The First War Crime is Starting the War

The Nuremburg trials stated that the crime is starting an aggressive war, because all atrocities of war stem from the fact that a war was started.

"War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." (Nuremberg judgement)

Hitler, for instance never killed anyone during his rule of Germany; he had people to do that for him. "Cry 'havoc' and let slip the dogs of war"

From Chris Floyd's Empire Burlesque (www.chris-floyd.com ).

Children of Abraham: Death in the Desert
www.chris-floyd.com/ index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=550&Itemid=1
Written by Chris Floyd
Sunday, 19 March 2006

we know that the American troops ... were sent to Iraq on a demonstrably false mission to "disarm" weapons that did not exist and take revenge for 9/11 on a nation that had nothing to do with the attack. And we now know that the White House – and George W. Bush specifically – knew all along that the intelligence did not and could not support the public case he had made for the war.

We know that the only reason that this dead baby has his arm frozen to his lifeless face is that three years ago this week, George W. Bush gave the order to begin the unprovoked, unjust and unnecessary invasion of Iraq. He hasn't fired a single shot or launched a single missile; he hasn't tortured or killed any prisoners; he hasn't kidnapped or beheaded civilians or planted bombs along roadsides, in mosques or marketplaces. Yet every single atrocity of the war – on both sides – and every single death caused by the war, and every act of religious repression perpetrated by the extremist sects empowered by the war, is the direct result of the decision made by George W. Bush three years ago. Nothing he says can change this fact; nothing he does, or causes to be done, for good or ill, can wash the blood of these children – and the tens of thousands of other innocent civilians killed in the war – from his hands.

The Avalon Project, at Yale Law School (www.yale.edu/ lawweb/ avalon/ avalon.htm) is highly recommended, BTW. I thought it was on my link list. Adding. The quote at the beginning is from the "Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals" (www.yale.edu/ lawweb/ avalon/imt/ proc/ judcont.htm), under the heading "The Nazi Regime in Germany" (www.yale.edu/ lawweb/ avalon/ imt/ proc/ judnazi.htm), subheading The Common Plan or Conspiracy and Aggressive War.