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War With Iran Comment by Larry Ross, October 21, 2004 Noam Chomsky and Professor Francis Boyle,
an international lawyer, both agree that "if Bush decides it is necessary
to go to war in order to win in November, he will go to war" with Iran,
Syria or North Korea. In my writings I have predicted
the same thing. However the polls show Bush is ahead, so he may not
go to war with some nation until after the election. However Cheney has
said terrorists may attack an American
city with nuclear weapons if Kerry is elected.
The Bush campaign may also issue an official terror alert in the attempt
to frighten people into voting for him. If Bush does not go to war and
it looks as if he might lose the US
elections, many writers suggest that the voting machines can be fixed
to show that Bush has won.
The Boyle article on impeaching Bush and
war crimes, helps reinforce the verdict
of Christchurch PAN's War Crimes Trial of Bush, Blair and Howard that
they are guilty of many war crimes and should all be sentenced to life
imprisonment.
Larry Ross,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Bush Censure Is Not Enough: Boyle by Professor Francis Boyle, August 27, 2004
In answer to your question, there is now considerable writing that the US will authorize an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr. Also, the US will now be engaging in major naval maneuvers right off the coast of North Korea in late October. So Syria, Iran, and North Korea--the last two part of the "axis of evil", along with Iraq. I stand by my conclusion, which Chomsky agrees with, that if Bush decides it is necessary to go to war in order to win in November, he will go to war. Remember that Clinton bombed Iraq in so-called Operation Desert Fox in order to try to stave off a vote of impeachment by the US House of Representatives. The US Nuclear Power Elite will stop at nothing to hold onto power. Of the three current targets, Syria, Iran and North Korea, Syria is the most likely because it cannot really defend itself. It is ripe for the picking by Bush--just like Iraq was. But again, anything can happen between now and November. Either a deliberate war against Syria, Iran or North Korea, or a scenario along the lines of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August. fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (voice)
217-244-1478 (fax)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Francis A. Boyle - August 27, 2004 Snowshoe Films
CENSURE IS NOT ENOUGH Transcript of an interview with Francis
A. Boyle
International Law Professor, University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
February 13, 2004
Author of the forthcoming book, DESTROYING WORLD ORDER, Boyle says a desperate Karl Rove-guided Bush administration may take the US to WAR AGAINST SYRIA if, by September, they think they will lose the 2004 election. Boyle says MoveOn.org's call for CENSURE
of George W. Bush is "A MEANINGLESS GESTURE, A COP-OUT, YOU MIGHT AS WELL
GO FOR IMPEACHMENT INSTEAD OF CENSURE."
Other topics include: Laurence Silberman and cover-up; Israeli involvement in Iraq. TRANSCRIPT
[Francis Boyle is professor of international at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Telephone interview conducted Feb. 13, 2004] Snowshoefilms: What’s the significance of Bush’s appointment of the notorious neo-con Laurence Silberman (retired federal appeals court judge) to be co-chair of the investigation into the “intelligence failures” over purported WMD in Iraq? COVER-UP Professor Boyle: He’s in there to cover the whole thing up. I don’t see anything independent coming from all this. The whole purpose, the whole strategy is designed to postpone it until after the election and then they’ll deal with it. Snowshoefilms: Don’t you think what it represents, too, is the incredible isolation of the Bush apparatus, picking from a very few select people who are totally compromised or who are part of the team in the first place? Boyle: They’re clearly trying to get away with it if they can, just like they did with the appointment of Kissinger to the September 11 commission and then they blew the whistle on him. I think Silberman was CIA counsel or something like that. He was in the general counsel’s office or he was general council. So all this is CIA-type stuff that’s going on here. They know exactly what they’re doing and they’re going to see if they can get away with it. And if they can get away with it, fine. They couldn’t on Kissinger. There was a furor. I don’t think people know enough about Silberman and the dirty tricks he’s been up to.* VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW Snowshoefilms: Under international law, what form of resistance is legitimate, with regard to Iraq? Boyle: The Iraqi people have a right to use military force to resist US occupation consistent with the laws of war. I mean, they can’t target civilians but other than that they can certainly use military force to this illegal, criminal invasion. Snowshoefilms: Who is monitoring US violations of international law? Boyle: It doesn’t appear to me that they’re obeying the Third or the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Everyone in Iraq, if they’re military or police and being detained for involvement in armed conflict, they have to be treated in accordance with the Third Geneva Convention. If they are civilians, they have to be treated in accordance with the Fourth Geneva Convention. It doesn’t seem to me we’re paying any attention to either Convention. We’re just picking them up. I guess we’re running a big internment facility there, near the airport. Thousands of people just being held and we don’t know their condition. Snowshoefilms: There’s no legal counsel for any of these folks? Boyle: Not that I’m aware of. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is supposed to be taking care of them and supervising it, but 1) they don’t say anything and 2), if you check into it, you’ll find out that we pay about 40 percent of the ICRC budget, so that’s a pretty slim reed to rest on. I don’t know but I’m not sure Saddam Hussein’s family has retained a lawyer to represent him. I heard Tariq Aziz family had retained a French lawyer, Berget. He’s demanded access. But the rest of them, they’re just there. The organization that’s supposed to look after them is the ICRC. So far, I don’t think they’ve done very much. I can’t say I’m overly optimistic that they’re going to do much. ISRAELI INVOLVEMENT IN IRAQ Snowshoefilms: The methods of the occupation in Iraq seem very close to those used by the Israeli Defense Forces and the Mossad… Boyle: We’ve had marines and others over there [in the Palestinian occupied territories]. That’s a matter of public record. We [the U.S.] have been analyzing their tactics against the Palestinians and they’ve been advising us on it, yeah. You can find that out there in published sources, not just the internet. And the Israelis – I think it’s been reported in the Israeli press – have been over in Iraq, advising us. And we’ve had our people over there watching what they’re doing in Janin and elsewhere. So it looks like the tactics are….they’re learning from the Israeli experience, unfortunately. CALL FOR CENSURE IS A COP-OUT Snowshoefilms: What about the impeachment proceedings versus censure? Boyle: Censure by Move On, that’s just a copout. They don’t have the guts to call for Bush to be impeached. It’s a total waste of time. It seems to me they’re just getting these people to do a meaningless gesture. If they wanted to accomplish something, Move On would support the impeachment campaign, and they’re not doing it. This [censure] is a sideshow. So what? They want something to do, but they don’t have the guts to back the impeachment campaign, so the best they could come up with was censure. They need to justify their existence, take in money. They need to mobilize people, but that [censure] doesn’t mean anything. You might as well go for impeachment instead of censure. DESTROYING WORLD ORDER: Boyle’s new book Snowshoefilms: What’s the status of the impeachment campaign? Boyle: We’re keeping the pressure on. What can I say? I have a new book coming out, Destroying World Order. It should be out in six weeks [May 2004], Clarity Press. It sums up the current status of the impeachment campaign. Ramsey Clark and I are moving forward. We’re keeping pressure at the grass roots. This is not a problem of drafting. The documents are there. They just need to be polished up. It’s really a question of getting one member of Congress with the guts, like the late [Congressman] Henry B. Gonzalez,** to put a bill of impeachment in. We’ll all mobilize behind him But right now we don’t have anyone. Snowshoefilms: Why wouldn’t Kucinich, at this point in the campaign, sign on to impeachment? Boyle: He was asked that at the beginning of the campaign and he said he was trying to unite and felt impeachment would divide us…. So I don’t know where he stands now. I support him, the positions he’s been taking. I’m not questioning his good faith one way or the other. I don’t know where he stands now [on impeachment]. We’re just moving forward with the grass roots because the members of Congress are afraid. Plus, many of them are compromised because they supported the war against Iraq. We’ve got to find someone who’s against the war and has a safe seat, and isn’t afraid. And there aren’t that many. I don’t know what Kucinich will do if he’s no longer running. Maybe he’ll put it in. WAR AGAINST SYRIA (OR THE U.S.?) IF KARL ROVE THINKS BUSH IS LOSING The main concern, though, is this – Noam Chomsky said the same thing – if we get to September and they think they’re going to lose the election, they’ll go to war, probably against Syria… It’s just like what happened in the 2002 congressional campaign. Karl Rove got the Senate back and more votes in the House by going to war against Iraq. And they’ll do the same thing this time. I think the most likely target is Syria. They’re setting Syria up for an attack. So they’ll sit there and wait and see how things turn out and after everyone goes on vacation in August, after Labor Day weekend, if they’re going to lose, I think they’ll got to war. Chomsky gave a lecture down in Cuba and he said the same thing. He didn’t identify Syria, but he said if they conclude it’s the only way they’re going to win an election, they’ll go to war. Snowshoefilms: What about [Michel] Chossudovsky’s notion that another internal major event could be – could occur – and that would be an internal war… Boyle: Right. ** Bill of Impeachment, Jan. 16, 1991 (see Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time (US War Crimes in the Gulf), 1992, p. 159.
***
STOPPING A POLICE STATE
Excerpts of an interview with Professor
Boyle, University of Illinois ,
Champaign-Urbana. The interview was
conducted April 28, 2003 in the
professor's office. The interview
is part three of a series.
The Federalist Society
"Justice Rehnquist joined the Supreme Court
before the founding of the Federalist
Society, but the four colleagues that he works with in the 5-4 majority
that we've seen now for several years - Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, O'Connor
have been members of the Federalist Society, appear at their functions,
and work with them -- and he works quite closely with those four Justices...This
same 5-4 majority gave the Presidency to Bush in violation of the Constitution
and a federal statute mandating that disputed elections get decided
by Congress - the House of Representatives.
"You have to understand the agenda of the
Federalist Society is to turn the United States and the federal judiciary
back to before Franklin Roosevelt and
the New Deal. That is how reactionary the Federalist Society really
is. Ashcroft is a member. His deputy
Viet Dinh, who drafted Patriot Act I and Patriot
Act II is a prominent member. White House counsel Gonzales is a
member. His entire staff are
members. Most of the Bush federal judiciary appointees
are members of the Federalist Society...
"You do not have to accept my word for that. It was Lawrence Walsh who has also said the same thing. Judge Walsh was independent counsel in the Iran/Contra scandal, by appointment of the Reagan administration. He's a life-long Republican. He worked for Dewey in New York . He then became deputy attorney general for President Eisenhower, and then a federal district judge, president of the American Bar Association. Judge Walsh is a conservative, as traditionally defined, and a conservative Republican. And even he has publicly condemned the Federalist Society for trying to turn the federal judiciary, and this country, back beyond Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. I think that gives you an idea of how radical these ideologues really are, and how dangerous their philosophies and practices are. And we are seeing this now - every day - in the Bush administration, at the White House, at the Department of Justice, and many of the other executive offices that have been populated by Federalist Society Lawyers."
International Criminal Court
"Right now a case is being prepared in
the International Criminal Court in the
Hague against Tony Blair and British government officials because Britain
is a party to the Rome statute on the International Criminal Court.
The US is not. President Clinton
signed it. Bush repudiated that immediately
upon coming to power [and] has done everything humanly possible
to sabotage the International Criminal Court. And the reason is obvious.
If you are contemplating an aggressive war against Afghanistan , and an
aggressive war against Iraq , you do not want an International Criminal
Court looking over your shoulder. That being said, I believe it
would be possible to include President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld, certainly Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz, Tommy
Franks and the others, in the British complaint - as aiders and abettors,
conspirators, those who are complicit. Basically you need to establish
a nexus, and the nexus would be: Britain
is a party [of the ICC] and Bush et al. are aiders and
abettors, facilitators, co-conspirators. They're complicit, they're accomplices..."
Impeachment "Last October, in light of the two horrendous
speeches given by Vice President Cheney
calling for a preventive war against Iraq, I set up a national
campaign to impeach Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft - and have been
working on it ever since then...a group of 10 students here set up a committee.
We have a web page. We've contacted just about every member of Congress
- in support of my draft bill of impeachment. Finally, on March
11, 2003, Congressman John Conyers, ranking member of the House judiciary
committee, that has jurisdiction over any bill of impeachment, called
for a meeting in Washington, DC to discuss introducing a draft bill of
impeachment against President Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft.
"At the meeting were 40 to 50 of his top
advisors, most of whom were lawyers.
And Congressman Conyers invited in myself and former Attorney General
Ramsey Clark to argue the case for impeaching them all.
"Ramsey also set up his campaign - I believe
it was January 17, 2003 . We are working independently of each other,
but in the same direction. For two hours, Ramsey and I did the best
we could (this was before the war started) to put in a bill of impeachment
right away. Most of the lawyers and advisors there are affiliated
with the Democratic National Committee (I'm not. I'm a political
independent.) and they seemed to take the position that it would be politically
inexpedient for the Democratic Party to put in a bill of impeachment at
this time. I didn't argue that point. It's not for me to tell
the Democrats how to get their people elected. I just argued the
merits of the issue: violations of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights,
Human Rights, the UN Charter, international
law, etc.
"Today there is now a second, revised draft
bill of impeachment sitting on Capitol
Hill. It is there. It is in circulation. What we need now
is pressure being brought to bear on
member of Congress to put this bill in - and
to make it clear that this is not a question of political expediency,
rather this is a question of our future republic.
"With all the faults and imperfections
and defects and indeed sometimes the crimes this republic has committed,
not only here internally - African Americans, American Indians - but externally,
we are still the oldest republic in the world - but you are going to have
to act to keep it that way. Because Bush and Ashcroft, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz want to turn this into a police state at home and an empire
abroad. So I would encourage you
all, contact members of Congress. They have to listen to their constituents.
Tell them you want that bill in right away, and that you will
support them when they put that bill in." updated
May 2003
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| Impeaching Bush (Weakest Standard) | February 27, 2004 | ||||
|
Ralph Nader says that Rep. John Conyers
is going to be filing a request for impeachment. Is the Impeach Bush movement
gathering steam? |
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