{"id":309528,"date":"2025-12-15T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=309528"},"modified":"2025-12-09T07:20:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T07:20:13","slug":"us-war-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/12\/us-war-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"US War Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Pete Hegseth. Photo: Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Hegseth in the dock?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

6 Dec 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0Recently, many people have asked me if the Trump administration\u2019s decision to target and destroy the Venezuelan boats is a war crime? The simple answer is yes and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ultimately bears responsibility. However, the legacy media\u2019s sudden interest in these micro war crimes, while they continue to turn a blind eye to macro war crimes, reeks of what Joseph Conrad best described as \u201cthe self-righteous stench of the converted sinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week, in a passionate, but error studded essay, Andrew Sullivan, a prominent cheerleader for a macro war crime\u2014the regime change war in Iraq\u2014wrote, \u201cThis is America. We don\u2019t murder; we don\u2019t torture; we fight<\/em>.\u201d Not to be outdone, Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s Seth Hettena cited an obscure 1944 trial of German submariners (Peleus<\/em> case) and concluded, \u201cEighty years later to the day, the law has not changed. The question is whether the United States is prepared to live by it.\u201d Even Pulitzer Prize winner William Finnegan stepped down from his New Yorker<\/em> pedestal, graced us with his presence on Substack and weighed in on boat attacks.<\/p>\n

While it is convenient to blame the Trump administration for America\u2019s moral decline, it is also intellectually dishonest. Our leaders\u2014both republican and democrat\u2014have flouted the laws of war since 9\/11. One of the few constants in U.S. foreign policy is hypocrisy, the gap between our words and deeds. Since 9\/11, that gap has widened into a yawning chasm. Let\u2019s take a trip down memory lane. From my 2010 book Law and War: American History and International Law<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, the Nuremberg trials and the principles that they spawned seem like quaint memories from a long-bygone era. The 9\/11 attacks and the ensuing \u201cGlobal War on Terror,\u201d forced America\u2019s international legal duality out into the open for all to see. Weeks after 9\/11, senior Justice Department lawyers convinced President Bush that the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d was a new kind of war requiring \u201ca new paradigm\u201d that would render the Geneva Convention\u2019s strict limitations on the treatment of enemy prisoners \u201cobsolete.\u201d1<\/p>\n

Unlike previous American presidents who claimed to support inter- national law when the outcome was favorable to the United States, President Bush explicitly rejected both long-standing, codified laws of war like the Geneva Conventions and older customary distinctions such as that be- tween soldier and civilian.2 The Bush administration pushed aside the military professionals and argued that there were no limits\u2014constitutional or congressional \u2014 on presidential authority.3<\/p>\n

Brazen disregard for the laws of war was soon elevated to a matter of principle as America began a sordid affair with what Vice President Cheney described as \u201cthe dark slide.\u201d Even though the U.S. Second Court of Appeals compared torturers to slave traders in a 1980 opinion, by the summer of 2002 the United States had redefined torture to include only those acts that resulted in death or organ failure. According to the new American definition, not even John McCain\u2019s treatment at the hands of the North Vietnamese met the new standard.4<\/p>\n

President Bush officially declared war on international criminal law when he unsigned the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court in July 2002. Conservatives viewed the ICC and the concept of \u201cuni- versal jurisdiction\u201d as a kind of inverse strategic legalism or \u201clawfare.\u201d According to Brigadier General Charles Dunlap, lawfare used the law instead of military force \u201cto achieve an operational objective.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new federal law called the American Service-Members\u2019 Protection Act (better known as the Hague Invasion Act), passed in August 2002, authorized the President to use \u201call means necessary and appropriate to release US prisoners of the ICC.\u201d The Bush administration also began suspending aid to countries that refused to give U.S. citizens immunity before the ICC. Initially the Bush administration took the position that neither the federal War Crimes Act nor the Geneva Conventions constrained U.S. forces in Af- ghanistan. Because the United States deemed that nation \u201ca failed state,\u201d they could define both Al Qaeda and the Taliban as \u201cillegal enemy combat- ants\u201d unprotected by common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.5<\/p>\n

It was one thing for American Special Forces teams to play fast and loose with the laws of war on hot battlefields in the Pashtu frontier, where the ir- regular nature of the foe merited such an approach. However, by the time the war shifted to Iraq, \u201ctorture\u2019s perverse pathology\u201d had taken root, and now army reservists were applying similar standards during the invasion of a sovereign nation. According to historian Alfred McCoy, not only does torture fail to provide reliable intelligence, it also \u201cleads to both the uncontrolled proliferation of the practice and long-term damage to the perpetrator society.\u201d6<\/p>\n

Although the term \u201cenemy combatant\u201d was used as a strategic legal mechanism to get around international humanitarian law, when all else failed, the Bush administration invoked simple messianic unilateralism. \u201cGood\u201d and \u201cEvil\u201d became the new \u201cmetrics\u201d for a vague new American foreign policy whose exponents claimed to be on a crusade to rid the world of \u201cEvil\u201d and to spread \u201cFreedom.\u201d7 Very suddenly, colonialism, crusades, nuclear weapons, and prayer breakfasts were all the rage for ambitious post\u20139\/11 D.C. Republicans. Not only did America\u2019s evangelical President describe the War on Terror as a \u201cCrusade,\u201d he claimed \u201cGod\u201d had told him to strike at Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.8 However, this Judeo-Christian inspired, reflexively anti-Islam rhetoric and policy proved strategically unsound and worked as a force multiplier for America\u2019s enemies. Soon the United States was fighting not only Al Qaeda but also \u201cIslamofascism\u201d and \u201cIslamHitlerites.\u201d9<\/p>\n

After 9\/11, human rights utopians were immediately replaced by proud neo-imperialists who called for a unipolar world, with America striking out preemptively against threats both real and imagined. Russian-born Wall Street Journal <\/em>editor, Council on Foreign Relations fellow, and L.A. Times <\/em>columnist Max Boot argued that \u201cAfghanistan and other troubled lands to- day cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once pro- vided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.\u201d Heavily praised by the mainstream press, Boot\u2019s 2002 book, Savage Wars for Peace<\/em>, points to the 1898 U.S. war in the Philippines as a template for the \u201cWar on Terror.\u201d \u201cIn deploying American power, decision makers should be less apologetic, less hesitant, less humble,\u201d wrote Boot. \u201cAmerica should not be afraid to fight \u2018the savage wars of peace\u2019 if necessary to enlarge the \u2018empire of liberty. \u2019\u201d10 President Bush\u2019s Canadian speechwriter, David Frum, and Iraq War architect, Richard Perle, went so far as to claim that the stakes for the United States in the War on Terror were \u201cvictory or holocaust.\u201d11<\/p>\n

The War on Terror\u2019s cheerleaders and enablers were not limited to the right. Pro-war columns by liberal hawks like Judith Miller, Michael Gordon, Thomas Friedman, Michael Ignatieff, David Remnick, Jeffrey Goldberg, Peter Beinart, Paul Berman, and Kenneth Pollack helped to sell and justify U.S. policy and conduct. \u201cThe press played ball. After 9\/11, they rolled over and played dead,\u201d said the dean of the White House press correspondents, Helen Thomas. \u201cReally, they asked no questions, they all had to be patriotic. . . . To ask a question was to be unpatriotic, un-American and so forth.\u201d12 Even the onetime human rights advocates at Harvard\u2019s Carr Center blew with the wind. Not only did Michael Ignatieff advocate the use of torture, his colleague Sara Sewall advised the U.S. military on counter- insurgency policy, and even Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist Samantha Power, who was quick to point out atrocities in Darfur, remained conspicuously silent about the new American paradigm.13 It is no coincidence that today all three are politicians or policy makers.<\/p>\n

The most incisive criticism of the Bush administration\u2019s POW policies came from professional soldiers who were growing increasingly uncomfortable with multiple combat tours ordered by civilian leaders who had never been in a fistfight, much less a firefight. Because the career military lawyers supported Geneva Convention protections for prisoners, they were simply cut out of the policy-planning process.14 One heavily decorated Vietnam war veteran wrote: \u201cNever before in our country\u2019s history has an administration charged with defending our nation been so lacking in hands-on combat experience and therefore so ignorant about the art and science of war.\u201d15 Secretary of State Colin Powell, one of the few Vietnam veterans in the Bush administration, argued forcefully and prophetically that the new American paradigm would \u201creverse over a century of U.S. policy and prac- tice,\u201d and predicted \u201ca high cost in terms of negative international reaction, with immediate adverse consequences for our conduct of foreign policy.\u201d16<\/p>\n

Many American policy makers, pundits, and academics attempted to rationalize the use of torture based largely on the \u201cticking time bomb\u201d scenarios of television supersleuth Jack Bauer. There was, however, one problem: torture does not provide a steady stream of reliable intelligence, as evidenced by testimony of superterrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. After months of torture and isolation, \u201cKSM\u201d confessed to mastermind- ing thirty Al Qaeda operations and even wielding the knife that decapitated Daniel Pearl.17<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are falling into the trap of imitating the \u2018evil-doing\u2019 which we accuse our enemies of initiating,\u201d wrote Rich Arant. A contract interrogator who worked at Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan\u2019s Bagram Air Force base in 2003\u20134, Arant had a revelation one night while questioning a former Afghan Mujahid who had fought against the Soviets and was now in jail be- cause a paid U.S. government informant and well-known Soviet collaborator had fingered him. When Arant told the old soldier he could trust an American to treat him with more respect than the Russians, \u201cthis dignified man completely collapsed in tears, unable to speak,\u201d wrote Arant. \u201cAfter my interpreter and I gave him a chance to gather himself, he said, \u2018I fought Russians, our common enemy, and now you Americans have imprisoned me on the word of a son of the Russians. This is my reward. \u2019\u201d Arant quit shortly thereafter and offered this observation:<\/p>\n

Our leaders have taught us that taking a life on today\u2019s battlefield can be a righteous and patriotic act, an act of bravery or self-defense, a \u201cpreemptive\u201d necessity in the new age of the war on terror. \u201cPrecautionary murder\u201d is the term once used by T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. Former conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners are now considered quaint, obsolete. But a prisoner is as defenseless as a passenger held hostage on an aircraft. There is little honor found in exploiting his fears, no matter how pressing the requirement.18<\/sup><\/p>\n

By the time the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, indefinite detention of American citizens, domestic espionage, and watch lists were all accepted as facts of life by a stunned and submissive American population who viewed the havoc wrought in their name from afar. That arm\u2019s-length relationship was shattered in 2004 when General Anthony Taguba\u2019s report on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was leaked to Seymor Hersh and photographs of American soldiers perversely torturing and humiliating common Iraqi criminals flashed around the world in seconds. Bin Laden himself could not have staged a more successful propaganda coup as smiling, fresh-faced American girls led naked Iraqi men on leashes. One senior policy maker described the perpetrators to me as \u201cthe seven soldiers who lost the war.\u201d19<\/p>\n

The Bush administration\u2019s response to the Abu Ghraib affair was similar to President Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s response to atrocities in the Philippines War or President Nixon\u2019s response to the Mai Lai Massacre: the perpetrators were \u201ca few bad apples\u201d and these were \u201cisolated\u201d events.20 However, this buffoonery was limited to the Abu Ghraib Seven. This appendix from the Taguba Report speaks for itself: in a sworn statement, a U.S. soldier stationed at Abu Ghraib wrote, \u201cI climbed a yellow ladder . . . to see a light skinned, black male . . . taunt the prisoners by flexing and shouting at them. Right after this, a Caucasian soldier . . . taunted the prisoners of compound \u2018B\u2019 and \u2018C\u2019 by similar means of flexing and shouting at them. This caused the prisoners to become extremely irate, and a short riot ensued that resulted in gunfire\u201d (seven Iraqis were shot).21<\/p>\n

It did not take long for American POW policy to be denounced by our British allies, the U.S. Supreme Court, federal judges, the International Red Cross, and the American Bar Association. Now there is irrefutable documentary evidence that even American doctors and psychiatrists violate the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg medical standards, and the Hippocratic oath. The New England Journal of Medicine <\/em>called the complicity in the interrogation process \u201ca matter of national shame.\u201d22 Military professionals, like former Navy Judge Advocate General, Rear Admiral John Hutson, rejected the few bad apples argument: due to \u201cthe range of individuals and locations involved in these reports, it is simply no longer possible to view these allegations as a few instances of an isolated prison.\u201d23<\/p>\n

The Guantanamo Bay camp is in many ways a distraction, a set piece, or as defense attorney Clive Stafford Smith put it, a \u201clightning rod not only for criticism but also for global attention.\u201d Largely ignored is the archipelago of secret prisons around the world where \u201chigh-value\u201d detainees are tortured, interrogated, and sometimes killed. FBI agents who visited the Cuban prison were shocked by both the style and the substance of the interrogations. Stupidly brutal, proudly racist, and deeply perverse, the FBI agents witnessed scantily clad female interrogators sexually taunting Muslim captives (one even smeared fake menstrual blood on a suspect).24 FBI agents watched one \u201cdetainee sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe light flashing.\u201d According to one FBI memo, the theatrics \u201cproduced no intelligence.\u201d25<\/p>\n

When it came to war crimes trials for the vanquished, the Bush adminis- tration employed traditional, primitive political justice. As a result, it could not even provide an easily convicted thug like Saddam Hussein with a de- cent show trial. The fallen Iraqi leader\u2019s chaotic American-choreographed proceeding saw lawyers murdered, courtroom brawls between defendants and guards, and even an execution video on YouTube before it made the morning papers.26 The treatment meted out to American and Australian collaborators like Jose Padilla, John Walker Lindh, and David Hicks has been oddly unsystematic, as if the prosecutors were making up the rules as they went along.<\/p>\n

The self-contained legal bubble of Guantanamo Bay has become a sort of Orwellian version of Alice\u2019s Wonderland where even defendants found not guilty \u201ccan be held in perpetuity.\u201d27 The Gitmo military commission was firmly under the control of Vice President Dick Cheney and his political appointee Susan Crawford. Navy Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer filed a motion in 2008 that charged senior Pentagon appointees with \u201cexercising unlawful command influence\u201d by pressuring prosecutors to charge \u201chigh- value\u201d detainees in order to gain \u201cstrategic political value\u201d before the 2008 election.28 The tribunal\u2019s top legal official, Brigadier General Thomas Hart- man, was removed from his position after judges in three separate cases barred him from participating in trials due to his pro-prosecution bias.29 Convinced that political interference made fair trials impossible, Colonel Morris Davis, Major Robert Preston, Captain John Carr, and Captain Carrie Wolf all resigned.<\/p>\n

Australian David Hicks was the beneficiary of an eleventh-hour politi- cal deal that sent the prisoner home in a futile effort to aid Australian Prime Minister John Howard\u2019s doomed reelection effort. Although Hicks signed a document claiming that he had not been mistreated by Americans, this statement was contradicted by his earlier affidavit.30 \u201cThe charade that took place at Guantanamo Bay would have done Stalin\u2019s show trials proud,\u201d said one of Australia\u2019s most experienced criminal lawyers, Robert Richter. \u201cFirst there was the indefinite detention without charge. Then there was the torture, however the Bush lawyers, including the attorney general, might choose to describe it. Then there was the extorted confession of guilt.\u201d31<\/p>\n

The Bush administration strained to make an analogy between the Nuremberg and Gitmo trials. In the lead-in to the first Gitmo trial, U.S. diplomats received a memo that instructed them to point to the execution of Nuremberg convicts to justify the death penalty at Guantanamo Bay.32 Brigadier General Hartmann went so far as to claim that the legal protections for Guantanamo Bay defendants \u201cexceed those that were available at Nuremberg.\u201d33 Colonel Morris Davis described one conversation with the Pentagon\u2019s top lawyer and recently resigned torture advocate, William Haynes, who tried to describe the Gitmo trials as \u201cthe Nuremberg of our time.\u201d When Davis reminded him that defendants at Nuremberg were acquitted, Haynes appeared shocked and replied: \u201cWait a minute, we can\u2019t have acquittals. If we\u2019ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can\u2019t have acquittals, we\u2019ve got to have convictions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the Bush administration and Guantanamo officials continue to compare the Guantanamo Bay military commission to the Nuremberg trials, nothing could be further from the truth. It took Nuremberg\u2019s international court less than 13 months to indict, try, and sentence Nazi Germany\u2019s top leaders in an imperfect but highly credible procedure. Between late 1946 and 1949, the United States tried another 177 German leaders in 12 more trials at Nuremberg.34 At no point did the United States monitor the work of the defense attorneys or authorize the use of torture to gain information. No Nuremberg defendants or their lawyers ever alleged that they were tortured. Former Nuremberg prosecutor Henry King found the analogies offensive: \u201cTo torture people and then you can bring evidence you obtained into court? Hearsay evidence is allowed? Some evidence is available to the prosecution and not to the defendants?\u201d35<\/p>\n

The Guantanamo Bay tribunals would have lived up to the worst star chamber expectations were it not for the verdict in the Hamdan case. In a split decision, a six-officer military commission convicted Osama Bin Laden\u2019s driver, Salim Hamdan, of the lesser charge of providing material support for terrorism, but acquitted him of the more serious conspiracy charge. The Hamdan case proved once again that even primitive political justice cannot be stage-managed.36<\/p>\n

Thankfully, not all Americans have given in to the fear. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour tried and convicted Algerian Ahmed Ressam for his plot to bomb Los Angeles Airport. Coughenour did not need a secret military tribunal, or indefinite detention, or to deny the defendant the right to counsel, or to deem him \u201can enemy combatant.\u201d The judge explained, \u201cThe message to the world from today\u2019s sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nations apart.\u201d According to Coughenour, if the prevailing American view becomes that terrorism renders the Constitution obsolete, \u201cthe terrorists will have won.\u201d37<\/p>\n

Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora was another who pushed back against the Bush administration: \u201cWhen you put together the pieces, it\u2019s all so sad. To preserve flexibility, they were willing to throw away our values.\u201d38 With the establishment of a new, Democractic administration and a fresh set of international crises causing near-seismic shifts, Americans would be wise to consider the words of American Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson\u2019s now famous opening address: \u201cWe must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants the poison chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.\u201d39<\/p>\n

The Bush\/Cheney administration transformed Justice Jackson\u2019s poisoned chalice into a poison keg. Not only did Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Chertoff, Feith, Perle, Gonzales, Ashcroft, Libby, Tenet and Black drink from it like frat boys during rush week, but so did their eager pledges\u2014Yoo, Addington, Hadley, Miller, Rizzo, Sanchez, Bybee, Haynes, Goldsmith, Bellinger, Newstead, Frum, and others. I expected more from the Obama administration, especially his national security advisor, self-proclaimed \u201cgenocide chick,\u201d Samantha Power. However, they too drank their fill from the poison keg as every American president since Bush\u2014democrat or republican\u2014has.<\/p>\n

If the boat attacks end Hegseth\u2019s career and reign in Trump\u2019s idiotic foreign policy in Venezuela\u2014good. However, accountability for these micro war crimes will not make up for our leaders\u2019 macro war crimes, and the ongoing macro war crimes that we aid, abet, and finance in Gaza and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Today, more than 23 years, eight trillion dollars, and a million dead later, America has never been more insecure at home and had less power, credibility and moral authority abroad. \u201cThe U.S. is no longer the world\u2019s policeman who will enforce the international rules based order,\u201d one dispirited U.S. government official wrote me in 2023 after the Biden administration abandoned the 100 million dollar Airbase 201 in Niger. \u201cWe\u2019ve instead turned into the fat middle aged crossing guard, standing there in a neon vest, flapping our arms and yelling at the side of the road for cars to slow down.\u201d<\/p>\n

End Notes Postscript: The New US Paradigm<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Testimony of Cofer Black to the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee, September 26, 2002; http:\/\/www.fas.org\/irp\/congress\/2002_hr\/092602black.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh, Administration of Torture <\/em>(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), A1\u20135. \u201cBut under this New Paradigm, the President gave terror suspects neither the rights of criminal defendants nor the rights of prisoners of war,\u201d wrote Jane Mayer in her groundbreaking book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals <\/em>(New York: Doubleday, 2008), 51\u201352.<\/p>\n

3. Bush also announced that the United States could use military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the states that harbor or support them. Mayer, The Dark Side<\/em>, 64\u201365. According to one of John Yoo\u2019s 2001 memos, \u201cThese decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

4. Alfred McCoy, A Question of Torture <\/em>(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006). \u201cWar means killing people,\u201d the architect of the new American paradigm, John Yoo, explained in a 2007 interview. \u201cIf we are entitled to kill people, we must be entitled to injure them.\u201d<\/p>\n

5. Jaffer and Singh, Administration of Torture, <\/em>A1\u20135.<\/p>\n

6. McCoy, A Question of Torture<\/em>, 112; Scott Shane, \u201cSoviet-Style \u2018Torture\u2019 Becomes \u2018Interrogation,\u2019\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, June 3, 2007. \u201cWhen you say something down the chain of command like, \u2018The Geneva Conventions don\u2019t apply,\u2019 that sets the stage for the kind of chaos we have seen,\u201d said retired Judge Advocate General Rear Admiral John Hutson.<\/p>\n

7. Mayer, The Dark Side<\/em>, 240 \u2013 41.<\/p>\n

8. Deputy Secretary for Defense Intelligence, Lieutenant William Boykin called the War on Terror a \u201choly war against Satan.\u201d According to Boykin, \u201cOur spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.\u201d Richard Leiby, \u201cChristian Soldier,\u201d Washington Post, <\/em>November 6, 2003.<\/p>\n

9. \u201cWas the USA unleashing pent-up rage, seeking vengeance for every military en- gagement it had lost or terrorist act that it had suffered?\u201d asked former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mossam Begg. \u201cWell, almost. The common denominator was Islam.\u201d David Horowitz, \u201cJimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar,\u201d Front Page Magazine, <\/em>December 14, 2006; Moazzam Begg and Victoria Brittain, Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, and Kandahar <\/em>(New York: New Press, 2007), 111.<\/p>\n

10. Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace <\/em>(New York: Basic Books, 2002), 352.<\/p>\n

11. David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil <\/em>(New York: Random House, 2003), 9. Disney\/ABC radio host Paul Harvey did his best to stiffen the American spine and in the process demonstrated the insidious effects of \u201ctorture\u2019s perverse pathology\u201d in one 2005 radio address: \u201cwe didn\u2019t come this far because we\u2019re made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. Yes, that was biological warfare! And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. And we grew prosperous. And, yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves\u201d (Paul Harvey Show<\/em>, ABC Radio, June 23, 2005). According to a Gallup poll, by 2005, more than one in four Americans approved of the use of nuclear weapons in the War on Terror. Another survey found that a majority of American high school students believed that newspapers \u201cshould not be allowed to publish without government approval,\u201d and even more shocking, one in five said that \u201cAmericans should be prohibited from expressing unpopular opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n

12. Helen Thomas, Media Matters <\/em>interview, May 12, 2006; http:\/\/vodpod.com\/ watch \/97344-helen-thomas-on-the-medias-failure.<\/p>\n

13. Ron Steel blasted Ignatieff in a New York Times <\/em>review of Ignatieff \u2019s book The Lesser Evil<\/em>: \u201cIn concocting a formula for a little evil lite to combat the true evildoers, Michael Ignatieff has not provided, as his subtitle states, a code of \u2018political ethics in an age of terror\u2019 but rather an elegantly packaged manual of national self-justification.\u201d Alfred McCoy was also extremely critical of Ignatieff. He described the American press and public\u2019s \u201cwillful blindness\u201d and \u201cstudied avoidance\u201d of American con- duct in the War on Terror. The human rights advocate turned Canadian politician did a one-eighty after the Abu Ghraib debacle and subsequently wrote an embar- rassingly feeble mea culpa <\/em>in which he blamed his lapse of judgment on too many years as a hothouse academic at Harvard. \u201cThe Lesser Evil,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, July 25, 2004.<\/p>\n

14. McCoy, A Question of Torture<\/em>, 128. Major General Jack Rives, Air Force Judge Advocate General, argued that the more extreme interrogation techniques not only put \u201cthe interrogators and chain of command at risk of criminal accusations abroad,\u201d they also damaged the military\u2019s \u201cculture and self image.\u201d<\/p>\n

15. David Hackworth, \u201cFry the big fish, too,\u201d February 1, 2005, www.worldnetdaily .com.<\/p>\n

16. Colin Powell, Memo to the Counsel to the President, January 26, 2002.<\/p>\n

17. Robert Baer, \u201cWhy KSM\u2019s Confession Rings False,\u201d Time<\/em>, March 15, 2007; Kath- erine Shrader, \u201cOfficials: Mohammed Exaggerated Claims,\u201d AP<\/em>, March 15, 2007; Josh Meyer, \u201cDetainee Says He Confessed to Stop Torture,\u201d Los Angeles Times<\/em>, March 31, 2007.<\/p>\n

18. Meng Try Ea, The Chain of Terror <\/em>(Phnom Penh: The Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2002), 2: \u201cUpper echelon wanted answers, and wanted them now. I soon left, ashamed at being unable to perform my duty.\u201d<\/p>\n

19. News.findlaw.com\/hdocs\/docs\/iraq\/tagubarpt.html.<\/p>\n

20. Robert Jervis, The Logic of Impressions in International Relations <\/em>(New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). <\/em>\u201cUnlike Nuremberg, which led with the trials of the top leadership of the Third Reich and only gradually worked its way down to the bottom of that evil ladder,\u201d wrote Col. David Hackworth, \u201cour leaders are, so far, successfully ducking any responsibility for the crimes perpetrated on their watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

21. Sworn statement taken at Baghdad Airport Confinement Facility, June 6, 2003. Another U.S. soldier wrote in a sworn statement: \u201cX choked him until he passed out X stated that X was beating him because Y is a Muslim and X is a Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n

22. Jane Mayer, \u201cThe Experiment,\u201d The New Yorker<\/em>, July 11 and 18, 2005.<\/p>\n

23. Hackworth, \u201cFry the big fish, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

24. www.cbsnews.com \/ htdocs \/pdf \/ FBI_gitmo_detainees.pdf.<\/p>\n

25. Ibid.<\/p>\n

26. James Rosen, \u201cSaddam Trial at Uncertain Juncture,\u201d McClatchy Newspapers<\/em>, Feb- ruary 13, 2006.<\/p>\n

27. \u201cAnnan Backs UN Guantanamo Demand,\u201d BBC<\/em>, February 17, 2006; \u201cGuantanamo Inmates Can Be Held in Perpetuity,\u201d Reuters<\/em>, June 15, 2005; \u201cI think if you combine excessive arrogance and excessive ignorance, you wind up 78 months later where we are in this process,\u201d said former Gitmo prosecutor Colonel Morris Davis, who resigned in protest. Josh White, \u201cProsecutor Alleges, Pentagon Played Politics,\u201d Washington Post, <\/em>October 20, 2007<\/p>\n

28. White, \u201cProsecutor Alleges, Pentagon Played Politics\u201d; Carol Williams, \u201cDefender Says Advisor Exerts Illegal Sway,\u201d Los Angeles Times<\/em>, March 28, 2008; William Glaberson, \u201cAn Unlikely antagonist in the Detainees\u2019 Corner,\u201d New York Times<\/em>, June 19, 2008.<\/p>\n

29. \u201cGuantanamo Bay Prosecutor Steps Down,\u201d BBC<\/em>, September 25, 2008; Mike Me- lia, \u201cFormer Gitmo Prosecutor Blasts Tribunals,\u201d AP<\/em>, September 26, 2008; Deputy Prison Camp Commander Brigadier General Gregory Zanetti called Hartmann\u2019s conduct \u201cabusive, bullying, and unprofessional.\u201d Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld resigned rather than prosecute a case against an Afghan teenager accused of throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers. Vandeveld said that he could no longer serve due to the \u201cslipshod\u201d evidentiary procedures.<\/p>\n

30. Carol Williams, \u201cDetainee\u2019s Plea Deal Angers Some Legal Experts,\u201d Los Angeles Times, <\/em>April 1, 2007; \u201cHicks Case Points up Problems Facing US \u2018Terror\u2019 Tribu- nals,\u201d AFP<\/em>, April 1, 2007; \u201cGuantanamo Follies,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, editorial, April 6, 2007.<\/p>\n

31. \u201cTrial Would Have Done Stalin Proud\u2014Lawyer,\u201d Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>, April 1, 2007.<\/p>\n

32. \u201cU.S. Diplomats to Use Nuremberg Defense,\u201d The Australian<\/em>, February 14, 2008; Matthew Lee, \u201cU.S Likens Death Penalty War Court to Nuremberg,\u201d AP<\/em>, February 12, 2008.<\/p>\n

33. Dan Ephron, \u201cFair, Open, Just, Honest: A Chat with the Adviser to the Gitmo Military Commissions,\u201d Newsweek<\/em>, June 2, 2008.<\/p>\n

34. Frank M. Buscher, The U.S. War Crimes Program in Germany, 1946<\/em>\u20131955 <\/em>(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1989), appendix A.<\/p>\n

35. Martha Neil, \u201cNuremberg Attorney: Gitmo Trials Unfair,\u201d ABA Journal<\/em>, June 11, 2007. To King, the United States \u201chas always stood for fairness. We were the ones who started war crimes tribunals and we\u2019re the architects. I don\u2019t think we should turn our back on that architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n

36. www.hamdanvrumsfeld.com \/.<\/p>\n

37. Hal Bernton and Sara Jean Green, \u201cRessam Judge Decries U.S. Tactics,\u201d The Seattle Times<\/em>, July 28, 2005.<\/p>\n

38. Mayer, The Dark Side<\/em>, 228.<\/p>\n

39. http:\/\/www.roberthjackson.org\/Man\/theman2\u20137-8\u20131\/.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Peter Maguire is a writer at\u00a0<\/em>Sour Milk.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – petermaguire.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 Dec 2025\u00a0–\u00a0Recently, many people have asked me if the Trump administration\u2019s decision to target and destroy the Venezuelan boats is a war crime? The simple answer is yes and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ultimately bears responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":309529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,541,559,3324,249,70,557,965],"class_list":["post-309528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-maduro","tag-north-america","tag-trump","tag-usa","tag-venezuela","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309530,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309528\/revisions\/309530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}