Iraqi war crimes revisited

Readers of this blog are aware that I have repeatedly written about the strong evidence of war crimes committed by the US military in Iraq since our overthrow of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship and subsuquent invasion, as well as the need to investigate this evidence and hold potential wrongdoers to account. Of course, since the US does not recognize the soverignty of the International Criminal Court, it seems that meting out justice--if violations of humanitarian law were found to have been committed as they likely would be--probably would be impossible at least in practical terms.

But even if the US cannot be held to account, it is the responsibility of citizens of good conscience to remember the actions committed by our government, actions that can reasonably be construed to be in violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international norms of human rights. And in remembering and chronicaling these actions, perhaps those responsible for them will be held to account by the history books.

To that end, former US military interrogator David Irvine, writing in the Salt Lake Tribune, does a masterful job in his op-ed framing the deviant conduct of US armed forces and explaining how it harms the US's image abroad as well as putting the lives of our soldiers deployed overseas at an increased risk of torture and death if captured by Iraqi insurgents. He also reports on the shameful efforts of the Bush administration to attempt to shield Americans from prosecution:

Alberto Gonzales is now urging Congress to water down the War Crimes Act of 1996 and carve out its Geneva Convention prohibitions against inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners.

As proposed by Mr. Gonzales, everything that has been done at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib (except murder and rape) would not be a war crime. However, since the exact language is still evolving, the true objective is unclear. Is this a back-door attempt to nullify the McCain anti-torture amendment which received overwhelming congressional support last year? Is it an effort to shield top military commanders and Cabinet officials from prosecution for war crimes?

Irvine goes on to explain just how dangerous this posturing would be for the US's efforts to successfully prosecute the "war on terror":

What makes this misguided project so dangerous is that whatever its purpose, the legislation takes center stage at a moment when America's Middle East foreign policy is teetering on the edge of disaster. At this delicate moment, the attorney general, who seems to be speaking for the White House, is announcing to the world that the United States intends not to be bound by Common Article 3 (so-called because it appears in all four Conventions) to which we previously bound ourselves and which most other nations accept as international law.

In the wake of the Hamden v. Rumsfeld decision, as well as last week's decision by US District Judge Taylor, it should be clear to all Americans that the Bush administration is not free to decide that prosecuting the war on terror relieves it of any obligations to follow the law--nothing gives the US carte blanche to act as it chooses because of some twisted belief that any ends justify the means.

Just last week, the New York Times reported that a "high-level military investigation into the killings of 24 Iraqis in Haditha last November has uncovered instances in which American marines involved in the episode appear to have destroyed or withheld evidence, according to two Defense Department officials briefed on the case." So this is more than just the US refusing to take responsibility for crimes they have been caught committing, or even trying to manipulate the law in order to protect perpetrators from punishment. There is now evidence pointing to conspiracies and cover-ups in order to prevent the world from learning the truth about our military's actions in Iraq.

The NYT article adds:

The investigation found that an official company logbook of the unit involved had been tampered with and that an incriminating video taken by an aerial drone the day of the killings was not given to investigators until Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the second-ranking commander in Iraq, intervened, the officials said.

Those findings, contained in a long report that was completed last month but not made public, go beyond what has been previously reported about the case. It has been known that marines who carried out the killings made misleading statements to investigators and that senior officers were criticized for not being more aggressive in investigating the case, in which most or all of the Iraqis who were killed were civilians. But this is the first time details about possible concealment or destruction of evidence have been disclosed.

Our credibility to criticize the gross human rights violations of Islamic regimes such as Iran is in the toilet, and unfortunately, since the Bush administration seems not only unwilling to address the serious evidence of US war crimes having been committed as well as efforts to cover those crimes up, but seems hellbent on creating some sort of legal justification for the crimes themselves, our moral standing in the rest of the world will only get worse before it gets better.