8/26, NYC: War Crimes Tribunal on Iraq

War Crimes Tribunal on Iraq: the case against Bush
http://www.PeopleJudgeBush.org

War Crimes Tribunal
Thursday August 26
3-9 pm
Martin Luther King Auditorium
65th St & Amsterdam, Manhattan, NY
212-633-6646

By Heather Cottin

Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. attorney general, has charged that
President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary
of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Attorney General John David Ashcroft
are guilty of "crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes."

Clark added that the U.S. government under George W. Bush was
"assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law."

Clark's statement was read to thousands who gathered to protest the
Democratic National Convention on Boston Common July 25.

Ramsey Clark's charges will form the basis for the Iraq War Crimes
Tribunal set for August 26 from 3:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the Martin
Luther King Jr. Auditorium, located at 65th St. and Amsterdam Ave. in
New York City.

Dozens of leading anti-war activists from India, Japan, South Korea,
Spain, Belgium, Germany, Italy and other countries, as well as from
the U.S., will be traveling to the tribunal to give testimony against
the Bush administration.

"It is important," said John Catalinotto, an organizer for the
tribunal, "that people coming to protest the Republican National
Convention understand the international character of the anti-war
movement and hear the findings of the international war crimes
tribunals on Iraq."

The event will be a first in the series of protests against the
Republican National Convention in the city.

The two big-business parties both promise to expand the number of U.S.
troops occupying Iraq. But opposition to this brutal occupation is
growing too.

Check out PeopleJudgeBush.org

Ramsey Clark is writing the indictment that will charge the Bush
administration with causing the death and maiming of tens of thousands
of Iraqis and hundreds of U.S. GIs, and providing false and deceptive
rationales for war.

The gravest charge is that the U.S. government is guilty of crimes
against peace--a crime prohibited by the United Nations Charter, the
Nuremberg Principles, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Clark states that the U.S. is responsible for "authorizing, ordering
and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret
and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and
psychological coercion of prisoners."

The tribunal will investigate the "ordering and condoning [of] direct
attacks on civilians, [and] civilian facilities." They will charge
that the U.S. has threatened "the independence and sovereignty of Iraq
by belligerently changing its government by force and assaulting Iraq
in a war of aggression."

The International Action Center, organizing for the tribunal, has
created a new web site. PeopleJudgeBush.org will collect history,
statistics, testimony and pictures, and give people a concrete way to
vote against the illegal war in Iraq. The website will provide
information and photographs of the depredations of the war censored by
the U.S. media.

The web site solicits testimony by e-mail of "photos, eyewitness
accounts, research and ideas that can be used as evidence to build a
case against the perpetrators of U.S. war crimes against Iraq."

It lists the crimes that expert witnesses with testify
about--including war profiteering and privatizing of national
resources, cultural genocide and the systematic looting of Iraq's art,
archives and cultural institutions.

Testimonies will describe the use of prohibited weapons, including
cluster bombs and depleted uranium. The tribunal will expose and
oppose the theft of trillions of dollars from domestic social services
so that the U.S. can pursue its policy of "Endless War" that has
already targeted Haiti, Iran, Palestine, the Philippines, North Korea
and Cuba.

The PeopleJudgeBush.org website concludes, "We have a responsibility
to hold this administration accountable for the past and continuing
horrors of the war and occupation... The people of the world know that
it is those in the highest echelons of the U.S. government who are
responsible for the atrocities, torture, deaths and war crimes in Iraq."


War Crimes Tribunal
Thursday August 26
3-9 pm
Martin Luther King Auditorium
65th St & Amsterdam, Manhattan, NY
212-633-6646


http://www.PeopleJudgeBush.org

Register for the Tribunal! http://www.peoplejudgebush.org/register.shtml

Donate to the Tribunal! http://www.peoplejudgebush.org/donate.shtml