28th November 2011
Guest Writer for Wake Up World
Recently, a War Crimes Tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, found former President of the United States George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of war crimes for their involvement in the Iraq war.
The panel was convened as part of an initiative by former Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohamad, who resigned in 2003 after 22 years in power.
Mohamad has been a consistently vitriolic critic of the Iraq war and originally unveiled his plans for the tribunal in 2007.
In the past Mohamad has called Bush and Blair “child killers” and “war criminals,” and the tribunal’s four-day hearing backed up his statements.
The Tribunal was composed of five separate panels which unanimously found both Bush and Blair guilty of “crimes against the peace.”
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The Tribunal deliberated over the case and decided unanimously that the first accused George Bush and second accused Tony Blair have been found guilty of crimes against peace,” the tribunal said in a statement.
“Unlawful use of force threatens the world to return to a state of lawlessness. The acts of the accused were unlawful,” they added.
They found that the invasion of Iraq, which began in 2003, was a flagrant violation of international law, regardless of the fact that it was done under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction.
Of course, as we all know now, these allegations turned out to be deliberately falsified and flew in the face of all of the evidence that they had at the time.
However, the sights were set on Saddam Hussein and nothing could be done to stop the globalist war machine once it had been set in motion, even if it meant the deaths of countless Iraqis and Western troops who believed they were actually fighting to keep the world safe.
In the course of the tribunal’s deliberation, they actually addressed the fact that the Bush administration had forged documents which purported to show that Saddam Hussein was developing and storing weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion.
They pointed out that the Bush and Blair administrations, along with the higher-ups in both nations, must have known the entire time that the Saddam Hussein regime did not possess weapons of mass destruction, proving that they intentionally fabricated evidence to help draw support for the act of aggression against Iraq.
An international law expert and prosecutor, Francis Boyle, told Iranian news agency Press TV, “Bush and Blair are found guilty under the same law that applied to the Nazis after the end of World War II. So, they are international criminals guilty of Nuremburg crimes against peace and they should be prosecuted by any state in the world that gets a hold of them.”
“And we will continue our efforts to bring Bush and Blair to justice and put them in jail,” Boyle added.
The tribunal ruled that Bush and Blair’s decision to bring the United States and the United Kingdom to war against Iraq was not only a blatant breach of law but also an act of aggression that resulted in the mass murder of the people of Iraq.
After the U.S.-led invasion, which destroyed the Iraqi infrastructure and crippled the economy, violence in the nation skyrocketed with bombings becoming a tragic fact of life.
The invasion lead to the violent deaths of over one million Iraqi people according to a study carried out by well-renowned British polling agency Opinion Research Business.
However, this study only covered fifteen of the eighteen provinces in Iraq, leaving two of the most restive regions of Kerbala and Anbar unstudied.
The northern province of Arbil could not be studied because local authorities would not give the British group a permit to conduct the work which included in-person interviews with 2,414 adult Iraqis.
As Project Censored points out, the death toll in Iraq is larger than the estimated number of dead as a result of the 1994 Rwandan genocide which left an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 dead.
The judges declared that the findings of the tribunal would be provided to the signatory nations of the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC).
They also said that they would be adding the names of Bush and Blair to a war crimes register in hopes that it would encourage other Rome Statute signatories to pursue prosecution.
Gurdial Singh Nijar, a prosecutor, told Press TV, “There is also a recommendation that this be circulated to states because all states have universal jurisdiction and therefore, whenever Bush or Blair appears within their shores there is an obligation under international law to commit these criminals – international war criminals – through the justice system.”
While at this point this decision is solely a symbolic victory, it is indeed a major step forward in bringing the deceitful criminals Bush and Blair to justice.
Hopefully the statements of Nijar will be taken to heart by nations around the globe, forcing Bush and Blair to remain in the United States and UK for fear of being locked up if they were to leave.
Eventually, if true change is brought to these Western nations and the ideals of peace, justice, and freedom are raised up to their proper place, Bush and Blair could be brought before an international court regardless of where they hide.
About the author:
Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End the Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at [email protected]
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