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Saturday, August 23, 2008 |
U.S. ambassador John Beyrle in Moscow in Kommersant: "Что касается ситуации в Грузии, то прежде всего я хочу сказать, что как представитель американского народа и просто как человек я глубоко сожалею о гибели людей и тех страданиях, которые мы видим со всех сторон этого конфликта. Невозможно остаться равнодушным при виде людей, оплакивающих своих близких, оплакивающих погибших солдат. С самого начала мы повторяли, что силой этот конфликт не решить. Вплоть до самого последнего момента мы убеждали грузинскую сторону не идти на это.
Мы видим, что российские войска вполне обоснованно ответили на нападение на миротворцев РФ в Южной Осетии."
Translation: "As for the situation in Georgia, I want to say first and foremost that as a representative of the American people and simply as a human being I deeply regret the fallen victims and sufferings which we now see from all sides in the conflict. It is impossible to remain insensible when seeing people crying for their relatives, crying for their fallen soldiers. From the very beginning we have repeated that this conflict cannot be resolved by violence. Until the last moment we have tried to convince the Georgian side not to follow this road.
We see that the Russian army was completely justified in its response to the attack on the peacekeepers of the Russian Federation in South Ossetia."
This all suggests that the US knew of the impending attack by Saakashvili.
See also GlobeAndMail.
10:56:03 AM 
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ByzantineBlog: "Some 15 Dutch soldiers of the former Netherlands battalion stationed in Srebrenica during the Bosnian civil war came to Belgrade on Wednesday, offering to testify in the Hague tribunal on behalf of Dr. Karadzic, a member of Radovan Karadzic's defense team Milivoje Ivanisevic told Vecernje Novosti.
'We talked about their possible testimony. They stressed that the Serbs did not commit war crimes against the Muslim civilians when they were passing through several dozen of their villages [in Srebrenica municipality] the Dutch soldiers were securing. They came over at their own expense and said they will testify and invite more of their fellow soldiers to testify too. They left Belgrade on Thursday,' Ivanisevic said."
10:37:01 AM
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ePluribus: "Vincent Bugliosi wants George W. Bush prosecuted for murder. There are others who are complicit in the crime, namely the Vice President and Condoleezza Rice, but Bush is the target of this famed former Los Angeles prosecutor (the Charles Manson case) and best selling author (Helter Skelter and The Betrayal of America as two examples). He is undeterred by the virtual major media blackout on interviews and advertising. He's taking his case directly to the people through alternate media and the internet.
Bugliosi constructs a devastating case in The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. As I write this review, it is still difficult to grasp my sense of shock at this title with this author's name below it. A legendary prosecutor with a near perfect record in big cases, Bugliosi articulates one of the most revolutionary ideas imaginable in a mix of today's otherwise vapid and obtuse political thinking."
The president 'knowingly and deliberately' caused the deaths of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians and that's called murder, plain and simple. This is not a hypothetical case that could happen under special legal interpretations. When the president leaves office, he is subject to the same law as the rest of us. Bugliosi explains the ability to prosecute the case against George W. Bush by a district attorney or states attorney in any local jurisdiction where a life was lost in the Iraq war. Federal prosecutors also have that option."
AlJazeera: "Afghanistan's interior ministry says US-led forces killed 76 civilians in an operation on Wednesday in the west of the country, directly contradicting the US military which said 30 suspected Taliban had died.
'Seventy-six people, all civilians and most of them women and children, were martyred during the operation by coalition forces in Shindand district of Herat province,' the ministry said on Friday."
ABCNet: "In 1863 at the height of the US civil war, president Abraham Lincoln set the principles for interrogation of prisoners with a famous instruction 'military necessity does not admit of cruelty'.
It took the September 11 attacks to change those principles and Vice-President Dick Cheney said the US would now have to work through the dark side.
In response, government lawyers drew up the so-called torture memos that would ultimately unleash the abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and at a host of secret CIA 'black sites'.
In his new book, lawyer Philippe Sands argues that the responsible officials, and the lawyers who advised them, should be charged with war crimes."
Torture Team - Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values.
And there are also the war crimes committed by Clinton with his bombings of civilians and supporting rebel armies and war criminals in Yugoslavia.
ByzantineBlog: "Regional Prosecution in Doboj (Republic of Srpska) has gathered documentation and other evidence for raising charges against some 100 persons of Croat and Bosnian Muslim nationality for the war crimes committed against Derventa (Bosnia-Herzegovina) Serbs during the year 1992."
The attack on Tskinvali by Saakashvili was a war crime. Mr Miliband seems to have some trouble with the proper definition of war crimes. Of course, his government is engaged in war crimes on a daily basis.
Part 1 of the concert in tribute of the victims fallen at Tskhinvali.
Part 2.
The British government is also co-responsible for torture. MI5 colluded in torture of a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay, says the High Court.
Telegraph: "Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian formerly living in London, faces the death penalty for allegedly plotting a radioactive 'dirty bomb' attack on high-rise apartment buildings in the US.
He claims a confession being used against him in a military commission was extracted after he was subjected to secret rendition and torture.
The High Court said the role of the Security Service during the questioning of Binyam Mohamed in Pakistan went far beyond that of a by-stander.
Lord Justice Thomas said the court had concluded that the conduct of the Security Service 'facilitated interviews by or on behalf of the United States when BM was being detained by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer in Pakistan in the period April 2002 until at least 17 May 2002 when he was seen by an officer of the Security Service'.
Under the law of Pakistan, he said, 'that detention was unlawful'."
Together with George W. Bush and a few others of his regime, also Tony Blair should be tried for war crimes.
10:34:46 AM
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EuroRus: "As it turns out, the default, which hit Russia ten years ago, was not merely a consequence of the ungifted economic policy of the Russian government during the second half of the 1990s. The devaluation of the Russian ruble occurred because of the efforts taken by the International Monetary Fund, which triggered the massive economic crisis in Russia nationwide and impoverished the majority of Russians in an instant.
The official described the default of 1998 as the price which Russia had to pay to evolve from its old system to the new globalized economy."
10:14:21 AM
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© Copyright 2008.
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