Stephen Rapp, are US war crimes legal?

– by Shenali D Waduge –

The cliché ‘thick as thieves’ must have been coined with US in mind. Does the US Government and its officials actually believe they have done the world a favor by maiming, killing and making homeless over 20million people since Vietnam? The US Government seems to have a very haughty opinion that the entire world except for America are guilty even if proved innocent and the US thinks it can go bombing people and places to smithereens and get away with it too. Well they can and they have because there is no other country to stand up to challenge them and the UN is ….well just a paid entity doing what its sponsors ask them to do. But is this the way the world is to function. Does it mean that people and nations have to just sit silent and allow not the Americans but a handful of neo-cons to bomb nations into submission, plant their people in the form of UN troops and get their people to act as ‘negotiators’ while another lot plunders the nations installing their people? Can these officials coming to various nations on the pretext of investigating ‘alleged war crimes’ please tell us what the real agenda is about. Stephen J. Rapp of Iowa is Ambassador-at-Large, heading the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. Department of State but surely he cannot ignore America’s crimes and it does look rather silly to be pointing fingers when the fingers pointing back are too many to count.

Why have none of US crimes against humanity ever been taken up for investigation?

Who gave US the right to apply indiscriminate bombing outside declared war situations and destroying civilian infrastructure and then claim civilian deaths as ‘collateral damage’?

Indiscriminate bombings outside war theatres include: Japan (Nagasaki/Hiroshima 1945), China (1945-6), Korea (1950-3), Guatemala (1954, 1960, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-61), Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-70), Vietnam (1961-1973), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Lebanon (1983-4), Libya (1986, 2011), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Iran (1987), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-2001, 2003 ongoing), Kuwait (1991), Somalia (1993), Bosnia (1994-5), Sudan (1998 – ongoing) Afghanistan (1998-ongoing), Pakistan (1998-ongoing drones), Yugoslavia (1999), Bulgaria (1999), Macedonia (1991)

Who gave US the right to use chemical and biological weapons while refusing to sign Conventions against its development and use?

Who gave US the right to not only test but use these chemical and biological weapons WITHOUT informing civilian populations?

• Biological agents used in the Gulf War were first tested on prisoners in Texas (1995)
• In 1994 Senator John D. Rockefeller reveals that for at least 50 years the Department of Defense has used hundreds of thousands of military personnel in human experiments and for intentional exposure to dangerous substances.
• In 1990 More than 1500 six-month old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles were given an “experimental” measles vaccine without informing their parents that had never been licensed for use in the United States.
• CIA Project MK Ultra for Subproject 68 involved mind-altering to test methods to influence and control mind and extract information. The experiments were carried out on Canadians because CIA did not want to risk it on Americans. Victims forgot how to talk, forgot their parents and suffered amnesia.
• Testing bio-weapon repercussions on the Army by spraying mustard gas and other skin burning, lung-ruining chemicals like Lewisite on soldiers without their knowledge. Lewisite penetrates clothing even rubber and when in contact with skin causes pain, itching, swelling and rash. Inhaling gas causes pain in lungs, sneezing, vomiting and pulmonary edema. Mustard gas is carcinogenic.
• Warfare simulations carried out on American cities in mid 1950s – CIA released whooping cough virus on Tampa Bay, using boats, the Navy sprayed San Francisco with bacterial pathogens causing pneumonia on citizens, the army release millions of mosquitos in Savannah GA and Avon Park, Florida to spread yellow fever and dengue fever and left Americans suffering from fevers, typhoid, respiratory problems and stillborn children. Thereafter the army disguised as public health workers were charting out the illnesses.
• Testing atomic bombs effects on humans (Manhattan Project) via plutonium injections. Even uranium injections have been given to unsuspecting patients under the same Project.
• Agent Orange produced by Dow Chemical was used upon prisoners before being used in Vietnam War. The injecting of, exposure to, dioxidin is beyond monstrous.
• In 1931 experiments were carried out in Puerto Rico sponsored by the Rockefeller Institute upon Puerto Rican citizens injecting them with cancers. Dr. Cornelius went on to become the head of US Atomic Energy Commission and Vice President of the American Cancer Society!
• US also exposed Guatemalans to syphilis.

Who gave US the right to carry out capitalist based military interventions since 1945 installing puppet regimes and other such un-democratic campaigns?

The list of nations are many – China (1945-51), South Africa (1960s-1980s), France (1947), Bolivia (1964-75), Marshall Islands (1946-58) Australia (1972-75), Italy (1947-75) Iraq (1993, 2003), Greece (1947-49) Portugal (1974-76) Philippines (1945-53), East Time (1975-99), Korea (1945-53), Ecuador, Albania, Argentina, Eastern Europe, Pakistan, Germany, Angola, Iran, Jamaica, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Middle East, Seychelles, Haiti, Suriname, Guyana, Chad, Grenada, Vietnam, Cambodia, Libya (1980s and now in 2011), Laos, Fiji, Thailand, Colombia, Chile, Greece – the list never seems to end…

It is not just military interventions, US thinks it can intervene in foreign elections and has even involved itself in rigging the outcome of foreign elections and even engineering sham demonstrations to ward off voters. The example of such has been in Philippines, Italy, Lebanon, Indonesia, Vietnam, Guyana, Japan, Nepal, Laos, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Bolivia, Chile, Portugual, Australia, Jamaica, El Salvador, Panama, Nicargua, Haiti, Bulgaria, Albania, Russia (1996), Mongolia (1996), Bosnia (1998) and even Iran by overthrowing a democratically elected leader Mossadegh.

The world is not challenging the US, so why is the US challenging the world? Why has US without any provocation undermined peace and human initiatives by routinely going on a wave of violence and using unimaginable methods to crush the enemy?

The US easily has the world’s worst record of human rights both visible and those that take place undercover, underground and through covert and over methods. While US enjoys placing Resolutions against other smaller countries it thinks itself pretty smart not to have any Resolution brought against America.

A good look at some of the Resolutions that US has vetoed through their representatives at the UN will reveal another side of the US.

US said

• No to Aid to underdeveloped nations
• No to promote developing nation exports
• No to protecting developing nations in trade agreements
• No to new international economic order for underdeveloped nations
• No to right of nations to economic system of their own choice
• No to cooperative models in developing nations
• No to world charter to protect ecology
• No to anti-apartheid convention
• No to nuclear test ban treaty (several times)
• No to international law to protect economic rights
• No to economic assistance to Palestinians
• No for the Law of the Sea Treaty
• No for a Zone of Peace in the South Atlantic

Stephen Rapp may also like to take note that the US has repeatedly withheld its dues from the UN, twice left UNESCO, twice left the ILO, refused to renew the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, refused to back WHO’s ban on infant formula abuses, refused to sign the anti-biological weapons convention, refused to sign the Convention against the use of land mines, refused to participate in UN Conference against Racism held in Durban, refused to sign the UN Covenant on Economic and Social Rights and the US has also opposed the emerging new UN Covenant on the Rights to Peace and Development and Environmental Protection.

Stephan Rapp may also like to comment on secret renditions, the torture treatment on uncharged inmates at secret US prisons, the piling cases of ‘collateral damage’ as well as the many assassinations the US has carried out on World Leaders. 40 such foreign heads of state in the last 50 years have been killed by the US and Allies – Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Salvador Allende (Chile) to name a few.

When US is speaking of war crimes we hope Stephen Rapp takes into account that US is the world’s largest manufacturer of arms and if arms are being manufactured they need to be sold and to sell there needs to be conflicts and so the entire world is facing conflicts and dictators are being armed, foreign governments are being armed, militaries are being armed, terrorists are being armed, rebels are being armed –is it not a lovely set up for the arms industry.

US is the world’s largest provider of live land mines which kill people even in peace time.

US has over 1000 military bases across the world.

Arab Spring has meant arming different Islamic groups and getting them to kill each other while US descends as school monitor and plunders whatever riches that are embedded in these nations. Now Asia is in the next lens for another series of Springs… and it looks like Sri Lanka is the next target as geographically, politically and tradewise it is a very important choke point as well as crucial entry and exit point.

Spare us the speeches on war crimes and associated allegations for we have had about enough of these prepared speeches. Take a good look at what American institutionalized policy is doing to nations of the world. Thankfully the American people are beginning to wake up but then the Government has been quick to set up the legal provisions to take action against the American citizens in a country that has to be the example of what a police state is all about – with cameras and NSA scandals wherever Americans go can America deny this allegation?