on the people of Iraq, that my colleagues, Denis Halliday, Hans Von Sponeck, so courageously resisted and finally resigned as a matter of principle, calling them by what they really were, genocide. The United States and Britain maliciously and criminally imposed genocidal sanctions on the people of Iraq, that killed approximately 1.5 million Iraqis, all of whom were innocent civilians.

And when U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked about the five hundred thousand dead children, she said that she thought the price was worth it. Now, I could have taken that statement to the International Court of Justice, and filed it against the United States as evidence of genocidal intent against the people of Iraq in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. And indeed I offered to do so to the then President of Iraq, but for whatever reasons he decided not to take these claims to the International Court of Justice.

And now, as you see, he is on trial in a total kangaroo court proceeding in Baghdad that is completely controlled and dominated by the United States government. So, 1.5 million Iraqis died as the result of these genocidal sanctions. And then came September 11. And we know for a fact that the Bush Jr. administration knew that a major terrorist attack was going to be launched on the United States. And they let it happen anyway deliberately and on purpose. Why? They wanted a pretext for war. And not just one war but for a long war which they are talking about today.

Indeed, from my research the war plans drawn up by the Pentagon for the war against Afghanistan were formulated as early as 1997. Enormous military forces fielded by that same U.S. Central Command, were already in and around and surrounding the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean before September 11. This war had been planned against Afghanistan. And armed, equipped, supplied, trained and war-gamed and ready to go. They just needed the pretext and that was September 11. Why? The United States wanted access to the oil and natural gas of Central Asia.

That had been a Pentagon objective since at least before the collapse of the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety-one. And the Nine Eleven attack gave them the pretext to make this major grab for the oil and gas of Central Asia. And they are there today with their bases, with their troops, in the surrounding countries in Central Asia. And of course in the process, obliterated, we don’t even have an estimate of the Muslims in Afghanistan who were killed in the air bombardment, twenty, twenty five thousand, maybe more, and tens of thousands of others starved to death and still suffering today.

But that, as we know from all the records was only the first step in the process. They wanted to finish the job in Iraq. And so immediately after September 11, Bush ordered Rumsfeld to update and operationalize the plans for attacking and invading Iraq. It had nothing at all to do with weapons of mass destruction. We in the peace movement in America had been saying that all along. The United Nations had determined there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These were lies designed to scaremonger the American people and Congress into supporting an illegal war of aggression, a Nuremberg crime against peace, against Iraq. And they told whatever lies and broke what international laws they had to break in order to attack Iraq.

And today the estimate, again we don’t know. Perhaps two hundred thousand people in Iraq had been killed outright by the United States, Britain, its allies, Australia in Iraq. And again, most of them civilians. Clearly if you add up what United States government has done to Iraq from August of 1990, when it imposed the genocidal economic embargo until today. The United States and Britain have inflicted outright genocide on the Muslim and Christian people of Iraq and they are predominately Muslim as we know.

Now comes the third step in the Pentagon’s pre-existing plan, to control and dominate the oil and gas resources of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. It’s sounds a bit like the plan that Hitler and the Nazis had in the 1930”s. Does it not? First go into Austria, then go into Czechoslovakia, then go into Poland. So first Afghanistan, then Iraq, and now Iran. And so now Iran is going to be the next victim of these outright criminals unless you and I can stop them.

Right now there are three aircraft carrier task forces in the Persian Gulf. And whenever they had put three aircraft carrier task forces over there, it’s always to prepare for an attack. And according to Seymour Hersch, the award winning journalist, it will probably be an aerial bombardment, along the lines of what they did to Yugoslavia in 1999. As you remember there, seventy eight days of aerial bombardment by the United States and NATO with no authorization from the Security Council. Clearly illegal. Killing again, we don’t know the exact number outright, four to five thousand innocent civilians. And targeting civilian infrastructure, all up and down, from which the people still suffer today. The use of depleted uranium ammunitions, outbreaks of cancer are documented today.

So this is what, is being planned right now as we speak; an attack upon Iran. Using jet fighter aircraft, fighter bombers, on these three aircraft carrier task forces, using cruise missiles on submarines and of course Israel will be involved and have a role to play, doing exactly what the Americans tell them to do. In addition, it appears that if they attack Iran, they will also attack Syria. Yesterday, if you heard President Bush’s press conference in Vienna, he threatened Syria, right? There’s no other word for it. He threatened Syria.

These Neo-Conservatives want to take out Syria as a favour to Israel. Remember, many of these Neo-Conservatives are affiliated personally and professionally with the Likhud Party in Israel and Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Beirut, the man who exterminated twenty thousand Arabs in Lebanon, most of them, not all of them were Muslims. And in addition, slaughtered two thousand completely innocent Palestinian women, children and old men at Sabra and Shatila. Ariel Sharon, the man who went to Haram Al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam, where Muhammad, (Peace Be Upon Him) ascended into heaven, and desecrated the Haram on September 28th, 2000, and deliberately provoked the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and has inflicted death and destruction on the Palestinian people since then. Close to thirty seven hundred Palestinians since then alone have been killed….most of them shot down like dogs in the street, and what has the Muslim world done about this?

My Palestinian friends tell me that they are worried that the government of Malaysia might recognize Israel and establish diplomatic relations with Israel. I certainly hope this is not true. We must treat the criminal apartheid regime in Israel, the same way the world treated the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa. If the United States attacks Iran, they will probably attack Syria with the Israeli air force and they will attack Lebanon to take out the Islamic resistance movement in southern Lebanon - Hezbollah that defended the legitimate rights of Lebanon and the Lebanese people and expelled the invading longstanding occupying Israeli army that had the full support of the United States government for over twenty years.

So they could attack Iran, Syria, Southern Lebanon and inflict yet another round of ethnic cleansing on the suffering Palestinian people. Remember Sharon and Likhud believe that Jordan is Palestine. And they want to drive as many Palestinians as possible out of their homes and into Jordan.

So if the United States as reported by Hersh and other reliable sources, goes ahead and attacks Iran, we could see warfare erupt all the way from Egypt to the border with India. This whole area convulsed in warfare. And who will be the primary victims of this war? Muslims. The United States could not care less about Muslim life. Look at the demonisation and victimisation of Muslims that we have seen inflicted by the United States and its surrogate, Israel. Look at Guantanamo, where six hundred Muslim men have been treated like dogs in a kennel. Pretty much the way the Nazis treated the Jews. Look at Abu Ghraib and the sadism and sexual exploitation and perversion of Muslims by their American captors. And the same thing has been done in Baghram in Afghanistan. And when Professor Sharif Bassiouni, the UN special rapporteur filed the report with the Security Council against US practices in Afghanistan, the Americans had Kofi Annan fire him. Just as they had Kofi Annan fire Mary Robinson, the UN high commissioner for human rights, when she protested what was going on down in Guantanamo.

The United States could not care less about Muslim life. And the same is true for the genocidal apartheid regime in Israel. They would be happy to use nuclear weapons against Iran. They would be happy to break the taboo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki against Muslims in Iran. It would create no problem at all for them. Indeed, I went to school with these Neo-Conservatives at the University of Chicago. Wolfowitz was there, Chalabi, Khalilzad, Shulsky, all the rest of them. I went through the exact same programme. Their mentor, Professor Leo Strauss. And who was his teacher in Germany and his sponsor? Professor Carl Schmitt who went on to become the most notorious Nazi law Professor of his day, justifying every atrocity that the Nazis inflicted on everyone. We must understand that these Neo-Conservatives are in fact Neo-Nazis. They have espoused the Nazi doctrine of Schmitt and Strauss and Machiavelli and Nietzsche, the ’superman’. They are the supermen, and the Muslims are the scum of the earth.

Now, I do not believe the United States will initially start bombing Iran with nuclear weapons. But if things get out of control they are fully prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons. And here in our materials, you have the Pentagon’s Joint Publication 3-12, which you can get on the internet…. just do a Google search and read it. And you will see there dated fifteenth March 2005; nuclear, tactical nuclear weapons have been fully integrated into United States conventional forces.

So if Iran were to defend itself, human wave attacks, whatever, they will be happy to use nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. Remember, these Neo-Nazis, Neo-Cons want to break the taboo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They want to use tactical nuclear weapons, to be able to say to the rest of the world, you do what we tell you to do or else look what we did to the Iranians.

It’s a very serious situation. And this could even get further out of control. Remember that before Bush invaded Iraq, President Putin of Russia said that if he invades Iraq he could set off World War Three. Well, I interpreted that as an implicit threat. Even the famous American news broadcaster Walter Cronkite said that if Bush invaded Iraq he could set off World War Three. Two weeks ago we had the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; China, Russia and Iran. So again, if Bush were to attack Iran, he very well could set off a Third World War, a nuclear war. And that is where you come in.

Dr. Mahathir has had the vision to call for this conference to alert the entire world to the existential dangers presented by a US attack on Iran that could readily become nuclear, regional and global. And I am calling upon you to do whatever you can in cooperation with Dr. Mahathir and the Perdana Global Peace Foundation to head this off. Allah has given each and everyone of you skills that can be used in this endeavour. I can’t tell you what they are, but you yourself know what they are. And you must go to Dr. Mahathir. You must go to the Perdana Peace Foundation and say, “This is what I can do. These are my talents. These are my professional qualifications. These are my skills. This is my cheque book. Let me help. Let me prevent, let me help prevent a nuclear war, a possible final, cataclysmic Third World War.”

“Thank you, shukran.”

http://www.perdana4peace.org/blog/?p=122#more-122

“The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians..” (President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945).

[Note: the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; the Second on Nagasaki, on August 9, on the same day as Truman’s radio speech to the Nation]

(Listen to Excerpt of his speech, Hiroshima audio video)