Francis Boyle - Ten Years after Colin Powell (2013)

Speaker 1: It was ten years ago this week, on February 5th, 2003, that then Secretary of State Colin Powell, at the request of President George W. Bush, gave what was billed as definitive evidence, which led the world to believe that the Iraq government was a clear and present threat to the United States and the Western world. Since then, While all of the administration officials acknowledge that there were mistakes, none seem willing to accept that there was deliberate malfeasance or a deliberate deception of the American people. On the line with us right now is Francis Boyle. He is an international law and human rights expert, professor of law at the University of Illinois, He lectures and writes extensively and has authored many books including Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law, and Biowarfare and Terrorism. He's been a harsh critic of both the Obama and Bush administrations. He's joining us now by phone to elaborate on this 10-year milestone and the significance of the case of the Iraq war invasion. So, thank you very much for joining us, Professor Boyle.

Francis Boyle: Well, thank you very much for having me on and my best to your listening audience. The Powell presentation at the Security Council was a joke and a fraud, and everyone knew it, even at the time, certainly here in the United States. I remember in October of 2002, before the Powell propaganda, I had a debate with a top honcho Republican lawyer here, David Rivkin, live on Pacifica Radio Network, where I said there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And I went through both the reports by the UNSCOM inspectors, the UNOVIC inspectors, the IAEA, and everything else. So that was all a matter of public record, if you were following it carefully. So Rivkin said to me, so do you mean professor boyle that the president is flying the vice president flying the secretary of state is flying the secretary of defense is lying the director of the c i a m flying and the ob national security adviser to the president is flying they're all lying about uh... weapons of mass destruction iraq and i said yes we went through this exact same set of lies on up uh... vietnam uh... 58,000 men of my generation were killed. Three million Vietnamese were exterminated. And a generation later, Secretary of Defense for Johnson, Bob McNamara, and Kennedy comes out in his memoirs in retrospect saying that, yes, he lied on behalf of the president. These were all lies. Everyone knew it at the time. Powell knew it. Right now, Powell's just shedding some imperial crocodile tears over his report. Powell aided and abetted a Nuremberg crime against peace, against Iraq, for which we unanimously convicted Bush and Blair at the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal. The two of them are international criminals, Bush, Blair. And I would say Powell, too, for aiding and abetting. And they should be apprehended and prosecuted by any state that gets a hold of the three of them.

Speaker 1: Yes, and it's interesting because the major media, they held at the time, Mr. Powell, and I suppose continue to hold these individuals in high reverence and seem to be just allowing that meme of, well, it was sort of a mistake to continue. So is there maybe the mainstream media...

Francis Boyle: This is a joke, too, in that it's well known that when he was a major in Vietnam in the Army, Powell helped cover up the My Lai Massacre. So there's nothing. I mean, this guy was a bootlicker from the beginning, which is how he got his position. I think he wanted to work for Al Haig and then bootlicked his way up the bureaucracy there. So he's been a psychophant and a bootlicker and now a war criminal. So I don't know what else to say, but I think everyone who tried to stop that war knew full well right from the beginning, from the get-go, there were no weapons of mass destruction. And the IAEA reports and the UNSCOM reports prove it. They had access. Powell had access to the exact same documents I did. And Powell, Bush, Blair, they all lied. And everyone knew at the time they were lying. And I said, as early as mid-October 2002, publicly on Pacific Radio Network Live, they were all lying. But I wasn't the only one.

Speaker 1: And another, the whole idea of the weapons inspectors at that time, like September, October, And I remember hearing President Bush, I mean, it gives Saddam Hussein one last chance to comply. And that whole business about sending the weapons inspectors, was that also a deception as far as the evidence can tell?

Francis Boyle: Sure. The report by Hans Blix, the last one he sent in there to the Security Council, made it clear they hadn't found any weapons of mass destruction. They just weren't there. So that, too, was part of the charade. Indeed, it was Clinton who pulled out, ordered the U.N. weapons inspectors under Butler to get out prior to his bombing of Iraq in Operation Desert Storm in an unsuccessful effort to stave off impeachment by the US House of Representatives. And the moment he was impeached, he stopped the bombing. So, you know, there are just so many lies, propaganda, deceptions. It's hard to go through them all. If you have a look at my book, Destroying World Order, that takes the story up to the outbreak of the Bush Jr. Blair war against Iraq in 2003. And then I continue the story in my book, Breaking All the Rules, and then Tackling America's Toughest Questions. So the footnotes are there. You can read it for yourself. Professor Chomsky has said pretty much the same thing I've said, if you go through any of his writings. now in terms of aiding and abetting this war crime what where does the mainstream media fit in would you say they should be held accountable as well well of course they're accountable there's no question at all I mean this goes back to the classic work by Herman and Chomsky manufacturing consent where they did a detailed content analysis of the U.S. media's coverage of the Vietnam War and concluded that the U.S. media fully supported the Vietnam War and served nothing more than a conveyor belt for U.S. governmental propaganda in support of the Vietnam War. And they applied the propaganda model by Bernays, which you can have a look at. So nothing has changed, certainly, in the last 50 years or more of my political life when it comes to the mainstream U.S. news media. Nothing at all.

Speaker 1: In terms of proper procedure, though, I mean, in an ideal world, I mean, we should be seeing, I presume you would argue, that the impeachment, if not the, and certainly the arrest of the people responsible. So what should have taken place to all these players, should have happened to all these players, including the media?

Francis Boyle: Well, you know, it's harder to get the media. As I said, I've gotten Bush and Blair convicted for Nuremberg crimes against peace, and we are trying to track them down and get them prosecuted for that, yes, around the world. We have a committee set up for that purpose, and I know your colleague, Michelle Chosodovsky, played a very important role in these efforts to his great credit. As for the media figures, legally it's hard to indict the media in general. You have to go after specific figures. We do have some precedent at Nuremberg, for example, Rosenberg inciting hatred against the Jews, and there was another media figure. And also now at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Some media figures have been convicted for inciting genocide. So there is some precedent for indicting media figures. I would come to mind, certainly, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity here in the United States are two of the worst. But again, I'm kind of busy doing other things right now. But maybe, actually, I did have a student do a paper on accountability of media for inciting international crime. So there have been a handful of convictions, and the ICTR convictions are relatively new. So in theory, it can be done, but You know, we've got all sorts of wars going on right now, and I'm trying to do my best. You know, Syria, Libya, Mali, the Palestinians, Afghanistan, whatever. And I'm working full-time against all these things. And, you know, going after the media people, I regret to say, just cannot be very high on my list.

Speaker 1: Okay. Now, having made that... case for war, however fraudulent, it was waged without a UN Security Council resolution making it a violation of the UN Charter. But the UN did allow, by the end of 2003, it did affirm the right of US troops to continue their operations in Iraq. So where do you see the UN in terms of their role in this whole situation?

Francis Boyle: Yes, well, technically I do analyze those U.N. resolutions in the three books I mentioned to you, as well as another book, Protesting Power, War, Resistance, and Law, by Rahman and Littlefield. Basically what the U.N. did was just accept the fact that U.S. and British military forces occupied Iraq and determined that in the course of that occupation, they were bound to obey the fortune either conventions of nineteen forty nine and the hague regulations of nineteen oh seven uh... as we know the united states and britain paid absolutely no attention at all to the fortune either conventions of uh... nineteen forty nine in the hague regulations of nineteen oh seven today the u n certainly has has become i won't say the general assembly uh... but certainly the uh... uh... secretariat secretary-general assistant secretary-general et cetera are nothing more than not proper stamps for all of the united states first and foremost and to a lesser extent britain and france look at the uh... shameless rule uh... the u n bureaucracy and the uh... secretary-general baki moon played both against libya and now uh... against syria so uh... You know, the UN has gone the same way that the League of Nations did in the late 1930s when it was subject to the depredations of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. It's nothing more than a front organization for U.S.-NATO criminality around the world.

Speaker 1: Now, do you want to maybe just mention a couple of what you see as the more egregious breaches of those Geneva and Hague conventions that you mentioned earlier?

Francis Boyle: Well, I have them all in my books. You know, the shock and awe, depleted uranium, Fallujah, which... is a nuremberg war crime if you if you read the nuremberg charter uh... it says quite clearly that the wanton devastation of cities towns and villages is in nuremberg war crime along the lines of what the uh... nazis did uh... that that's there uh... dot the depleted uranium fallujah shock at all uh... you know there are but massacres you name it they did it so uh... you know the the best estimate is just during the course of the That war alone, 1.4 million Iraqis were killed. And then before the war, maybe 1.8 million Iraqis were exterminated by means of the genocidal sanctions imposed by the United States, starting with the Bush senior administration in August of 1994, until they were removed in June of 2003. So I do have a paper on global research you can look at, and I estimate at a minimum the United States government exterminated 3.3 million Iraqis from August of 1990 until Obama finally pulled the U.S. out at the end of last year. So, and that's a fairly conservative estimate. Professor Poya has given a higher figure of maybe 4.7 million. So somewhere in there is what we're talking about. Clearly, genocides.

Speaker 1: Can I ask you your thoughts about the role of Canada in terms of the Iraq war crimes? Because while they got a lot of attention for not officially supporting George Bush's Coalition of the Willing, we did have soldiers in Afghanistan working in tandem with the United States and relieving soldiers there to fight in Iraq. Do you have any other thoughts about to what extent Canada should be

Francis Boyle: sanctioned well to its credit the Canadian government did stay out of the Iraq slaughter by Bush and Blair and I think it should be commended for that it did have a ship or some ships I think in the Persian Gulf that were part of the naval interdiction and As for what Canada has done in Afghanistan, that's a separate legal issue that I do address at greater length in my book, Tackling America's Toughest Questions, not specifically Canada's behavior. Although I do mention Canada, I think, in there. But the illegality and criminality of the war against Afghanistan that still, by the way, continues today as we speak and will continue at least until 2014, if not beyond. There's no real end in sight.

Speaker 1: Now, what about the responsibility of the individual soldiers themselves? I know that a number of them have abandoned the Iraq War recognizing that this is the wrong thing to do. Some of them have come to Canada to seek sanctuary and the administration of Stephen Harper is essentially branding them as criminals because they are deserting the military and desertion is considered a criminal offense. There have already been a few of these resistors sent back to the United States as a result. Do you have any thoughts about what Canada's legal responsibility is with regard to Iraq war deserters who seek sanctuary in Canada rather than go to fight and serve in what they come to see as an illegal and immoral war?

Francis Boyle: Yes, it's very unfortunate what Mr. Harper has done up there. As you know, during the Vietnam War, Canada kindly gave asylum to all the men of my generation who fled the criminal Vietnam War. And Mr. Harper, as you know, is a soulmate of President Bush, who started the war, and is returning these... courageous individuals back to the United States for prosecution. I helped in the defense of the first Gulf War resistor, Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, and also the highest-ranking officer to refuse to go to Iraq, Lieutenant Aaron Watata. These cases are explained in great detail in my book, Protesting Power, War, Resistance, and Law, which is why I wrote this book, to explain to other lawyers how to defend these heroes. There's no question at all about it. Men who have decided that as a matter of good faith and conscience they could not serve in a criminal war and commit war crimes. And that, you know, I go through the basis for that in my book. In the case of Staff Sergeant Mejia, the first resistor, he got a kangaroo court proceeding style of show trial by the Pentagon down at Fort Lewis, Georgia. I was down there for this. at the end and was stripped of uh... all of his uh... witnesses except me and at the uh... uh... into the day uh... he got uh... i believe it was eight months he was facing uh... two years he shouldn't have faced anything because it was a conscientious objector in in the united states you have a constitutional right of conscientious objection at any time even in an all volunteer of military force, as determined by the United States Supreme Court. I spent time with Staff Sergeant Mejia. He's a very courageous, principled man. Got the eight months. We immediately got him adopted a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, just along the lines of Sakharov or Havel or Aung San Suu Kyi. or any of these other human rights heroes that the United States praises around the world, but not when it comes to our own people. As for Lieutenant Watada, yes, he was facing five or six different charges, 11 years, and we got a mistrial because the Pentagon was afraid of going to trial Because if they did, with their case and our evidence, there's a very high likelihood that Lieutenant Wotata would have been acquitted on the grounds that he refused to serve in a criminal war against Iraq and refused to commit war crimes. So he was out, and no penalty. I mean, I believe he probably took some administrative discharge, but no time spent in prison and in prison. Lieutenant Wattata's case, for the first time ever, we had Amnesty International to designate him as an anticipatory prisoner of conscience, namely that if he were convicted and incarcerated after the end of this kangaroo court and Stalinist show trial, Amnesty International was going to adopt him as a prisoner of conscience. But fortunately, it never came to that. If you are interested in these cases and how we've successfully defended them here in the United States, and you can read my book, Protesting Power, and the principles here are directly relevant to the GI resistors up in Canada who fled this criminal war in the United States, and I would hope their Canadian lawyers could get a hold of this book and try to apply some of those principles same principles and keep them in Canada instead of being sent back here for persecution.

Speaker 1: You're listening to the Global Research News Hour, broadcasting from CKUW 95.9 FM in Winnipeg and from partner radio stations across the country. We're also podcast at the website for the Center for Research on Globalization at globalresearch.ca. It is believed that the rise of the Democrats and Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency was secured in large part due to the unpopularity of the Iraq War, which became one of the hallmarks of the Bush Republicans. Now with Obama in power for four more years, questions have arisen about how much of an improvement he has been over Bush in terms of upholding the law and civil liberties. As a controversial memo has recently been leaked outlining the circumstances under which the drone assassination of U.S. citizens believed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda might be legal, we asked Professor Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois to compare the two presidents.

Francis Boyle: Right. Well, first, before we get to the drone memo, President Obama and the Obama people are basically accessories after the fact. to all the Bush crimes against and in Iraq. They've covered it up, and they've refused to prosecute anyone for any of these crimes, despite having a legal obligation under United States domestic law and treaties and international law to prosecute them. So that technically makes them accessories after the fact to all the crimes against Iraq. As for the drone memo, yes, to put Obama into context, even President Bush Jr. himself, now a convicted war criminal, never arrogated to himself the alleged power to murder United States citizens. So Obama is worse than Bush. Second, Obama... waged this clearly illegal, genocidal, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Libya in 2011 without any authorization from the United States Congress. Well, again, even President Bush Jr., in his wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, did get authorization from the United States Congress. I think mistakenly so, to wage those wars. So, again, on Libya, President Obama is also worse than President Bush Jr. So you have two counts here, both foreign and domestic. Third, the National Defense Authorization Act permits the U.S. military effectively to to pick up anyone here in the united states uh... including u.s. citizens uh... and too detainment uh... and to remove them and arguably to subject them to extraordinary rendition to another country where they could be tortured uh... move them down to get low or uh... disappeared and in the legislation produced by congress uh... to for the n d a a According to Senator Levin, it was President Obama's idea and demand that the NDAA apply to United States citizens here in the United States of America. Now, that makes him just as bad as Bush, because Bush did that to people here in the United States. On the other two counties, worse. So I think that gives you a pretty good idea of Obama, to some extent, is even worse with Bush. As for the drone memo, which I have read, studied quite carefully yesterday, you have to understand, of course, this drone memo is a summary of the opinions produced by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice. It was written by Professor Barron at Harvard Law School and Professor Lederman at Georgetown Law School, authorizing the murder of the United States citizens. Well, certainly you don't want to go study at Harvard Law School and Georgetown Law School with professors who have purported to authorize the murder of United States citizens in violation of numerous statutes and treaties to which the United States government is a party and international criminal law. If you read through the memo, which is based on the opinion, it's the same thing the Bush torture lawyers did. And by the way, at the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, uh... last fall in in november of two thousand twelve uh... we got uh... bush cheney uh... rumsfeld tenet and their lawyers convicted for torture and war crimes and the whole purpose of these bush uh... torture memos uh... produced by the same office of legal counsel in the department of justice which sort of reminds me of the Nazi Ministry of Justice. Indeed, the Nazi Ministry of Justice produced similar memoranda, and some of those lawyers were prosecuted. They did it for the reason that they wanted to concoct a defense for Bush and all the rest of them on torture, and the defense would be advice of counsel. Well, I was just doing what my lawyers told me that I could do, and therefore I did not have criminal intent. Now, we successfully destroyed that legalistic pettifogging at the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal in November. I think Professor Chasadowski has materials on that on the Global Research website. did not accept uh... any of these argument and in fact these lawyers were simply part of the criminal conspiracy along with bush cheney and the rest of them to commit torture and uh... and war crimes it's the exact same thing on this uh... drone memo uh... if you read through it you can't take any of it seriously in effect what is happening here is that the office of legal counsel the uh... nazi ministry of justice And Professor Barron and Letterman are attempting to concoct a defense for Obama and Brennan and the CIA and the people at the Department of Defense running the drone campaigns. There are two of them, a CIA campaign and a Pentagon campaign, of advice of counsel and basically saying, Well, our lawyers told us we could do it, and therefore we did not have criminal intent. So we could murder United States citizens to our heart's content, as well as now approximately 5,000 Muslims, as best as objective evidence has been able to figure out. Well, it's clear if you read the memo, they're very worried. about the u.s federal statute that expressly prohibits anyone here in the united states for murdering a u.s citizen abroad they're very worried about that and you know did their best to cobble together whatever they could they know they are probable certainly on that statute and the uh... then if if that statute also uh... would be the uh... the u.s war crimes act and i won't even get into the uh... international criminal court uh... uh... statute uh... well i will actually if you read the uh... icc uh... statute uh... the drone strikes are war crimes for sure when you have war crimes that are widespread or systematic they become crimes against humanity and that's clearly what is going on here You have widespread and systematic drone campaigns by Obama, Brennan, heads of the CIA, and the Special Operations Command in the Pentagon, and they're committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. And finally, if you read Article 2 of the Genocide Conventions, uh... i think it's uh... it's pretty clear uh... that full obama uh... has become a uh... genocide there we know for a fact that on tuesday mornings uh... obama personally selects everyone to be murdered by trolls and designates them to the uh... murder we also know that there have been About 5,000 Muslims all over the world murdered by Obama. Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, which, by the way, the United States government is a party too, and we have domestic implementing legislation making genocide a crime, says, in the present convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy or impart a national, ethical, racial or religious group as such, killing members of the group. Well, notice the language here, religious group, i.e., Muslims. To the best of my knowledge, all the victims of the drone strikes have been Muslims around the world. And it also says in whole or in part. In part, I would say 5,000 is certainly enough to qualify the world court in the... Bosnia case ruled that the extermination of 7,500 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica was genocide. So I think, you know, 5,000 dead Muslims by Obama would qualify as genocide, too. So those are the legal issues as I see them today as we speak. bringing the rule of law to bear on Obama and the rest of them will be just as difficult as it has been to bring the rule of law to bear against Bush. And here I note the very courageous work up in Canada done by Gail Davidson, my colleague up there. Lawyers against the war. We have three times tried to get Bush uh... prosecuted in canada uh... one time uh... i think one time try to get cheney but he chickened out uh... and i really don't know bush is going to go back back to canada and it's really kale who is uh... uh... done the work you know the laboring work on that i i've assisted her to the extent i can't uh... i also scared bush uh... out of switzerland uh... he was afraid of getting up prosecuted for torture there there are no statute of limitations for the commission of these international crimes. And so Bush and Blair and Obama can be prosecuted for these crimes for the rest of their lives and by any state that wants to prosecute them. These are universal jurisdiction crimes. So, you know, it's really up to you, the listening audience, to what extent we will be able to get these people put in jail. But I want to say, you know, there's literally an army of lawyers out there trying to track these people down and put them in jail. And I'm confident certainly the Bush people we're going to get. And Obama, I guess once he's out of office, you know, we'll go after him. It's very hard because of... uh... uh... uh... head of state immunity uh... to get someone actually in office a president in office uh... but once he's he's out of office he's fair game uh... for prosecution and in the case of oklahoma uh... unlike bush bush was not a lawyer and so i guess you know he could say well my lawyers told me i could do it sort of like the devil maybe in the case of oklahoma He was after me at Harvard Law School. He's a lawyer, and he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, where I went as an undergrad. So Obama knows better, certainly, than Bush, and he's worse than Bush. And so he's not even going to be able to prevail, I think, on any type of advice of counsel, defense for any of his international crimes.

Speaker 1: Professor Boyle, your portrayal of these high officials as international renegades is certainly uncommon in the mainstream media, but we do very much appreciate your bringing them to our program. I want to thank you for bringing that expert viewpoint to the Global Research News Hour. Thank you very much for joining us.

Francis Boyle: Well, thanks for having me on, and I wish to say bonjour to all my French relatives, monarchs, Up in Montreal.

Speaker 1: Okay. Bonjour et à bientôt. À bientôt. That was Professor Francis Boyle, international law and human rights expert and professor of law at the University of Illinois.