Iraq: Panetta’s Immunity Request Not Protection from ICC

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Hundreds of Americans Troops/Contractors Face War Crimes Accusations

 

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

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Iraq, a nation horribly divided after an illegal invasion by the US and Britain in 2003 and the ravages of nearly a decade of civil war has decided to play the “war crimes” card while negotiating with the US over a troop pull out. 

They don’t entirely want a troop pull out, not really.  Though the presence of the US is causing instability, the US is spreading around cash by the bushel, paying off everyone in sight.

For the players, the contracting companies there, their buddies in Washington, the Pentagon Princes living in the luxurious “Green Zone” (a fond hello to several of my good friends who have been there for years) and those enjoying the “black ops” opportunities of playing Iraq against Kurdistan against Turkey against Iran against Shiites against Sunnis against Christians, the “false flag” terrorists who keep the deaths moving with at least a car bomb a day, Iraq is “good business.”

Yes, we know who you are.

Today, Secretary of Defense and former CIA Director, Leon Panetta, has demanded that Iraq, if they wish American trainers to remain on after the scheduled pull-out this year, must promise not to seek prosecution for war crimes. 

Leon Panetta - Let the Immunity Games Begin

Wikileaks and others sources have submitted evidence of hundreds of civilian deaths in 2006 tied to operations around Tikrit, that likely constitute war crimes. 

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, last month, called for an inquiry into this incident as a result of wide political pressure. 

Muqtada al-Sadr, a political ally of Maliki, has threatened renewed hostility toward American troops if withdrawals are held up. 

In the interim, America is trying to negotiate broad “immunity” deals covering those in the field, deals which are hoped will apply to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld and dozens of other officials whose international travel has been curtailed because of potential war crimes arrests.

This is the “stealth” aspect of current negotiations, an agreement that would prohibit the use of Iraqi witnesses were there to be a Nuremberg type inquiry into the Iraq War. 

The most overt acts, those which were obvious crimes that received the highest and most public approvals, however, took place inside the White House, Congress and the Pentagon, not Iraq.

Do White house Decisions Need Immunity, Too?

This, combined with hundreds of other incidents, rendition, kidnapping, torture and thousands of “mysterious disappearances,” may put hundreds of Americans, perhaps thousands, about half government “contractors” in line for criminal prosecution by the Iraqi government. 

It may not be today, not while Panetta is pouring taxpayer cash down the Iraqi sewer at the current unsustainable rate but the threat is real. 

When the money dries up and America’s prestige dries up with it, pushed forward every so much more quickly by our lonely position on the wrong side of so many issues, siding with Israel while they have the worst government in their short history, entire continents will become “no fly zones” for those with American passports. 

But, even if Panetta’s negotiating ploy is successful, anti-American factions in Iraq led by the Sadrists may seek prosecutions before the ICC (International Criminal Court).  What Panetta isn’t taking into account is the groups that have been conducting covert investigations of the use of “special weapons” by the US in Iraq.

A number of individuals have come forward regarding the use of low yield nuclear weapons, part of a secret arsenal of MRR devices developed since 1990 by the Lawrence Livermore Labs. 

These weapons, nuclear fusion devices that kill with both blast and ionizing radiation, leave no residual radiation signature after 72 hours and are controllable to an output of as little as 10 tons of TNT.

Livermore Labs - Outer Space...In our Space

Reports are that there were these weapons were used dozens of times including one high yield weapon at the Baghdad airport against Republican Guard armored forces. 

Other nuclear weapons, including nuclear “bunker busters” were used plus many applications of small yield nukes claimed to have been “fuel-air” bombs of “daisy cutters” from the Vietnam era.

The programs developing these weapons went “dark” over 20 years ago with tens of billions of “black budget” producing an arsenal of easily disguised weapons, some radiation only, some “dial-a-nuke” and some of types not yet defined. 

Sources indicate a breakthrough in physics allows fission reactions with much less uranium than before, thus allowing two-stage fusion weapons, hydrogen bombs, to be smaller, much less radioactive and to be easily masked as conventional explosives.

The “mushroom cloud” of previous nukes is no longer the case.  This 4th generation weapons can be used in place of conventional explosives with ease.

The problem, of course, is that, as they are “secret” and “deniable,” they have become the weapons of choice, portable and effective.  Accusations of their use are denied out of hand as “wild conspiracy theory” despite occasional news articles that touch on a program a thousand times larger than suspected.

VIENNA — Research on a new generation of precision atomic weapons by the Bush administration threatens to undermine international efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms and to tarnish recent successes, according to diplomats and nonproliferation experts. The criticism focuses on the administration’s decision to lay the groundwork for developing low-yield weapons — known as mini-nukes — while pursuing President Bush’s doctrine of preemptive strikes against rogue states.

In addition, hundreds of tons of depleted uranium, once believed to be nearly harmless, are now universally accepted as a dangerous source of radiation with wide reaching bio-genetic effects, birth defects and radiation related diseases.

Reports of these problems, not just in Iraq but Afghanistan and near “ground zero” in New York are typically suppressed.

About a month ago, I learned, from the New York Times, that one firefighter had died of radiation cancer, multiple myeloma. Now I find the real number is admitted to be at least 345, a number that could only be possible if the firefighters were exposed to radiation from a nuclear blast within 72 hours of the explosion.

There is simply no other explanation, certainly not the “toxic soup” story being spread around. If jet fuel caused cancer, we all would have been dead long ago, our air is filled with it. Was the World Trade Center a massive storage area for toxic chemicals as is claimed?

Steel? Glass? Aluminum? Carpet? Particle board? Gypsum? Polystyrene? Shouldn’t we all be dead? Wouldn’t every house fire, ever smoldering junk pile be, by the standards of the Department of 9/11 Fantasy and Mythology, an environmental disaster?

I think we just covered 99% of it there, all things in any house fire, in fact much less dangerous than the typical house fire and absolutely nothing that causes Leukemia or Multiple Myeloma, the diseases killing off the New York City Fire Department and unknown “others” that nobody is tracking, nobody is checking on. We call those “others” the people of New York.

[youtube brQqRLCxJew]

With the “nuclear finger” pointing at the US, our secret weapons, our clandestine efficiency, better to “nuke” a suspected bunker complex than risk multiple strikes with conventional weapons, especially when the site may be nothing at all anyway, after all, we have been making nukes since 1945, can’t legally test them anymore and, as far as the army goes, they are free.

Nuclear weapons have NO cost at all.  After all, weapons that don’t officially exist don’t cost millions to use, don’t deplete our normal inventories.

Where do those inventories go anyway?

The Bad Boys - And Lots of Them

Many are stored in Israel.  Well, that isn’t entirely the truth.  We have a strange agreement with Israel.  We can store weapons there, things illegal to sell to anyone.

Israel can, if they choose, use them against their own citizens and do with some regularity.  Thus, cluster munitions, white phosphorus and worse are dropped on Gaza.

Israel can also sell American weapons stored there if they desire, sell them without “restriction.”  The best market for that is North Korea.

Thus, North Korea has stockpiles of American cluster bombs, bunker buster munitions, Hellfire missiles, Stingers, anything they want to go with their two German submarines they got pretty much the same way.

Back in 2009, they actually exploded a nuclear weapon designed by Israel, built in South Africa at the Pelandaba facility by Armscorp, shipped by good friends from the UK and purchased in a convoluted deal that involved the British government, Rhodesian and South African arms dealers and Israel.

Pelindaba - South Africa - Nukes Went Missing

Any time you hear stories about A. Q. Khan and his network of “nuclear proliferationists,” make sure you are smiling.  It is easier to buy a second hand nuclear weapon that a used Mercedes with a decent automatic transmission.  Dr. David Kelly ran the transfer, part of it at least.

When he learned about all of it, he threatened to go public.  That caused him to commit suicide though a bevy of competent medical professionals say he was murdered by members of Britain’s security services.

DU Kinetic Energy Projectile - Lethal for How Long?

Doctors, what do they know?

Our other question is how far will Iraq want to take this?  We know they have concerns about nuclear weapons that aren’t much of a secret anymore.

We also know that attempts to prevent a variety of United Nations NGOs from getting studies on the effects of Depleted Uranium use on Iraq have not been successful.

Somebody put up money, a ton of it, and officials in Iraq, some American contractors, helped out in unsuspecting ways.  This may make things a bit “dicey.”

Then we have that other issue.  What issue is that, you might ask.  Few realize that Libya built its last bio warfare plant in 2006. This was documented in cables leaked by Julian Assange featured in this article in VT.  Even Britain’s Daily Telegraph got involved:

Scientists from Britain and America visited the chemical weapons facility as it was being built in August 2006.
The cable, a copy of which was leaked to the WikiLeaks website and seen by The Daily Telegraph, detailed a visit by the scientists to a military facility in Tajura, on the outskirts of Tripoli.

The communique reports: “US and UK experts were both told that a lab under construction at the facility would be for chemical weapons defensive purposes.”

Andy Oppenheimer, editor of Chemical and Biological Warfare Review, said the facility described in the cable was “quite clearly” being used to develop chemical and biological weapons agents.

“The Libyans may well claim that this facility is for defence, but that’s a very thin argument because in order to defend against chemical weapons you have to build them and test them first,” he said.

He continued: “Libya clearly did develop chemical weapons.”

How to Dispose of Nuclear Waste - DU Weapons of Course

The problem is that it wasn’t just Libya.  Currently, chatter indicates that the US has been playing with some of its own toys, developed during the cold war and supposedly destroyed as part of international agreements.

A number of “crop agents” are rumored to have been used, particularly things that tend to cause market pressure on rice harvests.  Another involves Dengue Fever.

It seems that someone with a feeling of “unaccountability” with a bit too much “access” has decided that dipping into the Ft. Dietrich inventory of biological agents intended for use in “irregular warfare” is worth the risk, considering how American forces are a bit “over-committed.”

Thus, our real question is “What is the nature of the genie?”

Is it the nuclear genie, the bio-weapon genie, the “leak” genie or having to face the increasingly obvious possibility that Americans can actually be charged as war criminals?

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Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades. Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world's largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues. Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than "several" countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.