From the Radio Free Michigan archives ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu. ------------------------------------------------ FACES OF WAR: INSIDE THE DESERT STORM MORTUARY BY JONATHAN FRANKLIN DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, DELAWARE - Beneath the corpse, on a steel tray lays a clean, folded American flag. I slowly raise my eyes and focus upon the soldier's charred face. Under the bright mortuary light, the crude sutures in his black lips glisten. I step around the gurney to inspect his deflated skull. I'm supposed to be looking at this scene through the eyes of a moonlighting mortician, not a nosy journalist. But after weeks of preparation and now a day inside the Desert Storm mortuary, I'm beginning to think I could really embalm, if I had to. The chief mortician must be equally convinced as he summons me to his corpse. "Got your embalming license Franklin? You can start this afternoon." I ponder the idea only long enough to imagine the National Enquirer headline: "Undercover Journalist Embalms War Dead." I have seen enough - possibly too much - and I found a clue suggesting the Pentagon is masterfully underreporting the number of U.S. combat casualties. But for now, I need to escape. "Uh, I'm gonna grab some lunch and get my [embalming] license from my hotel room," I tell the stocky chief mortician. "I'll be back in a couple hours." As I wait for the hearse to escort me free, I take a last morbid stroll. I look once more at the vicious wounds. The insanity, the illusions never end. Calm clerks stuff Permaglo-packed bodies into crisp uniforms. Medals, ribbons and rank insignia are impeccably aligned across a soldier's lifeless chest. I visit each of the six naked bodies scattered across the tile floor. Rigor mortis has captured their last agonizing poses. In a far corner, a young Marine arches his neck back and draws his mouth wide, his last second must have been a terrifying scream. The last expression of the shrouded lump to his right will always be a mystery. "They're still looking for his head," a mortuary clerk whispers to me. Nearly a month before I entered the mortuary, I began gathering information. For nearly three weeks I buried myself in the world of morticians, embalmers, and mortuary science professors. Posing as an actor with an upcoming role as a novice embalmer who enters a military mortuary, I was openly welcomed into this notoriously closed society. I read Mortuary Management magazine until it felt obvious that Permaglo is an embalming fluid and Tk the king of the casket industry. I entered the mortuary to quell my hunch that the Pentagon is underreporting U.S. casualty figures. Military strategists knew, that if the U.S. television audience could be prevented from seeing - or knowing - about dead Americans, the war would retain popular support. The unprecedented reporting restrictions imposed upon the U.S. media assured that virtually no first hand descriptions or photos of dead Americans would leave the Gulf. Given the media's feeble attempts at independent reporting, why wouldn't military officers be tempted to lie during war's inevitable chaos? Inside the military's largest mortuary there is no chaos. The mortuary staff at Dover are professionals, they show no emotion. Except for one young secretary who is obviously unnerved: "Do something about that mouth," she shouts to no one in particular. "That mouth" is a grapefruit-sized hole torn through the face of a young soldier parked alongside the secretary's desk. A half dozen mortuary "Inspectors" huddle above the dead soldier. She will be rebuilt. She will be "cosmetized" and tucked into a fresh uniform. The illusion of a quiet peace may even rest upon her plaster lips. Every mortuary worker who saw her naked body recognize this lie. They know the violence which ripped through her body. Later that week, newspaper and television reports show only her smiling face. She is heralded as a patriot who volunteered her life for the nation's security. Stretched out before me, she looks like a murdered teenager. Throughout the 80's Dover was symbolic with the country's collective mourning: the Challenger crew, the 241 Marines killed in Beirut and the U.S. soldiers killed during the invasion of Panama. Here the nation publicly remembered its tragedies. Apparently someone in the Bush Administration didn't want television images reminding Americans that Desert Shield would cause tragedies. Two days after the Gulf War began, public ceremonies at Dover were abruptly cancelled. Base spokesman Chris Geisel insisted the cancellation were designed to save families the "hardship" of travelling to Dover. But as a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union contended, the policy appeared to be another part of the Pentagon's strategy to suppress television images of dead U.S. troops. When I enter the Dover Air Force Base mortuary, during the height of the brief ground war, fresh coils of barbed wire surround the shoddily constructed metal warehouse. Searchlights aid armed guards who patrol the facility. The sight of dead U.S soldiers, one of the Pentagon's most closely held secrets, is housed in this nondescript building. The barbed wire and searchlights are designed to keep prowling journalists from providing an uncensored, first-hand confirmation of U.S. war casualties. When bureaucratic hurdles failed to assure the security of censorship, the Pentagon relied on brute force. Intrepid photographers who skirted military police lines and shot pictures of U.S. soldiers killed by an Iraqi scud missile, were ordered to relinquish their film to U.S. military personnel, according to the Washington Post. Given this censorship, the media has no safeguards if military authorities desire to underreport war casualties. Few media organizations independently confirm the military claims, nor do they seem aware of the well-documented history of Pentagon deception. The "Pentagon Papers" released by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, offered a rare glimpse at the military's disinformation machine. The papers document the strategy of exaggerating Viet Cong dead to assure the U.S. public that the war was being won. Ellsberg offered the rationale. Military leaders, Ellsberg said in a telephone interview, "feel their responsibilities are so burdensome that this is the least of their problems. They lie so often they are usually terribly surprised when they are caught. They have the sense that the public doesn't mind them lying." When U.S. forces stormed into Panama in December, 1989 the press was sequestered until nearly all combat was completed. Reporters based their accounts on carefully crafted, military press releases. The Pentagon reported fierce resistance and said 314 Noriega troops died in battl. Two months after the invasion, the Pentagon quietly admitted to the Los Angeles Times, that only one- sixth of the "enemy dead" were soldiers. Thus, the U.S. military quietly admitted they had slaughtered hundreds more Panamanian civilians. Air Force personnel who participated in the invasion of Panama told me U.S. combat deaths during "Operation Just Cause" were heavily underreported. They said combat deaths were classified as "training accidents" to prevent embarrassing revelations that dozens of U.S. troops died by "friendly fire." Two Air Force privates, members of the 24th U.S. Air Force Supply Division, who scrubbed clean the corpses of servicemen killed during the invasion, insisted they had washed the blood of "at least 67" dead U.S. soldiers - nearly three times the official Pentagon figure of 23. "I personally counted 67 bodies and there could have been many more. After two days I got off the detail I couldn't take it anymore," one of the privates told me last summer. Remembering this, I fly to Dover. Chris, a young free-lance mortician, is working in the morgue's "Reconstructive Art" division. As I approach, he calmly dips a brush into a pool of pink paint and dabs a glob across the chalk-white nose of a dead soldier. The face is sutured in 14 places, he tells me. The rough bumps and gouges on the hardened skinare a valiant attempt to create a resemblance to a human face. As he squirts a stream of lighter fluid onto the plastic palette, Chris treats me like the new rookie on the team. We talk about weather, sports and any other topic. Anything, I think, just not the details of embalming. "How's the pay?" I ask. "It's piece work," Chris whispers. "I've never made so much money." I excuse myself and head to the bathroom stall. Crouched behind the closed door, I scribble notes. Whenever I am left alone, I scratch out another dead soldier's name, later I compare these names against the official Pentagon list. Several times during my visit, I am seated at a desk covered with more documents than I can possibly copy. A white greaseboard lists the bodies and which airline flight will jet them home. A posted memo describes how to punch in a code to enter the mortuary phone system. I see my signature on a form authorizing a FBI background check. Before the FBI results return, my mortuary tour begins. A blue-smocked morgue employee with a badge identifying him as an "Inspector" outlines the entire mortuary process. "Here the dead are fingerprinted," The Inspector, tells me, pointing to a small crowd of bored FBI agents. The fingerprints, dental x-rays, DNA samples and blood types are all used to positively identify the dead. That is logical, but why x-ray the entire body? I ask my tour guide. "Unexploded ordnances," he says grimly. I imagine an unsuspecting embalmer blown sky-high after boring into a hand grenade. We continue into the mortuary waiting room. Six bodies lay lined up, have they been embalmed or are they frozen? I can't tell, even the most glaring wounds don't ooze or drip. The soldiers all lay on their back, naked, except for the woman. Her vagina and breasts are slightly covered. Their eyes are shut, their wounds are not. Approximately half the dead I see are young African-American men. I gaze at one soldier's nearly intact sculpted body: Looks like a wight lifter, I think. Those robust, naked thighs could belong holes splotch the skin from his armpit to his hip. I can scarcely look at his face. His lips and tongue are peeled off and stuck to his throat. There are no teeth. During my one day visit, I see many bodies. Some without hands. Some without heads. Throughout the day, I quietly probe for answers to my primary question: how many U.S. soldiers have died in combat. At the end of my day, during an informal chat with a morgue secretary, I stumble upon my first clue that, once again, combat deaths are being underreported. "When the (combat) deaths aren't on TV," the worker tells me, "they say the death was a 'training accident'." She says the official Pentagon figures are really only one-fourth of the true combat death toll. She estimates the mortuary had processed "about 200" combat casualties. At the time - February 28 -the official Pentagon combat death toll stood at just 55, according to DoD spokeswoman Susan Hansen. My adrenaline spurts with the frenzy of a journalist about to feast upon a scoop. Ahhh, a scandal after all! As the reality that I cannot easily confirm her claims sinks in, I am equally struck by the triviality of the story. So what if another hundred or two hundred U.S. soldiers died by Iraqi machine gun fire and not the various truck accidents and helicopter crashes as reported? For every dead U.S. soldier being carefully reconstructed and shipped home, probably a thousand dead Iraqi's disappeared into the desert sand. The U.S. military has promised they will make no public attempt to estimate Iraqi casualties. It is a complicated task and it does not fit into their public relations agenda. Few media organizations are bothering to investigate Iraqi casualties, but the low-end estimates begin at 80,000 and the Iraqi civil war is just now beginning. After completing 7 months of military-led obedience lessons, the U.S. press remains paralyzed when faced with perhaps the war's most important story - the number of souls sacrificed on the alter of war. Who can now deny the Pentagon's other smashing victory - the triumph over the poorly organized forces previously known as the free press. Former Attorney-General of the United States, Ramsey Clark went to Iraq during the period of Bush's heavy bombing raids. Upon his return, he held a press conference in New York City on Feb. 11, 1991 which was broadcast over Pacifica Radio Network station WBAI-FM (99.5). He covered over 2,000 miles during his weeklong stay in Iraq, and during his travels, he commented, the government of Iraq didn't try to direct his movements. He said that with all the devastation in Iraq, it could not have done so anyway. There was just he, a cameraman and a driver in his car, and he said that the driver obeyed all his instructions. The following is a transcript, which I made from a tape recording of the broadcast, capturing nearly everything he said. RAMSEY CLARK: The reports of the number of sorties over Iraq led me to the concern that there must be extensive civilian casualties ..... The head of the civil defense in Basra agreed that when the bombs started falling in the middle of the night, he would come and take us to the scene ..... The cities of Basra and Baghdad contain a good 25% of the population of the country ..... Once we got on the road, we'd see smoke and just go where the smoke was -- that sort of thing ..... The damage that we saw was staggering in its expanse ..... For instance, in a city like Basra, you can see six continuous city blocks that are almost rubble. They were homes. You'd see a guy sitting out there because they kind of watch over what's left ..... You get 50 miles down the road, and there's a bridge out ..... We saw hundreds of dwellings demolished ..... We got to one place in Baghdad. It was a heavy concrete home -- three floors and heavy concrete slabs, and there was a 500 lb. bomb hanging off the top. It hadn't gone off. And two had hit nearby and pretty much killed the family. The father was badly burned and in the hospital. Whether he would live or not, we didn't know. And there were a hundred angry people standing around wondering why these homes have been bombed. You look around and you don't see anything that looks like any target whatsoever. You only see homes. You go to the centre of a town ..... Devonia ..... and there are three hotels destroyed ..... the largest one had about fifty rooms ..... a lawyer's office, doctor's office, shops. The central market in Basra has about a thousand shops -- and here you see a crater that's bigger than the White House swimming pool, except it's round. Its right at the entrance to the market and it shattered everything. And it landed right on a supermarket. It's not there anymore. I mean it's just gone. And around, you just see damage, and there's no possible military target there. Driving through the countryside, you see food processing places, if they're big, fairly systematically hit. You see extensive bombing around bridges. It's hard to hit a bridge, apparently. I even saw a U.S. Government count and they said it took 500 and some sorties to hit a bridge, and they hit 31. But there're people living all around them. There's a big river through Baghdad and there're a lot of bridges across it. And people don't stay away from them. They build right up toward them. In Baghdad, the Ministry of Justice building has all its windows shattered. And right there -- and I think he was trying to hit the bridge, probably, because there's just absolutely nothing else there [remaining]. But he didn't hit the bridge and he had four bombs coming in there, and he just knocked out all these .... It's a poor part of town -- little shops and stores. And the merchants and the people who survived, they've lost everything, and their families were killed and all. The mosques: we came upon one mosque in Basra. It was particularly tragic, it was way out in the countryside. There were three or four bombs that hit around there that just kind of messed everything up. When you hit a mosque, it's got no internal support, just this big dome, so it just comes down. It collapses in rubble. And there was a family of twelve who had sought refuge in there. They found ten bodies in the mosque. The minaret was still standing there. Every type of civilian structure you could think of .... On the highways, I think we put over 1,400 miles on the highways, and we saw hundreds and hundreds of vehicles damaged or destroyed. We saw a lot of these oil trucks. They were burned up pretty bad. But you don't find anything that looks like arms in there. When [Secretary of State] Jim Baker says that they were carrying arms, he's talking about something he does not know. Now, in Jordan, along the road, we saw scores and scores of these trucks. They're pouring out, bringing oil from Iraq to Jordan, which has an economic crisis ..... When you're driving down the road, what you see are trucks -- a lot of tractor-trailers. We weren't ten miles into the country when we came upon a tractor-trailer that was on fire ..... John Alpert gets his camera out and he's taking a picture at night. It's dark. You don't leave your lights on, I'll tell you. I said "What is this here?" I thought it was sand. I picked it up and it was grain -- feed. Looked like animal feed. They hit that truck and it's burning. And another one carrying asphalt tiles. Buses, public buses, painted baby blue -- and they're hit by shrapnel and torn up -- burned. Mini-vans, taxis -- lots of private cars -- lots of private cars, on the highway from Baghdad to Amman. Not a military target on the scene. ..... We didn't see a single tank that had been hit. We didn't see a single armored car that had been hit, or an armored personnel carrier. ..... In every city, town and village, we went in to see if anybody had running water. There's no running water in the city of Baghdad. ..... The Minister of Health said the single most important and urgent health problem in the country is bad water. Tens of thousands of people are getting sick and some are dying -- from bad water. There's no heat. There's no electricity. We've systematically destroyed electric plants. Some people have little gasoline generators, who can afford them -- like CNN. In the hospital, you see a few lights on in emergency rooms -- but you go into a ward at night .... We went into four hospitals. There are people badly injured: men, women and children. Lots of children. [JD: It's understandable that there would be lots of children because half of Iraq's population consists of children under the age of fifteen.] Lots of women. A little girl twelve years old -- her leg cut off very near the hip, and no pain killer. And it's cold in there. Prior to performing surgery, the doctors are unable to wash their hands. There's no water. One doctor told me, "I hate my hands. We've got no gloves. I go from this wounded person to this wounded person to this wounded person, and I can't wash my hands." It was getting to him! And people moaning in pain that you don't hear here [in the U.S.A.] because we anesthetize them when it gets that bad. When Gen. Colin Powell says that this is a party -- which he's said in his press conferences -- he ought to think about the civilian population, or those hospitals in Iraq, and see what kind of a party he thinks it is. RAMSEY CLARK: When President Bush talks about pinpoint bombing, let me tell you, I didn't see any "collateral military damage." This is an attack on the people of Iraq -- the economy of Iraq. You tell me what municipal water in Mosul has to do with liberating Kuwait -- or bombing the bridges in Baghdad, or trying to ..... We're bombing the civilian population. The hospitals have been hit. The Teaching Hospital in Basra doesn't have a window in it. It was out of operation for a week, when they needed it most. They've got a lot of injured people there. I walked down there at night and here a bomb had hit a family club, and thank God it was closed because it would have killed scores and scores of people if it had been open. The bombing is a violation of international law, which all of us should always remember, protects civilians. You don't kill civilians! The United States of America doesn't go around killing civilians! And there're not hitting military targets. If they are, why can't you find some shreds of soldiers' clothing. All you find is the people's clothing scattered around, and their possessions scattered around in their residential areas. That's what's happening! Food, gasoline: VERY hard to get. The gas stations, all up and down the roads, are hit. Road repair camps are hit. They don't want you to repair the road from Amman to Baghdad. The idea that military traffic is on that road .... If SCUDS are out there .... You'd take a SCUD down a main highway? Why don't you see anything, if they hit them? These are violations of the Hague Conventions. They're violations of the Geneva Conventions. They're violations of the Nuremburg Principles. They're war crimes. And the idea that they are encompassed within the U.N. Resolutions including 678, the Security Council resolution, is off-the-wall. How can destroying civilian life in northern Iraq, or central Iraq, or any place in Iraq, except mass troop formations (and there are plenty of them out there) have anything to do with the liberation of ... [Kuwait]? There's nothing in there that says we have a right to go in -- and of course we couldn't get a right from anybody because, in natural law and in international law, there's no right, ever, to destroy civilian life or non-combatant life, which would include the government offices. Who do you think works in the telephone company? A bunch of soldiers? People work in there! And all those buildings that are hit in Baghdad. People work in there -- civilians, overwhelmingly. And we're just "bombing them back into the stone age", as people liked to say about Vietnam. ..... What kind of military pride could you have in beating up on a poor third-world country like that? Their per capita income is about $2,400. Ours is $19,000. We are raining death and destruction, with our technology, on the life in Iraq. And there ought to be a cessation of the bombing now. And anyone who dares to say that these are "surgical strikes" ought to go into those hospitals and see what kind of surgery they're having to do because of them -- on little babies, women and children. If the United States of America cares about its character, it had better stop that bombing. You can never have the respect or the good will of the people of the planet, including hundreds of millions of Arabs, a billion Moslems, or just poor people anywhere, if you use your technology to destroy their lives. INITIAL COMPLAINT CHARGING GEORGE BUSH, DAN QUAYLE, JAMES BAKER, DICK CHENEY, WILLIAM WEBSTER, COLIN POWELL, NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF AND OTHERS TO BE NAMED WITH CRIMES AGAINST PEACE, WAR CRIMES, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY AND OTHER CRIMINAL ACTS AND HIGH CRIMES IN VIOLATION OF THE CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, INTERNATIONAL LAW, THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AND LAWS MADE IN PURSUANCE THEREOF. PRELIMINARY STATEMENT These charges have been prepared prior to the first hearing of the Commission of Inquiry by its staff. They are based on direct and circumstantial evidence from public and private documents, official statements and admissions by the persons charged and others, eyewitness accounts; Commission investigations and witness interviews in Iraq, the Middle East and elsewhere during and after the bombing; photographs and video tape, expert analyses, commentary and interviews, media coverage, published reports and accounts gathered between December 1989 and May 1991. Commission of Inquiry hearings will be held in key cities where evidence is available supporting, expanding, adding, contradicting, disproving or explaining these, or similar charges against the accused and others of whatever nationality. When evidence sufficient to sustain convictions of the accused or others is obtained and after demanding the production of documents from the U.S. government, and others, and requesting testimony from the accused, offering them a full opportunity to present any defense personally, or by counsel, the evidence will be presented to an International War Crimes Tribunal. The Tribunal will consider the evidence gathered, seek and examine whatever additional evidence it chooses and render its judgment on the charges, the evidence and the law. Since World War I, the United Kingdom, France and the United States have dominated the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region and its oil resources. This has been accomplished by military conquest and coercion, economic control and exploitation, and through surrogate governments and their military forces. Thus from 1953 to 1979 in the post World War II era, control over the region was exercised primarily through U.S. influence and control over the Gulf state sheikdoms, Saudi Arabia, and through the Shah of Iran. From 1953- 1979 the Shah of Iran acted as a Pentagon/CIA surrogate to police the region. After the fall of the Shah and the seizure of U.S. Embassy hostages in Teheran, the U.S. provided military aid and assistance to Iraq, as did the USSR, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and most of the Emirates in its war with Iran. U.S. policy during that tragic eight year war, 1980-1988, is probably best summed up by Henry Kissinger's early expression, "I hope they kill each other." Throughout the seventy-five year period from Britain's invasion of Iraq early in World War I to the destruction of Iraq in 1991 by U.S. air power, the United States and the United Kingdom demonstrated no concern for democratic values, military aggression, human rights, social justice, or political and cultural integrity in the region. The U.S. supported the Shah of Iran for 25 years, selling him more than 20 billion dollars of advanced military equipment between 1972 and 1978 alone. Throughout this period, the Shah and his brutal Savak had one of the worst human rights records in the world. The U.S. supported Iraq in its wrongful aggression against Iran ignoring its poor human rights record. When the Iraqi government nationalized the Iraqi Petroleum Company in 1972, the Nixon Administration embarked on a campaign to destabilize the Iraqi government. It was then that the U.S. first armed and then abandoned the Kurdish people in the 1970's, costing them tens of thousands of lives. The U.S. manipulated the Kurds through CIA and other agencies to attack Iraq, intending to harass Iraq while maintaining Iranian supremacy at the cost of Kurdish lives without intending any benefit to the Kurdish people, or an autonomous Kurdistan. The U.S., with close oil and other economic ties to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, has fully supported both governments despite the total absence of democratic institutions, their pervasive human rights violations and the infliction of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments such as stoning to death for adultery and amputation of a hand for property offenses. The U.S., sometimes alone among nations, supported Israel when it defied scores of U.N. resolutions concerning Palestinian rights, during Israel's invasion of Lebanon which took tens of thousands of lives and its continuing occupation of southern Lebanon, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza. The United States itself engaged in recent aggressions in violation of international law by invading Grenada, bombing Tripoli and Benghazi, financing the Contras in Nicaragua, UNITA in southern Africa and supporting military dictatorships in Liberia, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines and many other places. The U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 involved the same and additional violations of international law that apply to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The U.S. invasion took between 1000 and 4000 Panamanian lives. The United States government is still covering up the death toll. U.S. aggression caused massive property destruction throughout Panama. According to U.S. and international human rights organization estimates, Kuwait's casualties from Iraq's invasion and the ensuing months of occupation were in the "hundreds," between 300 and 600. Reports from Kuwait list 628 Palestinians killed by Kuwaiti death squads since the Sabah Royal family regained control over Kuwait. The United States changed its military plans for protecting its control over oil and other interests in the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1980's when it became clear that economic problems in the USSR were debilitating its military capacity and Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan. Thereafter, direct military domination within the region became the U.S. strategy. With the decline in U.S. oil production through 1989, experts predicted U.S. oil imports from the Gulf would rise from 10% that year to 25% by the year 2000. Japanese and European dependency is much greater. THE CHARGES 1. The United States engaged in a pattern of conduct beginning in or before 1989 intended to lead Iraq into provocations justifying U.S. military action against Iraq and permanent U.S. military domination of the Gulf. ____________________________________________________ In 1989, General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander in Chief of the Central Command, completely revised U.S. military operations and plans for the Persian Gulf to prepare to intervene in a regional conflict against Iraq. The CIA assisted and directed Kuwait in its actions in violating OPEC oil production agreements, extracting excessive amounts of oil from pools shared with Iraq, demanding repayment of loans it made to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and breaking off negotiations with Iraq over these disputes. The U.S. intended to provoke Iraq into actions against Kuwait that would justify U.S. intervention. In 1989, CIA Director William Webster testified before the Congress about the alarming increase in U.S. importation of Gulf oil, citing U.S. rise in use from 5% in 1973 to 10% in 1989 and predicting 25% of all U.S. oil consumption from the region by 2000. In early 1990, General Schwarzkopf informed the Senate Armed Services Committee of the new military strategy in the Gulf designed to protect U.S. access to and control over Gulf oil in the event of regional conflicts. In July, 1990, General Schwarzkopf and his staff ran elaborate, computerized war games pitting about 100,000 U.S. troops against Iraqi armored divisions. The U.S. showed no opposition to Iraq's increasing threats against Kuwait. U.S. companies sought major contracts in Iraq. The Congress approved agricultural loan subsidies to Iraq of hundreds of millions of dollars to benefit U.S. farmers. However, loans for food deliveries of rice, corn, wheat and other essentials bought almost exclusively from the U.S. were cut off in the spring of 1990 to cause shortages. Arms were sold to Iraq by U.S. manufacturers. When Saddam Hussein requested U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie to explain State Department testimony in Congress about Iraq's threats against Kuwait, she assured him the U.S. considered the dispute a regional concern, and it would not intervene. By these acts, the U.S. intended to lead Iraq into a provocation justifying war. On August 2, 1990 Iraq occupied Kuwait without significant resistance. On August 3, 1990 without any evidence of a threat to Saudi Arabia, and King Fahd believed Iraq had no intention of invading his country, President Bush vowed to defend Saudi Arabia. He sent Secretary Cheney, General Powell and General Schwarzkopf almost immediately to Saudi Arabia where on August 6, General Schwarzkopf told King Fahd the U.S. thought Saddam Hussein could attack Saudi Arabia in as little as 48 hours. The efforts toward an Arab solution of the crisis were destroyed. Iraq never attacked Saudi Arabia and waited over five months while the U.S. slowly built a force of more than 500,000 and began the systematic destruction of a defenseless Iraq and its military by aircraft and missiles. In October 1990, General Powell referred to THE NEW MILITARY PLAN DEVELOPED IN 1989. After the war, General Schwarzkopf referred to EIGHTEEN MONTHS OF PLANNING FOR THE CAMPAIGN. The U.S. retains troops in Iraq and throughout the region and has announced its intention to maintain a permanent military presence. This course of conduct constitutes a crime against peace. 2. President Bush from August 2, 1990 intended, and acted to prevent any interference with his plan to destroy Iraq economically and militarily. _________________________________________________ Without consultation or communication with Congress, President Bush ordered 40,000 U.S. military personnel to advance the U.S. build up in Saudi Arabia in the first week of August 1990. He exacted a request from Saudi Arabia for U.S. military assistance and on August 8 assured the world his acts were "wholly defensive." He waited until after the November 1990 elections to announce his earlier order sending more than 200,000 additional military personnel, clearly an assault force, again without advising Congress. As late as January 9, 1991 he insisted he had the constitutional authority to attack Iraq without Congressional approval. While concealing his intention, President Bush continued the military build up of U.S. forces unabated from August into January 1991 intending to attack and destroy Iraq. He pressed the military to expedite preparation and to commence the assault before military considerations were optimum. When General Dugan mentioned plans to destroy the Iraqi civilian economy to the press on September 16, he was removed from office. President Bush coerced the United Nations Security Council into an unprecedented series of resolutions, finally securing authority for any nation in its absolute discretion by all necessary means to enforce the resolutions. To secure votes the U.S. paid multi-billion dollar bribes, offered arms for regional wars, threatened and carried out economic retaliation, forgave multi-billion dollar loans, offered diplomatic relations despite human rights violations and in other ways corruptly exacted votes, creating the appearance of near universal international approval of U.S. policies toward Iraq. A country which opposed the U.S., as Yemen did, lost millions in aid, as promised, the costliest vote it ever cast. President Bush consistently rejected and ridiculed Iraq's efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution, beginning with Iraq's August 12 proposal, largely ignored, and ending with its mid- February peace offer which he called a "cruel hoax." For his part, President Bush consistently insisted there would be no negotiation, no compromise, no face saving, no reward for aggression. Simultaneously, he accused Saddam Hussein of rejecting diplomatic solutions. President Bush led a sophisticated campaign to demonize Saddam Hussein, calling him a Hitler, repeatedly citing reports of the murder of hundreds of incubator babies he knew were false, accusing Iraq of using chemical weapons on his own people and on the Iranians, knowing U.S. intelligence believed the reports untrue. After subverting every effort for peace, President Bush began the destruction of Iraq, answering his own question, "Why not wait? . . . The World could wait no longer." The course of conduct constitutes a crime against peace. 3. President Bush ordered the destruction of facilities essential to civilian life and economic productivity throughout Iraq. _________________________________________ Systematic aerial and missile bombardment of Iraq was ordered to begin at 6:30 p.m. E.S.T. January 16, 1991, 18 1/2 hours after the deadline set on the insistence of President Bush, in order to be reported on prime time TV. The bombing continued for 42 days. It met no resistance from Iraqi aircraft and no effective anti- aircraft or anti-missile ground fire. Iraq was defenseless. The United States concedes it flew 110,000 air sorties against Iraq, dropping 88,000 tons of bombs, nearly 7 times the equivalent of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. 93% of the bombs were free falling bombs, most dropped from higher than 30,000 feet. Of the remaining 7% of the bombs with electronically guided systems, more than 25% missed their targets, nearly all caused damage primarily beyond any identifiable target. Most of the targets were civilian facilities. The intention and effort of the bombing of civilian life and facilities was to systematically destroy Iraq's infrastructure, leaving it in a pre-industrial condition. Iraq's civilian population was dependent on industrial capacities. The U.S. assault left Iraq in a "near apocalyptic condition", as reported by the first United Nations observers after the war. Among the facilities targeted and destroyed were: -- electric power generation, relay and transmission, -- water treatment, pumping and distribution systems and reservoirs, -- telephone and radio exchanges, relay stations, towers and transmission facilities, -- food processing, storage and distribution facilities and markets, infant milk formula and beverage plants, animal vaccination facilities and irrigation sites -- railroad transportation facilities, bus depots, bridges, highway overpasses, highways, highway repair stations, trains, buses and other public transportation vehicles, commercial and private vehicles -- oil wells and pumps, pipelines, refineries, oil storage tanks, gasoline filling stations and fuel delivery tank cars and trucks, and kerosene storage tanks -- sewage treatment and disposal systems. -- factories engaged in civilian production, e.g., textile and automobile assembly -- Historical markers and ancient sites As a direct, intentional and foreseeable result of this destruction, tens of thousands of people have died from dehydration, dysentery and diseases caused by impure water, inability to obtain effective medical assistance and debilitation from hunger, shock, cold and stress. More will die until potable water, sanitary living conditions, adequate food supplies and other necessities are provided. There is a high risk of epidemics of cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and other diseases as well as starvation and malnutrition through the summer of 1991 and until food supplies are adequate and essential services are restored. Only the United States could have, and almost exclusively, the United States conducted the destruction of Iraq. The conduct violated the U.N. Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter and the laws of armed conflict. 4. The United States intentionally bombed and destroyed civilian life, commercial and business districts, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, residential areas, historical sites, private vehicles and civilian government offices. ____________________________________________ The destruction of civilian facilities left the entire civilian population without heat, cooking fuel, refrigeration, potable water, telephones, power for radio or TV reception, public transportation, fuel for private automobiles, limited food supplies, closed schools, created massive unemployment, severely limited economic activity and caused hospitals and medical services to shut down. In addition, residential areas of every major city and most towns and villages were targeted and destroyed. Bedouin camps were attacked by U.S. aircraft. In addition to deaths and injuries, the aerial assault destroyed 10-20,000 homes, apartments and other dwellings. Commercial centers with shops, retail stores, offices, hotels, restaurants and other public accommodations were targeted and thousands were destroyed. Scores of schools, hospitals, mosques and churches were damaged, or destroyed. Thousands of civilian vehicles on highways, roads and parked on streets and in garages were targeted and destroyed. These included public buses, private vans and mini-buses, trucks, tractor trailers, lorries, taxi cabs and private cars. The purpose of this bombing was to terrorize the entire country, kill people, destroy property, prevent movement, demoralize the people and force the overthrow of the government. As a result of the bombing of facilities essential to civilian life, residential and other civilian buildings and areas at least 25,000 men, women and children were killed. The Red Crescent Society of Jordan estimated 113,000 civilian dead, 60% children, the week before the end of the war. The conduct violated the U.N. Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter and the laws of armed conflict. 5. The United States intentionally bombed indiscriminately throughout Iraq. ______________________________________ In aerial attacks, including strafing, over cities, towns, the countryside and highways, United States aircraft bombed and strafed indiscriminately. In every city and town bombs fell by chance far from any conceivable target, whether a civilian facility, military installation or military target. In the countryside random attacks were made on travellers, villagers, even Bedouins. The purpose of the attacks was to destroy life, property and terrorize the civilian population. On the highways, private vehicles including public buses, taxicabs and passenger cars were bombed and strafed at random to frighten civilians from flight, from seeking food, medical care, finding relatives or other uses of highways. The effect was summary execution and corporal punishment indiscriminately of men, women and children, young and old, rich and poor, all nationalities including the large immigrant populations, even Americans, all ethnic groups, including many Kurds and Assyrians, all religions including Shia and Sunni Moslems, Chaldeans and other Christians and Jews. U.S. deliberate indifference to civilian and military casualties in Iraq, or their nature, is exemplified by General Colin Powell's response to a press inquiry about the number dead from the air and ground campaigns "It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in." The conduct violates Protocol I additional, Article 51.4 to the Geneva Convention of 1977. 6. The United States intentionally bombed and destroyed defenseless Iraqi military personnel, used excessive force, killed soldiers seeking to surrender and in disorganized individual flight, often unarmed and far from any combat zones and randomly and wantonly killed Iraqi soldiers and destroyed material after the cease fire. ______________________________________________ In the first hours of the aerial and missile bombardment, the United States destroyed most military communications and began the systematic killing of soldiers who were incapable of defense or escape and the destruction of military equipment. Over a period of 42 days, U.S. bombing killed tens of thousands of defenseless soldiers, cut off most of their food, water and other supplies and left them in desperate and helpless disarray. Without significant risk to its own personnel, the U.S. lead in the killing of at least 100,000 Iraqi soldiers at a cost of fewer than 120 U.S. combat casualties according to the U.S. government. When it was determined that the civilian economy and the military were sufficiently destroyed, the U.S. ground forces moved into Kuwait and Iraq attacking disoriented, disorganized, fleeing Iraqi forces wherever they could be found killing thousands more and destroying any equipment found. The slaughter continued after the cease fire. For example, on March 2, the U.S. 24th Division forces engaged in a four-hour assault against Iraqis just west of Basra. More than 750 vehicles were destroyed, thousands killed without U.S. casualties. A U.S. Commander said "We really waxed them." It was called a "Turkey Shoot", One Apache helicopter crew member yelled "Say hello to Allah" as he launched a laser guided Hellfire missile. The intention was not to remove Iraq's presence from Kuwait. It was to destroy Iraq. In the process there was great destruction of property in Kuwait. The disproportion in death and destruction inflicted on a defenseless enemy exceeded 1000 to one. General Thomas Kelly commented on February 23 that by the time the ground war begins "there won't be many of them left." General Norman Schwarzkopf placed Iraqi military casualties at over 100,000. The intention was to destroy all military facilities and equipment wherever located and to so decimate the military age male population so that Iraq could not raise a substantial force for half a generation. The conduct violated the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter and the laws of armed conflict. 7. The United States used prohibited weapons capable of mass destruction and inflicting indiscriminate death and unnecessary suffering against both military and civilian targets. ___________________________________________________ Among the known illegal weapons and illegal uses of weapons employed by the United States are the following: -- fuel air explosives capable of wide spread incineration and death, -- napalm -- cluster and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs. -- "superbombs", 2 1/2 ton devices, intended for assassination of government leaders Fuel air explosives were used against troops in place, civilian areas, oil fields and fleeing civilians and soldiers on two stretches of highway between Kuwait and Iraq. Included in fuel air weapons used was the BLU-82, a 15,000 pound device capable of disintegrating everything within hundreds of yards. One seven mile stretch called the "Highway of Death" was littered with hundreds of vehicles and thousands of dead. All were fleeing to Iraq for their lives. Thousands were civilians of all ages, including Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Jordanians and other nationalities. Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants of tanks, armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25. The press reported no survivors are known or likely. One flat bed truck contained nine bodies, their hair and clothes were burned off, skin incinerated by heat so intense it melted the windshield onto the dashboard. [JD: You can help Ramsey Clark in his struggle for justice by calling his International Action Center in New York City at (212) 633-6646.] Napalm was used against civilians, military personnel and to start fires. Oil well fires in both Iraq and Kuwait were intentionally started by U.S. aircraft dropping napalm and other heat intensive devices. Cluster and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs were used in Basra and other cities, and towns, against the convoys described above and against military units. The CBU-75 carries 1800 bomblets called Sadeyes. One type of Sadeyes can explode before hitting the ground, on impact, or be timed to explode at different times after impact. Each bomblet contains 600 razor sharp steel fragments lethal up to 40 feet. The 1800 bomblets from one CBU 75 can cover an area equal to 157 football fields with deadly shrapnel. "Superbombs" were dropped on hardened shelters, at least two in the last days of the assault, with the intention of assassinating President Saddam Hussein. One was misdirected. The U.S. attempted to assassinate Col. Muammar Qaddafy by laser directed bombs in its attack on Tripoli, Libya in April 1986. Illegal weapons killed thousands of civilians and soldiers. The conduct violated the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter and the laws of armed conflict. 8. The United States intentionally attacked installations in Iraq containing dangerous substances and forces. __________________________________________ Despite the fact that Iraq used no nuclear or chemical weapons and in the face of U.N. resolutions limiting the authorized means of removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the U.S. intentionally bombed alleged nuclear sites, chemical plants, dams and other dangerous forces. The U.S. knew such attacks could cause the release of dangerous forces from such installations and consequent severe losses among the civilian population. While some civilians were killed in such attacks, there are no reported cases of consequent severe losses presumably because lethal nuclear materials, and dangerous chemical and biological warfare substances were not present at the sites bombed. The conduct violates Protocol I Additional, Article 56, to the Geneva Convention, 1977. 9. President Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Panama resulting in the deaths of 1000 to 4000 Panamanians and the destruction of thousands of private dwellings, public buildings and commercial structures. _________________________________________________ On December 20, 1989 President Bush ordered a military assault on Panama using aircraft, artillery, helicopter gunships and experimenting with new weapons, including the Stealth bomber. The attack was a surprise assault targeting civilian and non- combatant government structures. In the El Chorillo district of Panama City alone, hundreds of civilians were killed and between 15,000 and 30,000 made homeless. U.S. soldiers buried dead Panamanian in mass graves, often without identification. The head of state, Manuel Noriega, who was systematically demonized by the U.S. government and press ultimately surrendered to U.S. forces and was brought to Miami, Florida on extra territorial U.S. criminal charges. The U.S. invasion of Panama violated all the international laws Iraq violated when it invaded Kuwait and more. Many more Panamanians were killed by U.S. forces than Iraq killed Kuwaitis. President Bush violated the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, committed crimes against peace, war crimes and violated the U.S. Constitution and numerous U.S. Criminal statutes in ordering and directing the assault on Panama. 10. President Bush obstructed justice and corrupted United Nations functions as a means of securing power to commit crimes against peace and war crimes. ___________________________________________________ President Bush caused the United Nations to completely bypass Chapter VI provisions of its Charter for the Pacific Settlement of Disputes. This was done in order to obtain Security Council resolutions authorizing the use of all necessary means, in the absolute discretion of any nation, to fulfill U.N. resolutions directed against Iraq and which were used to destroy Iraq. To obtain Security Council votes, the U.S. corruptly paid member nations billions of dollars, provided them arms to conduct regional wars, forgave billions in debts, withdrew opposition to a World Bank loan, agreed to diplomatic relations despite human rights violations and threatened economic and political reprisals. A nation which voted against the United States, Yemen, was immediately punished by the loss of millions of dollars in aid. The U.S. paid the U.N. 187 million dollars to reduce the amount of dues it owed to the U.N. to avoid criticism of its coercive activities. The United Nations, created to end the scourge of war, became an instrument of war and condoned war crimes. The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution and laws of the United States. 11. President Bush usurped the Constitutional power of Congress as a means of securing powerto commit crimes against peace, war crimes,and other high crimes. President Bush intentionally usurped Congressional power, ignored its authority, and failed and refused to consult with the Congress. He deliberately misled, deceived, concealed and made false representations to the Congress to prevent its free deliberation and informed exercise of legislature power. President Bush individually ordered a naval blockade against Iraq, itself an act of war. He switched U.S. forces from a wholly defensive position and capability to an offensive capacity for aggression against Iraq without consultation with and contrary to assurances given to the Congress. He secured legislation approving enforcement of U.N. resolutions vesting absolute discretion in any nation, providing no guidelines and requiring no reporting to the U.N., knowing he intended to destroy the armed forces and civilian economy of Iraq. Those acts were undertaken to enable him to commit crimes against peace and war crimes. The conduct violates the Constitution and laws of the United States, all committed to engage in the other impeachable offenses set forth in this Complaint. [You can help Ramsey Clark in his struggle for justice by calling his International Action Center in New York City at (212) 633-6646.] 12. The United States waged war on the environment. _______________________________________________ Pollution from the detonation of 88,000 tons of bombs, innumerable missiles, rockets, artillery and small arms with the combustion and fires they caused and by 110,000 air sorties at a rate of nearly two per minute for six weeks has caused enormous injury to life and the ecology. Attacks by U.S. aircraft caused much if not all of the worst oil spills in the Gulf. Aircraft and helicopters dropping napalm and fuel-air explosives on oil wells, storage tanks and refineries caused oil fires throughout Iraq and many, if not most, of the oil well fires in Iraq and Kuwait. The intentional destruction of municipal water systems, waste material treatment and sewage disposal systems constitutes a direct and continuing assault on life and health throughout Iraq. The conduct violated the U.N. Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the laws of armed conflict and constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity. 13. President Bush encouraged and aided Shiite Muslims and Kurds to rebel against the government of Iraq causing fratricidal violence, emigration, exposure, hunger and sickness and thousands of deaths. After the rebellion failed, the U.S. invaded and occupied parts of Iraq without authority in order to increase division and hostilities within Iraq. ____________________________________________________ Without authority from the Congress or the U.N., President Bush continued his imperious military actions after the cease fire. He encouraged and aided rebellion against Iraq, failed to protect the warring parties, encouraged migration of whole populations placing them in jeopardy from the elements, hunger and disease. After much suffering and many deaths, President Bush then without authority used U.S. military forces to distribute aid at and near the Turkish border, ignoring the often greater suffering among refugees in Iran. He then arbitrarily set up bantu-like settlements for Kurds in Iraq and demanded Iraq pay for U.S. costs. When Kurds chose to return to their homes in Iraq, he moved U.S. troops further into northern Iraq against the will of the government and without authority. The conduct violated the Charter of the United Nations, international law, the constitution and laws of the United States and the laws of Iraq. 14. President Bush intentionally deprived the Iraqi people of essential medicines, potable water, food and other necessities. _________________________________________________ A major component of the assault on Iraq was the systematic deprivation of essential human needs and services. To break the will of the people, destroy their economic capability, reduce their numbers and weaken their health, the United States: -- imposed and enforced embargoes preventing the shipment of needed medicines, water purifiers, infant milk formula, food and other supplies, -- individually, without congressional authority, ordered a U.S. naval blockade of Iraq, an act of war, to deprive the Iraqi people of needed supplies, -- froze funds of Iraq and forced other nations to do so, depriving Iraq of the ability to purchase needed medicines, food and other supplies, -- controlled information about the urgent need for such supplies to prevent sickness, death and threatened epidemic, endangering the whole society, -- prevented international organizations, governments and relief agencies from providing needed supplies and obtaining information concerning needs, -- failed to assist or meet urgent needs of huge refugee populations including Egyptians, Indians, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Sudanese, Jordanians, Palestinians, Sri Lankans, Filipinos, and interfered with efforts of others to do so, -- consistently diverted attention from health and epidemic threats within Iraq even after advertising the plight of Kurdish people on the Turkish border caused by the U.S. -- deliberately bombed the electrical grids causing the closure of hospitals and laboratories, loss of medicine and essential fluids and blood. -- deliberately bombing of food storage, fertilizer, and seed storage facilities As a result of these acts, thousands of people died, many more suffered illnesses and permanent injury. As a single illustration, Iraq consumed infant milk formula at a rate of 2500 tons per month during the first seven months of 1990. From November 1, 1990 to February 7, 1991 Iraq was able to import only 17 tons. Its own production capacity was destroyed. Many Iraqis believed that Pres. Bush intended that their infants die, because he targeted their food supply. The Red Crescent Society of Iraq estimated 3000 infant deaths as of February 7, 1991 resulting from infant milk formula and infant medication shortages. This conduct violates the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other covenants and constituted a crime against humanity. 15. The United States continued its assault on Iraq after the cease fire, invading and occupying areas at will. ____________________________________________ The United States has acted with dictatorial authority over Iraq and its external relations since the end of the military conflict. It has shot and killed Iraqi military personnel, destroyed air craft and materiel at will, occupied vast areas of Iraq in the north and south and consistently threatened use of force against Iraq. This conduct violates the sovereignty of a nation, exceeds authority in U.N. resolutions, is unauthorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States and constitutes war crimes. 16. The United States has violated and condoned violations of human rights, civil liberties and the U.S. Bill of Rights in the United States, in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to achieve its purpose of military domination. ______________________________________________ Among the many violations committed or condoned by the U.S. government are the following: -- illegal surveillance, arrest, interrogation and harassment of Arab-American, Iraqi-American, and U.S. resident Arabs, -- illegal detention, interrogation and treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war, -- aiding and condoning Kuwaiti summary executions, assaults, torture and illegal detention of Palestinians and other residents in Kuwait after the U.S. occupation, -- unwarranted, discriminatory and excessive prosecution and punishment of U.S. military personnel who refused to serve in the Gulf, sought conscientious objector status or protested U.S. policies. Persons were killed, assaulted, tortured, illegally detained and prosecuted, harassed and humiliated as a result of these policies. The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the Constitution and laws of the United States. 17. The United States, having destroyed Iraq's economic base, demands reparations which will permanently impoverish Iraq and threaten its people with famine and epidemic. ____________________________________________________ Having destroyed lives, property and essential civilian facilities in Iraq which the U.S. concedes will require 50 billion dollars to replace (estimated at 200 billion dollars by Iraq), killed at least 125,000 people by bombing and many thousands more by sickness and hunger, the U.S. now seeks to control Iraq economically even as its people face famine and epidemic. Damages including casualties in Iraq, systematically inflicted by the U.S., exceed all damages, casualties and costs of all other parties to the conflict combined many times over. Reparations under these conditions are an exaction of tribute for the conqueror from a desperately needy country. The United States seeks to force Iraq to pay for damage to Kuwait largely caused by the U.S. and even to pay U.S. costs for its violations of Iraqis sovereignty in occupying northern Iraq to further manipulate the Kurdish population there. Such reparations are a neo-colonial means of expropriating Iraq's oil, natural resources and human labor. The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution and laws of the United States. 18. President Bush systematically manipulated, controlled, directed, misinformed and restricted press and media coverage to achieve propagandistic support for his military and political goals. ________________________________________________ The Bush Administration achieved a running five months media commercial for militarism and individual weapons systems. The American people were seduced into the celebration of a slaughter by controlled propaganda demonizing Iraq, assuring the world no harm would come to Iraqi civilians, deliberately spreading false stories of atrocities including chemical warfare threats, deaths of incubator babies and threats to the entire region by a new Hitler. The press received virtually all its information from or by permission of the Pentagon. Efforts were made to prevent any adverse information or opposition views from being heard. CNN's limited presence in Baghdad was described as Iraqi propaganda. Independent observers, eye witnesses' photos and video tapes with information about the effects of the U.S. bombing were excluded from the media. Television network ownership, advertisers newspaper ownership, elite columnists and commentators intimidated and instructed reporters and selected interviewees. They formed a near single voice of praise for U.S. militarism often exceeding the Pentagon in bellicosity. The American people and their democratic institutions were deprived of information essential to sound judgment and were regimented, despite profound concern, to support a major neo-colonial intervention and war of aggression. The principal purpose of the First Amendment to the United States was to assure the press and the people the right to criticize their government with impunity. This purpose has been effectively destroyed in relation to U.S. military aggression since the press was denied access to assaults on Grenada, Libya, Panama and now, on a much greater scale, against Iraq. This conduct violates the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and is part of a pattern of conduct intended to create support for conduct constituting crimes against peace and war crimes. 19. The United States has by force secured a permanent military presence in the Gulf, the control of its oil resources and geopolitical domination of the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region. __________________________________________ The United States has committed the acts described in this complaint to create a permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, to dominate its oil resources until depleted and to maintain geo-political domination over the region. The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations, international law, and the Constitution and laws of the United States. Scope of the Inquiry The Commission of Inquiry will focus on U.S. criminal conduct because of its destruction of Iraq, killing at least 125,000 persons directly by its bombing while proclaiming its own combat losses as less than 120, because it destroyed the economic base of Iraq and because its acts are still inflicting consequential deaths that may reach hundreds of thousands. The Commission of Inquiry will seek and accept evidence of criminal acts by any person, or government, related to the Gulf conflict, because it believes international law must be applied uniformly. It believes that "victors' justice" is not law, but the extension of war by force of the prevailing party. The U.S. Senate, European Community Foreign Ministers, and the western press, even former Nuremberg prosecutors, have overwhelmingly called for war crimes trials for Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership alone. Even Mrs. Barbara Bush has said she would like to see Saddam Hussein hung, albeit without mentioning a trial. Comprehensive efforts to gather and evaluate evidence, objectively judge all the conduct that constitutes crimes against peace and war crimes and to present these facts for judgement to the court of world opinion requires that at least one major effort focus on the United States. The Commission of Inquiry believes its focus on U.S. criminal acts is important, proper and the only way to bring the whole truth, a balanced perspective and impartiality in application of legal process to this great human tragedy. Ramsey Clark May 9, 1991 Working with Ramsey Clark in opposing Bush's Persian Gulf War, attorney Michael Ratner composed the following legal declaration: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * INITIAL LEGAL MATERIALS The modern law of war and peace is generally agreed to begin with the publication in 1625 of De Jure Belli ac Pacis by Hugo Grotius. Grotius believed the care to preserve society was the source of all law. He recognized the primary importance of preventing war. Still, with war the common condition of the Europe in which he lived, he sought to identify rules of war which would limit its horror. While for many the idea of rules of war is a contradiction, it is such rules that international law struggles to establish in its care to preserve society until war itself is abolished. Central to all modern efforts to limit war has been the desire to protect civilians, non combatants and resources and facilities essential to their survival. With the growth of technology in warfare, efforts have been made for over 150 years to prohibit or restrict uses of weapons of mass destruction and those causing unusually cruel or painful death or injury. An essential standard throughout the rules of armed conflict is the prohibition of the use of excessive force and affliction of wanton death or destruction. The concept of proportionality, that force be carefully limited to that required to defend or achieve legitimate military ends, is integrated into the laws of war in all its applications. For purposes of identifying criminal acts in the planning, preparation and execution of the Gulf conflict, a handful of basic laws are most important. Sections 22 and 23 of the regulations annexed to Hague Convention No. IV, Respecting Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907), for example, establish the principles that the means and manner of waging war are not unlimited and that weapons causing unnecessary suffering are prohibited. The Charter of the United Nations is basic to the hope for peace. It is the appropriate place to begin any legal analysis of crimes against peace and war crimes in our times. U.S. military service manuals provide Rules of Engagement for U.S. Forces taken largely from customary international law and the developing laws of armed conflicts. The United States Constitution, and particularly, Article I, section 8 and Article II, section 2, allocate powers over war and peace between the Congress and the President. Numerous federal criminal statutes proscribe activity affecting peace or prohibited in war. There are many other Covenents, Conventions, treaties, regulations, and draft codes that are important to a complete analysis. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an important statement because a respect for the rights of others is necessary to any real peace. The texts and partial texts of three key and binding sources of international law are set forth as follows: I. United Nations Charter pp II. Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal pp III. Geneva Conventions pp I. CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,... Article 2 The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles: l. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members. * * * 3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered. * * * 4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. Chapter Vl of the Charter is devoted to Pacific Settlement of Disputes. Its Article 33 states: Chapter Vl PACIFIC SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES Article 33 l. The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of internation- al peace and sucurity, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resortto regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice. 2. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their disputes by such means. These passages are from: "ISRAEL'S WAR IN LEBANON: EYEWITNESS CHRONICLES OF THE INVASION & OCCUPATION", compiled and edited by Franklin Lamb, publisher and sole distributor: Spokesman for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Bertrand Russell House, Gamble St., Nottingham, England NG7 4ET. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The nearly 70 days of the Israeli siege of West Beirut caused human suffering on a scale not often witnessed since the end of World War II. The Israeli blockade of West Beirut which sealed off the city from medical supplies, added to the trauma of the half million residents in the western sector and has been widely reported. With respect to the bombing of August 7, U.S. Ambassador Robert Dillon cabled Washington as follows: "Simply put, tonight's saturation shelling was as intense as anything we have seen. There was no "pinpoint accuracy" against targets in "open spaces". It was not a response to Palestinian fire. This was a blitz against West Beirut .... The magnitude of tonight's action is difficult to convey. The flare of exploding shells reflected against the cloud of smoke was an awesome sight .... a city burning." The final calculus from the siege is still incomplete and may remain so for a long while. It will be some time until the mass graves at Sabra and Shatila are exhumed and the truckloads of bodies and people carted off by the Phalange and their associates during the massacre are accounted for. According to initial Lebanese government statistics, now more than a year old, compiled by local Lebanese police districts using death certificates and hospital records, 19,085 persons were found to have been killed as of mid-November, 1982. Of these, 6,775 were killed during the 70 day period in Beirut. 12,310 were killed elsewhere in Lebanon, and 30,302 wounded. As of March 1, 1984, the number is estimated by the Lebanese government to have risen to 33,000 dead and 49,000 wounded. The Lebanese government found that 84 percent of the Beirut casualties were civilians. This figure is approximately 15 percent higher than had been estimated by the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose calculations had been dismissed by the Israeli government as cynical exaggerations and propaganda. According to the Lebanese police, over 2,300 of those killed or wounded during the first four months of the invasion were under 15 years of age, and more than 1,700 were over age 50. Of the 30,302 wounded during this same four month period, more than 1,800 required amputations because of fragmentation bomb or cluster bomb wounds, according to medical personnel working with the Lebanese Red Cross. In addition, more than 350,000 people were made homeless, 100,000 were without shelter, and several hundred thousand made destitute. The Lebanese government has estimated that physical damage from the invasion amounted to more than $3 billion, while destroyed housing alone accounted for nearly $1 billion. The cost of rebuilding Lebanon is now estimated to be $24 billion. Of the 25 hospitals and clinics operating in West Beirut during late July and August, 1982, many were partially destroyed by Israeli aerial, sea and land bombardment, despite exhibiting Red Cross and/or Red Crescent insignias. Dr. Samir Thabit, acting president of the American University of Beirut, stated that he considered having the large red cross painted outside Jessup Hall and West Hall removed. His reason was that from what he had been advised by civil defense workers and Red Cross personnel around West Beirut, the Red Cross insignia actually appeared to draw Israeli fire -- certain elements of the Israeli military apparently feeling that bombing hospitals presented an opportunity to "finish the job" against wounded "terrorists" and their sympathizers. A partial list of damaged or destroyed hospitals and clinics in the Beirut area, some of which were hit by cluster bombs, includes the following: Haifa Hospital Dar Al Ajazy Handicapped Center Islamic Mental Hospital Al Kafayat School for the Disabled Ras Beirut Hospital Makassed Home for the Elderly Development Organization for Human Abilities at Aramoun (DOHA) (an International Year of the Handicapped project) Al Ramadham Orphanage in Ouzai Islamic Psychiatric Hospital in Beirut The Armenian Hospital at Aazzouniye, 16 miles southeast of Beirut Al Mau Hospital Triumph Hotel Clinic La Hout Hospital (Near East School of Theology) Gaza Hospital Berbir Hospital Makassed Hospital Mouseitbi Medical Center Antranic Canter French Center (College Protestante) The functioning clinics of West Beirut were primarily makeshift, put together from the salvage and supplies of hospitals and clinics bombed earlier in the invasion. La Hout Hospital, for example, was set up in the library of the Near East School of Theology, and other clinics were set up at the Triumph Hotel and at the French Protestant College, Basta Center, and others. Many of the most serious cases were transferred to the American University Hospital (AUH), a facility partly funded by the U.S. Government. On August 4, 1982, a day of intensive Israeli bombing and shelling, more than 2,000 refugees sought haven in the AUH. These desperate people correctly believed that, partly because the hospital was American, they might be safe at AUH. They slept in the hallways and many children were placed, with blankets, in large "Project Hope" cardboard boxes. page 516 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CLAUDIA WRIGHT, Journalist, England ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "WITH ADVANCE KNOWLEDGE OF THE INVASION, THE UNITED STATES SENT ARMS TO ISRAEL AND MOVED IN SHIPS." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Lebanon War has differed from the four earlier Arab-Israeli wars in the ferocity of the Israeli attack and the degree of United States involvement. There has been widespread speculation in the international press, bordering on conviction in the Arab world, that these two things are connected -- part of a joint Israeli- United States plan to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and redraw the map of Lebanon once and for all. ..... And the following evidence indicates that the Reagan Administration did a great deal to encourage the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and to assure its military success. WHO'S TELLING THE TRUTH? In an Israel radio interview on August 14, Israeli Defense Minister General Ariel Sharon suggested that United States Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and former Secretary of State Alexander Haig not only had advance knowledge of Israel's plans to invade Lebanon, but also had approved those plans. [JD: As you will eventually come to learn, just ONE of the reasons that the corporate U.S. Government endorsed the invasion of Lebanon is because wars reap vast sales for the American military-industrial war profiteers.] Weinberger's office responded by calling Sharon's claim untrue, saying, "At no time did the Israeli defense minister say or allude to the fact that Israel had plans to invade Lebanon." Weinberger's statement is not an outright denial of Sharon's claim. Instead, he evades the issue of how much he knew when Sharon was in Washington last May. The Israeli general did not need to discuss the invasion plans directly, because those details had already been made known to the Pentagon from U.S. intelligence reports and from earlier visits to Washington by military officers, including the visit, just days before Sharon arrived, of his aide, Arye Ganger. On May 20, as Sharon prepared to leave Israel for Washington, a spokesman told the Tel Aviv newspaper Ma'ariv that "Jerusalem wants to maintain complete freedom of action" regarding Lebanon. That was a carte blanche for the Israeli Military, and apparently, nothing Sharon was told at the Pentagon indicated that there were U.S. reservations about Israel's plans. Indeed, everything that happened during Sharon's visit between May 22 and 27 suggested the U.S. Government's resolve to back him as much as possible. On May 24, the Reagan Administration sent an informal notice to Congress of its decision to sell Israel seventy-five F-16 jet fighters, worth about three billion dollars. Two days later, an Administration offer of another eleven F-15s [jet fighters], costing five hundred and ten million dollars, cleared Congress. The offer was then dispatched to Jerusalem. On the same day, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to add one hundred and twenty-five million dollars to the seven hundred and eighty-five million dollars in economic support funds already authorized for Israel in 1983, and to convert the entire nine hundred and ten million dollars to a grant, dropping the Reagan Administration proposal that one-third be treated as a loan. The reason, the Senate Committee claimed, was that "Israel's qualitative edge" in weaponry "continues to erode .... necessitating increased arms purchases," at the same time that heavy debts on past arms purchases were straining the Israeli economy. On May 26, former Secretary of State Haig gave a speech in Chicago hinting, for the first time, at how far the United States was prepared to go to find a new political solution in Lebanon, and how far, therefore, the Israelis could go toward eliminating the Palestinian and Syrian presence in Lebanon. "The time has come," he said, "to take concerted action in support of both Lebanon's territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, and a strong central government capable of promoting a free, open, democratic and traditionally pluralistic society." To Sharon and the Israeli Cabinet, there was no doubt what this "concerted action" meant. Former President of the United States Jimmy Carter has said that he was told by "very knowledgeable people in Israel" that their plans to invade Lebanon had been given "a green light from Washington." After Carter made these comments in an interview in the Atlanta Constitution on August 19, Secretary of State George Shultz responded by saying that Carter was "not correct." "My understanding is that the United States Government was not informed, and the United States Government was and is on the record as having opposed the invasion." Like Weinberger's response to Sharon, this also evades the specific contention that Washington knew of the invasion in advance and tacitly gave its go-ahead. "It was possible," Shultz said, that "somebody came through here and talked about [the invasion] as a possibility." Even if Sharon and his subordinates had spoken vaguely of their plans, United States Naval deployments in the Eastern Mediterranean could not have occurred without at least ten days advance warning of the likely date of the Israeli attack. According to the Pentagon, deployments were ordered even before Sharon had left Washington for home, thereby stationing one of the most powerful United States armadas ever assembled in the Eastern Mediterranean, offshore from Lebanon at the same time that Israel invaded. The U.S. armada gave that [Israeli] invasion vital protection from Soviet or Arab threats from the west. According to the Pentagon, in one of these deployments, the nuclear- powered aircraft carrier USS Ranger was ordered to sail from San Diego, California to the Indian Ocean to relieve the USS Kennedy. The USS Ranger reached its station June 1, two days before the shooting of the Israeli ambassador in Britain, Shlomo Argov, an assassination attempt used by Israel to justify its attack on Lebanon. The USS Kennedy then headed for the Suez Canal, passing through immediately after the assassination attempt. By the time Israeli forces had begun to move, the Kennedy had taken up a position off the Lebanese coast, where its surveillance and interceptor aircraft covered Israel itself and Israeli Naval operations off the Lebanese coast from surprise air or sea attacks from the west. The USS Ranger's relief of the USS Kennedy, said the Pentagon officials at the time, was routine, but the timing of the move and the Kennedy's new battle station were not. In the afternoon of 25 June, the Israelis flew over the hospital and dropped leaflets in Hebrew. Nobody could read them. I still wonder what they meant. Everyone became scared. One or two hours later they started heavy shelling, concentrated on the hospital. People rushed to the cellar. I believe there were more than 100 civilians there. We tried to continue and we did continue the operation treatment of the injuries, but with each new explosion I believed it would be the last one and that the building would fall to the ground. The people were scared to death and so was I, and it was impossible to go upstairs. I was on the ground floor at one time to give morphine to the injured upstairs, but was literally hit to the ground by the explosions outside. The patients on the first and second floor we had to leave alone. A boy 17 years old, a nurse, he was the only one of the staff who took care of the patients. He sat on the first floor and talked calmly to patients during the shelling. He is the greatest hero I have ever met. After three hours, it became dark and we decided to evacuate. When the dark came, the shelling became more scattered and it was possible to escape. I was really impressed how they carried out the evacuation. In less than half an hour all the patients were outside and in security. First, the civilians, women and children, then the patients and last, the staff. The last patient was in fact transported directly from the operating theatre and was still under anaesthetic. I will never forget the transport of this patient, his head between my legs, working hard to keep his air-way free. The ambulance, without lights throughout the blacked-out city. The story of the last patient is an example of WHO became victims. He was 18 years old. He moved with his family to a safe place in Beirut. He had begged his father to let him take a short trip to their house to feed their animals, and promised to be back in half an hour. The next day they met again in our temporary clinic. The father was crying and the son without his leg. To sum up, in my opinion there is no doubt that this was a deliberate shelling of a fully operational hospital without military installations or targets nearby. It was the second Palestinian hospital they had to evacuate because of shelling. We heard from a further witness that the first one was Akka, evacuated 22 June, I think. The Palestinians had no hospital of their own remaining in operation. We evacuated to the Theological School on Hamra Street, a safer place at that time, but with no equipment or facilities at all, most of it being left in Gaza. We had approximately 40 wounded patients and we faced many difficulties in the next days. But step by step, it became possible. I will finish with our departure some weeks later. Still, there were very few foreign doctors and nurses inside Beirut. When we passed the Israeli checkpoint, they checked our papers which declared we were sent from the health services in Norway to do medical and humanitarian work in Lebanon. The Israeli officer asked then: "Do you know the rules?" "Rules, what kind of rules?" we replied. He said, "Okay -- you can go, but you can never, never come back." It seemed they wanted to prevent health workers from entering Beirut at a time when the civilians in Beirut cried out their need for help to the whole world. This is a picture of our first patient, in a way our baptism by fire in this cruel war. She was in a flat, I suppose ten minutes from Gaza Hospital. The mother told us she was hit by a fragment which came through the wall, and the mother ran through the camp during the very heavy shelling with the little child in her arms; the child with one arm already nearly amputated. From: "ISRAEL'S WAR IN LEBANON: EYEWITNESS CHRONICLES OF THE INVASION & OCCUPATION, Compiled and edited by Franklin Lamb, 1984 Publisher and sole distributor: Spokesman for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Bertrand Russell House, Gamble St., Nottingham, England NG7 4ET. Transcribed with permission. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DR. MADS GILBERT, Physician, Norway ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ QUITE OFTEN, OPERATIONS HAD TO BE CANCELLED BECAUSE INSTRUMENTS COULD NOT BE PROPERLY WASHED BETWEEN OPERATIONS ... WOUND AND BONE INFECTIONS WERE EXTREMELY COMMON AND IN SOME CASES WE DISCOVERED LARGE AMOUNTS OF WORMS IN GANGRENOUS WOUNDS. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I will testify about the conditions and problems for patients and medical staff in West Beirut during this summer. I saw eight different medical centres or hospitals ranging from the American University Hospital to small underground first-aid stations in garages. Most of my working time I spent at the provisional La Hout Medical Centre located in the Near East School of Theology. This hospital was run in cooperation between Lebanese, Palestinian and European medical workers, headed and supervised by a joint Lebanese-Palestinian committee organising the health and social work in West Beirut. The main problems in the medical work were all directly or indirectly caused by two factors: the systematic bombing and shelling by the Israeli military forces; and a special method of warfare applied by the same military forces: the blockade or siege of West Beirut. To sum up, the main problems in the medical work were: 1. the number and severity of injured people; 2. the insufficient capacity of the medical system; 3. the deficiencies, due to the siege, of water, energy and various medical equipment,etc.; 4. the insufficient security both for patients and staff; and 5. the fading infrastructure of the town, affecting the maintenance, public services such as garbage emptying and street cleaning, posing serious threats to hygiene. Let me comment briefly on each of these points: first to the patients, or to put it more precisely: the constant flow of injuries produced by the Israeli military actions. All sorts of injuries were present, from serious blast or fragmentation injury commonly seen, to minor cases. Some 80 percent were civilians, the ratio between soldier and civilian casualties being as low as 1 to 30 based on my own counting. The injuries often demanded prompt reanimation and surgical action, as was the case with many traumatic amputations. At La Hout, the mixed Arab-European medical teams performed together some 270-300 major and minor surgical procedures from the end of June to the end of August. The capacity of the medical system of West Beirut was reduced overall mainly as a result of the Israeli destruction of hospitals. Provisional solutions had to be found. One example was the `Palladium medical station', located in a cinema building staffed by Palestinians and a Danish nurse, poorly equipped but functioning and indeed taking its share of the patients; or the third basement floor at La Hout medical centre which served as a sheltered ward: or the operating theatre at the same provisional hospital, located in the underground sound studio of this theological school. It was equipped with two operating tables and basic surgical and anaesthetic items. The war destroyed the infrastructure of the town. In every street, garbage was collected and burned, proving both the dangers of epidemic diseases but also the very strong discipline and dignity of the population -- and the town succeeded in keeping major epidemics away. I wil turn to the consequences of the war of siege waged by the Israelis against the people of West Beirut. The areas of deficiencies in the medical field due to the siege can be summed up in six points: 1. lack of water; 2. lack of energy -- both electricity and fuel; 3. lack of different sorts of medical equipment such as instruments, disposable materials, antibiotics, drugs, etc.; 4. lack of blood and blood products; 5. lack of adequate nutritional source for patients; 6. lack of medical staff; To illustrate some of the important shortages, let me start with the water. Due to the shutting of the pumping station in East Beirut, the population of West Beirut was exposed to a number of threats: They had to rely on improper sources of water such as wells formed in bomb craters. These were used both for drinking water, personal hygiene and laundry. In other areas, tanked water was distributed to a limited extent, and in some cases, reservoirs were installed by UNICEF in the Haret Hriek first-aid station. The lack of running water not only hastens the development of epidemic diseases, it also makes the medical work extremely difficult. Quite often, operations had to be cancelled because instruments could not be properly washed between operations. This delayed treatment. The sheets and dressings of the patients were hard to keep clean. Wound and bone infections were extremely common, and in some few cases we even discovered large amounts of worms in gangrenous wounds. Infected wounds needed daily and time-consuming attention with lancing and thorough cleaning to have a chance to heal properly. However, in spite of blockade and bombing, the responsible Palestinian and Lebanese authorities organised the search for other water sources; for example, drilling wells straight through the pavement outside La Hout. The Israeli blockade of power supplies was long-lasting and forced us to rely on generators delivering often marginal amounts of energy. These machines were sensitive to both bombing and fuel shortage. But with a permanent well and two generators outside, medical work could still continue at La Hout as with most of the other institutions. Paying attention to the shortages, one had to accept a conventional light bulb even for major surgery or even a torch when generators failed in the middle of and operation. Lack of medical equipment was another feature of the siege, forcing us to turn to methods of treatment inferior to modern medicine. Complicated fractures which should have been externally fixed, had to be plastered, often leading to disastrous results for the long-term function of the limb. Lack of disposable materials forced the staff to reuse items such as syringes and gloves. Let me make one thing quite clear at this point: it may appear at this hearing that medical services were run by foreigners during the war. In fact, the main burdens and responsibilities were taken by our numerous and courageous Palestinian and Lebanese health workers, many of them being unable to be witnesses at this hearing due to work, imprisonment or even death. It was thanks to those people that West Beirut never was left without some medical services. Let me conclude by summing up the main medical consequences of the Israeli siege of West Beirut. It caused: delayed primary treatment of injuries; often insufficient surgery; high mortality before and during surgery; a high incidence of post-operation infections; a high incidence of major surgical complications; malnutrition of several patient groups; altogether an unnecessarily high mortality and morbidity, adding to the damage already done to humans by the military attacks themselves. The following passages are from: "ISRAEL'S WAR IN LEBANON: EYEWITNESS CHRONICLES OF THE INVASION & OCCUPATION", compiled and edited by Franklin Lamb, 1984 publisher and sole distributor: Spokesman for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Bertrand Russell House, Gamble St., Nottingham, England NG7 4ET. Transcribed with permission by John DiNardo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DR. EBBA WERGELAND, Physician, Norway ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I WAS NOT SO MUCH STRUCK BY THE BOMBARDMENT ITSELF, AS BY THE TERRORISATION OF THE POPULATION, PALESTINIANS AND LEBANESE ALIKE. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I want to tell you about some of the things in the first period of the blockade which I experienced. I was sent by the Palestine Committee from Norway to Beirut on 8 June, after we had lost contact with the PRCS there. I was already too late to leave because Beirut was already being closed off. So from Damascus, I witnessed the beginning of the siege which was to block supplies and entries into West Beirut, partially or totally during two months. Hundreds of medical workers were already waiting in Damascus when I arrived there. They were mainly Palestinians working in the Gulf States, the majority with their homes and families in South Lebanon. They could not enter and they had no way of getting news about the fate of their families. Others were stuck too. Relief organisations were getting tons of equipment stocked in Damascus, in Chtaura on the way from Damascus to Beirut, and in Tripoli. Three ICRC [Red Cross] convoys were stopped on their way to West Beirut, twice by the Israelis and once by the Phalangists. This can be checked with the Damascus ICRC representative. Both the PRCS in Damascus and the international relief organisations agreed that Beirut had first priority if it could be reached. Stocks were being destroyed of blood and blood products, due to lack of storage facilities and to expired storage time. I spent my time there trying to find a way to get into Beirut and a Norwegian surgical team joined me in Damascus. I give you details here because I want to show you that the road was not open. We passed via Tripoli through the Phalangist area pretending that we belonged to a U.N. convoy which we knew was passing to East Beirut the same time. Because we were White, because we were Norwegians, this worked. We had to sleep in Jounieh, also called the Phalangist capital. It is north of Beirut on the coast. Israeli soldiers already moved among the inhabitants there as if it were quite normal, which reminded us of a long-standing, well- established relationship and cooperation between the new occupants and the Phalangists. We passed the next day from East to West Beirut as journalists. We brought no equipment, as other people had been turned off on their way to West Beirut before, also due to their equipment. I had been to Beirut four times before this visit and also during the 1978 invasion. From the first day, I was not so much struck by the bombardment itself as by the terrorisation of the population, Palestinians and Lebanese alike, all classes of society affected. I met the people from the camps as I did in 1978, in schools, in cellars, but this time it was worse because they were never safe, even if they moved into the centre of the city. I met people from the Palestinian refugee camps telling me about their houses being burned down the day before; they had lost everything. They moved from place to place trying to find a safe area, from day to day. I was not only a coordinator, I was also a medical doctor, but it was not easy to give sound medical advice to people without water and electricity or money to buy medicine. The lack of water and electricity was not only during the periods which were announced in the newspapers as blockades. It was more or less permanent, partially or totally, during my whole stay there, and this was due not only to the deliberate turning off of the tap in the East, but also to bombardment which destroyed the pipelines; and they could not be repaired. When we arrived it was 22 June and people had already stayed in bathrooms and corridors, people who had their flats in the centre of town. For weeks they started because they were scared by attacks or threatened attacks and low overflights. It was Ramadan and the Israelis, during the first part of our stay there, had the habit of attacking in the afternoon when the families got together to have their first meal. ...... As to shelling and bombardment, was it indiscriminate? All the hospitals I knew of in West Beirut except La Hout, the provisional hospital which was made up during the war, were hit, seriously or not so seriously. If it was not indiscriminate, then it was on purpose. I visited quarters where I had lived before. These residential areas were developing into ghost areas. Six storey buildings, apartment blocks cut through like you would cut slices of bread. How many live in Beirut? Many numbers have been mentioned, and I think no one knows for sure. But I think many people have underestimated the number because they did not look into every corner. They did not look in these flats which were over-crowded with refugees from the south and from the camps. I think it is an easy thing to under-estimate the population of West Beirut, who lived through these times. How many died? Again, no one can be expected to give an exact answer even though many authorities tried to give an answer. Under the rubble in West Beirut, there are still people left. Rescue work was extremely difficult. When bombardments last for five hours, fourteen hours -- ambulances could not work, and rescue work was dangerous. What do you do with fires when you have no water and fuel? There were courses organised by the Norwegian medical team for ambulance personnel in Beirut. A few days after we left, we received the news that of this group of about 15 to 20, one had been killed and three wounded when a grenade hit their ambulance. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DR. CONSTANTIOS ALEXIOU, Physician, Greece ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I WAS ALSO WITNESS TO MERCILESS, SIMULTANEOUS CARPET BOMBING FROM AIRCRAFT, ARTILLERY AND GUN BOATS. EVEN DURING THE CEASE-FIRE AGREEMENT, THEY WERE BROUGHT IN SYSTEMATICALLY. I SAW TOTAL DEVASTATION FROM BOMBARDMENT OF THE RESIDENTIAL DISTRICTS SUCH AS SABRA, CHATILA, FAKHANI, MAZDA'A. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My medical team consisted of five doctors and six nurses, and Damascus was the first stop. There, the International Red Cross policy towards us, as expressed by those officials in Damascus, can only be termed as strange. I refer to this because besides their negative stand towards a well-equipped and organised team, they were equally unwilling to hurry through large supplies of blood and the medicines offered by Greece, and desperately needed in West Beirut. As it was impossible for all the team to proceed to West Beirut, half of the group stayed in Damascus and after that, turned back to Greece. The other half travelled by taxis and arrived in East Beirut after an 11 hour trip. For three days in East Beirut, we attempted to obtain permission to travel into West Beirut, but it was impossible. The answer was that Israeli forces had cut off all means of communication with West Beirut. On the fourth day, we tried in an official way and succeeded in passing through the blockade of Israeli and Phalange lines. I cannot reveal, of course, the method used without exposing other people and countries. While waiting in East Beirut, we had a continual, extensive "bird's eye view" of bombardment by air, land and sea of the tragic city; horrific bombardment -- quite indiscriminate. The first hospital I went to in West Beirut was called Akka, nearly totally destroyed. Only in its basement was there something suggesting a first-aid station. There I operated on a crippled man, taking from his right leg two metallic pieces. These, I think, were fragments of a sort of cluster bomb. During that time, two ladies were admitted seriously suffering from extensive burns due to the burning bomb explosions. In the same place, I saw the children's department totally damaged by shelling, while in the doctors' bedroom it was apparent that the hole in the wall was due to a shell coming obviously from the sea. Because it was not possible for me to work at underground level, I left for Gaza Hospital. This was a building of six or seven floors, but everything above the ground floorhad been destroyed and its function was limited to the first and second basement. Finally, we went to a private gynaecological clinic. The Palestine Red Crescent had rented the fourth floor, turning it into a general surgical unit for emergency cases. >From my stay and work in West Beirut, I can assess the hospital conditions as follows. First, there was a lack of medical facilities and supplies, and of specialised medical staff. Second, the conditions for the care of the wounded were terribly difficult, since hospitals had already been bombed, while the functioning of the rest became problematic since they were unable to offer any security. Thirdly, the lack of vital things such as electricity, water, even blood posed significant obstacles for the care of the injured people. Fourthly, a great number of the seriously injured could not be looked after properly by units created in a hurry. All these factors, of course, resulted in a high rate of mortality and a high incidence of post- operative complications. During my stay there, I have been witness to an absolute blockade of the town from air, land and sea. In spite of any elementary human rights, the Israelis and Phalangists deprived 400,000 people of water, electricity, food supplies, making telephone communications difficult when they had not cut them off entirely. I had already realised that medical supplies, even blood, were significantly prevented by Israelis and Phalangists from being sent. I was also witness to merciless simultaneous carpet bombing from aircraft, artillery and gun boats. Even during the cease-fire agreeent they were brought in systematically. I saw total devastation by bombardment of the residential districts such as Sabra, Chatila, Fakhani, Mazda'a. The Israelis, as well, did not hesitate in bombing indiscriminately refugee camps, hospitals and cemeteries. I must end by alluding to the use of burning bombs [unquenchable white phosphorus], toy bombs [designed to attract children -- to explode when manipulated], vacuum bombs, etc. I also should tell you about the psychological war exercised daily by false bombing with illuminations and sound bombs, and the use of threatening leaflets. The car explosions and the presence of snipers supplemented the atmosphere of terror and anxiety and fear in the besieged city. Now I will show you some indicative, characteristic slides taken by me. A small child seriously injured when her sister was playing with an unknown weapon, probably a toy bomb; it exploded and her sister died. She was very seriously injured. Another child seriously injured in its abdomen. Next one: again, young people. Next one: another one died, [after being] very seriously injured. A baby; it was injured when it was embraced by his mother, who had died from a fragmentation bomb, probably, which injured it in the peritoneum and the right groin. Next one: another seriously burned by a phosphorus bomb. This is the insertion of spots of small fragments, probably from a fragmentation bomb. Next one: a very extensive burn from burning bombs. The ratio of civilians to fighters in my hospital was 25 to 1. Second, the use of prohibited weapons was obvious. Again, the bombardment of residential areas was obvious. Fourth, there were no injured persons by bullet, but by fragments from shells, burns and collapsed buildings. My stay in West Beirut was enough to convince me of the size and the dimensions of the Israeli action which is included in the term genocide. The following eyewitness testimony from the past paints a vivid portrait of the annihilation that is now being inflicted upon a civilian populace -- men, women, children, old people: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * DR. TERJE LUND, Physician, Norway ----------------------------------- I WAS ASTONISHED TO SEE THE PRECISION WITH WHICH THE ISRAELI AIR ROCKETS HAD HIT CELLARS AND SHELTERS UNDER HIGH BUILDINGS WITHOUT HITTING THE BUILDINGS. ------------------------------------------------------------------ I am going to concentrate on the item of bomb shelters since the time schedule is pressing. I am referring mainly to the heavy bombing on 12 August, the last day with heavy air raids which lasted from 6 o'clock in the morning until 7 o'clock in the evening. The aeroplanes were supported by artillery as we have heard before. All parts of the town were hit and, due to the heavy bombardment, no transport of wounded people was possible in the areas. So we did not receive many patients until 6 o'clock in the evening. Then we got a message that we should receive 40 burnt patients from a shelter which was hit. I was not at the emergency entrance according to our plan for catastrophe situations. I was on my part of the ward with special care for the critically ill patients and I was told by those who were in the entrance that we received about 30 patients in 15 minutes. I saw that day only the patients who came to my ward and my special responsibility was to take care of six critically ill burnt patients and two patients with serious head injuries. Among the burnt patients were a woman of 20 years old, a boy, who was her brother aged 12, and three ladies between 50 and 60 years old. These persons had burns of between 30 and 60 percent of the skin surface, second degree burns. In addition to these patients we received many with less serious injuries. I mean crush injuries, from small stones hitting them. All these patients were civilians. They all came from the same shelter. First let me describe the kinds of burns. They were special kinds of burns I had not seen before this war. As I said, they were second degree burns. That means that the skin makes big blisters and the outer layer of skin loosens from the body. For instance, on some of the patients, you could pull off the skin of the fingers with the nails on it -- just like a glove. All the areas which had been bare, that is, not covered with several layers of clothes, were burnt. The hair was still on their heads, but it changed into a fragile material which could be crushed when it was touched; it went into little pieces. At that time, it was not possible to say what was the cause of these burns, but we heard that they had all stayed in a shelter which was hit by three or four rockets from aeroplanes. When the cease-fire was stable a few days later, I went out with other medical personnel to see this specific shelter, to find out the situation, and on the way there we also stopped at other places. I was astonished to see the precision with which the Israeli air rockets had hit cellars and shelters under high buildings without hitting the buildings. I saw at least seven examples of this which was a hole, let us say two metres away from where the wall or building goes down to the ground, through which the rockets had gone down into the cellars and blown up the contents, whatever they were. In this specific case, with all these patients mentioned above, there were between eighty and one hundred and twenty civilians in the shelter which was hit by three or four rockets. These numbers are according to the French anaesthetist who was working in the medical first-aid station and who first received these patients. In one street I saw three high blocks with exactly similar rocket holes going down into the basements. Akka Hospital must, I think, have been hit by a similar kind of rocket a few weeks earlier, which had penetrated into the basement and into the surgical ward. I do not know if the shelter from which we received all those patients was constructed as a shelter or as an underground parking lot, but it was placed between two high buidings and was used by a lot of civilians. There were no military persons in this shelter at all according to those who received patients from the shelter. According to the French anaesthetist, 56 persons were taken out alive from these ruins. When I arrived there, I could tell from the smell that there were certainly still corpses buried under the concrete. They did not have the machines to dig them out at that time. The explanation why all these people had these kinds of burns was that they had been located in a part of the shelter which did not collapse. It was under one of the high blocks. The walls and the roof were black and my conclusion, after seeing this and after discussing it with people who are more experienced with weapons than I, was that it must have been a thermal flash, a special very high heat generated during the explosion from one or several of the rockets. So that the people who were staying in here were not hit by concrete or shrapnel, but were heated for a short second to such a point that they later died. Five of these six patients died after four days. In addition to those, we had old people with head injuries whose skulls had to be operated on immediately. We were working with those people very concentratedly for some days. My conclusion is that from the precision with which I have seen the basements hit, I find it very hard to believe that this was a coincidence. It is obvious that we have here very advanced weapons which are able to hit these kinds of targets, but I am not a military expert. I do not know how this functions, but it was said to be rockets. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PAMELA COOPER, ENGLAND ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THUS, I THINK THAT ONE OF THE GREATEST EVILS WHICH ISRAEL HAS WROUGHT UPON LEBANON IS THE FOSTERING OF SECTARIAN AND RELIGIOUS DIVISIONS WHICH THAT COUNTRY HAS TRIED SO HARD TO HEAL SINCE GAINING INDEPENDENCE. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our lifespan is too brief, at least for most of us lesser fry, to completely discard the ideologies and beliefs of our forefathers, yet, despite the peculiarly unpleasant moment of history we have to endure in the 1980s, in Europe we seem to have arrived at some degree of mutual religious tolerance and respect. As Christians, we have a duty to love our neighbour, since our loyalty is to a loving God. Thus, I think that one of the greatest evils that Israel has wrought upon Lebanon is the fostering of sectarian and religious divisions which that country has tried so hard to heal since gaining independence. Israel, under Prime Minister Begin and his cabinet, has become increasingly a confessional state. Like the Turks, he would like to divide the rule, to see Lebanon slit up into canons of Maronite, Melkite and Orthodox Christians, and Sunni, Shia Moslems and Druzes, retaining a prevailing influence and cooperation with the richer Maronite community. During the six weeks I lived in besieged West Beirut, where the Israelis doubtless had spies, but held no sway, there was an air of what I can only call brotherhood, a belonging, which I personally had never experienced before. As the guns bombed from the sea, the rockets and shells hit us from the south and from the hills to the southeast, Lebanese and Palestinians toiled tirelessly together for the dispossessed and the wounded, helped by a small force of doctors and nurses from almost every European country, Australia and New Zealand. As representatives of OXFAM, my husband and I were closely allied throughout to the joint Lebanese/Palestinian Committee, with a smaller group to help administer OXFAM funds. These dedicated men and women, Christian and Moslem who had stayed on in the western part of the city, became our close friends. As the siege tightened its grip, as the merciful black market withered, when the International Red Cross and the UNRWA supply lorries were held up and the fruit and vegetable vans were burned or denied access through the only three crossing places across the Green Line, then with them we were able to buy from local warehouses emergency foods such as sardines, humus, beans in tomato sauce which did not have to be prepared with the dwindling stocks of fuel. We employed women to sew sheets and diapers for the hospitals and the families in the high-rise blocks, and made emergency purchases of medicine and bandages. One of the biggest privations was lack of water to drink or for laundering. In underground hospitals, excavated as garages for the Mercedes of the departed Lebanese, the Belgian, French and Norwegian surgeons operated and amputated limbs under appalling conditions caused by cluster bombs, phosphorus bombs and artillery shelling. It might be a child or an old man pulled out of the rubble of a building that had been hit by the most up-to-date, deep-penetration weapon. As the perimetre of the city to the south and east was hit again and again, so more Lebanese and Palestinian families moved into the shrinking centre. In the Rue Clemenceau, there was a new block of flats housing a hundred families of refugees, not far from the coast and the American University. In the basement garage, a young Finn had set up a small clinic, and I arranged that an equally young English doctor, who had arrived from Athens as a volunteer, should visit twice a week or when a child or woman need hospitalisation. Except that there was no fuel to pump water to the flats so that it perversely ran down the walls of the clinic garage, the families had settled in gratefully, one to a room, with rolls of bedding and a few cooking pots which UNRWA distributed. Like most Palestinians, when given the chance, they kept the overcrowded rooms neat and clean, while every new arrival to this precarious and dangerous family life was welcomed with a welter of affection which I was also expected to contribute to. One morning at 4:30 A.M., I awoke to the sound of the now familiar salvos fired from the Israeli gunboats off the coast, followed by the crash of falling masonry. The shelling continued for most of the day. When we were able to reach the Rue Clemenceau, I saw the pathetic Red Cross flag tattered, but still flying to advertise the little clinic. The entire surface of the street was covered with broken glass. One shell had hit the two UNICEF water tanks set up across the street. Another shell had taken out the entire front wall of one floor of the building. But on the floor above, the customary colourful array of washing hung along the balcony. In the clinic, an exhausted and despairing Finn, with one or two helpers, told us that they had lost only one life, but had seventy casualties and only five beds. In the lower garage, which was dank and dirty but which had saved so many lives, many families were still sleeping, but others had returned to their blasted flats. This was the week of some of the cruelest bombardment, so that had there been anywhere to move them to, it would have been a risky undertaking. As I watch from the safety of S.W.1 scense of the P.L.O. fighters, maybe fathers and sons of some of my hundred families embarking for Cyprus, a question haunts me. When the siege is lifted and the Phalangist and Kataeb militias once again move around the devastated streets of West Beirut, will they purposely destroy those bonds of mutual trust, the fabric of social welfare and service which these Christian and Moslem, Lebanese and Palestinian men and women have woven so strongly through their suffering? Will that sense of "belonging" I am already lonely for, along with the smelly streets, the rotting and burning piles of refuse, the rats and the broken sewers, and those gallant children who all day carry water containers beyond their strength down the streets and up the stairways to their mothers and grandmothers nursing a new baby, be irretrievably lost? ------------------------------------------------ (This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the Radio Free Michigan site by the archive maintainer. All files are ZIP archives for fast download. E-mail bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu)