Prior to George W. Bush illegally rolling into Iraq based on a passel of lies, Bill Clinton oversaw Papa Bush’s medieval sanctions on the country. The sanctions were not intended to stop Saddam Hussein from building WMDs as we were told by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
They were put in place to starve the Iraqi
people, deny basic medical supplies, and turn the country into a failed
state. The process resulted in the death of half a million Iraqi
children.
Madeline Albright, Clinton’s
Secretary of State, went on national television and said the murder of
500,000 Iraqi children was a price worth paying.
Now we have Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, demanding similar sanctions imposed on Iran.
On Wednesday, Pompeo said the US will terminate
a treaty with Iran put into place in 1955, two years after the CIA
engineered a coup ousting the democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh.
The long forgotten Treaty of Amity was brought
up by the International Court of Justice when it ruled the US must lift
sanctions that affect the import of humanitarian goods and products.
The Hague said in a preliminary decision the US
must “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from”
sanctions that affect exports to Iran of medicine, medical devices,
food, agricultural commodities and equipment necessary to ensure the
safety of civil aviation, according to a report at Fox News.
The ICJ’s attempt to prevent the Trump
administration from engaging in massive crimes against humanity,
according to Pompeo, is “meritless” and he accused the international
court of “attempting to interfere with the sovereign rights of the
United States to take lawful actions necessary to protect our national
security and abusing the ICJ for political and propaganda purposes.”
Trump and his top neocon adviser John Bolton insist the International Criminal Court has no authority.
“As far as America is concerned, the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority,” Trump told the General Assembly at the United Nations. “The ICC claims near-universal jurisdiction over the citizens of every country, violating all principles of justice, fairness, and due process. We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.”
The US is not a party to the Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court. Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statue in
2000, but it wasn’t sent to the Senate to be ratified. The Bush
administration sent a note informing the Secretary-General that it would
not ratify the Rome Statute and did not recognize any obligation toward
it. Like the Trump administration, the Bush administration openly
demonstrated hostility toward the idea of holding nations accountable
for war crimes.
The US backed up this defiance by passing the
American Service Members Protection Act in 2002 ahead of the Iraq
invasion. The law includes a provision to “use all means necessary and
appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel
being detained by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International
Criminal Court.” Additionally, the act permits the president to order
military action against the Court, which resulted in critics calling it
the “Hague Invasion Act.”
However, the Bush administration and its
neocons decided the ICC would be of use on a selective basis—against its
official roster of enemies.
The former Bush UN ambassador (by recess
appointment) and current top Trump administration neocon John Bolton
declared war on the ICC after it announced it would investigate war
crimes in Afghanistan. Bolton said the US will level sanctions against
the international organization if it proceeds.
Trump and Bolton are clearing the decks in
preparation of military action against Iran. They would like to see a
return of brutal sanctions used for over a decade in Iraq.
Iran understands what this means: rapid
deterioration of health, targeting water purification (a primary
objective in Iraq), communications, agriculture, and medical
infrastructure.
The US stated sanctions would remain in place
even if Saddam Hussein decided to cooperate with the United Nations,
thus demonstrating the sanctions and subsequent second invasion were not
about WMDs and unfounded threats to America. The objective was to
destroy Iraq, kill its people, and reduce the country to failed state
status.
Neocon “creative destruction” is focused on
making certain Iran does not pose a challenge to the hegemonic rule of
the United States and Israel. Both Israel and the fossilized
Sunni-Wahhabi emirates in the Persian Gulf avidly support destroying
Iran and killing millions of its people.
*
Note to readers: please click the share
buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on
your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.
Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
