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US Genocide in Iraq

Dr Ian Douglas

with Abdul Ilah Albayaty and Hana Al Bayaty

1. Summary ...... 1 Does anyone believe there is 2. Introduction ...... 2 another way to steal a country? 3. Definitions...... 2 — Eduardo Galeano a) What is genocide? ...... 3 b) What is intent? ...... 6 4. Beyond law...... 12 a) The genocidal logic of neo-colonial war...... 12 b) Genocide by occupation ...... 15 1. Summary† 5. The destruction of the Iraqi state and national identity ...... 16 — The United States has committed and a) The strategic context for genocide...... 16 sponsored the crime of genocide in Iraq. i. Asserting US geopolitical, global hegemony ..... 16 ii. US policy aimed to break Arab unity...... 18 — Responsibility for genocide rests on iii. The US national emergency and corporate specific intent and given or probable interests...... 21 consequences of actions. The 2003 US iv. A unified strategy of genocide...... 23 invasion of Iraq was the culmination and b) Implementing genocide in Iraq ...... 23 intensification of a consistent US policy, i. Destroying Iraq physically and permanently...... 24 ii. Substituting the Iraqi state and nation...... 28 iii. Resistance to genocide...... 33 6. Interpreting genocide in Iraq ...... 37 † Dr Ian Douglas is visiting professor in politics at An- 7. Conclusion...... 40 Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine, and 8. Appendix...... 41 working to bring the charge of genocide against the United States and allies in a court of universal jurisdiction (www.USgenocide.org). Abdul Ilah Albayaty is an Iraqi political analyst and writer based in France. Hana Al Bayaty is coordinator of the Iraqi International Initiative on Iraqi Refugees (www.3iii.org). This text was written April-June 2007. US Genocide in Iraq spanning over 17 years, of destroying Iraq as a invasion of Iraq, but to lay a basis for stopping national and state entity. imperial adventures and to enrich the political — The United States attempted and succeeded thinking of instruments that can save our to destroy the state of Iraq, but has failed and civilisation. cannot succeed in its attempt to destroy the nation of Iraq. 3. Definitions — The Iraqi people have the legal right to The prohibition and prevention of genocide is resist occupation, colonialism and genocide by a peremptory norm of international law. No all available means, including armed struggle. derogation is permitted: states are obliged, — The national popular resistance in Iraq is individually and severally, to prevent genocide combating genocide directly where from occurring and to prosecute perpetrators, international law as a preventative and conspirators, those complicit and those who protective mechanism has failed. incite it. When a crime is ongoing the duty of authorities to enforce law by halting the crime — In defence of civilisation, people the world is of special urgency. Enforcing law means over should rise up in support of the national protecting potential victims and apprehending liberation struggle of the Iraqi people. suspected perpetrators. — In defence of international law, jurists and That the international community not only law associations should work to bring the failed to prevent the illegal US invasion and charge of genocide against the United States, subsequent occupation of Iraq, but also its leaders and its allies. supported what from 1990 has been a — The world must criminalise all forms of gathering US-led genocide in Iraq, is a war. Defensive wars would not be necessary in catastrophic betrayal for the Iraqi people and the absence of wars of aggression. an injury to us all. The reasons are multiple and include: 1) 2. Introduction Structural inequalities of power in world politics, epitomised in the UN Security The illegal US invasion of Iraq was and is a Council, that assure domination for the few humanitarian catastrophe. Some try to explain and subservience for the many; 2) Structural this catastrophe as a by-product. They justify inequalities of power in the world economy, their concept on the absence of intent. characterising capitalism on a world scale, that Reviewing applicable principles of scare dependent states from speaking out on international law and American policy towards imperial crimes; 3) The general subordination Iraq, this paper aims to prove that the of human rights to “peace and security” (i.e., humanitarian catastrophe present in Iraq is an pacification and impunity) illustrated in the essential component of US policy, constituting perpetuation of a toothless, complicit and premeditated genocide against the people of apologetic UN human rights system; and 4) Iraq. The intent that some propose is absent is The success of Zionist ideology in making the flagrantly evident. concept of genocide a synonym for “the Consequently, this paper constitutes a call to holocaust”, thus both its own exclusive jurists, law associations, and individuals from preserve and the model against which all all walks of life to act on ending genocide in alleged genocides must be compared. Iraq. This study was made not only because of The blanket of silence surrounding this the horrid consequences of the illegal US grievous international crime contributes to the 2 US Genocide in Iraq

deaths of hundreds of Iraqis every day. If not in numbers annihilated, but in the iniquity genocide cannot be prevented, the UN and its of a rationality that intends massively high ideals serve no function. At present destructive consequences. This qualification is nothing exists to prevent future atrocities on what ensures that the Genocide Convention is this scale or worse from occurring. a preventative mechanism and not simply a reactive instrument. It also means that guilt is a) What is genocide? a moral determination. Of all terms in the lexicon, genocide is the true Indeed, in origin the term itself — coined in word for what is happening in Iraq. The the inter-war period by Raphael Lemkin, a controversy the word elicits reveals its Polish legal scholar — emerged from the potential. Some warn against using the term so effort to make “barbarity” and “vandalism” as not to “debase its currency”. This is a crimes under international law. It is intent to misunderstanding of what genocide means. destroy that is the basis of the crime of Others fear that if used wantonly, antiwar genocide, illustrated in definable acts that protest may appear sensationalist. In reality, constitute — or would — genocide. any other word for US actions in Iraq is dishonest. Article 2 of the Genocide Convention reads: Looking closer, we find that the word In the present Convention, genocide genocide has two lives: its common meaning means any of the following acts and its legal substance. Commonly, genocide committed with intent to destroy, in whole is taken to mean the total annihilation of a or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or people. Nothing less counts, hence scepticism religious group, as such: in using the word. On rapid reading, UN (a) Killing members of the group; General Assembly Resolution 96 of 1946 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental authorising the drafting of a genocide harm to members of the group; convention suggests the same understanding: (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group “Genocide is a denial of the right of existence conditions of life calculated to bring of entire human groups, as homicide is the about its physical destruction in denial of the right to live of individual human whole or in part; beings.”1 But this definition bears reading (d) Imposing measures intended to again, for it is not the fact of annihilation that prevent births within the group; constitutes the crime of genocide, but rather (e) Forcibly transferring children of the denial of the right of existence of an entire group to another group. given group. This nuance is important. Article 3 notes that punishable acts include: Article 2 of the 1948 Genocide Convention — 2 (a) Genocide; now the legal standard — makes this point (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; clear by focusing on the concept of intent, (c) Direct and public incitement to supplementing this with the important phrase, commit genocide; “in whole or in part”, thus grounding genocide (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide. 1 UN General Assembly Resolution 96, 11 December From Article 2 a number of questions emerge: 1946, http://un.org/documents/ga/res/1/ares1.htm 1) what qualifies as “in part”? 2) What 2 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the qualifies under each enumerated group? 3) Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, 78 U.N.T.S. 277, 280. http://unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm What is the meaning of the destruction of an 3 US Genocide in Iraq enumerated group “as such”? 4) What destruction of the whole group. Viable entity qualifies as “serious bodily or mental harm”? does not denote destruction — and certainly 5) What timeframe might “physical not physical destruction — necessarily. It destruction” properly be determined on? 6) simply denotes that the group would no longer What qualifies as “destruction”? and 7) What function viably if a “substantial part” of it is “intent”? were destroyed or “lost”. Given that the last question is the most As to enumerated groups, US Code states: important, I will address it separately below. (2) the term “ethnic group” means a set of On the first question, though the convention individuals whose identity as such is itself simply says “in part,” which reasonably distinctive in terms of common cultural could be understood to mean one person (and traditions or heritage; indeed this is the way it is understood in the (5) the term “national group” means a set Elements of Crimes adopted by State Parties to of individuals whose identity as such is the International Criminal Court, wherein, in distinctive in terms of nationality or Article 6 (a)-(e), corresponding to the acts national origins; enumerated in the Genocide Convention, it is (7) the term “religious group” means a set simply noted that enumerated acts concern of individuals whose identity as such is “one or more persons”3), general distinctive in terms of common religious jurisprudential custom deems it necessary to creed, beliefs, doctrines, practices, or demonstrate that “in part” means a “substantial rituals part” as, for example, stated in the United The qualification “as such” in the Genocide States Code. Convention is an element of purposive Given that it is the United States that has specificity: that any of the acts enumerated are perpetrated genocide in Iraq, it is fitting to use conducted against individuals as part of a US Code definitions of the crime of genocide. group understood as a group as such. Thus one Under Title 18, Section 1093 of US Code, is obliged to provide some level of proof that: dealing with definitions of genocide, it is 1) the group was targeted as such (which can stated: “the term ‘substantial part’ means a be established on the basis of a pattern of part of a group of such numerical significance accumulated actions and not necessarily any that the destruction or loss of that part would stated objective or intent); and 2) the targeting cause the destruction of the group as a viable of the group could be understood within the entity within the nation of which such group is context of “specific intent” to perpetrate a part.”4 This definition is nuanced, but genocide, either of that group as such or, arguably contains one element that may prove arguably, of the nation “within which such a important in making the claim of US genocide group is part.” in Iraq: the phrase “as a viable entity”. As this paper aims to establish overall, a “Viable entity” expands the qualification of complex genocide has unfolded in Iraq what otherwise is often restricted to involving the targeting of several definable destruction as such: i.e., that the substantial groups in order to destroy a “substantial part” part must be large enough to lead to the of the nation of Iraq “of such numerical significance” that the state and nation of Iraq 3 Elements of Crimes, 3-10 September 2002, would cease to exist a “viable entity”. http://amicc.org/docs/Elements_of_Crimes_120704EN. pdf Strictly on the definition provided under US 4 http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/18C50A.txt Code of ethnic group, the nation of Iraq as a 4 US Genocide in Iraq

whole would qualify (notwithstanding the strongly criminalise intent itself rather than the category of national group), and within that execution of that intent. nation, arguably, the Iraqi middle class and the Reference to the crime of “complicity in impoverished Iraqi rural class. As a targeted genocide” also assures that the reach of the “national group”, members of the Iraqi Baath Genocide Convention is potentially very broad Party, while political, may qualify. As a — in the case of Iraq, perhaps even targeted religious group, it is clear that Sunni criminalising the silence of the international Arabs have been and remain, at present, the community and responsible state leaders in the predominant target of the US occupation. context of US actions that at the very least Finally, concerning what constitutes “serious constitute — as defined by the Elements of bodily or mental harm”, what timeframe upon Crimes of the ICC — the crimes against which “physical destruction” might properly humanity of murder, extermination, be determined, and what qualifies as imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual violence, “destruction”, international jurisprudence and persecution, enforced disappearance and other incorporations of the Genocide Convention humane acts, and the war crimes of wilful into the national law of states varies. In some killing, torture, inhuman treatment, wilfully instances, specific aspects are named as to causing great suffering, destruction and what might be deemed serious bodily or appropriation of property, denying fair trial, mental harm5, while little in the way of unlawful confinement, attacking civilians, jurisprudence defines the timeframe on which attacking civilian objects, of excessive destruction ought properly to be viewed. incidental death, injury or damage, of Similarly with destruction itself; thus, in any attacking undefended places, of killing or given case, it is largely down to argument. wounding a person hors de combat, of And again, given that the Genocide attacking protected objects, of destroying or Convention is designed also to be a seizing the enemy’s property, of depriving the preventative instrument, destruction may not nationals of the hostile power of rights or even have taken place or begun as such. actions, of pillaging, of employing prohibited Article 3 — as well as the focus on intent — gases, liquids, materials or devices, of outrages indeed ensures that the Genocide Convention upon personal dignity, of rape, of sexual is not simply a reactive instrument to be violence, of starvation as a method of warfare, invoked after a given genocide, but may be of murder, of cruel treatment, of torture, of invoked before a single death has been taking hostages, of sentencing or execution recorded, particularly in section (b) where without due process, of displacing civilians, “conspiracy to commit” would appear to most and of treacherously killing or wounding, and which arguably constitute a pattern amounting to genocide. In combination, from Articles 2 and 3 of the 5 Reservations lodged by the United States to the Genocide Convention we can conclude: 1) Genocide Convention stipulate that for the United There is no threshold of genocide as such; States: “the term ‘mental harm’ in Article 2 (b) means rather, it is qualified on the basis of a permanent impairment of mental faculties through drugs, torture or similar techniques.” determination of the moral degradation http://unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/treaty1gen.htm. These contained within qualifying acts that are reservations remain controversial and would be conducted with the intent that destruction, or irrelevant in a court of universal jurisdiction where the the rendering “unviable” of an enumerated court exercises judgement relative to what would group, whether in whole or in part, or constitute a crime in the state of its location. 5 US Genocide in Iraq substantial part, will be the consequence; 2) undoubtedly an undervalued instrument that That genocide concerns an existential threat to could be used to pressure an end to US a given group in intent, even if actual aggression on Iraq and potentially form the destruction of the group is not achieved; 3) basis of reparative prosecutions. What is at That genocide also concerns the intent to annul issue, simply, is the burden of proof relative to the positive biological development of a specific intent, and substantiated argument group, whether by mental or bodily harm or by relative to qualifying acts and enumerated interceding to prevent propagation or disrupt groups “as such”. social generation; 4) That intent alone is Again, states are obliged, individually and imputable under international law; and 5) That severally, to prevent genocide from occurring complicity with consequences that qualify as and to prosecute perpetrators, conspirators, genocide is imputable under international law. those complicit and those who incite it. After Once the complexity and flexibility of the four years of US carnage and 13 years of prior operative articles of the Genocide Convention US-UN sanctions, the antiwar movement, in has been digested it is easier to understand connection with jurists and legal associations, what Lemkin opined when commenting on the has the material, expertise and organisational incorporation of his concept into international skills to ensure that this obligation is met. law: b) What is intent? Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate Prosecution under the provisions of the destruction of a nation, except when Genocide Convention demands the accomplished by mass killings of all demonstration of purposive or “specific members of a nation. It is intended rather intent”. Referred to also as the mens rea to signify a coordinated plan of different (“guilty mind”, “guilty or wrongful purpose”, actions aiming at the destruction of or criminal intent), specific intent usually, essential foundations of the life of national though not always, must infer an groups, with the aim of annihilating the understanding that the action undertaken groups themselves. The objectives of such would lead to the destruction, or rendering a plan would be the disintegration of the unviable, in whole or in part, or substantial political and social institutions, of culture, part, of an enumerated group; that as such language, national feelings, religion, and would constitute an unlawful act, and that the the economic existence of national groups, consequence is desired. It is perhaps fair that and the destruction of the personal the gravest of international crimes sets the security, liberty, health, dignity, and even burden of proof so high, but in the case of Iraq the lives of the individuals belonging to it is not unreachable. 6 such groups. In criminal law there are traditionally five Lemkin’s prose definition of genocide is levels to intent, differentiated according to practically word for word what has happened different degrees of foresight and criminal in Iraq since 1990. The possibility of reading desire: 1) Purposive intent, where an unlawful Lemkin’s definition into the Genocide consequence is foreseen, desired and planned Convention denotes that the convention is for. In this category it is not strictly required that the actus rea — the given act or set of acts

6 constituting genocide — is present, though if it Raphael Lemkin, “Genocide,” in A L Hinton (ed), Genocide: An Anthropological Reader (Oxford: is it adds significantly to the weight and charge Blackwell Press, 2002), p. 27. of the offence; 2) Oblique intent, where simply 6 US Genocide in Iraq

the consequences can be seen as an assured responsibility for the crime of genocide would outcome of a given act or set of acts; 3) be unavoidable. Knowingly, where the accused knows or In jurisprudence there are three essential reasonably should know the certainty of the categories for how intent is judged: 1) the outcome of a given act or set of acts; 4) objective test, where mens rea is imputed on Recklessness, where the consequences are seen the basis that any reasonable person would to be possible but the act or set of acts is have had the requisite mental element in the undertaken anyway; and 5) Negligence, where same circumstances. Here the continuum liability is centred on a firm sense that the between “inevitable, probable, possible and consequences should have been foreseen but improbable”, related to projected where the accused did not foresee the consequences of acts, is explored relative to consequences. the specific circumstances of a given case; 2) Purposive and oblique intent and knowingly The subjective test, where a given court must undertaking a given act are all under the be satisfied that the accused had the requisite umbrella of “specific intent”, whereas mental element, or either direct intent or recklessness and negligence are deemed knowingly undertaking the act, or recklessly “general intent”. In a sense, knowingly undertaking the act; and 3) A hybrid of undertaking a given act within the framework objective and subjective determinations. The of specific intent is akin to negligence in essence of the act of adjudication is to general intent, where both oblique intent and determine the relation between foresight (or clear purposive intent could constitute the foreseeability) and desire for the given degree of specific intent necessary to secure consequences to occur. conviction under the provisions of the In time of war, “intent to destroy” may appear Genocide Convention. On the other hand, indistinguishable from warfare. This is not the recklessness might be deemed a grave case. While in restricted circumstances warfare disregard for human life, and thus constitute may permit so-called “legal killing”7, in all the “requisite mental element” required for instances it is governed by international prosecution under the Genocide Convention. humanitarian law. Not everything is permitted Negligence would fail the test of specific in so-called “legal war”. In the case of Iraq, all intent. use of US force was and remains illegal under Simply put, the argument that the occupation international law8; but at issue here is under of Iraq has been one blunder after another is contrary to the elements of the crime of 7 genocide, which perhaps explains its present International humanitarian law limits what is deemed acceptable in warfare, but the majority of the world’s currency in popular discourse. On the other legal scholars put the right to life as paramount, thus hand, if it could be established that the criminalising war in all circumstances. In the Anglo- consequences of US actions in Iraq were American legal community, there is a split, with some certain, or even that the US administration supporting this majority decision and a majority arguing ought reasonably to have known, specific that killing is permissible in restricted circumstances. There is little jurisprudence. intent, and hence conviction for genocide 8 Clearly the Iraqi government is not a sovereign entity could be established. Without doubt, if it could that can credibly request the continued presence of US be shown that there was a strong desire — forces in Iraq. Rather, it is an extension of an illegal even undeclared — to bring about the occupation established after an illegal war of consequences that constitute genocide, aggression. In this sense, UN Security Council Resolution 1546, which is the basis of subsequent extensions of the mandate for Multinational Force-Iraq, 7 US Genocide in Iraq what conditions might the use of force causing trauma and serious mental harm. As constitute “intent to destroy” as defined by the one Pentagon strategist boasted to CBS News, Genocide Convention. “There will not be a safe place in Baghdad.”11 In general, there are two conditions: 1) When This is also prime facie evidence of the mens the use of force is substantially rea of specific intent. disproportionate and indiscriminate (a On whether the distinction between civilian determination based an assessment of the level and military targets has been respected and of force necessary to achieve a military upheld, with credible studies reporting as objective, and the extent to which the many as 1,000,000 Iraqi civilian deaths since obligatory distinction between military and 2003 alone, a number that is increasing civilian targets has been observed in the rapidly, US use of force would appear clearly action); and 2) When patterns of given indiscriminate.12 Alternatively, the use of consequences destroy — or could reasonably depleted uranium (DU) ordnance — about be foreseen to destroy — in whole or 2,000 tons to date since 2003, around 10 times “substantial part” an enumerated group. what was used in the 1991 Gulf War — Relative to substantially disproportionate and illustrates unequivocally indiscriminate and indiscriminate force, as illustrations of the disproportionate force in that DU, which is principle, the massive and overwhelming airborne and waterborne, has a half-life of 4.7 destruction of Fallujah, Tel Afar, Al-Qaem, billion years, causing sterility, cancer, Haditha and Ramadi, among other cities and leukaemia and birth defects, as well as towns destroyed, qualifies. In Fallujah, 75 per rendering swathes of Iraqi land permanently cent of the city was levelled. In the words of lethal and unusable. Indeed, the United States 1st Lieutenant Ben Klay, who took part in the has not only attacked living Iraqis, but also the decimation of Ramadi, “We’re used to taking unborn generations of Iraq. down walls, doors and windows, but eight city Shuna Lennon makes an important point when blocks is something new to us.”9 Added to the stating: “desire to bring about the illegal result illegal use of white phosphorus and napalm equivalent MK-77 in Fallujah and Tel Afar, 11 these wilful illegalities reveal the mens rea of In the words of Harlan Ullman, chief architect of the 10 shock and awe “regime”: “This ability to impose desire to destroy. massive shock and awe, in essence to be able to ‘turn Alternatively, the notion of “Shock and Awe” the lights on and off’ of an adversary as we choose, will — 800 missiles raining down on Baghdad in so overload the perception, knowledge and understanding of that adversary that there will be no the first 48 hours of a bombing campaign that choice except to cease and desist or risk complete and lasted 300 hours — appears to declare outright total destruction.” http://alternet.org/story/15027/ and intent to use disproportionate force, mortally http://commondreams.org/views03/0127-08.htm 12 targeting Iraqis as a national group as well as http://brusselstribunal.org/Lancet111006.htm. In the Report of the UN Sub-Commission on Genocide, the special rapporteur stated that “the relative proportionate is contrary customary international law, in particular the scale of the actual or attempted destruction of a group, Draft Articles on State Responsibility that prohibits by any act listed in Articles II and III of the Genocide states from recognising as legal the consequences of a Convention, is strong evidence to prove the necessary serious breach of international law. intent to destroy a group in whole or in part.” Paragraph 9 Arab Commission for Human Rights, et al., “War and 93, Prosecutor v. Clement Kayishema & Obed Occupation in Iraq,” Ruzindana, Case No. ICTR-95-1-T (21 May 1999). http://globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/occupation/re Further, in the recent ruling of the International Court of port/index.htm Justice on Srebrenica, 8,000 deaths was deemed 10 http://brusselstribunal.org/WMD.htm sufficient to constitute genocide. 8 US Genocide in Iraq

is not an essential component of intention, and led to the “excess deaths” of 1,500,000 Iraqis that bringing something about because it is a is a clear example of “patterns of given means to a quite different end can be consequences” where foreseeability was sufficient.”13 This illustrates the principle present and the policy continued, suggesting at noted above of knowingly undertaking an act the least oblique intention (which is sufficient where the perpetrator claims either not to have for conviction on genocide in being a category known, or desired, the consequent outcome. In of specific intent), but more plausibly — given the instance of DU, it is simply unconvincing constant US bullying in the UN to maintain the that US commanders could be unaware of the clearly destructive sanctions regime — disproportionate and indiscriminate impact of purposive intent. its use. At best, it illustrates grave disregard Sanctions also illustrate the principle of for human life, and at worst oblique intention complicity in genocide. Lennon opines: or direct intention. A strong argument could be made for the case of direct intent on the basis Even if it is arguable that the UN did not that many targets of US DU use are not know as a matter of moral certainty from military vehicles or other heavily armoured the inception of the sanctions that they installations but rather civilian districts in would bring about civilian starvation and Mosul, Basra, Samawa and Baghdad, among deaths, it certainly knew from the time other towns and cities.14 when its own investigations revealed to it the extent to which the sanctions were On the other hand, specific intent can be causing civilian deaths. The earliest date inferred in the accumulated “pattern of on which that occurred is perhaps open to purposeful action”. If the sum of the whole debate. It may be as late as 1995. creates as a consequence the destruction, in However, the fact that the blockade / whole or substantial part, of an enumerated sanctions regime inherently targets group, and if these consequences are known or civilians must have been known to its can be reasonably foreseen in advance, or even architects from its inception and if brought to the attention of commanders mid- accordingly criminal liability attaches operation and ignored, this may be deemed under the Geneva Protocol.15 genocide and mens rea specific intent. As Lennon states: “where a consequence is This conclusion formed the basis of Francis foreseen as a matter of moral certainty, Boyle’s petition for relief from genocide intention can be said to be present.” submitted to the secretary general of the UN and other relevant bodies 18 September 1991. Ongoing attempts to impose a military solution In this petition, after listing (paragraphs 5-18) on Iraq should be seen in this light, while the the risks faced by the applicants of the petition 13-year US-imposed UN sanctions regime that (4.5 million Iraqi children), Boyle states:

13 Shauna Lennon, “Sanctions, Genocide and War Crimes,” http://hartford- 15 As early as March 1991, the UN secretary-general hwp.com/archives/27c/437.html dispatched to Iraq an inter-agency mission to assess 14 Souad Al-Azzawi, “Depleted Uranium Radioactive Iraq’s humanitarian needs. The mission reported that Contamination in Iraq,” http://brusselstribunal.org/DU- “the Iraqi people may soon face a further imminent Azzawi.htm. As Al-Azzawi rightly states, “Existing DU catastrophe, which could include epidemic and famine, contamination in the surrounding environment is a if massive life-supporting needs are not rapidly met.” continuous source of (low level radiation) exposure to http://un.org/Depts/oip/background/reports/s22366.pdf. civilians which can be considered systematic attacks on UN sanctions began in August 1990 and didn’t end until civilians in an armed conflict.” May 2003. 9 US Genocide in Iraq

Only the “specific intent” of Respondent specific criminal intent to cause the George Bush to commit genocide against observed harm in Iraq.17 Applicants remains to be proven beyond a So specific intent can also be established on reasonable doubt to establish his criminal the basis of reasonable foreknowledge of the responsibility under United States consequences of a given action or pattern of municipal law and international criminal actions; most especially when destructive law. The open publication and widespread consequences are identified midway into an dissemination of the Harvard Report on 22 action, or pattern of actions, and the concerned May 1991 makes that task possible. Any party fails to prevent these consequences, or Bush administration official responsible continues to perpetrate them. In this instance for implementing the economic sanctions not only are the consequences certain in and of policy against Iraq who has knowledge of themselves (oblique intention), and not only the conclusions of the Harvard Report does the party know of them (knowingly would possess the “specific intent” undertaking a given act), but it cannot required to serve as the mental element or constitute reckless intent because the mens rea of the international and consequences are certain, not simply a municipal crime of genocide against possibility. It can only infer direct intent, or Applicants, The 4.5 Million Children of the highest level of criminal intent.18 Iraq. Applicants assert that Respondent George Bush has full knowledge of the Importantly, it would be for a court to decide if genocidal consequences of the the pattern of consequences known and continuation of economic sanctions ignored or addressed insufficiently amounted against Iraq and therefore has the mens rea to specific intent, not the individuals who necessary for committing the crime of perpetrated the acts. As explained by genocide as recognized by the Genocide international law expert Roger O’Keefe, Convention and the Genocide bodies like the International Court of Justice Implementation Act.16 (ICJ) “can decide to convict on the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond all reasonable Boyle’s conclusion is echoed in an article by doubt.”19 Elias Davidsson wherein the relationship between “knowledge” and intent in international criminal law is discussed. 17 Davidsson concludes: Elias Davidsson, “United States Foreseeability, Awareness and Knowledge of the Consequences of the The conjunction of foreseeability, general Sanctions Against Iraq,” intent to cause hardships, detailed and http://aldeilis.net/english/images/stories/economicsancti compelling notice served on a regular ons/knowledge.pdf 18 Relative to UN sanctions as a specific case, the basis, and a protracted neglect to monitor question would be to assess the extent to which the consequences, strongly suggests a humanitarian exemption, on the one hand, and the so- called Oil-for-Food Programme, on the other, ameliorated the overall debilitative effect of total international isolation, and whether the degree to which they did ameliorate those effects was reasonably sufficient in the face of given and known consequences. Other papers in this volume discuss the case of 16 Francis Boyle, “On Behalf of Iraq's 4.5 Million sanctions in detail (see chapters by Hans C Von Children: A Petition for Relief from Genocide,” 23 Sponeck and Christian Scherrer). November 2002, 19 In the case of former Rwanda Prime Minister Jean http://counterpunch.org/boyle1123.html Kambanda, the International Criminal Tribunal for 10 US Genocide in Iraq

In all events, it is unlikely that direct intention Americans torture without repugnance, will be declared openly.20 Jean-Paul Sartre in shooting at unarmed women for the his essay “On Genocide”, written in the pleasure of completing a hat-trick: they context of the Vietnam War, discusses the kick the wounded Vietnamese in the question of intent when direct proclamations testicles; they cut off the ears of the dead are absent. His analysis is sentient in the for trophies … Whatever the lies or context of the current occupation of Iraq and nervous hedging of the government, the US attempts to break resistance to that spirit of genocide is in the soldiers’ minds. occupation. This is their way of enduring the genocidal situation in which their government has Cognizant that Hitler was an exception to the 21 rule when it came to candour, Sartre writes: put them. The declarations of American statesmen Sartre’s understanding of premeditation is are not as frank as those that Hitler made reflected in the Elements of Crimes of the ICC that stands as a legal reference point in in his day. But honesty is not 22 indispensable; the facts speak for developing definitions of genocide. This themselves ... it can only be premeditated. document contains illustrations of the kinds of It is possible that in the past genocide was conduct that would immediately qualify under committed suddenly, in a flash of passion, subsections (a) to (e) of Article 2 of the in the midst of tribal or feudal conflicts. Genocide Convention. Alongside intent is Anti-guerrilla genocide, however, is a added “context”, which in all cases reads: product of our times that necessarily “The conduct took place in the context of a entails organisation, bases and, therefore, manifest pattern of similar conduct directed accomplices (from a distance) and the against that group or was conduct that could appropriate budget. It needs to be thought itself effect such destruction.” over and planned. Does this mean that Indeed, a review of the strategic context of US those responsible are fully aware of their Middle East policy, and Iraq policy own intentions? It is difficult to decide: to specifically (see below), suggests that the 2003 do so one would have to probe the latent invasion was but the “execution phase”, or ill-will of puritanical motives ... [But] we “endgame” of a general strategy of destroying do not have to worry about this the state and nation of Iraq predicated on the psychological hide-and-seek. The truth is premeditated destruction of a “substantial to be found on the field ... The young part” of the Iraqi population, rendering the state and nation unviable as entities.

Rwanda found that intention could be inferred from As Sartre might say, the facts speak for actions and omissions, though Kambanda claimed he themselves. In the words of John Pace, former did not have the intention to destroy an enumerated human rights chief of the UN Assistance group in whole or in part. Prosecutor v. Jean Mission in Iraq: “The country has been blown Kambanda, Case No. ICTR 97-23-S (4 September 1998). Kambanda was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. 20 Madelaine Albright’s infamous statement that the price of 500,000 dead children was “worth it” is an 21 exception, and almost certainly could have formed the Jean-Paul Sartre, “On Genocide”, basis of a petition to the International Court of Justice. http://brusselstribunal.org/GenocideSartre.htm Indeed, the renowned legal expert Francis Boyle offered 22 Elements of Crimes, 3-10 September 2002, to the Iraqi government to do just that. President http://amicc.org/docs/Elements_of_Crimes_120704EN. Hussein decided not to proceed. pdf 11 US Genocide in Iraq apart in terms of its social structures and social — in particular the laws of war — are but a fibre.”23 “vain” attempt to humanise total war. Total war between “advanced” states, 4. Beyond law however, rarely becomes genocide. On the one hand, total war finds comfortable expression in Legal definitions by nature favour the exigencies of order. Ultimately, there is a industrial competition, only coming to actual war when powers reach parity that in duration second level — moral, civil and political — blocks the dynamic of competition and wealth embodying the calling of common sense and production that are based respectively in conscience. While it is important, if the antiwar movement is to take up the term inequality and exploitation. More importantly, the general equality of advanced states genocide, to understand in outline the legal forestalls outright genocide because of the issues, comprehending the broader context and its immediate manifestation is indispensable. possibility of retaliation it embodies. A different logic exists in the imperialist a) The genocidal logic of neo-colonial war process. Here there is no parity of forces, so no In his essay, “On Genocide”, Jean-Paul Sartre military consideration prevents wars of goes beyond legal definitions to place conquest from being genocidal. On the other genocide as a “thing” in an evolving historical hand, the colonial endeavour in nature, at least context. There is not one society that has not to some extent and not always, protected the practised genocide, Sartre says, but the form populations of colonies from outright that genocide takes is different relative to the genocide. Colonialism is a system whereby nature of the state and states system from natural resources are plundered and which it emerges, and the nature of warfare manufactured goods are sold back to colonised each suggests and produces. populations at world market prices. The destruction of colonised peoples undermines From the 19th century, with the development the very logic of that colonial exchange. of mass industry and the democratic evolution of bourgeois societies, Western states The problem is that, generally, no people can increasingly engaged one another in strategies accept to be the slaves of others for long. of “total war”, entailing not only the industrial Thus, constant massacres and torture were development of the machinery of war, but the embedded in the colonial system, in order to breaking down of the distinction between the keep the numerically superior colonised civilian population and the military, and the subservient to the colonial settlers. At the same extension of competition between states into time, the colonial system destroys pre-existing imperial acquisition worldwide. The logic of social structures; constituting genocide of a “total mobilisation” is the mirror of total war, different kind and building pressures within in that defence of the nation becomes the colonial system that ultimately break out in synonymous with defence of the “way of life” wars of national liberation. By the mid-20th it expresses and embodies.24 International laws on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilised for the purpose of wholesale 23 http://uruknet.info/?p=21095 slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have 24 Michel Foucault makes a complementary point in his become vital. If genocide is indeed the dream of modern essay, “Right of Death and Power over Life”, in The powers, this is not because of a recent return of the History of Sexuality, Volume 1 (London: Allen lane, ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and 1979), p. 137: “Wars are no longer waged in the name exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and of the sovereign who must be defended; they are waged the large-scale phenomena of population.” 12 US Genocide in Iraq

century, bolstered by their experience as proxy mobility of the combat groups which armies for colonial states, and increasingly [have] to strike unexpectedly and aware of the nature of the international disappear immediately. This [is] not colonial system, numerous former colonies possible without the participation of the seized their independence. entire population … Against partisans Neo-colonialism has been the response of the backed by the entire population, [neo- former colonial powers; on the one hand colonial] armies are helpless. They have subjecting newly post-colonial states to an only one way of escaping from the institutionalised system of unequal exchange, harassment which demoralises them ... this and on the other hand staking their existence is to eliminate the civilian population. As within political frameworks that open the way it is the unity of a whole people that is to military occupation and re-colonisation. The containing the conventional army, the only Cold War was such a system, and the “War on anti-guerrilla strategy which will be effective is the destruction of that people, Terror” is its successor. In general, neo- colonial wars are different because what is at in other words, the civilians, women and stake in each instance is the example that must children … A determined population, be set to all other post-colonial states: that the unified by its fierce and politicised colonial relation did not end, but can and will partisan army, will not let itself be be reasserted at will. intimidated, as it was in the heyday of colonialism, by a massacre ‘as a lesson’. Principally, it is the instrumentalisation of On the contrary, this will only increase its international financial, economic and political hatred. It is no longer a matter of arousing relations that allows for neo-colonisation. Such fear but of physically liquidating a people. was the role of the UN sanctions regime and weapons inspections programme for Iraq. Only Sartre clarifies the point by exploring the when the United States was assured there were psychology of the colonial soldier in Vietnam: no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was it In these confused American minds the possible to wage the war it had long prepared; Viet Cong and the Vietnamese tend to only when it was certain that economically and become more and more indistinguishable. socially Iraq was on its knees could it invade. A common saying is ‘The only good The US war on Iraq is not the conduct of Vietnamese is a dead one’, or, what comes politics by other means in any classical sense, to the same thing, ‘Every dead Vietnamese nor even a classical war, but rather a neo- is a Viet Cong’ … Originally, they were colonial war: a war of liquidation, genocide probably disappointed: they came to save and plunder. Vietnam from Communist aggressors. Neo-colonial war is “total war waged to the They soon saw that the Vietnamese end by one side and with not one particle of actually disliked them. Instead of the reciprocity.” And it is this inequality that — attractive role of the liberator they found akin to colonial suppression, only greater — themselves the occupiers. It was the contains within it the logic of genocide. beginning of self-appraisal: ‘They do not want us, we have no business here.’ But Sartre writes: their protest goes no further: they become the scarcity and quality of weapons [on the angry and simply tell themselves that […] side of the invaded state] … dictates the there is not a single Vietnamese who is not nature of the fighting: terrorism, ambush, really a Communist: the proof is their harassing the enemy, and the extreme hatred of the Yankees. Here, in the 13 US Genocide in Iraq

shadowy and robot-like souls of the degradation. In fact, say the American soldiers, we find the truth about the war in government, we have done nothing but Vietnam: it matches all of Hitler’s offer the Vietnamese this choice: either declarations. He killed the Jews because you stop your aggression or we break you. they were Jews. The armed forces of the This absurdity is not uncalculated: it is United States torture and kill men, women clever to formulate a demand which the and children in Vietnam because they are Vietnamese cannot possibly satisfy. In this Vietnamese. way, America remains the master of the In neo-colonial “wars of example”, especially decision to stop the fighting. But, one — as in Vietnam — where the economic might read the alternatives as: declare interests are minimal, the “innate yourselves conquered, or ‘we will take you contradiction” in colonial logic that once back to the Stone Age’. It does not cancel forestalled genocide (keeping the natives alive out the second term of the alternative, which is genocide. They have said: as consumers for industrial goods), no longer pertains. In this case, Sartre writes, “Total genocide, yes, but only conditional genocide then reveals itself as the foundation genocide. Is this legally valid? Is it even of anti-guerrilla strategy. And, under certain conceivable? circumstances, it would even present itself as Until submission: “villages are burnt, the the ultimate objective, either immediately or population has to endure massive and gradually.” deliberately destructive bombardments, the This is not to say that the people aggressed cattle are shot at, the vegetation is ruined by have no choice. There is always submission. defoliants, what does grow is ruined by toxic But submission is simply the revitalisation of elements, machine guns are aimed colonialism, and as such is genocide by haphazardly, and everywhere there is killing, another name. As Sartre explains: “One cannot rape and pillage.” And not only the daily risk colonise without systematically destroying the of death and environmental destruction, but particular character of the natives, at the same also “the systematic destruction of the time denying them the right of integration with economic system, from the irrigation ditches the mother country and of benefiting from its to the factories of which ‘there must not be a advantages … It naturally follows that the brick left upon another brick’; destruction of colonised lose their national personality, their hospitals, schools, places of worship, culture, their customs, sometimes even their consistent effort towards wiping out [national] language, and live in misery like shadows.” achievements.” So the commencement of physical genocide is After submission: “most elementary needs are used as blackmail to force the aggressed to ignored. There is under-nourishment and accept another genocide. Here “substantial complete lack of sanitation. The social part” loses all meaning, for its annihilation is structure is destroyed … family life no longer but a means to force the rest into submission. exists. As the homes are broken up, the birth That the choice is posed between death and rate diminishes; all possibility of cultural or submission doesn’t stop the act from being religious life is abolished. Even work that will genocide by intention. As Sartre writes: improve the standard of living is denied … The elder sister or the young mother, without a Let us say that there is only a choice breadwinner and with so many mouths to feed, between immediate violent death and a sinks to the utmost degradation in prostitution slow death after mental and physical to the enemy.”

14 US Genocide in Iraq

In reality, neo-colonial strategy presents the solution for the colonial state. A logic of aggressed population with one choice: genocide is inherent to neo-colonial war in all resistance or collective death or disintegration. respects: in its duration in the face of popular So long as it resists, it faces massive deliberate resistance; in the tactics it must resort to in attacks or the possibility of extinction in an order to quell popular resistance; in the overwhelming genocidal campaign, while if it possibility of massive escalation in the face of submits, it faces conditions of life that amount popular resistance; and in the outcome if to genocide of another kind. Insofar as there is submission is achieved. no choice except resistance and survival, The principle of genocide by duration is popular resistance wages its struggle in the currently exhibited in occupied Iraq. Under hope of debilitating the aggressor sufficiently international humanitarian law, the United enough as to slow him down and spark unrest States as an occupying power is obliged to within his domestic population, while not provide for the wellbeing of Iraqis. Yet so long overly provoking him into launching an all out as they are occupied, the Iraqi people, campaign of extermination. This cat and naturally set against the occupying power in mouse war of attrition will last so long as a resistance and embodying as such the political solution is absent (i.e., the withdrawal continuity of the state, have no interest in of the colonial state) and so long as the pursuing anything but bare survival lest the political will of the resisting population situation of occupation become normalised. remains firm. This mode of resistance is illustrated well in From the vantage point of the neo-colonial how quickly sabotage, especially of strategic state, either the aggressor “gives way, makes infrastructure like oil pipelines, took hold in peace and recognises that a whole nation is Iraq following the onset of the US opposing him,” or else, realising that classical occupation.26 Naturally, any resistance colonial repression will not work, resorts — if movement to occupation has an interest in he can do so without damaging his own making the occupation as difficult and as interests — to “extermination pure and costly as possible for the occupying power. simple.” Given that US officials, in order to get The resisting population, on the other hand, American public backing for the war, stressed can only choose resistance, as resistance — to that Iraqi oil would pay to rebuild the country the extent to which the full discharge of the they would imminently destroy27, oil neo-colonial state is avoided, and to the extent to which the effects of colonial terror “in its 26 psycho-social consequences”25 can be http://iags.org/iraqpipelinewatch.htm 27 When General Jay Garner, chief of the Office for ameliorated — is the only possible path to Humanitarian Relief Assistance (ORHA), in February liberty and independence. 2003 decried the fact that his team was allocated only b) Genocide by occupation $27 million to rebuild Iraq where Garner forecasted the cost of reconstruction to be upwards of $12 billion, One can surmise that because this equation Donald Rumsfeld told him: “If you think we’re must be understood in advance, the very spending our money on that, you’re wrong. We’re not doing that. They’re going to spend their money waging of neo-colonial war is genocidal in that rebuilding their country.” Echoing the same attitude, in success amounts to cultural genocide for the April 2003 Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told colonised, while failure presents genocide as a ORHA officials: “We don’t owe the people of Iraq anything. We’re giving them their freedom. That’s enough.” See also 25 http://brusselstribunal.org/DeathAnxiety.htm http://commondreams.org/headlines03/0110-01.htm 15 US Genocide in Iraq production has been constantly targeted by Sartre’s analysis of the dynamics of neo- Iraqis themselves in order to drain the pocket colonial war reveals the inner logic, in the of the American taxpayer. abstract, of genocide inherent to contemporary Thus it is not simply the incompetence, colonialism — a logic that appears to the fore corruption and punitive mentality of the in two circumstances: 1) Where the innate United States and its local proxies that explain contradiction of colonialism, represented in why four years into the US occupation even certain economic interests primarily, is absent; basic services like access to water and 2) When popular resistance to colonialism electricity are debilitated. The overall level of takes the form of guerrilla warfare and the reconstruction is held at zero not only as a entire aggressed population appears as a target. collective punitive measure, but also because If this is indeed the inherent dynamic, all that the Iraqi resistance prevents Iraqi oil from would remain to be done would be to expose reinforcing the occupation or paying for as neo-colonialism US aggression on Iraq. It is already clear that in Iraq popular resistance has America’s war of aggression. The $50 billion in Iraqi assets that the US seized along with taken the form of guerrilla warfare. revenues from oil possibly exported has In reality, US policy in Iraq amounts to and funded no real reconstruction in four years. exceeds colonialism. Current US actions in Money is used, rather, on military and police Iraq are an objective attempt to destroy Iraq as operations, sunk into political corruption, or a state and nation. In this instance, the funding propaganda campaigns. genocidal logic of neo-colonial war has been It is in this context that the intransigence of the activated on purpose and established as the US occupation — its unwillingness to accept ultimate aim. It has nothing to do with its defeat and withdraw — suggests additional accident or incompetence, and even goes genocidal intent. So long as the US occupation beyond reactive vengeance. It is the outcome continues, the overall suppression of Iraqi of an entire global, regional and national wellbeing persists, development and life- imperative. Thus we must penetrate, before sustainability impeded. Intransigence leading outlining how the project has been to arrested development augments the toll of implemented, the core context of Iraq’s excess deaths and the general psychosis destruction as such. The strategic context for experienced by those living in continual fear US genocide in Iraq gives us a framework of imminent annihilation, and steals from Iraq, through which to interpret events as well as every day the US occupation remains, fully appreciate the gravity of these events. countless productive life hours and life years. a) The strategic context for genocide Given that the US must be aware that Iraqi There are three primary sets of reasons why reconstruction is impossible so long as it Iraq was singled out for destruction. These remains an occupying power, the fact that it reasons, attendant to three levels of policy remains an occupying power is further (global, regional and national), form a single evidence of the US “knowingly” committing overarching imperial strategy, each part genocide, or, if used as blackmail and interrelated and dependent on the others. punishment, “purposely” committing genocide as outlined above. i. Asserting US geopolitical, global hegemony Being “a region whose resources would, under 5. The destruction of the Iraqi state and consolidated control, be sufficient to generate national identity

16 US Genocide in Iraq

global power,”28 command of the Middle East In the words of Henry Kissinger, “Oil is too and Eurasia region is essential to any bid for important a commodity to be left in the hands world hegemony. Until 1989, US global of the Arabs.” If this sums up US policy that supremacy was thwarted by the Soviet Union. until 1990 was covert, from the collapse of the Though embedded in the Middle East region Warsaw Pact it became overt. The 1990 economically and politically, US control sanctions regime, followed by the 1991 Gulf remained virtual, not actual. In his 1980 State War, marks the opening salvo of a US drive of the Union Address, President Jimmy Carter for Middle East and Eurasia control that summed up Cold War US Middle East continues until now. History will prove or concerns: “Any attempt by any outside force disprove the reasons of Iraq’s occupation of to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will Kuwait. Legally Iraq had no right to invade be regarded as an assault on the vital interests Kuwait, but the sanctions regime adopted by of the United States. It will be repelled by the the UN Security Council, in its rapidity, use of any means necessary, including military severity and results, is proof that already in force.”29 Already in 1979, spurred by the 1990 there was a premeditated plan to destroy Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter had Iraq, rather than see only an end to the Kuwait created the Rapid Deployment Joint Task invasion. If containment was the strategic Force (RDJTF), an ad hoc assortment of US philosophy of the Cold War, in 1990 it became forces designated for possible deployment in subjugation and substitution. Sanctions the Middle East. reached into the heart of Iraq. In 1981, President Reagan added the “Reagan Why Iraq in particular? In addition to being Corollary to the Carter Doctrine”, proclaiming sovereign over the world’s second largest that the US would not only use military force proven reserves of oil, its geopolitical position to “defend” Middle Eastern oil supplies from is the answer. Regionally, “Iraq is a “external” threats, but would also use military crossroads. Its land provides the necessary force to maintain the “internal stability” of the route for Iran to access Syria, Jordan and the region. By “stability” Reagan meant exactly Mediterranean, and for Syria and Jordan as what he said: the maintenance of the they look towards Iran and the Arabian Gulf engineered status quo: the non-unity of the basin. It is also the natural path from Turkey to Arab Muslim world and guaranteeing the the Gulf, and vice versa.”30 Globally, Iraq is presence and superiority of Israel. positioned in the centre between Eurasia and Consequently, in 1983 Reagan consolidated the Mediterranean. If the US was to control the the RDJTF as US Central Command. By late global economy, it could only do so by 1989, with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, imposing itself as intermediary between Iraq, and with the Soviet bloc fragmenting, the Europe and China. As formulated by Paul United States was left unopposed in the most Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney (then US defense important geopolitical and geo-economic secretary) in 1992, the imperative was region of the world. Objectives long “precluding the emergence of any future suppressed by the Cold War could be activated potential global competitor” by maintaining in full. the “mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger 28 1992 Draft “Defense Planning Guidance”, drafted by Paul Wolfowitz. http://USgenocide.org/strategy.html 29 30 Abdul Ilah Albayaty and Hana Al Bayaty, “Fortress http://jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/speeches/su80j Iraq,” Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue 722, 23-29 December ec.phtml 2004. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/722/re1.htm 17 US Genocide in Iraq regional or global role.”31 people behind its government against other By 1997, sanctions were not working. With regimes was evident. Iraq emerged as a Europe and China ever rising, entailing defender of all Arabs against imperialism, competition for access to oil for development, Zionism and the Shah-inaugurated a group of ideologues, Zionists and corporate expansionist ambitions of Iran adopted by lobbyists coalesce and send a wake-up call to Tehran’s Mullahs in 1979. This situation was Washington.32 Named the “Project for a New threatening for pro-American Arab regimes, American Century” (PNAC), gone now is the for Israel, and all those afraid of a rising Arab language of “new era of multilateralism” nation hoping to pursue unity, economic attendant to the “new world order”. America’s independence, democracy and progress. very future depends, the PNAC neocons said, Since 1948, the US has attempted to break on “full spectrum dominance.” Military Arab unity in three principal ways: 1) “presence in the Gulf region”, reads a PNAC Unconditionally supporting the State of Israel 2000 strategy document, should be considered — an entity founded on theft and a war of “a de facto permanent presence.” As the colonial aggression on the Palestinian people PNAC indiscreetly admitted: “The United — and bargaining US political favour on this States has for decades sought to play a more predicate; 2) Balkanising the Arab world both permanent role in Gulf regional security. at a regional level (the undermining of Arab While the unresolved conflict with Iraq solidarity) and a national level (conspiring to provides the immediate justification, the need internally partition Arab states); and 3) for a substantial American force presence in Destroying Arab developmental achievements the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of to pave the way for US corporate Saddam Hussein.”33 globalisation. These elements of consistent US Middle East policy are interdependent and ii. US policy aimed to break Arab unity mutually reinforcing. Overall, the US goal has With the end of 1991 Gulf War, it was evident, long been to ensure that the Arab world although having suffered severe casualties and remains an “arc of instability” wherein the the enormous cost of war, that Iraq had a large United States, through an ever-increasing and experienced army, capable of defending network of military bases, can play the role of its national interests. Throughout the Iran-Iraq permanent arbiter and final authority, War, and the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi army guaranteeing US global hegemony and proved that it was an army of technicians in all securing by military force US national 34 domains. In addition, the unity of the Iraqi interests. Washington’s use of the State of Israel as an

31 offensive spearhead breaking into the Arab 1992 Draft “Defense Planning Guidance”, http://USgenocide.org/strategy.html 34 32 Geoffrey Geuens, “Imperialist State, Nation of To date, the US has over 700 declared bases in 130 Capitalists: The Links between the PNAC and the US countries. In Iraq, the US, as of 2007, has 55 bases Military-Industrial Complex,” The BRussells Tribunal remaining out of over 100 established in 2003-2004, Dossier, 14-17 April 2004. many slated to be “enduring”; this in addition to http://brusselstribunal.org/pdf/DossierBRussellsTribuna building the largest embassy anywhere in the world: a l.pdf huge complex covering an area bigger than the Vatican 33 “Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategy, Forces City and sporting an Olympic-size swimming pool, a and Resources for a New Century,” PNAC, September state-of-the-art gymnasium, tennis courts, a cinema and 2000. restaurants. Cost estimates, including all the perimeter http://newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDef security, self-contained utilities and other amenities, enses.pdf come to over $1 billion. 18 US Genocide in Iraq

world is well documented. After every Israeli threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will aggressive war on the Arab world its aid tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at package has increased.35 Before 1990, Iraq was home even before it is able to organise a the only Arab state sufficiently independent, as struggle on a wide front against us. Every well as militarily capable, to be a counter- kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist balance to Israeli colonial expansionism and to us in the short run and will shorten the challenge Israel’s illegal occupation of Arab way to the more important aim of breaking lands. Unlike Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and the Gulf States, Iraq was not dependent on the in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into US for security or the general welfare of its provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in population. This independence placed Iraq — Syria during Ottoman times is possible. especially after the 1979 peace treaty between So, three (or more) states will exist around Egypt and Israel — at the centre of the the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and political system of the Arab world. While Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will Iraq’s development was tolerated when separate from the Sunni and Kurdish involved in a never-ending weakening war north.” (emphasis in original) 36 with its eastern neighbour, its achievements In his 1999 book, Tyranny’s Ally: America’s quickly appeared contrary to US regional and Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, David global interests as soon a ceasefire was Wurmser, current Middle Adviser to Dick reached with Iran. Cheney, would echo similar ideas when That Israel has long wished that Arab states be advocating that the US intervene to create a divided up into small ethnic and sectarian “loosely unified Iraqi confederal government, entities is well known. In his 1982 essay, “A shaped around strong sectarian and provincial Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, Oded Yinon entities.”37 Wurmser in 1996, along with argued: Douglas Feith (US undersecretary of defense Lebanon’s total dissolution into five for policy, 2001-05) and Richard Perle provinces serves as a precedent for the (chairman of the Defense Policy Board entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Advisory Committee 2001-03), both key Iraq and the Arabian peninsula … The neoconservatives, wrote for incoming Israeli dissolution of Syria and Iraq … into Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu the ethnically or religiously unique areas such strategy document, “A Clean Break: A New as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target Strategy for Securing the Realm”. Therein on the Eastern front in the long run, while Netanyahu is encouraged to “re-establish” the the dissolution of the military power of “principle of pre-emption,” including those states serves as the primary short removing Saddam Hussein from power, deemed “an important Israeli strategic term target … Iraq, rich in oil on the one 38 hand and internally torn on the other, is objective in its own right.” guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s

targets. Its dissolution is even more 36 http://informationclearinghouse.info/article1025.htm important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is 37 David Wurmser, Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure stronger than Syria. In the short run it is to Defeat Saddam Hussein (Washington: AEI Press, Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest 1999), pp. 136-37. 38 http://israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm. Richard Perle was later to co-sign with Elliott Abrams, Richard L 35 By credible estimates, US aid to Israel since 1948 Armitage, John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad, William passed $100 billion in 2002. Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz an “Open 19 US Genocide in Iraq

Yinon’s essay and Wurmser’s book echo the peaceful and cooperative with its assertions of former Israeli Labour Foreign immediate neighbours, there will be no Minister Abba Eban that the “Arab East” is a stability in Iraq or in the region. As was “mosaic” of ethnic divergence.39 Present plans rightly observed by Saud Al-Faisal, the to partition Iraq into three weak and Saudi foreign minister, this may result in a conflicting protectorates are their direct civil and regional war. 40 progeny. In Iraq, the current “political That partition is even a proposal, given that process” is not about stability, but the pursuit none of the stated aims of the 2003 illegal US of war by other means, aimed to break up the invasion suggest it, reveals that the US has state and sow conflicts throughout the region. moved consciously to fulfil Israel’s agenda In the words of Abdul Ilah Albayaty and Hana and bring about precisely this outcome. The Al Bayaty: overall result: a strategic victory for the State The so-called political process, instead of of Israel; ancillary benefits for Iran as a second bringing stability to Iraq, is and will be the level proxy; and justification for permanent cause of increasing instability in the and expanding US military presence in the region. Indeed, on the one hand, the whole of the Middle East region. Kurdish parties are working to create a The third arm of US regional policy has been Kurdish entity in the north, unrestrained to destroy existing Arab developmental by the central government. This will be a achievements, undermining and destroying destabilising factor for Iran, Turkey and Arab states as viable entities while promoting Syria, and is opposed by the majority of corrupt, incompetent and repressive regimes Arab Iraqis. On the other, the Shia that serve the interests of foreign powers. religious forces are trying to build a Shia Rejecting this destiny, it is well known that of semi-state in the south, governed by the all Arab states, Iraq prior to 1990 had the most concept of “Wilayat Al-Fakih” (Rule of developed system of national education, the Jurist — a laden concept which puts healthcare and primary state services. On the religious authority above nationalism), basis of a nationalised oil industry and Iraq’s similar to and allied with Iran. This will be water resources, Iraq was able to achieve a destabilising factor for the whole Gulf significant state and national development region, including Saudi Arabia. It is autonomous from foreign capital and thus opposed by most Arab countries. In independent of foreign influence, reality, if there isn’t a strong unified Iraq, encompassing infrastructure, science, military advance, and social security. Sanctions Letter” of the Project for a New American Century targeted Iraqis as a people and state, not only (PNAC) think-tank to President Bill Clinton, 16 January 1998, urging Clinton, “to seize that opportunity, and to the Iraqi government or army. Indeed, the enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests regimen of punitive sanctions imposed on Iraq of the US and our friends and allies around the world. stands unprecedented in modern history, That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of systematically destroying its attained levels of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power,” adding economic, social, political and military ominously that “American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the development and leading to an estimated 41 UN Security Council.” 1,500,000 excess deaths over 13 years. 39 Saleh Abdel-Jawwad, “Israel: the ultimate winner”, Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue #634, 17-23 April 2003. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/634/op2.htm 41 Hans C von Sponeck, A Different Kind of War: The 40 For more on partition, see UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq (New York: Berghahn http://USgenocide.org/partition.html Books, 2006). 20 US Genocide in Iraq

Overall, these three aspects of US regional execution order. Spending $200,000 a minute policy — breaking regional unity by on oil, no system of life on earth is as instrumentalising Israel; Balkanising and dependent on oil as that of the United States. partitioning Arab states into ethnic and The consumer economy, which depends on oil sectarian entities; and destroying Arab and relative high wages, is the guarantor of the development capacities — by design aim to internal tranquillity of the US. Many core US ensure that the Arab world as a whole never industries — protected and uncompetitive, and attains the requisite social, political, economic based on high wages — would collapse if and military development to take advantage of guaranteed supplies of oil were to end, upon the enormous oil, gas and mineral resources which guarantees stable prices depend. With over which by right it is sovereign. the collapse of industries, the consumer Keeping Iraq in particular unstable is key to economy would be oversupplied. Prices would US strategic designs for the whole Arab plummet and growth would disappear. Outside the national sphere, US corporate region. In the words of Abdul Ilah Albayaty and Hana Al Bayaty, given Iraq’s median globalisation, exploitative in nature, depends on the US military machine, which itself geopolitical position: “The slightest 44 deterioration in relations between Iraq and any depends on foreign oil. As the eclipse of the of its neighbours is automatically a setback for age of oil approaches, these objective realities 42 constitute a national emergency for the United cooperation throughout the whole region. 45 Michael Ledeen, founding member of the States. Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs US economic vulnerability is not only centred and a key neoconservative, in 2002 on the supply of oil. The entire entity of the unabashedly told the truth about US regional United States is wagered on the use of the policy in saying: “Stability is an unworthy dollar as the primary currency of oil American mission, and a misleading concept transactions. The US long forced OPEC oil to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, sales to be transacted only in dollars, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia … The establishing the dollar as the global currency real issue is not whether, but how to of reserve. Indeed, the global oil industry is the destabilise. Creative destruction is our middle guarantor and engine of the global dollar name … Our enemies have always hated this economy. Any alteration of this arrangement whirlwind of energy and creativity which threatens to explode the illusion on which menaces their traditions (whatever they may American economic prowess is built. If dollars be) … we must destroy them to advance our were to flood back into the United States, historic mission.”43 hyperinflation would take hold, followed by iii. The US national emergency and corporate 44 interests According to Defense Logistics Agency spokeswoman Lana Hampton, quoted in an article in the The entire entity of the United States is on American Forces Information Service News, the US death row. The end of the age of oil is its military is using 10-11 million barrels of fuel each month to sustain operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. 42 Abdul Ilah Albayaty and Hana Al Bayaty, “Fortress http://defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=16915 Iraq,” Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue 722, 23-29 December 45 Michael Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape 2004. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/722/re1.htm of Global Conflict (New York: Owl Books, 2002) and 43 Michael Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How America’s Growing Petroleum Dependency (New York: We’ll Win (New York: Truman Talley Books, 2002). Penguin Books, 2005). 21 US Genocide in Iraq stagflation as uncompetitive and protected companies are anxious for greater access there, industries collapsed. As consciousness of the progress continues to be slow.”48 By approaching end of the age of oil sinks in, and September 2000, despite their ideas receiving as others powers — the EU and China — rise, some heed, the PNAC is running out of this monetary consideration is a second level patience: “Global leadership is not something to the US national emergency.46 exercised at our leisure, when the mood strikes By 1997, the PNAC understands well the twin us or when our core national security interests levels of the US national emergency and are directly threatened; then it is already too commits itself to address it. Though the US- late. Rather, it is a choice whether or not to led destruction of Iraq has already begun, the maintain American military pre-eminence, to secure American geopolitical leadership, and signatories of the PNAC express concern that 49 the US is resting on its laurels — they to preserve the American peace.” undertake to accelerate it. The PNAC Much has been said about the PNAC’s claim announces its presence with a question and a that the transformation in American strategy warning: “Does the United States have the would be slow and frustrating “absent some resolve to shape a new century favourable to catastrophic and catalysing event — like a new American principles and interests? We are in Pearl Harbour.” Many believe that 9/11 was danger of squandering the opportunity and the convenient trigger. In reality, the true Pearl failing the challenge. We are living off the Harbour occurs within weeks of this PNAC capital — both the military investments and prediction being published. On 6 November the foreign policy achievements — built up by 2000, Iraq began selling oil in euros, with past administrations.”47 Admonishing the then others (Venezuela, Iran, Russia and Libya) Clinton administration, the neoconservatives threatening to follow suit.50 Later Iraq of the PNAC argue for significant defence and converted its $10 billion reserve fund at the foreign policy spending, to curtail — with no UN also to euros. In the aftermath of the 7 irony — “the promise of short-term November 2000 US presidential elections, the commercial benefits” threatening to “override Republican right faced the long-term national strategic considerations.” emergency immediately. If the oil economy In 1999, Dick Cheney, then CEO of were to shift to euros, the American economy Halliburton, the largest post-invasion would collapse. This is the context contractor in Iraq, muses on the issue of surrounding the deliberations of the Cheney supply: “by 2010 we will need on the order of Energy Policy Task Force in early 2001, an additional 50 million barrels a day. So whose conclusions until now remain where is the oil going to come from? ... While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still 48 http://energybulletin.net/559.html where the prize ultimately lies. Even though 49 “Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century,” PNAC, September 2000. 46 William R Clark, Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and http://newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDef the Future of the Dollar (NY: New Society Books, enses.pdf 2005). 50 William R Clark, “The Real Reasons for the 47 “Statement of Principles”, Project for the New Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic and American Century, 3 June 1997. Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth”, 17 http://newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.ht February 2003. m http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CLA302A.html 22 US Genocide in Iraq

classified.51 position, necessitates destroying its Arab The two national emergencies had rolled into Muslim identity — erasing its very being as a one: Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi people nation. were weathering sanctions while other states In combination, the above represents the were circumventing them, slowing down strategic context and motive — global, progress in Big Oil regional ambitions; and regional and national — for destroying the President Hussein played the bourse card, state and nation of Iraq. No single aspect can threatening the entire basis of the American be taken alone; each supports the others. It is economy in one move. Iraq was the country through myriad acts meeting these three broad that didn’t compromise and succeeded in firing strategic concerns that US “intent to destroy” missiles on Israel; it was also the country that Iraq can be traced, while the general cohesion used its oil for progress and that aided poor of these three pillars of US strategy suggests countries in Asia, Africa and the Arab world, “intended destruction” of Iraq as the logical As a country that could defy imperialism when conclusion of well-established US Middle East imperialism was victorious everywhere, Iraq and global strategic policy. signed its own death warrant. It should die. Nothing in this “logic” can excuse its That US Big Oil corporations would make a 52 execution. Indeed, nothing in this logic is killing on stolen Iraqi resources was a bonus. excusable. It is specific intent, not The real issue was national defence — that is, implementation that defines the crime of defence of the system of life of a nation that genocide under international law. Claims of consumes 25 per cent of the world’s energy “benevolent hegemony” that accompany US resources while it constitutes 4.6 per cent of global plans are irrelevant. These plans in the world’s population, a system that creates intent constitute genocide. US national, 600,000 tons of garbage per day. regional and global designs dictate the iv. A unified strategy of genocide rationality embedded in military planning and thinking. Implementation is merely the mirror To truly secure US supremacy, Iraq would of the intent. And if, in the words of Morris have to become the 51st economy of the and Scharf, “it is unnecessary for an individual United States. This could only suggest to have knowledge of all details of the genocide. By no other means could the United genocidal plan or policy,” the pattern of States control what has been a geopolitical implementation is enough to infer the crime.53 entity for 6,000 years and a bastion of Arab nationalism throughout the 20th century. By b) Implementing genocide in Iraq54 no other means could the United States seize Having understood the desire, or mens rea, the from Iraqis their principle source of material means, or actus rea, becomes easier to and future welfare, imposing on their culture unravel. From the above, it is clear that the the idea of foreign ownership of the riches of United States had reasons to desire — within the land. Destroying the Iraqi state would not its own logic — the destruction of Iraq as a be enough. To control Iraq, in its median

51 Disclosure of the 2001 deliberations of the National 53 Virginia Morris and Michael P Scharf, The Energy Policy Development Group (commonly referred International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (NY: to as the “Cheney Energy Task Force”) is subject to Transnational Publishers, 1998). ongoing legal action. 54 For more information on the section that follows see http://judicialwatch.org/printer_1270.shtml http://albasrah.net/, http://uruknet.info/ and 52 http://brusselstribunal.org/pdf/BigOil.pdf http://heyetnet.org/en/ 23 US Genocide in Iraq state and nation. The means by which it the UN Security Council, its budget managed destroyed the Iraqi state, and attempted to by foreign powers, and with no end in sight.55 destroy the Iraqi nation, follow on from and This marks the beginning of the dismantling of accord to these reasons. Iraq as a state and nation. Ground invasion Specifically, the US has sought to: 1) Destroy takes place when established policy proves Iraq physically and culturally, and principally unable to achieve its goals. militarily, so that it can never re-emerge as an Francis Boyle in his indictment for crimes economic, political or military force; and 2) against humanity and the crime of genocide Break Iraq as a state and nation, substituting describes well the 1991 Gulf War and its the state with three or more conflicting and intent: weak entities based on ethnic and sectarian affiliations that presage the destruction of The bombing continued for 42 days. It met Iraq’s Muslim Arab identity. These two no resistance from Iraqi aircraft and no objectives, if achieved, would allow for the effective anti-aircraft or anti-missile plunder of Iraq’s resource riches, control of its ground fire. Iraq was basically median position in order to attain global pre- defenceless. Most of the targets were eminence, serve in the protection of the US’s civilian facilities. The United States offensive regional instrument and proxy, intentionally bombed and destroyed Israel, and erase the last official remnant of the centres for civilian life, commercial and pan-Arab nationalist movement. business districts, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, residential This project of intended destruction — the areas, historical sites, private vehicles and legal substance of genocide — has been going civilian government offices. In aerial on for 17 years. All together, the pattern of attacks, including strafing, over cities, intent is irrefutable. It has led to an estimated towns, the countryside and highways, 1,500,000 excess Iraqi deaths under sanctions, United States aircraft bombed and strafed and as many as 1,000,000 excess violent Iraqi indiscriminately. The purpose of these deaths since the US illegal war of aggression. attacks was to destroy life and property, By any definition, but also defined in law, this and generally to terrorise the civilian is genocide. population of Iraq. The net effect was the i. Destroying Iraq physically and permanently summary execution and corporal punishment indiscriminately of men, The destruction of Iraq began with sanctions in women and children, young and old, rich 1990 and the 1991 Gulf War. On the one hand, and poor, of all nationalities and religions. the war was not to liberate Kuwait. It was the The intention and effort of this bombing opening shot of a broader objective of campaign against civilian life and facilities destroying Iraq, entailing permanently was to systematically destroy Iraq’s destroying its military capabilities and civil infrastructure leaving it in a pre-industrial capacities, in order to replace the Iraqi state condition. The United States intentionally with an unviable entity in need of constant US assistance, while breaking its economy in order to break the will of the Iraqi people and 55 In the words of Martin Indyk, the top Middle East later plunder Iraqi resources. Under sanctions, policymaker on Clinton's first National Security in finance and economy Iraq became a ward of Council, “We will not be satisfied with Saddam's overthrow before we agree to lift sanctions.” http://thewashingtoninstitute.com/templateC07.php?CI D=61 24 US Genocide in Iraq

bombed and destroyed defenceless iraqi military control of at least two thirds of its military personnel; used excessive force; territory, became de facto occupied. killed soldiers seeking to surrender and in The no-fly zone system also had an ancillary disorganised individual flight, often agenda: 1) It imposed a de facto division of unarmed and far from any combat zones; Iraq into three regions that corresponded to a randomly and wantonly killed iraqi political agenda of partition59; 2) Provided soldiers; and destroyed material after the political cover for continuous targeting of ceasefire. The United States used Iraq’s military and civil infrastructure; and 3) prohibited weapons capable of mass Provided air cover for the US to gather destruction and inflicting indiscriminate conspiring opposition forces and for the US death and unnecessary suffering against and Israel to train Iraqi separatist militias, both military and civilian targets. Fuel air which later would replace the national army. explosives were used against troops in place, civilian areas, oil fields and fleeing Tied to UN sanctions, the UN weapons civilians and soldiers on two stretches of inspections programme (United Nations highway between Kuwait and Iraq.56 Special Commission, UNSCOM) presented Iraq with constantly shifting demands. The The material destruction of Iraq didn’t end “100 per cent” verification order was with the ceasefire that supposedly marked the technically — even according to former end of the 1991 Gulf War. General Michael J inspectors — impossible to satisfy. Aside from Dugan, former chief of staff of the US Air that, according to a 1999 article in The Force, revealed the deliberations of the US Washington Post, “United States intelligence administration when he stated in mid-summer services infiltrated agents and espionage 1991 that if another war comes, “We will equipment for three years into United Nations bomb Iraq back into the Stone Age.” arms control teams in Iraq to eavesdrop on the In reality, in the post-Gulf War period Iraq’s Iraqi military without the knowledge of the defences were systematically obliterated by UN agency that it used to disguise its work, numerous US-UK bombing raids under according to US government employees and justification of unilaterally imposed and illegal documents describing the classified no-fly zones — first in the north, in April operation.”60 Similar allegations surfaced in 1991, and later in the south.57 Thus, contrary to 2003 that the UK leaked false information on what is usually assumed, the occupation of weapons in order to use inspections as political Iraq didn’t start in 2003; it started in 1991. If cover. occupation is the situation that pertains when Combined, no-fly zones and weapons the territory of a state is put under the inspections allowed the United States and its authority of a foreign military power — as defined by The Hague IV Regulations58 — then Iraq from this time, in losing effective 59 Richard Becker, “Is the U.S. Attempting to Dismember Iraq?” http://globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/irqbckr.htm 60 “US Spied on Iraq Via UN,” The Washington Post, 2 56 Francis Boyle, “Flashback: US War Crimes During March 1999, http://washingtonpost.com/wp- the Gulf War,” 2 September 2002, srv/inatl/daily/march99/unscom2.htm UNSCOM was http://counterpunch.org/boyle0902.html disbanded in 1999, replaced by United Nations 57 http://ccmep.org/usbombingwatch/2002.html Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission 58 Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV) 18 (UNMOVIC). In 2003, UNMOVIC concluded that October 1907, UNSCOM had successfully dismantled Iraq’s http://yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague04.htm unconventional weapons programme during the 1990s. 25 US Genocide in Iraq allies to bomb Iraq at will for 13 years in the value belonging to the Iraqi state is not stolen; pre-invasion phase. Under the cover of everything else is destroyed. This policy of weapons inspections in particular, scores of tabula rasa amounts to the effacement of factories, schools, chemical plants of a civil modern and ancient Iraq. The result is a state nature — indeed anything suspected even of national shock and of preparation of the remotely of having a prohibited military confrontation between the occupation and the function — were blown up or bombed. Iraqi state apparatus that went underground. In the name of the no-fly zones, the US and Order #2 of US Civil Administrator L Paul allies hit infrastructure, communication lines, Bremer will disband the national Iraqi army61, defensive installations and numerous non- leaving 400,000 well-trained and experienced military targets, ostensibly all in the name of men with no immediate means of material protecting the civilian population. While the survival and no legitimate national force US administration was telling lies about responsible for defending Iraq’s population seeking a diplomatic solution to the “Iraq and territory. In addition to the looting of civil crisis” it engineered, Operation Southern institutions, systematic looting of military Focus begun in June 2002, entailing intensive installations and armories is organised62, all bombing below the 33rd parallel, ostensibly to left unprotected by occupation forces allegedly “soften up” Iraq for invasion. In September on Iraqi soil to disarm by force the Iraqi state. 2002 alone, US air forces dropped 54.6 tons of Heavy materiel from national armories is bombs, one month prior to Congress either sold as iron or carried to the north. authorising war. Army personnel are criminalised as Saddam’s With the ground invasion the military and civil “henchmen”. destruction of the Iraqi state accelerated Armaments, equipment and archives are dramatically. With the massive air bombing destroyed or stolen, personnel killed or campaign dubbed “Shock and Awe”, the Iraqi detained, and Iraqi military ideology — of state — already criminalised, as the being an army defending the unity of Iraq and “repressive arm” of the Iraqi Baath Party — in the Arab nation — considered racial and every instance of its human and infrastructural sectarian. Iraq’s experienced and strong army, form was a target. Conscious that its forces dating in origin to 1921 and which defended were unequal to those of the foreign invaders, the unity of the Iraqi state and participated in and after the Battle of Baghdad Airport where the defence of Palestine, Jordan and Syria, will non-conventional weapons were used by the be replaced by Kurdish separatist and pro- US, the Iraqi army disperses, a substantial part Iranian militias. The task of the new army is going underground to pursue pre-planned guerrilla warfare. 61 CPA Order #2, “Dissolution of Entities,” 23 August The police like the population as a whole stays 2003, http://cpa- home. Militias entering Baghdad alongside US iraq.org/regulations/20030823_CPAORD_2_Dissolutio n_of_Entities_with_Annex_A.pdf forces inaugurate the breakdown of law and 62 James Glanz and William J Broad, “Looting at order sanctions long desired, looting and Weapons Plants Was Systematic, Iraqi Says,” New York burning down all public institutions Times, 13 March 2005. (ministries, hospitals, universities, schools, http://globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/unmovic/200 museums, libraries, cultural institutions, etc.), 5/0313systematic.htm. James Glanz, “Arms Equipment Plundered in 2003 Is Surfacing in Iraq”, New York unopposed by US forces who have been Times, 17 April 2005. ordered not to intervene. Nothing of exchange http://globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/unmovic/200 5/0417surfacing.htm 26 US Genocide in Iraq

not to defend the unity and integrity of Iraq, Programme, which was based on limited sales but to defend the occupation and its local quotas until 1998 and thereafter remained proxies against the people of Iraq labelled heavily regulated, sanctions continued from “terrorists” or “Saddamists”. 1996 to devastate commerce and infrastructure.64 The banning of “dual use” Iraq’s territorial borders are left unsecured. 65 Private foreign security contractors working as items even included paper. Sanctions also mercenaries, create a parallel system of fear would play a role in the de facto partition of and danger, operating free of all accountability Iraq: the northern Kurdish area, under the no- to law.63 The militias of sectarian forces fly zone, was effectively exempted, allowing brought in with the occupation begin to Kurdish separatists to flourish and entrench operate across the Iraqi territory. their autonomy from the central government. Simultaneously, a wave of assassinations One aspect of the package established by UN targets pilots, engineers, scientists and military Security Council Resolution 687 of 3 April officers, with reports linking the killing to 1991 was the UN Compensations Commission intelligence agencies of Israel and Iran that throughout the period of sanctions, when suspected of circulating elaborate “hit lists”. economically Iraq was crippled and when over With weapons being disseminated across the 5,000 children were dying monthly, collated country, kidnapping becomes a threat to daily damages claims from the Gulf War and civil security, along with extortion and siphoned a third of Iraq’s oil revenues summary execution. Corpses quickly start to (restricted under quotas) to pay reparations. appear on the streets of Baghdad. This situation is ongoing with claims 66 Parallel to military campaigns, from 1990 the amounting to $352.5 billion. For contrast, US deliberately pursued a policy of weakening when in December 1996, under the Oil-for- Iraq economically to be sure that Iraq could Food Programme, Iraq was permitted to export not recover from the systematic destruction of oil in return for humanitarian supplies it was civil infrastructure during the 1991 Gulf War restricted to an overall quota of $2 billion in and again emerge as an economically oil sales every six months. In effect, Iraq had developing country. UN sanctions, which no means of sustaining itself, the total of its prevented the free sale of oil from 1990 remittances from oil amounting to disposable onwards, had a devastating effect on Iraq’s revenue of $15 per Iraqi per month. economy, and necessarily the majority of Iraqi Exasperated by a system they deemed citizens. The majority of Iraq’s working “genocide,” Denis Halliday and Hans von population in 1990 were employed in the Sponeck (both former UN humanitarian public sector and thus dependant on oil coordinators for Iraq who resigned) in revenue that prior to 1990 comprised 90 per November 2001 wrote: “The uncomfortable cent of Iraq’s GDP. truth is that the West is holding the Iraqi people hostage.”67 Given that Iraq was a welfare state, the debilitation of public services affected all Iraqi citizens. Ostensibly eased by the Oil-for-Food 64 http://globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/2002/pap er.htm 65 63 CPA Order #17, “Status of the CPA, MNFI, Certain http://iraqwar.org/list.htm 66 Missions and Personnel in Iraq,” 27 June 2004, http://www2.unog.ch/uncc/status.htm http://cpa- 67 Hans Von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, “The iraq.org/regulations/20040627_CPAORD_17_Status_of Hostage Nation,” 29 November 2001, _Coalition__Rev__with_Annex_A.pdf http://zmag.org/halsponiraq.htm 27 US Genocide in Iraq

Upon invasion, US strategy in Iraq can be centuries.73 The common worldwide practice summed up in one phrase: privatisation by of saving heirloom seeds from one year to the military force. Order #12 of US Civil next is made illegal in Iraq. Administrator Bremer enacted on 7 June 2003 The consequences are as follows: 1) A rise of suspended all tariffs, customs duties, import unemployment to over 70 per cent; 2) taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for Systematic plunder by multinational goods entering or leaving Iraq, and all other corporations; 3) Corruption on a scale trade restrictions that may apply to such 68 unprecedented; and 4) The institution of two goods ; Order #17 grants foreign contractors, economic realities: the economy of graft including private security firms, full immunity 69 limited to the Green Zone, and the non- from Iraq’s laws ; Order #39 allows for the economy of the rest of Iraq, known as the privatisation of Iraq’s 200 state-owned “Red Zone”. enterprises, 100 per cent foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses, national treatment of foreign ii. Substituting the Iraqi state and nation firms, unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds, and 40-year ownership In its attempt to destroy and substitute the Iraqi licenses70; Order #40 turns the banking sector state and nation, the United States pursued two from a state-run to a market-driven system parallel tracks: 1) Demonising the Arabism of overnight by allowing foreign banks to enter the Iraqi state, of the Iraqi Baath Party — a the Iraqi market and to purchase up to 50 per non-sectarian national movement of six cent of Iraqi banks71; Order #49 drops the tax million sympathisers — and Saddam Hussein; rate on corporations from a high of 40 per cent and 2) Promoting, funding and organising to a flat rate of 15 per cent. The income tax sectarian groups of the Iraqi opposition. 72 rate is also capped at 15 per cent ; and Order Kick-starting the policy of destroying the Iraqi # 81 prohibits Iraqi farmers from using the nation defined as being composed of Iraqis, methods of agriculture that they have used for Bush Sr encouraged the rebellion of “Kurds” and “Shias” against the Iraqi central government in 1991 as the Iraqi national army was demobilising, implying that those who 68 CPA Order #12, “Trade Liberalisation Policy,” 26 ruled them were “Sunnis”. In the words of February 2004, http://cpa- Francis Boyle: “Bush encouraged and aided iraq.org/regulations/CPAORD12.pdf Shiite Muslims and Kurds to rebel against the 69 CPA Order #17, “Status of the CPA, MNFI, Certain government of Iraq causing fratricidal Missions and Personnel in Iraq,” 27 June 2004, http://cpa- violence, emigration, exposure, hunger and iraq.org/regulations/20040627_CPAORD_17_Status_of sickness and thousands of deaths. After the _Coalition__Rev__with_Annex_A.pdf rebellion failed, the US invaded and occupied 70 CPA Order #39, “Foreign Investment,” 20 December parts of Iraq without lawful authority in order 2003, http://cpa- iraq.org/regulations/20031220_CPAORD_39_Foreign_I nvestment_.pdf 71 CPA Order #40, “Bank Law,” 19 September 2003, http://cpa- iraq.org/regulations/20030919_CPAORD40_Bank_Law _with_Annex.pdf 73 CPA Order #81, “Patent, Industrial Design, 72 CPA Order #49, “Tax Strategy for 2004,” 20 Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant February 2004, http://cpa- Variety Law,” 26 April 2004, http://cpa- iraq.org/regulations/20040220_CPAORD_49_Tax_Strat iraq.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81_Patents_ egy_of_2004_with_Annex_and_Ex_Note.pdf Law.pdf 28 US Genocide in Iraq

to increase division and hostilities within After years of conspiracy, the December 2002 Iraq.”74 London conference of the Iraqi National UN sanctions forced Iraq, as both a state and a Congress (INC; pre-1998 funded by the CIA, nation, into complete isolation. While post-1998 funded by US Congress, and headed President Saddam Hussein, and by extension by Ahmed Chalabi) agreed on what the Iraqi Baath Party, was the main focus of percentages each participating faction of the relentless vilification, from 1990 onwards to US-assembled “opposition” would gain in the be non-Kurd Iraqi was to be suspect. With the sectarian quota system. Unable to replace the demonisation of President Hussein began the Iraqi state and its national movement without process in discourse that would undermine the the Islamist “factor”, the INC London very concept of Iraqi citizenship: the conference also crystallised an accord between imposition of sectarianism in allegations, now the US and Iran on how to, and who would, questioned, that “Saddam gassed the Kurds” replace the regime of Saddam Hussein: an alliance between Kurdish separatists allied to and “oppressed the Shia”, and ruled in the name of the “Sunni minority”. The Iraqi Baath the US; pro-US Iraqi liberals (the INC and the Party, central to the operation of the state, was Iraqi National Accord of Iyad Allawi); and falsely cast as “Sunni”, repressive of Iraqi pro-Iranian Islamists under Mohammed Bakr Al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Kurds and Shias as Kurds and Shias — a 75 canard that would later allow for the targeting Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). of Sunnis simply because they are Sunni. This constituted body of US-approved Covertly, and later overtly, the United States spokespeople for the virtual constituents of started funding sectarian militias and Iraqi society — Shias, Kurds, liberals — opposition groups. The US-sponsored 1992 would help justify the need in the media for a opposition conference in Salah El-Din (on ground invasion and provide candidates for the Iraqi soil, with US security guarantees — a first US installed interim government. Silenced blatant breach of Iraqi sovereignty) are the Iraqi people as well as the 23 February crystallised the ideas of what would replace 2003 London meeting of authentic Iraqi the political regime of the Iraqi Baath Party: a opposition forces who opposed the US agenda of illegal pre-emptive war and the interference sectarian division of Iraq, as well as sectarian 76 quotas in government. A decade of of foreign powers in Iraqi national affairs. unsuccessful attempts to unify that opposition The phase of “creative destruction” in the Iraqi on the details of carving up Iraq would follow. political domain starts with, and is predicated By 1998, US official policy, announced in the upon, an unprecedented propaganda campaign Iraq Liberation Act, became “regime change”, directed at both international and Iraqi public including official funding of sectarian opinion, based on sectarian vocabulary and opposition groups. Within a month and a half virtual identities and predating the invasion. It of the passing of the act, the United States reads: 1) “The Kurds have been gassed,” so launched a major bombing campaign across should be protected and given special rights, Iraq. Various plots for a coup d’etat were presaging Kurdish succession and the supported and funded by the CIA. 75 Ghassan Atiyyah, “Fixing it: the London conference, Tehran deal, and beyond”, 1 September 2003, http://opendemocracy.net/conflict- 74 Francis Boyle, “Flashback: US War Crimes During iraqivoices/article_872.jsp the Gulf War,” 2 September 2002, 76 See “On Democracy in Iraq,” Documentary, dir. http://counterpunch.org/boyle0902.html Hana Al Bayaty, 2003, 52mins. 29 US Genocide in Iraq fragmentation of the Iraqi state; 2) “Shias are No one who does not endorse the TAL is the majority” — a baseless assertion given that permitted to participate in the “political no reliable census has been conducted — process”, which itself is reduced to a oppressed not only by Saddam’s regime but competition between sectarian leaders. The also throughout their history, the “democratic whole domain of Iraqi politics becomes US- process” simply the harbinger of social justice; drafted. The US claims to know who 3) “Sunnis are the criminals” and oppose the represents the Iraqi people better than the “New Iraq” because of loss of privileges and people itself. The TAL, in effect, legislates the the power to oppress others; 4) “Iraq is an alienation of the Iraqi people from democratic artificial creation” comprised of three politics. Violating the UN Draft Articles on homogenous regions: Kurds in the north, State Responsibility, UN Security Council Sunnis in the centre, and Shias in the south. Resolution 1546 in June 2004 “welcomes” and Inherent to this propaganda is a purposive “endorses” the formation of a “fully sovereign” interim Iraqi government as a stage blurring of the distinction between ethnic and sectarian identities: the Shias and Sunnis are on the road to an independent, democratic and not Arab or Kurd; Kurds are not Muslim, be it federal Iraq, thereby recognising the Shia or Sunni; and there is no such thing as consequence of an illegal state act — the “the Iraqis”, only a composition of Sunni, Shia invasion. and Kurd. All other components of Iraqi The following period of general repression can society — Turkomans, Assyrians and other be split between two phases: 1) The imposition Christians, and Yaziids and Sabbits — are of illegal elections; and 2) The imposition of a purposely ignored. permanent constitution based on the TAL. The aim of this propaganda is to facilitate US Across Iraq, the occupation attempts to create destruction of the Iraqi state. The first order three de facto realities on the ground: 1) passed into law by US Civil Administrator Northern autonomy for the Kurds with Bremer, outlaws the Iraqi Baath Party in its promises of generous representation in entirety.77 Immediately 100,000 able members parliament, and the annexation of oil-rich of the administrative cadre are criminalised Kirkuk, allowing the occupation to justify its and disbarred from state employment. Silenced “democratic process” and in turn is the fact that 58 per cent of those targeted by instrumentalise Kurdish militias to suppress the US-imposed DeBaathification Commission the Iraqi resistance; 2) The promotion of are Shias. In place of the dissolved state, the Islamist clergy in the south in exchange for Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) is Sistani’s support of the political process and drafted and imposed, legislating the his compelling fatwas for all Shias to disbanding of the army and the privatisation of participate in national elections; 3) The central the economy. Civil and political resistance to region identified as Sunni and subject to waves the occupation is outlawed, and civil and of violence, urbicide and terror. political resistance to US corporate Ahead of and after elections, waves of privatisation is criminalised. violence and arbitrary detentions target Sunni communities. The vilification of the Baath Party and its assimilation with Sunnis deepens. Media sources speak of “Sunni terrorists”, 77 CPA Order #1, “DeBaathification of Iraqi Society,” “Saddam loyalists”, “The Sunni Triangle”, 16 May 2003, http://cpa- “The Triangle of Death” and “Sunni Al- iraq.org/regulations/20030516_CPAORD_1_De- Ba_athification_of_Iraqi_Society_.pdf Qaeda”, all presaging and constituting the 30 US Genocide in Iraq

destruction of Iraq’s unifying Arab Muslim boycott, despite the price of starvation exacted identity and the very idea of Iraqi citizenship for non-participation. In the new National and nationality. This sectarian propaganda will Assembly, contradictory agendas ensure directly play a role in later attempts to spark permanent instability. The “political process”, civil war, and will contribute to the enforced already stripped of legitimacy, cannot but homogenisation of city districts and justify the further deepen the confrontation between the erasure by military force of whole towns in occupation and the Iraqi people. How can a predominantly Sunni provinces. That these permanent constitution be drafted by a provinces rise up in resistance in response to parliament that does not fairly represent the US military aggression is taken as proof that population and fails — and cannot succeed — the resistance is Sunni, thereby sectarian and to ensure peaceful coexistence in society? should be repressed. In order to achieve its The theatrical elections and the political goals, the sectarian occupation accuses the process are unable to hide the gap between the Iraqi people and its resistance of sectarianism. real Iraq and the real plans of the occupation. The so-called “political process” is but theatre The real occupation is using military force to in which the public has no right to change the impose its model. The “political process” issue. While Iraq is under real and concrete simply creates a clique working for, or illegal occupation; while political free accepting, the occupation’s plan of destruction expression is absent thanks to the for Iraq. As with the elections, the constitution deBaathification and the repression of Sunnis; in 2005 is passed at gunpoint by referendum. while Iraqi citizens cannot prove themselves Based on the TAL, it legislates the destruction citizens because of the absence of registers — of Iraq as a state and nation. By its central destroyed in the looting78 — and state provisions and blurred jargon it: 1) Cancels the institutions; while the condition of concept of the united republic of Iraq; 2) participating in politics is acceptance of the Cancels the concept of citizenship; and 3) TAL; while those who survey and organise the Cancels the concept of Iraq as an Arab- elections are well known pro-occupation Muslim nation. propagandists; while the political process is The draft oil law — the major plank in the under the occupation’s guns; while you loose strategy of plunder of the US occupation — if your food ration or your life if you don’t vote passed would contribute to the de facto as you should, how can anyone think that the partition of Iraq in shrinking the funding result is the real expression of Iraqi people? source of central government, as well as The elections can be summed in an Iraqi opening the way to foreign ownership of Iraqi proverb: “You choose a rabbit, I give you a oil. As set in the illegal constitution, the rabbit; you choose a gazelle, I give you a proposed Oil Law that until now cannot be rabbit.” The spectacle is organised to institute passed, has two objectives: 1) To end all a divided Iraq. public management of the Iraqi oil industry by Further, elections will be based solely on opening it up to private capital; and 2) to pass sectarian lists, the main lists benefiting from to confederated regions real decisions on oil, generous US funding and access to US- neglecting the existence and the necessity of a sponsored media. Fifty per cent of Iraqis will united Iraq with a central government.

These two principles are more political 78 Saad Kiryakos, “Destroying Iraq's Public Records,” propaganda to ignite local dreams and July 2003, conflicts than real law to organise Iraq’s oil http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KIR307A.html 31 US Genocide in Iraq industry. All who are concerned with the oil and the promotion of sectarian and feudal industry in Iraq, including international oil forces that understand only nepotism. With companies, know it is impossible to direct the mass deprivation, child begging has risen 450 oil industry but by a central entity, whether it per cent. Criminality and prostitution have is public or private, and that these burgeoned, as has the drug economy. Extortion principles are a source of potential unending and kidnapping is a whole parallel economy. conflicts between Iraqis. Forced displacement has denied thousands of The US oil project is to give in the north the families of their possessions and property. For presenting producing fields of Kirkuk to the those unable to flee, the only economy is Kurds, and in the south the presently collaboration, which amounts to genocide of producing fields to Shias, while obliging the another kind. Instead of sustaining the centre — which it names “Sunni” and which occupation by joining the Iraqi army or the has, according to estimations, twice what the police, millions are choosing poverty and dignity. north and the south have — to render its oil to foreign companies. The occupation’s Equally destructive has been the targeting of propaganda on oil is solely to ignite conflicts women. Iraq’s women have been central to its between Iraqis. All know it is unrealisable. public history for generations. From enjoying Technically, oil fields do not respect sects and the freedoms of liberty and progress, enshrined ethnicities. Legally, the occupation’s laws are in pre-US invasion protective legislation, not binding for Iraqis. And politically, all cancelled by the occupation, Iraqi women have Iraqis believe that oil is the property of the been consigned to their homes, hundreds of nation and its privatisation is plunder and thousands rendered widows, thousands more treason. raped and abused, and millions forced behind Iraq, prior to when the genocide began in the veil by the rise of sectarian Islamist 1990, was a modern Arab state led by its fundamentalism, or as a general feeling of middle class culture. It became nothing less mourning and a counter-identity to the than hell for those living in it now. US occupation. The violence that has been visited “creative destruction” has touched all aspects upon Iraqi women has deeply shocked Iraqi of society as a whole. Through the society. Mass detentions of men have driven dismantlement of the state, the middle class many, separated from their husbands, into has been decimated. The targeted assassination poverty. Further, rising sectarianism has of all kinds of professionals has accurately broken thousands of families with divorce been described as the imposition of the rates soaring, many women left struggling to “Salvador Option”79 in Iraq. Not only has this feed themselves or their children. lead to tens of thousands of murders, driving The climate of general repression that is the the middle class that remained, despite the first outcome of the above touches all Iraqis, wave of migration during the sanctions period, individually and collectively, and deeply. into exile, but in stripping Iraq of its middle Mental disturbance and psychosis has class culture it has led to a breakdown of proliferated. Constant witness to atrocities and social values at all levels. death, 2007 saw the walling-in of whole Further, all welfare provision has completely communities, further isolating neighbourhoods collapsed, ensured by the disbanding of Iraq’s and relatives, entailing de facto house arrest for millions. The parallel economy of extortion competent civil service under deBaathification and violence has led to massive forced

79 http://brusselstribunal.org/BritishBombers.htm redistributions of wealth; many families forced 32 US Genocide in Iraq

to give everything they own in ransoms. Tens on Baghdad and its surrounding towns. It is of thousands of children have been orphaned. clear to all military planners, whether from the In the social sphere, a strategy of annihilation invading armies or from the disbanded has been pursued from the beginning. “By national army, that the control of Baghdad is destroying the Iraqi state,” in the words of essential to the control of the entirety of Iraqi Hana Al Bayaty, “the occupation has erased territory. any potential intermediary with the Iraqi There have been to this day, four attempts to people and has had to face them directly.”80 pacify Baghdad since 2003. Iraq being a Not only has it had to; it wanted to and aimed particularly centralised state, all roads passing to. After four years of its resistance, however, across the country and linking it to the Iraqi people have vindicated Sartre: if the neighbouring states, lead to or leave from the US wants to break them, it will have to capital. From the very start of the occupation, exterminate them to the last woman, child and the confrontation between the resistance and man. multinational forces has naturally concentrated itself on the control of these axes. The iii. Resistance to genocide occupation cannot stabilise Iraq without the Of the few in the West that stood in solidarity subjugation of Baghdad and its surrounding with Iraq under sanctions and visited the provinces. The Iraqi resistance as it grows country destroyed by unprecedented force in from 2003 onwards will mainly operate in and the 1991 Gulf War, many describe Iraq’s mode around the capital in order to disrupt the of survival under sanctions as a “miracle”. supply chain and capacity of movement of With ingenuity and determination, Iraqis occupation forces across the country. The rebuilt essential civil infrastructure bombed to success of this resistance strategy will cost the oblivion and televised on screens worldwide. United States millions of dollars. Under unprecedented forces, included Because of its arrogance and ignorance and intended starvation and the debilitation of imperial calculations, Fallujah and Ramadi, primary services, the Iraqi nation did not Samarra, Baquba, and Hillah are daily fragment — indeed, it strengthened. criminalised as strongholds of the “Sunni” Following the ground invasion, Iraqi resistance insurgency. In fact, they become known to the began on the second day of the occupation of entire world simply because they respectively Baghdad with the killing of an American are the first towns on the roads going from soldier in Al-Adhamiyah. By June 2003, the Baghdad to Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran and the resistance is already strong enough to declare a Arab Gulf. As a result of daily campaigns of programme of national liberation. What is indiscriminate bombings and arrests, civil and evident now is that this resistance was armed resistance in these provinces increases, prepared in parallel before the invasion as the thereafter used as the proof of the veracity of sole way a small people can confront a US propaganda. military superpower. As to Baghdad, it is historically a multi-ethnic Even before the supposed end of US major and multi-cultural city where no ethnic or combat operations, resistance operations sectarian community is the majority. The targeting occupation forces escalate, centred provinces creating a ring around the Iraqi capital are traditionally and culturally patriotic 80 Hana Al Bayaty, “Iraq’s Sectarian Myth,” Al-Ahram and anti-occupation. This is proven by their Weekly, Issue 747, 16-22 June 2005. sympathy and cooperation with resistance http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/747/re7.htm 33 US Genocide in Iraq movements that developed throughout and a newly recruited Iraqi army, also based successive attempts by foreign imperial on sectarian quotas, that is to this day reported powers to occupy Iraq by taking its capital, be as being unreliable, poorly equipped and it at the time of the Mongols or the British. poorly trained. The occupation resorts to two The arrogance and ignorance of US strategists different military tactics: 1) Terror and thought that by awe and corruption they could targeted assassinations, and 2) A campaign of destroy Iraqi nationalism and identity. In urbicides and mass incarceration. attacking Sunnis they thought that they could In an attempt to divide the Iraqi population and win Kurds and Shias. They forgot the factors criminalise its popular resistance, the which stand against their theoretical occupation conducts numerous “black-ops” — suppositions: 1) There is no ethnically or patent US and UK covert attacks on Shia sectarian pure region in Iraq. An important populated areas such as markets, mosques, bus Sunni population in the south and one million stations, etc. These operations are then Kurds in Baghdad illustrates this point; 2) A attributed to the popular resistance in order to third of Iraqi marriages are inter-communal criminalise it and divide it from its base of marriages; 3) Most Iraqi tribes are composed support across the whole population. All of Sunnis and Shias together; 4) The large bombings in mosques and civil gathering Iraqi middle class is secular; 5) Iraqi identity places, representative of a long list of acts has nothing to do with religion, sect or aimed to agitate, divide and terrorise the Iraqi ethnicity; 6) Class interest is more important population, are denounced and denied by the for the people than their ideologies; 7) Iraqis Iraqi armed resistance and never investigated are all inheritors of the same civilisations, the by so-called sovereign successive Iraqi latest being the Arab Muslim civilisation; and governments. 8) More than 80 per cent of Iraqis are Arabs Throughout the attempt to conduct illegal and they are proud of it. elections, feeding off propaganda In 2004, the US began a new phase in its criminalising the Baath Party and assimilating project by attacking Fallujah and Najaf. It was the Baath with Sunnis, waves of mass evident then that the occupation was pushing detentions are followed by the strafing and all Iraq against its project. Whatever the levelling of entire cities (including Fallujah propaganda, Iraqis understood that the US and Tel Afar, Al-Qaem, Haditha, Ramadi, wants to subjugate them by force and that Samarra). Scandals of war crimes, crimes democracy is a lie. By late 2004, unable to against humanity, and grave human rights break the backbone of the growing resistance abuses continually arise, and collective movement, and due to the nature of guerrilla punishment through food deprivation and warfare being unable to differentiate the large-scale round-ups of the male population population from its assailants, the occupation are common. The targeting of the educated further targets the population. middle class by occupation sponsored militias We now enter a period of escalating and death squads starts to spike by late 2004, repression, especially affecting the central part especially in Baghdad, with thousands of of Iraq and running in parallel with the US forced disappearances and the beginning of an militarily-imposed sectarian “political exodus from Iraq that by 2007 would top four process”. Having disbanded the national army, million. the occupation relies primarily upon sectarian The Iraqi resistance, through its popular militias with poor local and no national ties, support, proves its capacity to collect

34 US Genocide in Iraq

information quicker than the occupying forces In February 2006, in what seems a desperate and their generous payouts. One major blow to attempt to impose civil war, the occupation the occupation is the attack inside a refectory and its militias organise the bombing of the within an American military base near Mosul, Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra, one of the killing 19 soldiers and wounding 59 others.81 most sacred shrines for Shia communities The Iraqi population, harbouring the worldwide. In a matter of hours, as expected, resistance, was by then already a permanent sectarian militias burn down holy Sunni target, but this attack widens US suspicion mosques all over Baghdad and kill scores of even to collaborators. The feeling of civilians in summary executions, all under the insecurity, even within their fortified barracks, protection and supervision of occupation force and extreme tension due to the lack of trust in air cover. A campaign of ethnic cleansing at local translators, starts breaking the morale of the hands of governmental militias is not the occupying troops. contained and continues to this day. After massive waves of indiscriminate With the failure of the political process due to repression, the central part of Iraq refuses to the impossible real life conditions to which participate to the “elections”, while southern Iraqis are subjected, and the military, political Iraq, under British occupation, is called by the and moral achievements of the Iraqi people clergy to participate, officially as a means to represented by the resistance — that is to say elect a parliament that would call for a the legal Iraqi army — the US tries to use the timetable for withdrawal. Over 50 per cent of illegal tribunal it created to execute members the population overall boycotts the elections, of the legal Iraqi government as an instrument de-legitimising the “political process”. As the of propaganda. The fate and the illegal trial of population stands in solidarity against US President Saddam Hussein in particular is plans, the occupation appears increasingly instrumentalised to revive sectarianism and to eager to instrumentalise this division of tactics attempt to divide the different currents of the and pit Iraqis against each other. From this resistance among and within themselves. moment onwards, US forces try to build a Although the Iraqi resistance is not borne of a “new army” by unofficially incorporating person, party, sect or religion, the trial, by sectarian militias into the security apparatus, refusing Saddam Hussein prisoner of war none of which have allegiance to the central status, is aimed to revive the idea that Saddam government and largely operate outside of its Hussein equals Baathism that equals Sunnism control. that equals Arabism. Its political aim is to By the start of 2006, attempts to pacify prevent the resistance from defending the Iraqi Baghdad have failed for the third time. Despite state by presenting them as only defending indiscriminate incarceration, blackmail, Saddam and the Sunnis. In addition, the trial is hostage taking, the walling-off of towns, food used to ignite sectarian divisions, as the chief deprivation and massive human rights prosecutor is known to be Shia and the violations, the resistance is reportedly presiding judge known to be Kurd. developing more sophisticated weapons and As with the political process, the biased and able to conduct up to 1,000 attacks against flawed theatre of “victor’s justice” announces occupation forces each month. Its resolve the nature of the entity the occupation intends cannot be broken and new recruits volunteer to establish in place of the Iraqi state. Amid everyday. the US-authored genocide unfolding in ferocious force, Saddam Hussein’s alleged 81 http://counterpunch.org/patrick12222004.html 35 US Genocide in Iraq crimes pale in significance. In dignity and resistance, armed, political and popular. Faced displaying essential Iraqi patriotism, Saddam with impending defeat, the US accuses its Hussein succeeds in convincing Iraqis that he proxies of its own failure in hope of winning was not sectarian and remains anti-imperial. the hearts of Iraqis. He reflects until his last breath the Iraqi This marks the entrance of a strategy of people’s refusal to be subjugated. annihilation in the political sphere. No one is Because of the trial’s failure to achieve its the American’s friend. Timed revelations political goals, the hanging, its timing, method begin to surface about secret government and perpetrators (an assuredly soon-to-be prisons. Constant crisis meetings are held and public execution overseen by a Shia public admonishments of puppet Prime government), is used by the occupation for the Minister Maliki are frequent. Meanwhile, the same ongoing purpose of igniting sectarian Green Zone is all but empty. Iraqi divisions and creating a vacuum of leadership parliamentarians award themselves a two- in the Baath Party and the Iraqi resistance. month 2007 summer holiday, several Contrasted by the final dignity of Iraq’s legal rumoured to be approaching Western states for president on the gallows, it is evident to all asylum — an option the chief judge in the trial that the occupation has expended all its of Saddam Hussein took within days of the political cards. It is also forced to realise that president’s summary execution. the Baath current, personified in the integrity The strategy of annihilation is paralleled in the of the president, constitutes the backbone of military sphere with what in 2007 will be the resistance to its occupation, and that in known as “the surge”. On 10 October 2006, struggle it is experiencing a renaissance. resistance forces engage the occupation at In hanging Saddam as a symbol, the US Forward Base Camp Falcon, where occupation intended to create a leadership crisis among ammunition reserves for the whole of the and between the old guard and the struggling Baghdad region are kept. An undisclosed new young Baathists — a confrontation number of occupation forces are killed as the between their cultures. The aim was to divide entire camp burns to the ground, lighting up the movement and reveal potential candidates the skies of Baghdad. This defeat will cost the for compromise, as well as signifying clearly occupation $1 billion. This attack is so well to the civil resistance that there is no limit to planned and carried out that it seems the occupation’s will. The hanging coming on impossible for the US to hide anymore that it the Muslim day of forgiveness — Eid Al-Adha is battling an experienced army. — is a further intended injury and an insult to The retaliation will show no mercy. Rejecting Muslims and Arabs worldwide. These the Baker-Hamilton Report recommendations, calculations failed. The resistance intensified, and despite the concerns it expresses on the declaring that in the place of Saddam Hussein state of the US military, Bush orders an thousands of Saddams will rise. increase in US force levels, redeploying — Neither the constitution nor the National whereas through much of 2006 they had been Assembly will be able to achieve the core garrisoned — US forces back into Iraqi objective of the United States. Having neighbourhoods. Exhausted by the armed destroyed the Iraqi state, the US’s own resistance, US forces resort to walling-in entire handpicked proxies prove unable to build a districts of Baghdad — a strategy already functioning state of any kind. In reality, a tested in other Iraqi cities. Amid the shooting parallel state exists, composed of the Iraqi down of numerous US helicopters by the

36 US Genocide in Iraq

armed resistance, the US launches bombing 6. Interpreting genocide in Iraq campaigns that are as disproportionate and From the strategic context mapped above, it is indiscriminate as they are futile. The Iraqi clear that the United States not only had a resistance responds by reportedly shooting desire, but also in the minds of the down an F-16. neoconservative right has been compelled to The US is out of options in its “New Iraq”. pursue a strategy of genocide in Iraq. This Although it continues manoeuvring politically, strategy has taken two forms: 1) An overall reinforcing its destruction of the life of Iraqi genocide contained in, and following from, the society, it has only two choices: 1) Accept its imperative of destroying Iraq as a state and a defeat and a humiliating exit; or 2) nation; 2) Specific genocide pursued through Exterminate the population. The “surge the implementation of this agenda against strategy”, the walling-in of Baghdad districts82, definable groups within the nation of Iraq. the project to impose on 50 localities the same In the first instance, the combination of 13 constraints imposed on Fallujah (electronic years of sanctions and the ravages of the IDs, check points at all points of entry, only ground occupation have demonstrably proven residents allowed in), the four million subjected the Iraqi people as a defined national exiled, the non-recognition of the resistance group to conditions of life calculated to bring amid its continual attacks and military-style about its physical destruction in whole or in anti-occupation operations in Baghdad, reveals part. In reference to sanctions, in the words of that the occupation, whatever choice it makes, Marc Bossuyt: has lost. It was genocide for a purpose, now it is genocide without purpose. Baghdad can The sanctions regime against Iraq has as never be subjugated. its clear purpose the deliberate infliction on the Iraqi people of conditions of life As for Iraqi resources, in the time of the no-fly (lack of adequate food, medicines, etc.) zones it was US that destroyed Iraq’s oil calculated to bring about its physical industry to prevent Iraq from profiting from oil destruction in whole or in part. It does not revenues. After the occupation, it is the matter that this deliberate physical Iraqi people who prevent the occupation from destruction has as its ostensible objective using oil revenues to further its project of the security of the region. Once clear national subjugation. The US in its plans evidence was available that thousands of forgot that the central region that it calls civilians were dying and that hundreds of “Sunni” controls all Iraq’s communications, thousands would die in the future as the pipelines and, for historical reasons, the Security Council continued the sanctions, military and technical and scientific cadre. the deaths were no longer an unintended Even if the US were to attempt to enforce its side effect — the Security Council was strategy of annihilation by imposing a responsible for all known consequences of parliament compliant enough to pass the oil its actions. The sanctioning bodies cannot law it wants, in the long term it will fail. Once be absolved from having the “intent to the occupation leaves, all of its laws will be destroy” the Iraqi people.83 revoked, Iraqis reconstructing Iraq as they did under sanctions: in the name and the benefit of all Iraqis. 83 Marc Bossuyt, “The adverse consequences of economic sanctions on the enjoyment of human rights,” August 2000, UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion 82 http://brusselstribunal.org/Wall.htm and Protection of Human Rights 37 US Genocide in Iraq

The destruction of the Iraqi state — a subordinate state based on ethnicity and necessary condition of the implementation of sectarian identity: a state of parties, US global, regional and national goals — has lineages and religious references rather been an objective attempt to render “unviable” than a state of equal and free citizens. By the nation of Iraq in the context of a strategy of dividing the state into three or more weak partition, Balkanisation, the destruction of and conflicting entities according to the Iraq’s unifying Muslim Arab identity, and the virtual lines of blood and sectarianism, the erasure of the very concept of being “Iraqi”. US, in reality, draws a map corresponding Only by destroying Iraq as a state and nation to the occupation’s own interests in oil. could the United States advance in its bid for This programmed division necessitated the global hegemony and “full spectrum abolition of the Iraqi state; the dismantling dominance.” Only by destroying the unifying of its apparatus and institutions and an Muslim Arab identity of Iraqis could the ongoing plan of privatisation of state- United States hope to control the 6,000-year owned industries, buildings, lands and old geopolitical entity that is Iraq. services.84 In thinking about what the state is, we must DeBaathification is another pretext for the bear in mind two aspects: 1) The state is the same ends. Given its centrality in the operation sum of the entire social, cultural, political and of the state, destroying the Baath Party — an economic history of a given people, translated openly stated objective of the US military into language, social norms, customs, intervention, consciously planned in advance85 identifications, urban formations, patterns of — necessarily subjected the entire Iraqi life, and natural social unities that inform and population to conditions of insecurity and mould the feeling of citizenship, and that exist mass deprivation. In reality, deBaathification independent of concepts as an historical is nothing more than collective punishment reality; 2) The state is the historical guarantor and a canard used to justify disbanding the of the propagation and development — the army, the police, the education system, and the very existence — of a given people; it is entire administrative cadre. indivisible and cross-generational, and is a Further, the systematic destruction of necessity to existence itself. education86, heath care87, and all primary In reference to post-invasion US policy, in the services88, demonstrates US refusal that Iraq words of Abdul Ilah Albayaty: — and by example any Arab state — Beside controlling and plundering the independently develop conditions of national development and life sustainability. The natural resources of Iraq, the United 89 States’ plan consisted in abolishing the systematic assassination of academics , health concept of citizenship — the basis of any modern state. It annulled sovereignty, destroyed heritage and memory, and took 84 Abdul Ilah Albayaty, “Why the US will lose,” Al- over Iraqi wealth in an attempt to divide Ahram Weekly, Issue 767, 2-9 November 2005. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/767/op8.htm the country and destroy its Arab and 85 Islamic geopolitical and civilisation-based The Future Iraq Project advocated deBaathification “of all facets of Iraqi life.” affiliations. The occupation has tried, and http://thememoryhole.org/state/future_of_iraq/ continues to try, to replace Iraq by a 86 http://brusselstribunal.org/Academics170407.htm 87 http://brusselstribunal.org/Health200307.htm 88 (E/CN.4/Sub.2/2000/33) http://csmonitor.com/2005/0811/p01s03-woiq.html http://USgenocide.org/Bossuyt.pdf 89 http://brusselstribunal.org/Academics.htm 38 US Genocide in Iraq

professionals90, engineers, journalists91, In regards to specific genocide, it appears clear scientists, and lawyers92 throughout the period that: 1) Sunnis in Iraq have been of US occupation reveals an objective attempt disproportionately targeted by US military to liquidate, or forcedly expel, the educated action and the constitution of a sectarian Iraqi middle class that possesses the scientific, environment that criminalises Sunnis and technical, administrative, civil and military militates towards their erasure for being Sunni. skills necessary to guide Iraq on the strategic This constitutes genocide of a religious group path of independence, democracy and as defined by the Genocide Convention; 2) development. Members of the Iraqi Baath Party have been The US project of destroying the Iraqi state targeted not only for assassination but also and nation, however, cannot but fail: dispossessed of their material means of survival. That members of the Iraqi Baath The United States established a collision Party adhere or not adhere to a political course confrontation with Iraqi society programme is irrelevant; their primary identity when it liquidated the Iraqi state, is their Iraqi citizenship, and they constitute an destroying its accomplishments and Iraqi national group objectively and by erasing its memory. It was oblivious to the ideology, the loss of which in whole or simple truth that society is not just a substantial part renders the state of Iraq political movement that can be conquered, unviable as an entity, threatening the survival or a number of individuals who may be of the Iraqi nation; and 3) The targeting of the apprehended, bribed or even killed. It is all Iraqi middle class, as an ethnic group as the living people in a given country. Like enumerated in US Code, has also rendered the other live societies, Iraqi society possesses state of Iraq unviable, threatening the survival huge capabilities — a sophisticated of the Iraqi nation. legacy, ancient civilisations and an experienced patriotic movement. In sum, the colonial nature of US policy is American strategists, while building their manifest, suggesting, along the lines set out by model for Iraq, missed or disregarded the Sartre, that intent to commit genocide is fact that social movements are based on inherent to its rationality. Certainly solid realities and lived experience, and “submission” amounts to genocide for the cannot just be created on the whim of a Iraqi people; not only socially and culturally, political decision or through insidious under the yoke of sectarian forces imposed on forms of pressure.93 Iraq by the US, but also economically, given that the overall US strategy is clearly defined To the extent to which US strategists continue as seizing Iraqi oil and controlling Iraq as a to refuse to recognise — or are not forced to whole as part of a global strategy of recognise — this reality, the slow genocide of commanding the resources of the entire Iraq as a state and nation will continue. Middle East and Eurasian area. The plunder and expropriation of the primary wealth- creating natural resources of a foreign state

90 and nation by definition is an act that denies http://wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/irq2- that state and nation its primary conditions of m21.shtml 91 http://brusselstribunal.org/JournalistKilled.htm development and life. 92 http://irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71864 Further, in the context of popular resistance, 93 Abdul Ilah Albayaty, “Why the US will lose,” Al- the “logic” of neo-colonial genocide is present. Ahram Weekly, Issue 767, 2-9 November 2005. With the United States choosing a “surge http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/767/op8.htm 39 US Genocide in Iraq strategy” over a timetable for withdrawal, it 7. Conclusion appears that a strategy of annihilation — tested What has happened in Iraq is more than simple and devolved into attempts to spark civil war divide and rule. The biggest lie is that the US until now — has been embraced in full. The occupation of Iraq is a blunder. Analysis of the overall tendency is not only towards the strategic logic for destroying Iraq, as well an continuance of the slow genocide of Iraq as a understanding of the nature of colonial war nation, having destroyed the central state and and how the US occupation has unfolded, brought about conditions of mass deprivation, reveals that it is not the occupation that veered but a possible spike in conscious extermination from its aims, but rather the Iraqi people who as the occupation struggles to survive in the in courage resisted. The longer the situation face of overwhelming civil resistance. persists, the more proven is the fortitude of the For Sartre two conditions, in such a situation, Iraqi people. lead to the only way out — the withdrawal of The US’s declaration of global permanent war the colonial power: 1) Domestic unrest within has revived the strategy of total conquest, the colonial state, opposing the barbarity of entailing a reduction of human life as a whole what is done in the name of “national interest”; to its bare essence where people no longer and 2) A realisation on behalf of colonial state have a history as such but are mere things. military commanders that the war cannot be Akin to a domestic state of emergency, the won, leaving withdrawal as the only option. global “war on terror” declared and policed by The second condition appears present. Dissent the United States presages a generalised within the US military — and not only at the suspension of customary global civil rights and level of ground troops — is growing. Only the inaugurates an era that militates towards total arrogance and disregard for life and conquest or total destruction. While Iraqis coexistence that is embodied in the ideologues have borne the brunt, in reality it is an attack and officials of the current US administration on the whole of humanity. blocks common sense from prevailing. As As such, the ongoing US genocide on Iraq is Sartre stated 40 years ago, the United States is clearly and demonstrably a threat to not guilty of having invented genocide; it is international peace. International law must be guilty of having “preferred a policy of war and wrested from its foundation as a means of aggression aimed at total genocide to a policy legitimising and humanising war and instead of peace, the only other alternative, because it criminalise it unequivocally. Establishing as would have implied a necessary criminal US imperial policies is the first step reconsideration of [its] principal objectives.” towards forging the alternative world the bulk This guilt, indeed, is summed up in the very of humanity hopes for and believes in. notion of the “Project for a New American Genocide is a crime over which all states Century”. should, and many can, exercise universal As to the first condition, a mass injection of jurisdiction.94 That states have fallen silent energy is needed. It is sad but a fact that leaves agency to the people of the world. people grow accustomed to atrocity. But Sartre’s analysis should be binding, for we have in mass action a chance to help bring all 94 of this to an end. It is the decisive struggle of Theodor Meron, “International Criminalization of Internal Atrocities”, American Journal of International our time. Law, Volume 89 (1995), p. 569, Kenneth C Randall, “Universal Jurisdiction under International Law”, Texas Law Review, Volume 66 (1988), pp. 785, 835-837. 40 US Genocide in Iraq

To end this genocide unfolding in front of us, Wilful destruction of electricity and water unity of purpose is necessary across the infrastructure multiple fronts of action for social justice. Wilful destruction of sanitation Global civil disobedience need not be infrastructure. conceived along the lines of a single plan. Widespread forced disappearances Resistance is always a matter of situation. The Assassinations of members of the Baath aim must be coordinated action at local, Party as a defined national group national and international levels, in shifting Assassinations of doctors as members of a alliances that gather and displace while national group maintaining pressure on all fronts. Assassinations of academics as members Save the humanity in you by being against this of a national group genocide. Assassinations of lawyers as members of a national group Whereas thousands of Iraqis are falling, in Assassinations of journalists as members reality, the United States cannot make its of a national group strategy work. In pursuing a policy of Killings by US-supported death squads genocide the United States has committed Killings by US-supported sectarian militias moral suicide. The people of the world can and Instigation of sectarian strife leading to tit- must step into the vacuum its moral collapse for-tat killings opens. We must remember and claim what Widespread use of DU leading to cancer modern states supposedly concede: that people and leukaemia are the sole source of sovereignty, and that Wilful destruction of the healthcare system international law is the patrimony of the leading to mass preventable deaths development of human civilisation. (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to In defending both, we defend the Iraqi people. members of the group; Widespread use of torture 8. Appendix 1990-2003 sanctions regime Use of disproportionate and indiscriminate According to Article 2 of the Genocide force Convention, the following arguably constitute Widespread use of DU leading to cancer, qualifying acts of genocide in Iraq, 1990-2007. leukaemia, sterility and birth defects All have been conducted by US forces, Wilful dismantling of the state in all its multinational forces, and/or US-supported aspects, individually and severally death squads, militias or Iraqi security forces Wilful destruction of electricity and water under the final military authority of the United infrastructure States: Wilful destruction of sanitation (a) Killing members of the group infrastructure Use of disproportionate and indiscriminate Wilful destruction of Iraqi heritage force Wilful destruction of religious sites Disproportionate killings of members of Wilful destruction of Iraqi civil the middle class as a defined national infrastructure group Disproportionate killings of members of Disproportionate killings of Sunnis as a the middle class religious group Disproportionate killings of Sunnis Widespread forced disappearances

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Assassinations of members of the Baath Wilful destruction of Iraqi civil Party infrastructure Assassinations of doctors Disproportionate killings of members of Assassinations of academics the middle class Assassinations of lawyers Disproportionate killings of Sunnis Assassinations of journalists Widespread forced disappearances US support for death squads Assassinations of members of the Baath US support for sectarian militias Party Instigation of general terror Assassinations of the Iraqi resistance Instigation of sectarian strife Assassinations of doctors Mass arbitrary detention Assassinations of academics Mass kidnapping Assassinations of lawyers Mass extortion Assassinations of journalists Mass rape US support for death squads Mass corruption US support for sectarian militias Mass humiliation Instigation of general terror Instigation of a drug culture Instigation of sectarian strife Instigation of prostitution Mass arbitrary detention Mass unemployment Mass kidnapping Mass impoverishment Mass extortion Mass malnourishment Mass torture Ghettoisation Mass rape Restrictions on movement Mass corruption Urbicide Mass humiliation Historicide Instigatio n of a drug culture Sociocide Instigation of prostitution Policide Mass unemployment (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group Mass impoverishment conditions of life calculated to bring about its Mass malnourishment physical destruction in whole or in part; Ghettoisation 1990-2003 sanctions regime Restrictions on movement Use of disproportionate and indiscriminate Urbicide force Historicide Widespread use of DU and the Sociocide contamination of land and water Policide resources (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent Wilful dismantling of the state in all its births within the group; aspects, individually and severally Widespread use of DU leading to sterility Wilful destruction of electricity and water and birth defects infrastructure Instigation of general terror Wilful destruction of sanitation Mass arbitrary detention infrastructure Mass impoverishment Wilful destruction of Iraqi heritage Mass malnourishment Wilful destruction of religious sites Ghettoisation Restrictions on movement

42 US Genocide in Iraq

Urbicide Sociocide According to Article 3, the following arguably constitute qualifying crimes in Iraq: (a) Genocide; All aspects noted above, individually and severally (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; US strategic agenda in Iraq, 1990 to the present Ongoing US strategic adjustments All members of Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I), individually and severally The Iraqi government as an arm of the occupation All members of the United Nations, individually and severally, who supported sanctions and the 2003 invasion (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; “Shock and Awe” Statements of US neoconservatives Statements of US “liberal hawks” Right wing and liberal US media alike in contributing to the vilification of Iraqis Right wing and liberal US media alike in contributing to the vilification of the Iraqi Baath Party Right wing and liberal US media alike in contributing to sectarian US corporate propaganda (d) Attempt to commit genocide; All aspects noted above, individually and severally (e) Complicity in genocide. All members of MNF-I, individually and severally The Iraqi government as an arm of the occupation All members of the United Nations, individually and severally, who failed to stop sanctions and the 2003 invasion

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