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Icon plus in circle5/31/2023 forces committed many other war crimes in Iraq, including extrajudicial killings, torture and the targeting of civilians, which are prohibited by the Geneva Conventions the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. War Crimes Committed by the Bush Administration Operation Iraqi Freedom violated the UN Charter and constituted an illegal war of aggression. Bush and his allies instead cobbled together prior Council resolutions, none of which - individually or collectively - authorized the invasion of Iraq.īush justified the attack with his doctrine of “preemptive war.” But the UN Charter only allows a country to use military force in response to an armed attack by another country or with permission of the Security Council. concluded that in spite of intelligence information to the contrary, members of the Bush administration made false statements before the invasion about Iraq having WMD, and linkages between Iraq and al-Qaeda.Īlthough Team Bush urged the UN Security Council to pass a resolution authorizing its attack on Iraq, the Council refused. The “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” the minutes revealed.Įven a 2005 congressional report prepared at the direction of former Rep. The Downing Street Minutes, a transcript of one of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s briefings with British intelligence that The Times of London published in 2005, demonstrated that the Bush administration had decided by July 2002 to invade Iraq and carry out regime change. Moreover, the Bush administration fabricated a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda notwithstanding the intelligence to the contrary. Indeed, no WMD were ever found by the UN weapons inspectors before or after Bush’s invasion of Iraq. In 2002, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter confirmed that Iraq had destroyed 90-95 percent of its WMD and there was no evidence that it had retained the other 5-10 percent, which didn’t necessarily constitute a threat or even a weapons program. Secretary of State Colin Powell shamefully presented false information about Iraq having WMD to the UN Security Council in February 2003. Johnson used the fabricated Tonkin Gulf incident as a pretext to escalate the Vietnam War, Bush relied on mythical weapons of mass destruction and a nonexistent link between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks to justify his war on Iraq.īush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice falsely warned that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and Rice invoked the image of a “mushroom cloud” to justify the impending invasion of Iraq. military interventions, the rationale for this illegal aggression was based on a lie. Two decades later, not one of the officials responsible has been brought to justice. It plunged the country into a civil war and millions of Iraqi refugees remain displaced. The United States spent $815 billion on the war, not counting indirect costs. During the eight-year war, about 300,000 Iraqis and 4,600 Americans were killed. In what came to be called “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” 173,000 troops from the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq. He is the first non-African leader to be charged by the ICC, which frequently succumbs to pressure from the United States. By contrast, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has already charged Russian President Vladimir Putin with war crimes just one year after his unlawful invasion of Ukraine. have never faced criminal accountability. bombing of Baghdad, dubbed “Shock and Awe.” In rapid succession, “coalition forces” dropped 3,000 bombs, including many that weighed 2,000 pounds, on Baghdad in what The New York Times called “almost biblical power.”Īlthough they launched an illegal war of aggression and committed war crimes in Iraq, 20 years later the leaders of the U.S. Import from 'antd' import MessageSvg from 'path/to/message.svg' // path to your '*.svg' file.Today, Iraqis mark the 20th anniversary of the horrific U.S.-U.K.
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