05/07/14 – Dahr Jamail – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest on the show today is the great Darja Mail, the brave Darja Mail, former unembedded reporter from the Iraq War.
He's got this piece in truthout.org on bringing war criminals to justice.
And so we're going to talk about that.
We're going to talk about the current state of Iraq as well.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Dar?
Good, Scott.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
So, yeah, so let's start with this article here on bringing war criminals to justice.
You went to Europe, where to London, and you did, you participated in this thing.
I'm trying to find the name of it.
I thought I had it in front of me.
But now it's gone.
The Iraq Commission Conference, I guess, is just the title of it, right?
Oh, in Brussels.
Pardon me.
I thought it was in London.
And so what was the Iraq Commission Conference?
Tell us all about it.
Yeah, this was a group of activists and international lawyers that met a few weeks ago in the middle of April in Belgium.
And the goal was to listen to testimony from folks from Iraq, both Iraqis themselves, as well as journalists like me, as well as Ras Kapouti, a soldier who served during the second siege of Fallujah.
And all of us provided testimony to a group of international lawyers that was there already, because the Iraq Commission coincided with the 18th Annual Conference of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the IADL.
And so there were about 70 international lawyers there from 50 different countries.
And the idea of the Iraq Commission part of this was to bring in all of this testimony and to start crafting a international coalition of lawyers to start working towards, okay, what can be done since the US is not a member of the International Criminal Court, the ICCC, the ICC, I'm sorry, but what can be done nevertheless to try to sort of fence them in?
So for example, like Rumsfeld cannot go to Germany, because if he does, there's enough legal organization there and citizen resistance that he could legitimately be arrested.
So things like that, things tied in with what happened recently in the US where college students got together and basically thwarted Condoleezza Rice from giving a commencement address because they didn't want a war criminal speaking at their school.
So things like that, so that activists are taking part in doing that along with international lawyers literally trying to set up hard and fast machinations that can be used in the future to hopefully bring justice in the court of law, whether it's in the ICC or otherwise, further down the road towards people like Rumsfeld, Bush, Wolfowitz, Powell, etc., who are responsible for the disaster in Iraq.
Right.
Well, you know, it's too bad because I sure would like to see the American people insist on the prosecution of these people under American law for what they've done.
But you know what?
If somebody else wants to convict them, that's fine, because you're not allowed to start wars and murder people like that.
Somebody's got to enforce it.
And so tell me, do you think it's actually possible to really use the system of so-called international law here?
Because after all, it's all political how it's applied and always will be.
But that there really you think it's possible or what?
Could you give it a percentage chance of success or something that somehow these different institutions could basically be trapped into following through and really putting Donald Rumsfeld in prison for the rest of his miserable life?
Or what?
I mean, I appreciate the stunt anyway.
If nothing else, it shows what complete and ridiculous hypocrites they are when they claim to be the leaders of the oldest constitutional republic on earth and all of that, when they have nothing but the greatest of contempt for even the theory of the rule of law.
Well, that really is the bottom line question, Scott, is is is this really feasible?
Is something really legitimately going to come out of this?
And certainly the odds are long against it.
But, you know, that's why I mentioned the U.S. not you know, this is, of course, as you said, politically and by very clear design, the U.S. will not join the International Criminal Court, because if they did, just about every U.S. president in the last at least 80 years, possibly longer than that, could could theoretically be tried there for one reason or another.
But there are there is one interesting case that I'll point out that is actually happening as we speak.
There is a lawyer from San Francisco named Inder Kumar.
He runs his own successful law firm there, and he is representing an Iraqi single mother who is now in Jordan, who has suffered damages from the invasion and occupation.
And she has filed a class action lawsuit against Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz in a federal court in California.
And she's alleging that all of those people who plan and wage the Iraq war violated international law going by the Nuremberg principles.
And I spoke with Kumar at the conference, and he said, me as a lawyer, I was really inspired by the Nuremberg trials and the principles that came from them.
And he said, look, an international war of aggression is the mother of all war crimes, as outlined during Nuremberg.
Right.
So he's trying to use the Nuremberg principles to take up a federal court case in U.S. court.
And that case is happening.
He's waiting to get word from the court now on if the case is going to be accepted.
And if it does, it would literally be the first time that a case has been accepted by a U.S. federal court and would obviously set precedent.
Now, it is a long shot.
Is it going to happen?
Probably not, but we don't know yet.
It is still a possibility.
But what's really interesting about this to me and what was fleshed out after his testimony at the Iraq commission and then what was discussed later by other international lawyers is that if his case goes forward, then it has set the stage for a template that could be used in every other U.S. state as well as other countries around the world to start using this as a way to start filing charges in various courts against these war criminals.
Right.
Well, you know, obviously the system is rigged in the first place by the security council powers to use these laws against their enemies.
So, you know, a conviction of a Charles Taylor or something like that, which I think they convicted him, right?
They did.
It's, you know, it's great to see something like that.
Doesn't mean necessarily that it could apply to the politicians of the nations who really do the enforcing necessarily.
But then, you know, the other Scott Horton has pointed out on the show, the heroic anti-torture international human rights lawyer, that sometimes dictators have gone decades free, sometimes one decade, sometimes two or three.
And then the law catches up with their sorry asses and they end up going to prison.
Now, Rumsfeld ain't got three decades left.
And and I don't know whether, you know, real cabinet level or presidential level American officials could ever be really held accountable for any crimes.
I think the boat sailed there with Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon and the pardon.
But the point sure is important and they sure do deserve to be convicted.
You know, the guy, Vincent Bugliosi, is that it?
The guy that convicted Charles Manson said that, you know, under American law, George Bush is guilty of murder.
Simple as that.
That any prosecutor in America could prosecute him for killing American soldiers, for getting them killed when he knew he was lying.
When the official NIE said that, yeah, we think that he's got some chemical weapons, but we think we judge with high confidence the official position of the U.S. intelligence community in 2002 was that Saddam Hussein would never use chemical weapons against the United States.
The only instance he might ever use them would be if we invaded.
He might use them to defend Baghdad from our invasion.
That was in the NIE vote, too.
So he said either Condoleezza Rice is guilty of murder because she lied to the president about what the NIE said, or he's guilty of murder.
They both are for pretending it said something it didn't or what have you.
But the fact of the matter is there's a lot of different sets of laws.
The ones that you talk about on the international level about the war crime of aggression is the Supreme War crime and all of that.
But on the local level, too, for getting Johnny killed by pretending this had anything to do with protecting us from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction when they knew it wasn't right.
And when, in fact, they admitted when Wolfowitz said, well, you know, it was the one thing that we could agree on for bureaucratic reasons to use as the cause of spelling, not that we really thought it was a problem.
So anyway, point is they're guilty as hell.
And I think this kind of thing, no matter what, is really important that people really see that and see the hypocrisy that you kind of have to have an unofficial kind of commission just to even really make the point.
But anyway, somewhere between 500,000 and a million people were killed in that aggressive war, which, again, they knew better than and all the information is out now, even about the sources they had at the highest levels of Saddam Hussein's government, verifying he had no weapons of mass destruction on the eve of war.
All that stuff's come out by now.
So it really all it would take would be for the for the rule of law to be a real thing.
And these guys would be in the pen right now.
That's the real point.
Well, that's that's exactly right.
And, you know, another thing that came up at the conference was that it's very important that people keep doing like what you're doing right now of just keeping all these facts in public consciousness.
Keep the discussion going.
Don't let this just slide by and let people forget about it.
Keep reminding people that precedent was set by American prosecutors during the Nuremberg trials in Germany post World War Two, where they convicted Nazi leaders.
And those same precedents apply today to the Iraq war and the Bush administration officials responsible.
Absolutely.
All right.
Now, hold it right there.
I'm sorry we got to take this break, but we'll be right back, everybody, with Darja Mail from DarjaMail.net right after this.
Oh, and Truthout.org, too.
Phone records, financial and location data, PRISM, Tempora, X-Key Score, Boundless Informant.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
ScottHorton.org is where I keep all my archives.
You can follow me on Twitter, ScottHortonShow.
I'm talking with Dar Jamal.
He's got this great piece at Truthout.org.
It's actually a two-parter on bringing war criminals to justice.
There's the Bush administration and their aggressive war against Iraq.
Well, in this case, I mean, we could be talking about Obama and Libya, right?
But that's a different interview.
So let's talk about what's going on in Iraq right now.
Wonderful, perhaps glorious, purple-fingered democracy, right, Dar?
So what are you complaining about?
Ends, means, omelets, paradise.
Now, they're way better off.
That's right.
They're reveling in their fledgling democracy, happily voting while scores of bodies piling up at morgues across the country on a daily basis.
Well, we had yet another so-called election, again, fraught with controversy, all kinds of evidence and allegations of corruption, which most certainly has been the case in every election that's happened there so far.
For starters, we still have vast swaths of the country not even able to participate in the election, i.e.
Al Anbar province, or at least many parts of it, because violence is so intense.
But nevertheless, the election took place about eight days ago at the end of last month.
And once again, again, no big surprise, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who continues to maintain very strong links to the government in the U.S., who have sold him over $20 billion of weapons and training to date.
And that is an ongoing, a dynamic figure, let's put it that way.
But once again, his state of law party has won the largest number of votes.
Looks like he will remain in power.
He is certainly fulfilling the moniker that he's got across much of Baghdad, where he's now known as a Shia Saddam, because he is ruling like a dictator.
But the vote hasn't yet been totally confirmed.
That's supposed to happen on 25 May.
But the unofficial results show that his state of law party has received, again, the majority of votes.
So it looks like he will stay in power, while violence and chaos continues across the failed state that is Iraq today, accepting the Kurdish-controlled north.
Q Does his old party, the United Iraqi Alliance, still exist on the Shiite side?
A It does not.
It dissolved into other various parties.
It's a dynamic situation.
All the political horse trading that's going on behind closed doors continues within the Shia, within the Sunni, within the Kurds.
And so every election, it's a little bit different landscape.
So no, that party is dissolved, and it's basically been absorbed into the state of law.
Q And so now, as the state of law, is that basically just the Dawa party?
A It really is, by and large.
Yeah, it's everyone who's maintained allegiances to Maliki, which at this point, we know it's not the Sadrists.
We know it's not Fadila.
It's not any of the other parties.
It's certainly not the Sunni parties or the Kurds, who are very much at odds with the state of law party and Maliki's policies, for reasons you and I have talked about in other interviews.
But it's very, very fragmented.
And it's another reason why, for the most part, gridlock in the parliament there has become chronic, much like it is in Lebanon or DC, for that matter.
Yeah.
Q Yeah.
Well, now, so if I'm remembering right, the election in January 2005, part of what was such a disaster there was because the Sunnis boycotted.
They knew they were going to lose big time.
And so they stayed out.
Maybe they didn't have much opportunity to vote in the first place.
And then that's what really precipitated the civil war more than anything else, was because the United Iraqi Alliance that won was made up of the Dawa party and the Supreme Islamic Council and their Bada brigades, who set about kicking all the Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad, which, you know, it took killing a few hundred thousand of them to get the job done there.
And then so in the election of 09, I guess the Sunnis really did try to vote in that one and they actually beat Maliki.
But then he still won anyway with American help.
But now they've this time around, it sounds like they've boycotted and or didn't even have an opportunity to participate in all in this election.
Did I summarize that even right going back over the last few or not?
No, that is right.
You know, the only thing you were just barely off on was the 2010 election, which was.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I was thinking it was right after Obama took office for some reason.
It was.
Yeah.
No, aside from that, you you really just lined it out.
Perfect summation.
And, you know, and I think it is important to point out what you what you mentioned, too, that during the last election, Maliki actually did lose the election.
He lost out.
It was a very close vote.
But yet Lowie actually won.
But because the U.S. wanted to keep Maliki in power, he stayed in power.
So much for democracy and legitimate votes.
But but yeah, what what is the what's the problem is, you know, you gave the perfect intro to the statement is that because of the ongoing marginalization of the Sunni, because once again, you know, Iraqi forces have continued to surround Fallujah.
And as we speak, it looks like we're about to begin any time now from now in the next couple of days, a full scale offensive to try to retake the city that, you know, these chronic problems, you know, sectarian base, because Maliki, he's been accused of and very much has continued to play the sectarian card, continues to keep the political instability in the country.
And that really is the root of the problem.
Yeah, well, and then you have Ayman al-Zawahiri.
I think actually, this is kind of a parenthesis some good news.
It seems like Zawahiri from Pakistan is again insisting that ISIS go home to Iraq.
And it seems like some politician might advise him that since he has no means of enforcing that he should kind of shut up because he already said that once and they told him to get lost, old man, or something.
And they're still over there fighting.
And I guess they're fighting in Iraq, too.
But they certainly have not called off their Syria operations.
But this is a big part of what's going on again, right, is that right is the the tribes in the Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar have absolutely had it up to here with Maliki and his refusal to provide any government service or really to treat them as anything but outlaws.
In the first place, you have this massive foreign backed war going on in Syria across the border, which is completely re-energizing the entire Iraqi jihadist movement.
And so then the Sunni tribes, I guess, are happy to use them against Maliki for I don't know what gain they think they're getting out of it.
But it seems like that or I don't know, is it is it the case?
Do you think that the tribal leaders have unleashed these the jihadist types or it's sort of outside their control?
Because I know Maliki has been, you know, like you said, the siege of Fallujah, he's just been shelling the town like he's the U.S. Marine Corps.
That's right.
Well, it's it's it's really the the jihadist forces, the extremist groups have been largely operating on their own.
I think there's probably been a little bit of collaboration with the tribes, but for the most part, that has not been the case.
And the thing is, Iraq is such a fragmented, lawless, chaotic, failed state at this point, though, that I think what collaboration has happened within some of the organized tribal resistance in Iraq and the extremist groups has been, hey, look, you guys are here.
You're well armed.
You have your own funding.
They're basically fighting together.
These are more warm bodies to the fight to go up against a very well armed, not necessarily well trained, but a very well armed and U.S. supported by default through Maliki Iraqi army as it was nine and ten years ago.
Right.
As it's been the entire time Maliki has been in power.
And that's why we have these same chronic problems.
If with no political representation and legitimacy in the government for the minority groups, i.e. the Sunni, we're going to have this kind of ongoing chronic violence.
And again, now with Maliki, once again, about to solidify power after another rubber stamp, a corrupted so-called election again, where is the end?
How long is this going to continue?
Certainly it's not going to end anytime soon.
Yeah.
Well, and it's too bad that I don't know if you saw the thing by.
Oh, man, we're almost out of time.
I'm sorry.
You saw the thing in The New Yorker kind of says, oh, if only America was still there, things would be better.
But other than that, I mean, they really talk about just what a poor job Maliki has done of working with others in ways that he could.
And still, they wouldn't be a threat to him.
But he treats everybody like an enemy.
It really is making a Saddam out of himself where he doesn't have to.
And at the expense of his own power, really.
But anyway, that's that's correct.
I mean, he's really put himself in this situation by trying to play this strong arm president, which is exactly how he ran again in this election.
And he keeps rigging the elections to his favor.
And Iraq is such a lawless state that he's he's really embedded himself into a place of power now.
And I don't really see that changing, you know, for you.
I wonder if they'll ever be an election there again.
Really?
All right.
Well, I'm sorry.
We're out of time.
Thanks so much for your time, Darjeel.
Appreciate it.
That's Darjeel, everybody.
Darjeel.net.
Check him out.
Truthout.org.
See you tomorrow.
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