Talk:War crimes

Wow, reading this article, it seems the US is the only country to commit war crimes
This article is a disgrace and needs to be improved. HouseOfChange (talk) 15:01, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Update, I added material here, and I removed other material. The topic is "war crimes." Lots of quotes were dramatic and heart-rending descriptions of particular war crimes, accompanied by finger-pointing at the US for said war crime. There have been hundreds of war crimes in history, so an article full of quotes that covered them all would be heart-rending indeed but also useless for a reader who came to Wikiquote for notable sourced quotations on the general topic "War Crime." This article was created by now-blocked account Om777om to house quotes blaming the US for a wide range of sins, including having provoked the war with Japan. (Israel is another of their pet villains.) More recently, the sockmaster of LibraryClerk0191/GaneshaSis/Alphabravo2022 etc. edited the article extensively on the same theme. I made a lot of edits, and of course the History tab lets you see them all, but I will catalog here just a few of the images and "quotations" I removed for being not notable or quotable quotes on the topic "War Crimes." HouseOfChange (talk) 22:06, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Assange’s WikiLeaks revelations, redactions notwithstanding, gave proof, yet again, that the government of the United States engages in war crimes of historic proportions on a daily basis around the world....
 * To Redact the Truth or Not to Redact the Truth: Is That the Question?, by Jeff Mackler, CounterPunch, 7 January 2022
 * Our governments feel threatened by Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange, because they are whistleblowers, journalists, and human rights activists who have provided solid evidence for the abuse, corruption, and war crimes of the powerful, for which they are now being systematically defamed and persecuted. They are the political dissidents of the West, and their persecution is today’s witch-hunt, because they threaten the privileges of unsupervised state power that has gone out of control.   The cases of Manning, Snowden, Assange and others are the most important test of our time for the credibility of Western rule of law and democracy and our commitment to human rights.
 * PEN America and the Betrayal of Julian Assange, by Chris Hedges, CounterPunch, (December 29, 2021)


 * Days after U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a new investigation into a clandestine airstrike that killed scores of Syrian noncombatants whose deaths were subsequently covered up, 24 advocacy groups on Wednesday published an open letter calling on the Pentagon to "reckon with U.S.-caused civilian casualties and commit to urgent reforms." The letter, addressed to Austin, expresses "grave concerns" about the Pentagon's "civilian harm policies and practices and their impact," citing an August 29 drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan that killed 10 civilians including an aid worker and seven children, as well as a March 18, 2019 airstrike in Baghuz, Syria in which around 70 civilians died and was "flagged as a possible war crime by at least one Defense Department lawyer...The Defense Department's response to the Kabul and Baghuz strikes also underscores the department's repeated failure to adequately investigate alleged civilian harm—including possible war crimes, as required under international law—and provide compensation or amends," it adds.
 * Pentagon Blasted for 'Unacceptable Failure' to Reckon With Civilian Casualties, Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, December 2, 2021
 * In a painstaking investigation, the New York Times reported the US military killed dozens of civilians in an airstrike in the town of Baghuz, Syria on March of 2019, then feverishly spent the next two-and-a-half years covering up evidence of war crimes. The bombing was carried out by a classified special operations unit known as Task Force 9... In a complete mockery of lack of accountability and justice, the only assessment done immediately after the strike was performed by the same ground unit that ordered the strike...David Eubank, a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who now runs the humanitarian organization Free Burma Rangers, walked through the area about a week after the strike. “The place had been pulverized by airstrikes,” he said in an interview. “There was a lot of freshly bulldozed earth and the stink of bodies underneath, a lot of bodies.” The New York Times deserves credit for exposing U.S. military war crimes but one can only wonder why it gained privy to classified documents while Julian Assange WikiLeaks founder, who exposed other U.S. war crimes earlier has been silenced and locked in U.K. ‘s high-security Belmarsh Prison.
 * Massive U.S. War Crimes in Syria, Jagjit Singh, The Berkeley Daily Planet November 22, 2021


 * The story starts March 18, 2019, in a big Air Force combat operations center in Al Udeid in Qatar. And there we have, it almost looks like mission command for NASA. You have banks of computers, big screens, all of them watching the air war against the Islamic State... on this day, a lot of people in the command center are watching a drone that was flying up overhead. Now, what they saw was a field that was just littered with a tangle of cars and makeshift tents of debris of the leftovers from weeks of combat. But also within there was a lot of people. And the drone hovered over and focused in on a group of women and children who had found refuge down by the river against a steep sand bank. The drone, it lingered for several minutes, slowly circling with its cameras focused on these folks, either sleeping or just laying down low to take cover from whatever combat might be coming. And the people in the operation center were calmly watching this when, suddenly... an American F-15 attack jet came right through and dropped a large bomb dead center into this group of women and children... killing nearly all of them.
 * Dave Philipps quoted in How the U.S. Hid a Deadly Airstrike, by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times November 15th, 2021


 * Nearly three years ago, as US-led coalition forces trapped a remnant of the Islamic State (IS) in a small enclave near the Syrian town of Baghuz, the US military committed a horrific atrocity. As Air Force officers watched the scene via drone cameras in real time, US warplanes murdered at least 80 unarmed women and children with 500- and 2,000-pound bombs. The officers who saw the attack urged that a war crimes investigation begin immediately.... The revelations of the act of mass murder in Syria come from Air Force officers at Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, who were monitoring a high-resolution surveillance drone flying over Baghuz. That day, the (New York) Times writes, the “US military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank... “We just dropped on 50 women and children,” said one officer monitoring the drone, though the US Central Command told the Times that 80 were killed, and the Times wrote that Air Force officers later saw a “shockingly high” death toll in another classified report.
 * Alex Lantier, Whistleblowers expose US mass murder of women, children in Syria, WSWS (15 November 2021)


 * A military lawyer, Lt. Colonel Dean Korsak, ordered drone operators and fighter aircrews to conserve footage of the atrocity for investigations. He then “reported the strike to his chain of command, saying it was a possible violation of the law of armed conflict—a war crime—and regulations required a thorough, independent investigation,” the Times reports. Korsak’s concerns were bolstered by reports from CIA officials “alarmed” about Task Force 9’s operations in Syria. What they encountered, however, was a cover-up orchestrated at top levels of the state, under both the Republican Trump and the Democratic Biden administrations. Coalition forces in Baghuz oversaw the hiding of the bodies. “Satellite images from four days later show the sheltered bank and area around it, which were in the control of the coalition, appeared to have been bulldozed,” the Times writes. It cites a former US Army Special Forces soldier, David Eubank, who arrived a week after the attack: “The place had been pulverized by airstrikes … There was a lot of freshly bulldozed earth and the stink of bodies underneath, a lot of bodies.”
 * Alex Lantier, Whistleblowers expose US mass murder of women, children in Syria, WSWS (15 November 2021)
 * After 20 years of the United States military destroying entire countries under the guise of fighting terrorism, there is finally a partial reckoning with U.S. warmongering around the world.... As mainstream news outlets become increasingly complacent, and even supportive of pro-war policies, it becomes more essential that anti-war voices, and anti-war journalists in particular, resist the attempt by the United States to set the precedent that the act of publishing war crimes is a punishable offense....After 20 years of the United States military destroying entire countries under the guise of fighting terrorism, there is finally a partial reckoning with U.S. warmongering around the world.
 * Fate Of Anti-War Journalism Lies in Upcoming Assange Hearings, Sam Carliner, October 22, 2021


 * Some of the information provided to the public (thanks to the anonymous online source submission system developed by Assange) includes the CIA rendition program, detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay, and U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and more. It is this view on publishing which understands war as something to be exposed and resisted that has made Assange such a hated figure by warmongers in the United States.
 * Fate Of Anti-War Journalism Lies in Upcoming Assange Hearings, Sam Carliner, October 22, 2021


 * Colin Powell had a long career in which he implemented key imperialist policies — from Vietnam in his youth, to working with Ronald Reagan and both Bush presidencies. His imperialist record is too long for this article, but here are some highlights: Colin Powell was a senior tactical adviser during the Vietnam War, where he committed numerous brutal war crimes. In his [2003] memoir My American Journey, Powell explains that he led South Vietnamese soldiers in an attack on a village full of families, elderly people, and other non-combatants: The people had fled at our approach, except for an old woman too feeble to move... We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo cigarette lighters... [because] Ho Chi Minh had said the people were like the sea in which his guerrillas swam... We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable.   Powell also stated that  If a [helicopter] spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him.   These were not violent tactics that Powell himself invented, of course; it was the strategy of the United States in the war. And of course, Powell executed that strategy well, rising through the ranks of power.
 * Colin Powell Brought “Diversity” to War Crimes and Imperialism, Tatiana Cozzarelli and Otto Fors, Left Voice (18 October 2021)
 * America’s leaders deceived the American public into perpetrating this invasion and occupation, of a foreign country (Iraq) that had never threatened the United States; and, so, this invasion and subsequent military occupation constitutes the very epitome of “aggressive war” — unwarranted and illegal international aggression. (Hitler, similarly to George W. Bush, would never have been able to obtain the support of his people to invade if he had not lied, or “deceived,” them, into invading and militarily occupying foreign countries that had never threatened Germany, such as Belgium, Poland and Czechoslovakia. This — Hitler’s lie-based aggressions — was the core of what the Nazis were hung for, and yet America now does it.)
 * Eric Zuesse, Why U.S. Must Be Prosecuted for Its War Crimes Against Iraq, American Herald Tribune, (16 May 2020)
 * Imagine if you will a ship from a nation not at war with anyone sailing in international waters on a quiet June day being suddenly attacked by unidentified warplanes and torpedo boats, their markings covered up to conceal their country of origin. The vessel under attack had little with which to defend itself, but its crew heroically made sure that a large national flag was hoisted to demonstrate that it was not a belligerent in anyone’s conflict. The attackers noted the nationality of the vessel, but persisted in their aggression in a clear attempt to sink the ship and kill all its crew. The officers on the ship radioed that they were under attack and asked for help, but even though friendly fighter aircraft were within striking distance and were automatically dispatched, they were then mysteriously recalled... Life rafts lowered into the water as the vessel seemed to be sinking were machine gunned by the attacking aircraft and torpedo boats to make escape or evacuation of the wounded impossible but the captain and survivors worked heroically, and successfully, to keep the ship afloat. When the vessel finally made it back to port, the officers and crew were sworn to silence by their own government and a cover-up was initiated that has persisted to this day. Many of the ship’s survivors have died since that day 53 years ago, and the attempts of the remainder to see justice before they are also gone have been ignored.
 * Philip Giraldi in Israel's War Crimes Have Killed Americans, If the president loves to honor the military, start with the U.S.S. Liberty, Unz Review, (5 May 2020)


 * Israel’s apologists, a virtual fixture at all levels in the U.S. government as well as in academia and the media, have long been making the argument that the attack on the Liberty was some kind of “friendly fire” accident. But the relatively recent discovery that a Navy spy plane intercepted and recorded Israeli both helicopter and fighter pilots mentioning the American flag displayed by the ship during the attack suggests otherwise. Other recordings made of the Israeli communications revealed that some of the pilots did not want to attack. One pilot said, “This is an American ship. I can see the flag. Do you still want us to attack?” Israeli ground control responded, “Yes, follow orders. Hit it!” before admonishing the pilots to “finish the job.”
 * Philip Giraldi in Israel's War Crimes Have Killed Americans, If the president loves to honor the military, start with the U.S.S. Liberty, Unz Review, (5 May 2020)


 * The tale of the Liberty demonstrates that even fifty-three years ago the United States government was betraying its own people out of deference to Jewish power and to the state of Israel. If anything, as horrific as the killing of 34 personnel on board of the Liberty was, the situation has gotten even worse as Washington sends billions of dollars to the Jewish state annually while also giving its kleptocratic government a green light to commit war crimes and other aggressions that will ultimately draw in the United States, and could plausibly bring about our ruination. It is unpleasant to say the least to watch an unrestrained and unprincipled client state do terrible damage to a much larger patron enabled by the machinations of a dual-loyalty fifth column, but that is what we are seeing.
 * Philip Giraldi in Israel's War Crimes Have Killed Americans, If the president loves to honor the military, start with the U.S.S. Liberty, Unz Review, (5 May 2020)
 * Assange and WikiLeaks revealed the American military’s war crimes, the American government’s corruption and the American corporate media’s pathetic servile flattery to the power elite... if you’re a member of our ruling class, you would view those as textbook examples of dickery... you won’t see the following list of WikiLeaks’ accomplishments anywhere on your corporate airwaves...  Chelsea Manning’s most famous leak is arguably also WikiLeaks’ most famous leak, so it’ll top this list: 1) That would be the notorious Collateral Murder video, showing U.S. air crew gunning down unarmed Iraqi civilians with an enthusiasm that couldn’t be matched by an eight year-old winning a five-foot-tall stuffed animal at the county fair. They murdered between 12 and 18 innocent people, two of them Reuters journalists.  Zero people have been arrested for the collateral murders. Yet Julian Assange has been arrested for revealing them.  2) WikiLeaks brought us the Guantanamo Bay “Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures”—showing that many of the prisoners held on the U.S. military detention facility were completely innocent, and that some were hidden from Red Cross officials... Because when you’re torturing innocent people, you kinda want to do that in peace and quiet, away from prying eyes... None of the soldiers torturing innocent people at Gitmo have been arrested for it. Yet Julian Assange has been arrested for revealing it.
 * Lee Camp, 18 Ways Julian Assange Changed the World, MintPress News (24 May 2019)
 * Assange and WikiLeaks revealed the American military’s war crimes, the American government’s corruption and the American corporate media’s pathetic servile flattery to the power elite... if you’re a member of our ruling class, you would view those as textbook examples of dickery... you won’t see the following list of WikiLeaks’ accomplishments anywhere on your corporate airwaves...  Chelsea Manning’s most famous leak is arguably also WikiLeaks’ most famous leak, so it’ll top this list: 1) That would be the notorious Collateral Murder video, showing U.S. air crew gunning down unarmed Iraqi civilians with an enthusiasm that couldn’t be matched by an eight year-old winning a five-foot-tall stuffed animal at the county fair. They murdered between 12 and 18 innocent people, two of them Reuters journalists.  Zero people have been arrested for the collateral murders. Yet Julian Assange has been arrested for revealing them.  2) WikiLeaks brought us the Guantanamo Bay “Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures”—showing that many of the prisoners held on the U.S. military detention facility were completely innocent, and that some were hidden from Red Cross officials... Because when you’re torturing innocent people, you kinda want to do that in peace and quiet, away from prying eyes... None of the soldiers torturing innocent people at Gitmo have been arrested for it. Yet Julian Assange has been arrested for revealing it.
 * Lee Camp, 18 Ways Julian Assange Changed the World, MintPress News (24 May 2019)
 * The United States and its allies are experts at covering their crimes and finding scapegoats to take the blame for them. They are doing it now with their disinformation campaigns against Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Syria. The show trials at the UN’s Yugoslav tribunal, the ICTY, were all about covering-up NATO’s war crimes and spinning lies to blame everything on the Serbs who resisted NATO’s aggression. They use their influence at the International Criminal Court for the same purposes. And now a document has come to light, leaked from the UN’s Rwanda war crimes tribunal, the ICTR, that contains a report on the war crimes of the US supported Rwanda Patriotic Front that invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990, conducted four years of terrorist operations against the Rwanda people and government, then in 1994 launched their final offensive and slaughtered their way to power. To discuss this document, marked “Top Secret” I have to burden the reader with a brief history of events from the evidence available in order to give it some context.
 * Christopher Black in Top Secret: Rwanda War Crimes Cover-Up, New Eastern Outlook, (22 October 2018)
 * If you water-torture someone at a secure military compound and no one is around to see it, is it a war crime? Tricky, right?  Well, what if someone does see it? And what if you admit to it -- and to a criminal investigator, no less? And what if you add that you also used electrical torture, too? Is that, in fact, a war crime?  More cut and dried, right?  And what if criminal investigators identified 28 other members of your military unit as having beaten prisoners, tortured them with electric shocks, and water-boarded them? And what if 15 of them actually admitted to those acts? Is that, I ask you, a war crime?  Years ago, when I investigated the particular set of crimes mentioned above that were carried out by U.S. military intelligence personnel in Vietnam, I found that only three of the soldiers involved were even punished. And by punished, I mean that the three received fines or reductions in rank. None served any prison time.  One of the admitted torturers I spoke with was still unrepentant. He explained to me that, were he placed in the same situation again, he would do exactly the same things. And why wouldn’t he? You don’t find Americans in the dock at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
 * Rebecca Gordon: Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Turning Our Backs on Nuremberg, TomDispatch (26 March 2019)
 * I visited Julian on two occasions in the Ecuadorian Embassy and was very impressed with this courageous and highly intelligent man. The first visit was on my return from Kabul, where young Afghan teenage boys, insisted on writing a letter with the request I carry it to Julian Assange, to thank him, for publishing on Wikileaks, the truth about the war in Afghanistan and to help stop their homeland being bombed by planes and drones. All had a story of brothers or friends killed by drones while collecting wood in winter on the mountains.
 * Mairead Maguire, Requests Permission to Visit Assange, Nominated for Nobel Prize, Global Research,   (14 April 2019)


 * I nominated Julian Assange on the 8th January 2019 for the Nobel Peace Prize. I issued a press release hoping to bring attention to his nomination, which seemed to have been widely ignored, by Western media. By Julian’s courageous actions and others like him, we could see full well the atrocities of war. The release of the files brought to our doors the atrocities our governments carried out through media. It is my strong belief that this is the true essence of an activist and it is my great shame I live in an era where people like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and anyone willing to open our eyes to the atrocities of war, is likely to be hunted like an animal by governments, punished and silenced.Therefore, I believe that the British government should oppose the extradition of Assange as it sets a dangerous precedent for journalists, whistleblowers and other sources of truth the US may wish to pressure in the future. This man is paying a high price to end war and for peace and nonviolence and we should all remember that.”
 * Mairead Maguire, Requests Permission to Visit Assange, Nominated for Nobel Prize, Global Research,   (14 April 2019)


 * On Friday evening, 04 January 2019, Israeli forces wounded 46 Civilians, including 7 Children, 4 Journalists and 6 Paramedics, in an excessive use of force against the peaceful demonstrators in the eastern Gaza Strip... the Israeli forces who stationed in prone positions and in military jeeps along the fence continued to use excessive force against the demonstrators by opening fire and firing teargas canisters at them, without the latter posing any imminent threat or danger to the life of soldiers
 * The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights On 41st Friday of Great March of Return and Breaking Siege, Israeli forces wound 46 civilians, including 7 children, 4 journalists and 6 paramedics (4 January 2019)
 * Now that the Trump(President of the USA), May (Prime minister of the United Kingdom), and Macron (President of France) regimes have proven beyond all doubt that they are lawless war criminal regimes, what is next? Will the Russian president and foreign minister continue to speak of “our Western partners” and seek common ground with proven lawless war criminals?How can other governments accept the US, UK, and French governments that intentionally lied about a Russian chemical attack on the Skripals and about a Syrian chemical attack on Douma, risking a third world war, and then themselves attacking Syria on the basis of a transparent lie unsupported by any evidence? How exactly do you conduct diplomatic relations with war criminals? You don’t. You put them on trial. Why aren’t Trump, May, and Macron on trial?  The reason is that the world has been conditioned, like Pavlov’s dogs, to expect and accept the West’s war crimes as ordinary common features of life. The West’s crimes are protected by precedents established by decades of failing to hold the West accountable. The West has squatters rights in committing unaccountable war crimes.
 * Paul Craig Roberts in Where Is the Shame? Why is the World Silent? Acceptance of the West’s War Crimes is the “New Normal” Global Research, (25 April 2018)