INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT APPROVES FIRST EVER WAR CRIMES INVESTIGATION OF US FORCES, CIA
Rachel Blevins —RT.com
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he US is promising retaliation after top judges at the International Criminal Court gave the approval to move forward with the first ever war crimes investigation into the conduct of the US military and the CIA in Afghanistan.
The US is now firing back, after top judges at the International Criminal Court gave the green-light to move forward with a war crimes investigation into US conduct in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US does not recognize the ICC’s authority over American citizens, and has no plans to cooperate.
Given his many character and cultural limitations Pompeo, by nature a bully, a neocon, and fascist gangster, cannot see that besides being a blight in the annals of diplomacy, he's also a disgrace to Italian Americans everywhere.
“This is a truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body,” Pompeo said. “It’s all the more reckless for this ruling to come just days after the United States signed a historic peace deal on Afghanistan, which is the best chance for peace in a generation.”
Pompeo’s comments follow a decision from ICC appeals judges earlier Thursday, which confirmed that the investigation will target all sides in the conflict, including the US Military and the CIA.
“The Appeals Chamber considers it appropriate to amend the appealed decision to the effect that the prosecutor is authorized to commence an investigation in relation to alleged crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan in the period since 1st May, 2003, as well as other alleged crimes that have a nexus to the armed conflict in Afghanistan.”
The US invaded Afghanistan less than one month after 9/11 with the promise of defeating the Taliban. And while the Taliban is now stronger than it has been at any point since the war began, members of the ICC have attempted to call attention to the atrocities people in the country have faced throughout the war with an investigation that looks at all sides in the conflict.
Back in 2017, the Office of the Prosecutor claimed it had evidences proving that from 2003 to 2004, members of the US armed forces and members of the CIA “committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence against conflict-related detainees.”
Last year, the ICC tried to move forward with an investigation. But the Trump Administration responded by revoking the visa of the ICC’s chief prosecutor after repeated threats from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, claiming Washington would do anything possible to stop the court from investigating the US.
And the threats appeared to work briefly, as judges from the ICC ruled last April that there was no point in moving forward with an investigation if they couldn’t guarantee there would be cooperation. However, that decision has now been overruled.
Pompeo has previously threatened economic sanctions against the International Criminal Court if they do move forward with investigating the US for war crimes, so now it remains to be seen if he will follow through with that threat.
There are likely major concerns about what a potential war crimes investigation could uncover, especially when looking at nearly two decades of war where countless civilians have been killed, injured and displaced at the hands of the US and its allies.
The bombings have also drastically increased in recent years. The United Nations confirmed that in 2018, Afghanistan saw the highest number of civilian casualties in a decades. And in 2019, the US and its allies killed more civilians than the Taliban.
The war in Afghanistan has continued under three administrations, and there have been numerous accusations of corruption—the latest of which came in the form of the Afghanistan Papers. Released late last year, they documented interviews with top military generals who revealed that the US government has been lying about the war for years.
Even though the latest peace agreement promises to bring American troops home, the latest round of bombings from the US raises new questions about whether the longest war in US history will truly come to an end anytime soon.
Addendum
NYT TRIES TO MAKE ‘RUSSIAGATE’ 2020 HAPPEN WITH HIT PIECE CITING ANONYMOUS SOURCES
The NYT published an article claiming intelligence officials are warning US lawmakers that Russia is already interfering in the 2020 election—and there is apparently nothing the US can do about it in a country that budgeted nearly $63 BILLION for its National Intelligence Program in 2020…
The New York Times released an article with the headline “Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump,” where they claimed that intelligence officials warned House lawmakers during a classified briefing.
The article states that although “intelligence officials have previously told lawmakers that Russia’s interference campaign was continuing, last week’s briefing included what appeared to be new information: that Russia intended to interfere with the 2020 Democratic primaries as well as the general election.”
In addition to the fact that the Mueller Report confirmed there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016, this article also claims that Russia has been and is currently working to influence our election.
That raises a much bigger question, considering the fact that in 2020 alone, the United States National Intelligence program was funded to the tune of nearly $63 billion dollars—so if intelligence officials did, in fact, have evidence that another country was trying to influence our election, why wouldn’t they do anything to stop it?
A spokesperson for President Putin was quick to deny the Times’ article, but he said he was not surprised by it and he warned these claims will only continue.
In a statement, Dmitry Peskov said, “This is just another paranoid report of the kind which, unfortunately, we will see more and more of as the election approaches. Of course, such claims bear no relationship to the truth.”
Before Trump was elected, outlets like the New York Times, claimed Russia preferred to have Trump in office over Hillary Clinton. However, Moscow has repeatedly denied those claims and we have seen Trump increase tensions both by keeping a firm US presence in Syria, and by pulling out of the INF treaty.
The article credited four authors, and the names that are listed are very familiar with both the 2016 election and the Russiagate narrative.
Among those authors is Maggie Haberman, the New York Times’ White House Correspondent. She was featured in internal documents from Clinton Staffers leaked by Guccifer 2.0 in 2016. The memos described Haberman as “friendly” to Hillary Clinton, and her campaign press secretary was quoted as saying, “We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed.”
Then there is Adam Goldman who is contributing to the article about Russiagate after he has reported on the flimsiness of the Steele Dossier, and he has admitted that he was one of the ones who chased the infamous Trump “Pee tape.” When asked what happened, he just said, “I don’t want to get into it.”
The important thing to remember here is that the New York Times’ story is once against making claims based on vague “anonymous sources.” That is a practice we saw repeatedly in 2016, and even though claims about Russiagate turned out to be blatantly false, we are seeing it once again in 2020.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Rachel Blevins is a correspondent for RT.com. Blevins is a journalist who aspires to break the left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning existing narratives. Inspired by telling the stories and exploring the angles of news that the mainstream media refuses to cover, Rachel’s career has been devoted to reporting on the topics of government corruption, U.S. foreign policy, the police state, civil liberties, the drug war, and media hypocrisy.
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