Ramsey Clark: UN must act to prevent war

The following letter (slightly abridged) by former US Attorney General 
Ramsey Clark has been sent to all members of the UN Security Council, with 
copies to the UN General Assembly and Senator Biden of the US Senate 
Committee on Foreign Relations:

Any remaining hope the peoples of the United Nations have to save 
succeeding generations from the scourge of war through the United Nations 
would be crushed by another United States attack on Iraq.

Threats to attack, invade and overthrow the Government of Iraq by President 
George Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, various 
cabinet officers and Pentagon officials have been routine for a year.

The psychological warfare is itself a crime against peace and violates the 
UN Charter.

The danger to civilian life in Baghdad from such a strike would be 
enormous.

The United Nations must act to prevent an attack by the United States 
against Iraq.

If the United Nations is unable to restrain the United States, a permanent 
member of the Security Council, from committing crimes against peace and 
humanity as well as war crimes against a nation that has already been 
violated by the US beyond endurance, then what is the United Nations worth?

At the very least, opposition to any attack or attempt to overthrow the 
Government of Iraq by force must be publicly expressed by the United 
Nations.

The United states bombed defenseless Iraq mercilessly for 42 days in 1991.

The US led and glorified the massive assault on Iraq in January and 
February 1991.

The Pentagon announced it conducted 110,000 aerial sorties against the 
defenseless "cradle of civilisation", dropping 88,500 tons of bombs.

The widespread bombing destroyed the economic viability of the civilian 
society throughout the nation.

It killed tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens and others. A major part of 
the bombing was directed at civilians and civilian facilities.

US bombs destroyed Iraqi water systems, electric power transmission, 
communications, transportation, manufacturing, commerce, agriculture, 
poultry and livestock, food storage facilities, markets, fertilizer and 
insecticide production, business centres, archeological and historical 
treasures, apartment houses, residential areas, schools, hospitals, 
mosques, churches and synagogues.

The Pentagon stated its casualties were 156. One third were from "friendly 
fire", the rest were accidental. The US had no combat casualties.

The United States forced the imposition of genocidal sanctions on Iraq in 
1990.

The US crafted economic sanctions against Iraq which the Security Council 
approved on August 6, 1990, the 45th anniversary of the US atomic bomb 
attack on Hiroshima.

Those sanctions are the direct cause of the very cruel deaths of more than 
a million people. This is the greatest crime against humanity, in the last 
decade of the most violent century in history.

Each painful death of an individual wasting away — from malnutrition; 
Kwashiorkor; the rush of dehydration from contaminated water and from 
diseases was preventable.

The sanctions continue to this time to cause hundreds of deaths each day. 
Every United Nations agency dealing with food, health and children — 
including FAO, WFP, WHO, UNICEF — has proclaimed the horror, magnitude and 
responsibility for this human catastrophe.

The great majority of the deaths caused by the sanctions are infants, 
children, the elderly, the chronically ill and emergency medical cases. 
These are the people most vulnerable to polluted water, malnutrition, and 
the lack of medicines and medical equipment and supplies.

US claims that it is the Iraqi Government that is responsible for deaths 
from shortages of food and medicine are false.

The US blocked oil sales by Iraq for six years before appearing to yield to 
humanitarian pleas to permit oil sales to purchase food and medicine.

Since 1997, when sales began, it has effectively frustrated and delayed the 
Oil for Food program, which does not provide sufficient income at the 
levels approved to stop the daily deterioration of health and growing death 
rates in Iraq.

Before sanctions there was virtually no malnutrition in Iraq and free 
hospital, health services and medicines were a model for the region.

Its present system of government distribution of available food staples is 
a model of fairness and efficiency, lacking only in quantity and variety of 
food.

United States military aircraft have attacked Iraq at will for 11 years.

The US has engaged in air strikes against Iraq at will since March 1991, 
when the massive attacks averaging one aerial sortie every 30 seconds 
ended.

Iraq is not a threat to the US, countries in the region or others.

The US has falsely claimed that Iraq is working to develop weapons of mass 
destruction to attack the US, Israel, its neighbours and others.

The US claimed its 1991 attacks destroyed 80 per cent of Iraq's military 
capacity. The UN inspection efforts claimed to discover and dismantle 90 
per cent of Iraq's post-1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass 
destruction.

Iraq, its peoples and resources are exhausted.

It has a "stunted" generation of children under age 10 and a debilitated 
population at all ages. It is the victim of the worst crime against 
humanity in recent decades.

The United States is the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.

Two of the highest UN officials responsible for UN weapons inspection 
within Iraq and a principle US citizen participating in the inspections 
have resigned, denounced the sanctions and denied that there is a threat 
that Iraq will develop weapons of mass destruction.

The US has more nuclear weapons than all other nations combined as well as 
the most sophisticated and numerous systems for the delivery of nuclear 
weapons, including the Trident II submarine fleet.

It possesses the greatest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and 
the most advanced and extensive research in mass destruction weaponry in 
the world.

Military spending by the US exceeds that of the nine next largest budgets 
for war combined. President Bush has repeatedly declared the right to 
strike first. The US attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs and 
continues to justify those acts.

The US has renounced treaties controlling nuclear weapons and their 
proliferation; voted against the protocol enabling enforcement of the 
Biological Weapons Conventions; and rejected the treaty banning land mines, 
the International Criminal Court and virtually every other international 
effort to control and limit war.

The US War Against Terrorism is a declaration of right by the US to attack 
first — anyone, anywhere, on mere suspicion, or without excuse, 
unilaterally.

The US wants to overthrow the Government of Iraq and many others in 
violation of law.

Unless restrained the chance for peace and global equality of economic, 
social, cultural and political opportunity among nations will be lost.

Which government presents the greater threat to peace globally or for 
Mesopotania and its neighbours — the US or Iraq?

An attack by the United States on Iraq to overthrow its government would be 
a flagrant violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Charter and 
international law.

Only absolute power unrestrained by any rule of law or standard of human 
decency openly taunts an intended victim as President Bush has taunted 
Iraq.

Because the US has committed historic injustices against Iraq, most during 
his father's presidency, and still seeks dominion in the region, President 
Bush, his Vice President and others in his administration hate Iraq and 
want finally to destroy it.

If 12 years after its devastating aerial assault and after 12 years of 
genocidal sanctions, the omnipresent risk and frequent fact of random 
attack with the ever present stalking by US aircraft and endless threats 
against its helpless victim, the US commits its coup de grace on the people 
of Iraq to the silence of the UN and wealthy nations of the world, human 
shame and impotence will doom us to ever greater violence.

A US assault on Iraq will cause more and greater violence; urgent action by 
the UN to prevent a US assault on Iraq is required.

I urge you to immediately activate the United Nations, the General 
Assembly, the Security Council and all its agencies to denounce the 
continuing threats by the United States against Iraq, to demand immediate 
cessation of the threats and to warn the United States that an attack by it 
on Iraq will violate the Charter of the United Nations, international law 
and the friendship of all who seek peace and respect the dignity of 
humanity.

An attack on Iraq by the United States would also violate the Constitution 
and laws of the United States and expose President Bush to impeachment by 
the House of Representatives under the Constitution of the United States 
for the highest of crimes, those against peace and humanity, to judgement 
by the United States Senate and trial in federal court for crimes charged.

Unfortunately in recent years our Constitution has been more honoured in 
the breach than in faithful observance of the rights it is intended to 
protect for all. But the effort to hold accountable any US authority who 
participates in an assault against Iraq will be made here by those who love 
their country and for that reason insist that its acts be just.

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Acknowledgements: International Action Center

39 W. 14th St., Suite 206 New York, NY

10011 212-633-6646; fax: 212-633-2889.

For full text visit: http://www.iacenter.org