scottish anti-usa

The charges fall into four categories: the use of cluster bombs; the killing
of civilians by other means; attacks on the infrastructure essential for
public health and the failure to prevent the looting of hospitals. There is
plenty of supporting evidence.1

US forces dropped around 1500 cluster bombs from the air and fired an
unknown quantity from artillery pieces. British troops fired 2100.2 Each
contained several hundred bomblets, which fragment into shrapnel. Between
200 and 372 Iraqi civilians were killed by them during the war.3 Others,
mostly children, continue to be killed by those bomblets which failed to
explode when they hit the ground. The effects of their deployment in
residential areas were both predictable and predicted. This suggests that
their use there breached protocol II to the Geneva Conventions, which
prohibits "violence to the life, health and physical or mental well-being"
of non-combatants.4


On several occasions, US troops appear to have opened fire on unarmed
civilians. In Nasiriya, they shot at any vehicle that approached their
positions. In one night alone, they killed 12 civilians.5 On a bridge on the
outskirts of Baghdad, they shot 15 in two days.6 Last month, US troops fired
on peaceful demonstrators in Mosul, killing seven, and in Fallujah, killing
13 and injuring 75.7 All these actions appear to offend the 4th convention.


The armed forces also deliberately destroyed civilian infrastructure,
bombing the electricity lines upon which water treatment plants depended,
with the result that cholera and dysentery have spread. Protocol II
prohibits troops from attacking "objects indispensable to the survival of
the civilian population such as ... drinking water installations and
supplies".8


The 4th convention also insists that an occupying power is responsible for
"ensuring and maintaining ... the medical and hospital establishments and
services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory".9 Yet when
the US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked why his troops had failed
to prevent the looting of public buildings, he replied, "Stuff happens. Free
people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."10
Many hospitals remain closed or desperately under-supplied.


On several occasions, US soldiers acted on orders to fire at Iraqi
ambulances, killing or wounding their occupants.11 They shot at the medical
crews which came to retrieve the dead and wounded at the demonstration in
Fallujah.12 The Geneva Conventions suggest that these are straightforward
war crimes: "medical units and transports shall be respected and protected
at all times and shall not be the object of attack."13


The armed forces of the United States, in other words, appear to have taken
short cuts while prosecuting their war with Iraq. Some of these may have
permitted them to conclude their war more swiftly, but at the expense of the
civilian population. Repeatedly, in some cases systematically, US soldiers
appear to have broken the laws of war.


--
Scottish Anti-USA