U.S.S. Cole included among our “questionable” military interventions. We were REFUELING! Not exactly a “military” activity at all. I refuse to go through another list of unsubstantiated assertions again, sorry. Make a case for actual war crimes. Once again you have included our food mission to Somalia as a “war crime.” The Cuban Missile Crisis?! Los Angeles, 1992?! You have a “five year plan” to give me carpal tunnel syndrome, don’t you?
I think you mistake “war” or soldiers / sailors “existing” for “war crimes.” To intentionally kill civilians when the objective has little or no “military value” is a war crime. Good example, the bombing of Dresden in WWII, there were only wounded soldiers and no war industries. “Landing” Marines somewhere is NOT a war crime. Why? Because they haven’t DONE anything. Could it be a wrongful intervention, an unjust war, or a breach of international law, yes. But it is not a war crime to land troops somewhere. If so, every in-port liberty of a naval vessel is a war crime. Oh, wait, you claimed it was (U.S.S. Cole).
You really should try to balance out the sources you look at George. You are seriously getting a not-based-in-objective-fact world view. Not to say any source is 100 percent reliable, but what you cited is sketchy, inaccurate, and indicates to me you take too much on faith. Please look at what I told you about. Please study the “lessons of history,” so you are not “doomed to repeat it.” Yeah, Saddam is wonderful, leave him alone.:rolleyes: This, “All history proves that it is impossible to win a war with air power alone…” was true. One little fact you should know, if nothing else…
I plead, “you posted a freaking novel” for missing this one. You actually have a point here. Was this attack wrong? Yes. Most sources question that this plant had anything to do with nerve gas. I will assume it did not. Still, 30,000 “casualities” from less than 100 cruise missiles, you should know better.This lists the actual casualties at seven injured. I heard one may have died. 30,000 must be someones “consequential damages” extrapolation. This explains how the “30,000” figure was probably gues…arrived at. This source, clearly opposed to the attack, does not claim to estimate an actual number.
It sure sounds like we killed or injured 30,000 people with missiles in your source. Why does your source, once again, play fast and loose with the facts? Bad attack anyway, no lying was really necessary. We should have rebuilt the plant. There is no shortage of criticism either.
War crime? Probably, I would argue that the seven injured and one killed were victims of a war crime. Why? We struck a non-military target and caused civilian casualties. 30,000? That is just a shameful misrepresentation of fact. (to not put an “estimate based on extrapolation and many assumptions” on that figure is really sleazy)
Point of debate: U.S. War Crimes. That should do it. We have plenty of “wars” (liberties, blockades, deployments, refueling stops, etc…) to choose from, and plenty of internet sources to claim everyting is a war crime. Ain’t freedom of speech fun?
Beagle, neither me nor the author of the list said it was a list of War Crimes. It is a “List of US Military Interventions”. What I said is that among that huge list,
there are some that do seem questionable to me, possibly to the point of being a War Crime.
Regarding the “30,000 civilian casualties in the 1998 Sudan bombs”, I wrote the author and he said, "Thank you: I don’t know where the hell that figure came from! Someone reposted my list in text form (apparently because people had problem printing my web list). I assumed the list came straight from the website where I had posted it: http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm
On my web list, I have nothing about 30,000 casualties, which is ridiculous. I should have been more careful and seen if something was added to my original list. It
looks like the only addition. I will check into this".
Good catch, Beagle. The USS Cole is not mentioned on the web page either, but the web page only goes up until 1999.
Moderator, could you please edit out the part about “30,000 deaths in 1998 Sudan” in my long list above? Better yet, now that I know there is a web page
that contains the info, could you delete all or most of my long post with the List of US Military Interventions (leave the intro and ending), and replace it with a reference to the web page: http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm
I’m actually very much in favour of a war crimes tribunal, but haven’t seen very much evidence here of any war crimes.
If a country is engaged in a war, and civilians suffer and die as a result, then that is a terrible terrible thing, but not, at law, a war *crime *.
Firing cruise missiles against terrorsit camps in Sudan is not a war crime either, as I see it.
Aiding repressive regimes may be an abhorrent decision of foreign policy, but I am pretty sure this doesn’t fall within the definition of “war crimes” , either.