Like the fake constitution: 'election' in Iraq is illegal

The 'parliamentary elections' - next Thursday in Iraq - are totally illegal and void. Whether it's an election, a referendum, a parliament, the courts or a 'new' constitution: doing this in an occupied country is illegal. Doing it in an illegal war doubles the illegality.*

by Henk Ruyssenaars

According to all international law, and also by the US signed international treaties and conventions, changing a constitution or holding elections in an occupied territory is absolutely illegal.

THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS (IV) OF 1949, PROHIBIT THE MODIFICATION OF THE DOMESTIC LAWS OR LEGAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE OCCUPIED POWER.

May I - as a pro memoriam - reprint the item on the illegal changing of the 'constitution' in Iraq which with armed force was pushed down the throat of the Iraq people? The title is ''The 'New' constitution in Iraq is Illegal'' and it was first published last August 23d - 2005.

'Illegal' - that's what Iraqi opposition leaders now call the three more days the 'parliamentarians' gave themselves to further concoct Iraq's first post-Saddam 'constitution'. According to US occupation information sources: "the charter's authors, under heavy US pressure, beat a midnight Monday deadline by just minutes to turn over their draft to parliament." Whatever they draft or call it: it's illegal.

In what way ever the US 'Lie Factory' - http://tinyurl.com/8ncal - and the collaborators in occupied Iraq via the mainstream media may try to 'cook' the books: according to the also by the US signed Geneva Convention*, the Hague Convention (Art. 43) and all earlier valid international laws, it's mandatory c.q. compulsory, that "An occupant" must ensure public order "while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country." Whether it's an election, a referendum, a new parliament, the courts or a 'new' constitution: doing this in an occupied country is illegal.

Even if the genocidal neocons in the White House have their propaganda machine and 'front man' George Bush praise the not at all successful negotiations: "as the essence of democracy: the establishment of a democratic constitution will be a landmark event in the history of Iraq and the history of the Middle East," as US President George W. Bush again and knowingly lied in a speech in Salt Lake City. This 'charter' is legal nor democratic.

SOME PUBLIC OFFICIALS START TELLING THE TRUTH

Where he met resistance from an unexpected side: the mayor of the town himself. Bush critic and Cindy Sheehan's action supporting Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, had called for demonstrations against President Bush, and told the more than 2,000 activists: "Our nation was lied into war.* You are true patriots for being here today."

Apparently more and more public officials in the US finally dare - or have become desperate by what they also see happening - and start telling the truth.

That can never be expected from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - who like the rest of the neocon's administration praises Iraqi politicians for showing: "determination and resolve in the face of extremism and violence." -

However: the maintream propaganda sewers are activated, saying that 'once approved by the Iraqi 'legislature', the so called 'Charter' will be presented to the victims of occupied Iraq in a referendum.

The US's 'Lie Factory" - [http://tinyurl.com/2rg5o] - and Newspeak divisions will stage the same 'Potemkin cover' as last time, at those so called 'free elections'; with most people knowing that whatever is done with this piece of paper: the illegal 'constitution' will be worth less than the paper it's written upon.

But it will be valid and important as evidence of also this breach of the Geneva Conventions - in the court cases which in the nearby future must and will take place, concerning the war crimes of the PNAC neocons and their ilk.

It's all illegal, whatever the occupying ''Coalition of the Killing'- forces plans to do, like trying to change the Iraqi constitution in this ravaged country.

The Geneva Convention, Article 54 reads: \"The Occupying Power may not alter the status of public officials or judges in the occupied territories, or in any way apply sanctions to or take any measures of coercion or discrimination against them, should they abstain from fulfilling their functions for reasons of conscience.\"

Many in the US and Pentagon still have not understood that Might does not make Right.

It is on the other hand a miracle that some of the victims of the US 'liberation' still have some humor intact:

The best comment came from an Iraqi who said he wants to move to Japan, because:

My father is a Sunni, and my mother a Shia.

So I think I'm a Sushi...

Henk Ruyssenaars

[andend] - Story at Uruknet - Url.: http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=15022&s2=25

FOOTNOTES/LINKS:

* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC video & text - interview United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

* 'Crying Wolf' - Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/7ttx8

* Reference guide to the Geneva Conventions - Url.:  http://www.genevaconventions.org

* The 9/11 WTC drama was PNAC terror - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/9np7d - It was an inside job - Google - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/7tj9d

* Who's financing? - The 'Federal Reserve' is the absolute biggest crime ever - Url.: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm

* Al Qaeda – The Database - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cqx69

* Iraq: very good information via Dahr Jamail’s web site at - Url.: www.dahrjamailiraq.com

* MSNBC - Poll: Ninety-four (94) percent believes that George Bush and the neocon media mislead the nation to go to war with Iraq - Url.: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8248969/

* Corporate News Media: Incompetent, Criminally Negligent or Complicit? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cqpfe

* Brainwashed? - Take the free 'Gullibility Factor' test to find out if you're really a mind slave or not; Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cbgnc

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/8zhvo
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl

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Iraq: 1,000 days of war & always torture...

From Shock and Awe to a country torn between insurrection and democracy

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

The Independent - 13 December 2005 - It has been the strangest war. A thousand days ago, on 20 March 2003, the US and British armies started a campaign which ended a few weeks later with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

It seemed so easy. President George Bush announced that the war was over. The American mission had been accomplished. Months passed before Washington and London realised that the war had not finished. In fact it was only just beginning. Of the 18,000 US servicemen killed or wounded in Iraq, 94 per cent have been killed or wounded since the fall of Baghdad.

THERE IS NO SIGN THAT THE ELECTION FOR THE 275-MEMBER IRAQI PARLIAMENT THIS THURSDAY WILL END THE FIGHTING.

The Sunni Arabs, the core of the insurrection, will vote for the first time, but there is no talk of a ceasefire. A leaflet issued by one resistance group in Baghdad yesterday encouraged its followers to vote but warned: "The fighting will continue with the infidels and their followers."

It was such a strange war because the US began a conflict in 2003 to change radically the Middle East, the most volatile and dangerous region in the world. This was in complete contrast to the first Gulf War in 1991, when the main war aim of President George Bush Snr was to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and restore the status quo.

There was a further sharp difference between the two wars. Mr Bush Snr had expended enormous effort in creating an international coalition under the UN to fight Iraq. His son, by way of contrast, seemed to revel in isolation. He made the Iraq war the supreme test of American military and political strength.

The US would fight it alone, aside from Britain tagging along behind, and win it alone. It did not need allies outside or even inside Iraq. The insurgents received vital if covert assistance from abroad, but the rebellion against the US occupation was always essentially home-grown.

DISILLUSIONMENT WITH THEIR LIBERATORS

Disillusionment with their liberators set in among Iraqis almost as soon as the American troops captured the capital in April 2003. The poor poured out of the slums of Baghdad in a frenzy of destruction and theft. Everything was looted, even the stuffed animals in the natural history museum.

Iraqis expected much from the fall of Saddam. They had endured 23 years of war and sanctions. The Iraqi armed forces simply packed up and went home.

Nobody wanted to die for the old regime. Instead they hoped to enjoy the fruits of their oil wealth for the first time and begin to live like Kuwaitis or Saudis.

Instead the US installed a colonial regime. Iraqis were marginalised and their opinions ignored. Iraqi professionals with PhDs and fluent in several languages found themselves being ordered about by young Americans whose only qualification was links to the Republican Party.

The army and security services were dissolved. The five million-strong Sunni community was enraged. The first attacks on US patrols and vehicles began. Whenever I visited the site of an ambush I saw young Iraqi men dancing in jubilation around the blazing vehicles.

By November 2004 a serious guerrilla war was under way. The 140,000-strong US Army was hopelessly ill-equipped for such a conflict. Once I saw an American artillery unit trying to quell a fist fight among Iraqi drivers in a queue at a petrol station. They had brought with them an enormous howitzer designed to fire a shell 30km because they had nowhere to store it.

THE FACE OF BAGHDAD BEGAN TO CHANGE.

The symbol of the new regime was the concrete block, enormous obstacles to car bombs looking like gigantic grey tombstones. Walls of them sealed off the Green Zone in the centre of Baghdad where the US and Britain had established their headquarters.

The suicide bombers began to make their terrifying impact. Nobody was safe. The UN headquarters was reduced to a heap of rubble, as was the building housing the Red Cross. Iraqi police stations and US positions were all hastily fortified. On some days there were a dozen attacks. Later they fell in number, but became more sophisticated, with one bomber trying to blast a way through the concrete walls so the second could reach the targeted building.

People in Baghdad and the centre of Iraq lived in perpetual terror of suicide bombers, kidnappers, Iraqi army and US troops. The roads to the capital were all cut by insurgents or bandits. Better-off Iraqis, fearful of kidnappers who preyed on their children, fled to Jordan, Syria and Egypt. In the face of Sunni Arab attack, the US relied more and more on the two other great Iraqi communities. The Shia make up 60 per cent of the population and the Kurds 20 per cent.

Some Iraqi leaders had an acute perception of the American dilemma in Iraq. "Let them try to run the country without us and they will see what trouble they will be in," said a Kurdish leader in the summer of 2003. "Then they will come running to us for our help."

Last year the US learnt that it could contain but could not suppress the Sunni insurrection. This year has seen Iraq slowly coming under the control of a Kurdish-Shia alliance whose authority is likely to be reaffirmed by the election on Thursday.

Iraq at the moment is an extraordinary patchwork with conditions varying in every part of the country. Kurdistan is more prosperous than at any time in its history. The skylines of its cities are crowded with cranes. In Baghdad there is hardly any sign of construction, and richer districts are often inhabited only by armed security guards. Their inhabitants have fled.

A BBC poll yesterday showed that half of those questioned say that Iraq needs a strong leader, while only 28 per cent cited democracy as a priority. But it would be a mistake to think that Iraqis could agree on the same strong leader. The Sunni would like a strong man to put the Shia in their place, and the Shia feel likewise that the priority for a powerful leader would be dealing with the Sunni.

Iraqis are cynical about their political leaders. The election results are likely to show that the great majority of Iraqis will vote along ethnic or religious lines as Shia, Sunni or Kurds. The country is turning from a unitary state into a confederation.

There is no sign yet of the thousand-day war ending. Every month up to a thousand fresh corpses arrive at the mortuary in Baghdad.

A new Iraq is emerging but it is already drenched in blood.

[andend] - The Independent, UK - Url.: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article332812.ece

The Guardian / UK - Noami Klein - "The US has used torture for decades. All that's new is the openness about it." - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/axx8r

RELATED REFERENCES & LINKS:

* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC: video & text-interview of the United Nation's Secretary General - Kofi Annan - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

* The Nuremberg principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment." - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/byurp

* 'Spreading democracy' - Countries & US Death Squads - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/drnca - A 55' second sound bite concerning the US 'bringing democracy' everywhere - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5u98v

* Who's financing? - The 'Federal Reserve' is the absolute biggest crime ever - Url.: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm

* 'Crying Wolf' - Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/7ttx8

* Reference guide to the Geneva Conventions - Url.:  http://www.genevaconventions.org

* The 9/11 WTC drama was PNAC terror - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/9np7d - It was an inside job - Google - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/7tj9d

* Al Qaeda – The Database - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cqx69

* The infamous US 'Lie Factory' -  http://tinyurl.com/8ncal

* He who travels far will often see things

Far removed from what he believed was the Truth.

When he talks about it in the fields at home,

He is often accused of lying,

For the obdurate people will not believe

Inexperience, I believe,

Will give little credence to my song.

'Journey to the East' - Hermann Hesse

* Help all the troops of whatever nationality to come back from abroad! We need them badly at home in many countries - AND WITH ALL THEIR WEAPONS, WHICH WE PAID FOR BY TAXES - to fight with us against our so called 'governments' and their malignant managers - Url.:  http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.:  http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/6v8ru
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/amn3q
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

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