In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond

I confess to being uncomfortable when I bought this book, which addresses in a very comprehensive way the degree to which the US Government and the US military as well as intelligence, mercenary, and corporate personnel, are committing war crimes. I want to say up front, that as best I can tell; our brave and professional troops are in fact making lemonade from lemons, and doing the best they can. However, they all realize that they and all the world was lied to by the Bush Administration, that this is about oil, and that they are killing civilians and many children for no good reason, due to the horrible circumstances that we have created by remaining there. According to this book, suicides are up 40%, there are 6000 deserters, and seamen recruits are *winning* when court-martialed for refusing to obey illegal orders to go to Iraq. The editors have done a superb job of bringing together a collection of proven individuals including President Jimmy Carter, Senator Robert Byrd, Daniel Ellsberg, Sy Hersh, a group of US Generals (retired) protesting the White House mandated torture, and a wide variety of individual experts on war crimes. The book opens with a discussion of three kinds of war crime: 1) Wars of aggression, i.e. unprovoked, pre-emptive, unjustified 2) Violations of humanitarian law 3) Crimes against humanity You can read the book for the details. Suffice to say that they set the stage with objective factual discussion, and then proceed to document, most ably, the reality that the United States of America is now a war criminal in the larger context of humanity. What is being done "in our name" is immoral, reprehensible, unconstitutional, impeachable, and--to my great dismay--largely ignored by the majority of our adult population. A few highlights from this easy to read collection of relatively short (2-4 page) pieces: Ellsberg: Loyalty to the Constitution must take precedence at all levels. Like Viet-Nam, we are now realizing that the current regime cannot be trusted and can blunder strategically because the balance of power is out the door. Only We the People can demand a restoration of liberty & justice for all, with respect for the Constitutional limits to federal power. Carter: Iraq war is an unjust illegal war. He says this as a President and as a Christian and as a loyal American who reveres the Constitution. Herbert: Pentagon is "shopping for wars" even as Iraq hollows it out. They have even discussed surprise unprovoked military attacks whose only justification is the possibility of collecting intelligence. As an intelligence expert, I can afford that the secret intelligence community is largely worthless and costs over $60 billion a year, but I can also assert that for less than $5 billion a year, I can not only provide 96% of all the intelligence we need from open sources in 183 languages, but I can also provide free online education and free cell phone answers from reachback help desks in India. He

This useful collection examines the evidence for US war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. It concludes that the US state is destroying democracy in the name of defending it. Part 1 looks at the war crimes of illegally invading and occupying another country. It shows how the US-British occupation, an illegal continuation of an illegal war, has broken all the laws of occupation. "The occupation is basically one gigantic war crime." The occupiers sacked all the army and police force, deliberately causing chaos. There were 100,000 excess deaths in the year after the invasion (Lancet), mostly from US air strikes. The USA is waging war largely by massive, unreported, bombing: the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs on Iraq between May 2003 and December 2005. The occupying forces continue to commit war crimes - they attack and kill civilians, using cluster bombs, depleted uranium shells and napalm. They drove 200,000 residents out of Fallujah and killed more than 1,000 people; half of them women and children. They deny food, water, electricity and medical supplies to civilians and attack hospitals and ambulances. They demolish homes, a collective punishment outlawed by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. They create death squads to set Shia against Sunni. Part 2 discusses the US and British forces' use of torture. The Washington Post wrote of the `documented tortures and killings of foreign prisoners by this American government'. The Department of Defense reported `systemic and illegal abuse of detainees'. The US government blames `rotten apples'. But decisions by policymakers determine decisions by interrogators: those who take political decisions are responsible for the consequences. Bush authorised interrogation techniques `beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice'. His Order of 7 February 2002 said that the USA would not apply the 3rd Geneva Convention to Al Qaeda members. He defined himself as above the law, and the detainees as outside the law, against the US Constitution's pledge to `government under law'. Rumsfeld said, "Unlawful combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention." In the real world, the Convention obliges captors to protect all persons captured in wars. Rumsfeld's ruling by contrast authorised any and all abuses, and is itself a war crime. The Justice Department, like the Pentagon, issued statements purporting to justify the use of torture. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez advised Bush that the Geneva Conventions were `obsolete', the same word used by the head of Hitler's Wehrmacht, General-Field Marshal Keitel. At Nuremberg, the US prosecutor cited this as an aggravating circumstance in seeking and obtaining the death sentence for Keitel. John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, said, "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so ..." These policies by Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez and

I think this is a great book. It's clearly organized and I learned a lot. It made me very sad and concerned about the state of democracy and truth in our country today. It's frightening that our government is committing war crimes in our name.

This well-reasoned and level-headed collection of writings about America's conduct of the "War on Terror" is a chilling indictment of U.S. policy. That we are willing to cede our most basic national principles in service of our fear and historical ignorance, and in the name of this administration's failures and fixations, is at once terrifying and heartbreaking. This is a call to moral action, no matter which side of the politcal aisle you seat yourself. At the core of this book lies this question, asked and paraphrased through many ages: Must we destroy our country in order to save it?

Jeremy Brecher sifts through mountains of evidence to question how the United States can justify torturing people if we are trying to convince them that adopting a western-style democracy is in their own best interests. Furthermore, he argues these events are not isolated incidents. Seemingly disparate events are connected. Many of America's public officials convinced themselves, each other, and the troops that we are above the law because we are making the world safe for democracy. Couple the American government's jingoistic ideology with a solider's stress of being in a guerilla war--where anybody could be a combatant---and there is no surprise that some members of the American forces commit war crimes in the Middle East. Brecher's ultimate analysis questions the ethics of many American policy holders. However, he believes in the American people to demand better behavior from their leaders. This makes the breadth of disturbing information in his volume easier to digest.