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-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 8:24 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [mus-lim] US War Crime in Iraq
Bismillah, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim,
Assalamu'alaikum wr.wb.,
'...More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and
dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway. The clear rapid
incineration of the human being [pictured above] suggests the use of
napalm, phosphorus, or other incindiary bombs. These are anti-personnel
weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols. This massive attack
occurred after Saddam Hussein announced a complete troop withdrawl from
Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660. Such a massacre of
withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common
article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who "are out of combat."
There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were
Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending seige of
Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. No attempt was made by
U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and
civilians on the "highway of death...."
Berikut saya kutipkan salah satu testimony yang dipresentasikan kepada
Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal dari
laporan yang berjudul:
WAR CRIMES : A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the
Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal
by Ramsey Clark and Others (Ramsey Clark served as U.S. Attorney General
in the administration of Lyndon Johnson. He is the convener of the
Commission of Inquiry and a human rights lawyer of world-wide respect.
This report was given in New York, May 11, 1991)
wassalam,
Tutun Nugraha
(testimony)
The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers on "The Highway of Death"
by Joyce Chediac
I want to give testimony on what are called the "highways of death." These
are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi
military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of
thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February
26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.
U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front,
and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours.
"It was like shooting fish in a barrel," said one U.S. pilot. The horror
is still there to see.
On the inland highway to Basra is mile after mile of burned, smashed,
shattered vehicles of every description - tanks, armored cars, trucks,
autos, fire trucks, according to the March 18, 1991, Time magazine. On the
sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome
repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and
awful under the sun, says the Los Angeles Times of March 11, 1991. While
450 people survived the inland road bombing to surrender, this was not the
case with the 60 miles of the coastal road. There for 60 miles every
vehicle was strafed or bombed,
every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is
riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs
of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and
it's impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were
melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.
"Even in Vietnam I didn't see anything like this. It's pathetic," said
Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. This one-sided carnage,
this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House
spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the U.S. and its coalition
partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is
surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history.
The Iraqi troops were not being driven out of Kuwait by U.S. troops as the
Bush administration maintains. They were not retreating in order to
regroup and fight again.
In fact, they were withdrawing, they were going home, responding to orders
issued by Baghdad, announcing that it was complying with Resolution 660
and leaving Kuwait.
At 5:35 p.m. (Eastern standard Time) Baghdad radio announced that Iraq's
Foreign Minister had accepted the Soviet cease-fire proposal and had
issued the order for all
Iraqi troops to withdraw to postions held before August 2, 1990 in
compliance with
UN Resolution 660. President Bush responded immediately from the White
House saying (through spokesman Marlin Fitzwater) that "there was no
evidence to suggest the Iraqi army is withdrawing. In fact, Iraqi units
are continuing to fight. . . We continue to prosecute the war." On the
next day, February 26, 1991, Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad radio
that Iraqi troops had, indeed, begun to withdraw from
Kuwait and that the withdrawal would be complete that day. Again, Bush
reacted, calling Hussein's announcement "an outrage" and "a cruel hoax."
Eyewitness Kuwaitis attest that the withdrawal began the afternoon of
February 26, 1991 and Baghdad radio announced at 2:00 AM (local time) that
morning that the government had ordered all troops to withdraw.
The massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Conventions
of 1949, Common Article III, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who are
out of combat. The point of contention involves the Bush administration's
claim that the Iraqi troops were retreating to regroup and fight again.
Such a claim is the only way that the massacre
which occurred could be considered legal under international law. But in
fact the claim is false and obviously so. The troops were withdrawing and
removing themselves from
combat under direct orders from Baghdad that the war was over and that
Iraq had quit and would fully comply with UN resolutions. To attack the
soldiers returning home under these circumstances is a war crime.
Iraq accepted UN Resolution 660 and offered to withdraw from Kuwait
through Soviet mediation on February 21, 1991. A statement made by George
Bush on February 27, 1991, that no quarter would be given to remaining
Iraqi soldiers violates
even the U.S. Field Manual of 1956. The 1907 Hague Convention governing
land warfare also makes it illegal to declare that no quarter will be
given to withdrawing
soldiers. On February 26,199 I, the following dispatch was filed from the
deck of the U.S.S. Ranger, under the byline of Randall Richard of the
Providence Journal:
Air strikes against Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait were being
launched so feverishly from this carrier today that pilots said they took
whatever bombs happened to be closest to the flight deck. The crews,
working to the strains of the Lone Ranger
theme, often passed up the projectile of choice . . . because it took too
long to load. New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd wrote, "With the Iraqi
leader facing military
defeat, Mr. Bush decided that he would rather gamble on a violent and
potentially unpopular ground war than risk the alternative: an imperfect
settlement hammered out
by the Soviets and Iraqis that world opinion might accept as tolerable."
In short, rather than accept the offer of Iraq to surrender and leave the
field of battle, Bush and the
U.S. military strategists decided simply to kill as many Iraqis as they
possibly could while the chance lasted. A Newsweek article on Norman
Schwarzkopt, titled "A Soldier of Conscience" (March 11,1991), remarked
that before the ground war the general was only worried about "How long
the world would stand by and watch the United States pound the living hell
out of Iraq without saying, 'Wait a minute - enough is enough.' He
[Schwarzkopf] itched to send ground troops to finish the job."
The pretext for massive extermination of Iraqi soldiers was the desire of
the U.S. to destroy Iraqi equipment. But in reality the plan was to
prevent Iraqi soldiers from retreating at all.
Powell remarked even before the start of the war that Iraqi soldiers knew
that they had been sent to Kuwait to die. Rick Atkinson of the Washington
Post reasoned that "the
noose has been tightened" around Iraqi forces so effectively that "escape
is impossible" (February 27, 1991). What all of this amounts to is not a
war but a massacre.
There are also indications that some of those bombed during the withdrawl
were Palestinians and Iraqi civilians. According to Time magazine of March
18, 1991, not just military vehicles, but cars, buses and trucks were also
hit. In many cases, cars were loaded with Palestinian families and all
their possessions. U.S. press accounts tried to
make the discovery of burned and bombed household goods appear as if Iraqi
troops were even at this late moment looting Kuwait. Attacks on civilians
are specifically prohibited by the Geneva Accords and the 1977
Conventions. How did it really happen? On February 26, 1991 Iraq had
announced it was complying with the Soviet proposal, and its troops would
withdraw from Kuwait.
According to Kuwaiti eyewitnesses, quoted in the March 11, 1991 Washington
Post, the withdrawal began on the two highways, and was in full swing by
evening. Near midnight, the first U.S. bombing started. Hundreds of Iraqis
jumped from their cars and their trucks, looking for shelter. U.S. pilots
took whatever bombs happened to be close
to the flight deck, from cluster bombs to 500 pound bombs. Can you imagine
that on a car or truck? U.S. forces continued to drop bombs on the convoys
until all humans were killed. So many jets swarmed over the inland road
that it created an aerial traffic
jam, and combat air controllers feared midair collisions.
The victims were not offering resistance. They weren't being driven back
in fierce battle, or trying to regroup to join another battle. They were
just sitting ducks,
according to Commander Frank Swiggert, the Ranger Bomb Squadron leader.
According to an article in the March 11, 1991 Washington Post, headlined
"U.S. Scrambles to Shape View of Highway of Death," the U.S. government
then conspired
and in fact did all it could to hide this war crime from the people of
this country and the world. What the U.S. government did became the focus
of the public relations campaign managed by the U.S. Central Command in
Riyad, according to that same issue of the Washington Post. The typical
line has been that the convoys were engaged in "classic tank battles," as
if to suggest that Iraqi troops tried to fight back or
even had a chance of fighting back. The truth is that it was simply a
one-sided massacre of tens of thousands of people who had no ability to
fight back or defend themselves.
The Washington Post says that senior officers with the U.S. Central
Command in Riyad became worried that what they saw was a growing public
perception that Iraqi
forces were leaving Kuwait voluntarily, and that the U.S. pilots were
bombing them mercilessly, which was the truth. So the U.S. government,
says the Post, played down
the evidence that Iraqi troops were actually leaving Kuwait.
U.S. field commanders gave the media a carefully drawn and inaccurate
picture of the fast-changing events. The idea was to portray Iraq's
claimed withdrawal as a fighting
retreat made necessary by heavy allied military pressure. Remember when
Bush came to the Rose Garden and said that he would not accept Saddam
Hussein's withdrawal?
That was part of it, too, and Bush was involved in this cover up. Bush's
statement was followed quickly by a televised military briefing from Saudi
Arabia to explain that Iraqi
forces were not withdrawing but were being pushed from the battlefield. In
fact, tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers around Kuwait had begun to pull
away more than thirty-six
hours before allied forces reached the capital, Kuwait City. They did not
move under any immediate pressure from allied tanks and infantry, which
were still miles from Kuwait City.
This deliberate campaign of disinformation regarding this military action
and the war crime that it really was, this manipulation of press briefings
to deceive the public and keep the massacre from the world is also a
violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the right of
the people to know.
Joyce Chediac is a Lebanese-American journalist who has traveled in the
Middle East and writes on Middle East issues. Her report was presented at
the New York Commission hearing, May 11, 1991.
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