Friday, April 04, 2008

Friday Questions for Diane, April 4, 2008

The John Yoo torture memo is noteworthy, as further hard evidence of the cold mentality and legal manipulations of the Bush/Cheney administration, but there is little new information there.

It would serve the public so much better if the media would cover the release this week of the “U.S. War Crimes in Iraq 2007-2008”, a report by Karen Parker, President of the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers and Chief Delegate to the United Nations for the International Education Development/Humanitarian Law Project, along with author/policy analyst Bill Rau, produced by Consumers For Peace.

In this update to their 2006 report, Ms. Parker and Mr. Rau shine a light on the increase of civilian fatalities, with great detail, as the U.S. has increased the use of “air power” in place of ground troops. This strategy continues to result in massive, indiscriminate killing and maiming of the civilian population, and completely goes against international humanitarian rights law as defined by the United Nations.

They point out that reports on the success of the surge are based on the decrease in Iraqis killing other Iraqis. However, the number of Iraqis killed by the U.S. is not counted when claiming the surge has been a success.

The report calls for Congress to question General Petraeus about these missing statistics that would show the impact of U.S. military actions and policies on the Iraqi people.

Do your fine journalists there today think this a worthy area of investigation?

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