Trinicenter.com - Crimes Of War: How The U.S. Will Remain 'Unaccountable'

by Sean O'Driscoll, March 27, 2003 :tompaine.com

Don't expect to find her story on any U.S. news channels. Doha Suheil, a five-year-old girl, was crippled on March 20 after the Radwaniyeh suburb of Baghdad was hit by 2,000-pound cruise missiles. The U.S. military bombed a residential compound to kill Saddam Hussein's son, Qusai, and one of Saddam's lieutenants, Izzat Ibrahim.

In the ferocity of the attack, dozens of local civilians, including women and children, were killed and injured by shrapnel and collapsing buildings. Seven other members of Doha's family were wounded in the same bombings; the youngest, a one-year-old baby, was being breastfed by her mother at the time.

While the Bush administration has repeatedly talked about aiding the Iraqi people after the war, it is difficult to see how they can win over the local population by bombing neighborhoods better known for housing young families than military targets.

What marks the Radwaniyeh bombings from other attacks in the center of Baghdad is that they could constitute a war crime under the Geneva Convention -- a document now being used to denounce the display of U.S. prisoners of war on Iraqi television stations. Part 5, Article 85, added in 1977, states that a "grave breach" of the Convention is committed by: "iii.) launching an attack against works or installations containing dangerous forces in the knowledge that such attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects, which is excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated."

The example often used by lawyers and academics to illustrate "excessive force" is the use of air attacks to destroy a building full of civilians to kill a single desired target. An attack on a poorly constructed residential neighborhood to kill a small number of undisputedly legitimate war targets doesn't come far off the textbook case.

Such bombings might explain the United States' refusal to sign up for the International Criminal Court, which was finally established in The Hague one week before the Iraq war began. Article 8 of the Rome Statute defines war crimes for the new Criminal Court and includes disproportionate acts such as "intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects." Bombing civilian neighborhoods to kill such a limited number of people could be such a crime.

But the U.S. government has gone much further than refusing to sign up to the court. It has also sought so-called "Article 98" bilateral agreements with several countries to protect the U.S. military from war-crime prosecutors. Countries that have agreed include those who most need U.S. economic assistance, including Rwanda, East Timor, Afghanistan, India and those who worry how their own record might appear before the court, including Russia and Israel. If the new court finds that American military leaders should be tried for crimes, these officers will have the option of skipping off to one of these countries, out of reach.

The Bush administration claims the U.S. refusal to participate in the court will protect its military commanders from an "unaccountable" prosecutor, despite all the safeguards put in place by the Rome Statute.

"Unaccountability" is the buzzword among U.S. officials dealing with the International Criminal Court. It might also be a word used by Doha Suheil's family, as they hover around her bed, wondering how they will tell their five-year-old daughter that she may never walk again.

Sean O'Driscoll is a freelance journalist based in Washington, DC.