Iraq Civilian Killings: Who Is Reponsible?
I wonder how long the United Nations and the world leaders go on looking the other way despite mounting evidence during the past four years of the crimes being committed against the civilian population in Iraq, directly attributable to the occupation of the country by the US forces.
Are we living in 18th or 19th century when the masters were allowed to do whatever with their slaves? Has the United Nations and world leaders come to the conclusion that Iraq is a colony of the United States and beyond the ambit of the comity of nations?
Can the Secretary-General and the Security Council members of the UN be absolved of their complicity in the crime/genocide going on in Iraq? It appears that the UN is not even concerned about the Iraq civilian killings. Read here…
Even investigations conducted by the US military has blamed its own members for indulging in murder, mayhem and worse.
Here is the latest from The New York Times: “A military investigation has found that senior Marine Corps commanders in Iraq showed a routine disregard for the lives of Iraqi civilians that contributed to a ‘willful’ failure to investigate the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqis by marines in 2005, lawyers involved in the case said.
“The report, completed last summer but never made public, also found that a Marine Corps general and colonel in Iraq learned of the killings within hours that day, Nov. 19, 2005, in the town of Haditha, but failed to begin a thorough inquiry into how they occurred.
“The 130-page report, by Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell of the Army, did not conclude that the senior officers covered up evidence or committed a crime. But it said the Marine Corps command in Iraq was far too willing to tolerate civilian casualties and dismiss Iraqi claims of abuse by marines as insurgent propaganda, according to lawyers who have read it.
Well, well, well…Is it not a crime that the corps command tolerated military excesses ??? The Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, sitting in the safety of the White House, brazenly maintains that the situation in Iraq is ‘improving’ while hundreds of civilians are massacred every month, if not week.
“ ‘All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics,’ General Bargewell wrote in his report, according to two people who have read it. ‘Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get the job done no matter what it takes’.â€?
Pray how is George W. Bush, or the USA, any different from Saddam Hussein & Co for an average Iraqi civilian? In fact the US occupation has aggravated the situation and led to a blood bath involving Sunnis and Shias.
It will be criminal and unfair if only the US Marine officers were punished. Mr Bush and the top echelons of the US administration cannot be allowed to go scot-free as their hands are as much tainted with the blood of Iraqi civilians as anyone else. The US Marines are being sacrificed to satisfy the lust and greed for Iraqi oil.
The complicity, right up to the C-in-C in the White House, becomes all the more glaring because civilian casualties are rising every day as the excesses of the US forces are being overlooked, as the report indicates.
Come to think of it, at least during Saddam Hussein’s rule there was no such anarchy, murders and mayhem that are now being witnessed in Iraq non-stop for the past four years.
For my earlier post on Iraqi civilian casualties please click here…
