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Civilian death toll – unacceptable/indictable!
by yarra Friday, Jul 4 2008, 11:38pm
international / peace/war / commentary

viable solutions in today's world

AFGHANISTAN -- "US-led air raid kills 22 civilians", Reuters UK reports on July 4. We need not go into detail, as it’s now a very familiar story. Whether it’s from unmanned drones, long distance artillery or missile attacks the result is all too familiar. The U.S. today is able to boast humanitarian offences and war crimes that dwarf the numbers achieved by African and Asian despots in the past.

The world is outraged by Robert Mugabe’s actions in relation to fixing elections and conducting a coercive terror campaign but where is the outrage over the flagrant crimes of the United States? According to a John Hopkins study the U.S. is directly responsible for over 750,000 civilian deaths in Iraq; add to that thousands of innocents killed in Afghanistan and the Balkans and it becomes plain THE USA IS THE MOST HEINOUS, CRIMINAL, TERRORIST STATE ON THE PLANET – but not a peep from International law makers or other nations whose duty it is to UNITE and challenge all rogue, warring, criminal nations!

How much longer will people tolerate such outrageous legal double standards before ALL law, order and civilised conventions are disregarded? ‘Offend’ me and I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off or I want your vehicle, take my 9mm slug as payment; not to mention your very pretty daughter! The law of the jungle is the simplest law of all!

If it’s a Kalashnikov society we’re approaching, not a problem; if it’s the law of the jungle you want then let her rip, suits us down to the ground. But we are highly trained personnel, what of Joe citizen or CEO Moss, poor suckers? If the law of the jungle prevails what will become of the soft, weak, cowards that populate boardrooms and executive offices? They may wish to hire our services as bodyguards – big mistake, doesn’t anyone have integrity these days?

The mindless public is unable to take responsibility for anything today; however, every in/action has consequences and comes at a price. Mindless acceptance of the most brazen legal double standard in modern history comes at a very high price indeed, as we will all soon discover.

I would have thought demanding the arrest of ALL war criminals would have ensured the continuation of civilised society but I see now I was wrong, please forgive my stupidity!

What a thoroughly tragic joke the masses are today! It was only a few decades past that people were outraged by the criminal Nixon administration and America’s illegal war in Vietnam.

I bet if I put a bullet in a Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Bush, Perle, Wolfowitz or Rove head, people would turn a blind eye!

Ned Kelly, freedom fighter

http://uk.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUKISL7141020080704

COMMENTS

U.S. 'planned to test nerve gas on diggers'
by Ross Coulthart via rialator - ninemsn Saturday, Jul 5 2008, 5:41am

Top secret US military plans to test deadly nerve gas by dropping it on soldiers in a remote Queensland rainforest during the Cold War have been uncovered in Australian Government archives.

Newly declassified Australian Defence Department and Prime Minister’s office files show that the United States was strongly pushing the Government for tests on Australian soil of two of the most deadly chemical weapons ever developed, VX and GB — better known as Sarin — nerve gas.

The plan, which is disclosed for the first time on tomorrow’s SUNDAY program on Nine, called for 200 mainly Australian combat troops to be aerially bombed and sprayed with the chemical weapons — with all but a handful of the soldiers to be kept in the dark about the "full details" of the tests.

A former senior official with then Prime Minister Harold Holt, Mr Peter Bailey, tells the program that as far as he knows the tests never went ahead but the planning was very advanced.

He admitted the whole operation was to be kept secret because use of such weapons was almost certainly illegal under international law at the time.

"The idea that we could actually… that the Australians could countenance such an activity is …unacceptable," University of NSW toxicologist Professor Chris Winder said.

He says even a fraction of a drop of either chemical on exposed skin could have been fatal and Cold War fears that communist Chinese or Russian attackers might have used such weapons in a third world war "doesn’t justify it now and I don’t think it justified it then".

The files show that in July 1962 the then-US defence secretary Robert McNamara wrote in secret to the Australian Defence Department suggesting joint testing of chemical weapons "on a classified basis without a public release by either country".

In early 1963 a survey team of Australian and US scientists reviewed sites in Australia for chemical warfare tests, suggesting the remote Iron Range rainforest near Lockhart River in far north Queensland as one such location.

The request caused consternation in Canberra, with senior Defence bureaucrats clearly opposed to the use of nerve gas, but, as former senior Prime Ministerial policy advisor Peter Bailey recalls: "I heard that many times in Cabinet meetings that if they weren’t pretty good and pretty faithful to the Americans we would be dumped.

"We had already been dumped with the British east of Suez pullout so ministers were pretty aware this was our one main support and the red peril thing was still in people’s minds."

In October 1964 the Americans pushed the request again, this time insisting that the public should be fed a "cover story" to conceal the real nature of the tests: the documents show the public was to be told the tests were to test equipment or land reclamation in a jungle environment.

Low-flying military aircraft and spraying was to be explained away with the false claim that low-risk herbicides and insecticides were to be used in the testing but the cover stories were clearly untrue — the real chemicals to be used were two of the most deadly man-made substances, VX and GB nerve gas.

Former Democrat Senator Lyn Allison, who became aware of the existence of references to secret chemical weapons tests in Australia during her support of sick former veterans of the Maralinga nuclear bomb tests, told SUNDAY that her own attempts to get the full story on what went on with proposed testing were rebuffed several years ago.

She said Government files on the issue were still classified even now and the revelations in the new documents obtained by SUNDAY underlined the need for the Defence Department to finally disclose all that went on during the Cold War.

"To understand that Australia was still prepared to consider this proposal because of its relationship with the US I think needs proper examination," Senator Allison told the program.

"So all those documents should be released, there shouldn’t be any pussy footing around — it’s time for us to know what went on."


© 1997-2008 ninemsn Pty Ltd

[How does it feel to be America's slave now Mr Howard, Mr Rudd?

Arrest Howard, Downer, Ruddock, Rudd, Nelson and Smith for their conscious involvement with the criminal Bush regime. The illegality of Iraq and Guantanamo are internationally known -- the U.S is a terrorist State led by WAR CRIMINALS. Stop them now!

The above report reminds us of the unfortunate people of the Marshall Islands, who were used as guinea pigs in atomic and radiation tests. The INHUMANITY of the US is beyond comprehension!

The sooner Australia shows the way by arresting Howard and his senior Ministers the sooner American citizens will do likewise -- real JUSTICE must be served -- DO IT! Ed.]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=287260