Winging my way back across the Atlantic, my mind is full with a thousand images, voices, and stories from those I interviewed and those I met randomly during these last six weeks in the Middle East. My last night in Jordan, unwilling to waste time sleeping, I visited with friends, schemed how additional humanitarian aide could be funneled into war-torn Iraq, and conducted one last interview, this one with a doctor who’d just returned from visiting the health clinic he once directed, but that has been in shambles since US troops shot it up in November.

     He shows me pictures from his visit: a blackened room where the maternity ward once was, a gaping hole in the ceiling of a treatment room where a missile ripped through, an outside wall strafed with bullet holes and surrounded by barbed wire has a “3DB” spray-painted in black just under the health clinic’s sign.


     “What’s that?” I ask. “It means three dead bodies,” he replies impassively, as he flips through images. “They spray-paint codes on the sides of buildings after they’ve raided them,” he says of the troops. In another photo, a women stands atop a heap of rubble that was once her house. He doesn’t know what the “BG80” sprayed across a surviving slab of concrete means. I hope it doesn’t refer to 80 dead, but given the hundreds killed, I know that it could.

     I think back to a conversation I had with Nermin, a 23-year veteran journalist from Baghdad, while we were both in Turkey. She was telling me of the countless times she’d stopped in Fallujah on her way back home from somewhere. Fallujah, famous for its kebobs, was the perfect mid-way stop for a bite to eat.

     Last November, Nermin went into Fallujah knowing it had been devastated but not prepared for how extreme the devastation was. A trip that was normally 45 minutes now took her five hours. The kebob stand was, of course, gone.  Her friend from the Iraqi Red Crescent who’d gotten her in was staying in Shurta, a neighborhood, the friend said, that wasn’t destroyed like other areas.

     But, it was, Nermin told me, every building either flattened or full of bullet holes.

“I’ll never forget the first house I saw. There were beautiful green curtains in a second story window blowing gently in the wind. The main gate was open and in the garden a small bike, as if someone were coming home. But beyond that sat a car, completely destroyed.

     “I began to think all my dreams were in that bedroom. And where were the owners…were they alive or were they dead?” She looks off into the distance. I follow her gaze, as if I could also see these billowing curtains whose color I imagined as the green of a tree fully leafed out, a color I’ve always thought of as the color of life.

     “Fallujah was called ‘The City of Minarets,’” she continues, bringing me back. “But now there is no call to prayer. Being a Muslim you are called five times a day, but there was only silence.

     “I carry a phone book that was given to me in 2003. Fifty of my friends who are in that book are now lost. For the Americans, every Iraqi is a terrorist until they prove it, not deny it.”

     As I step into the clean, well-organized and climate-controlled airport I wonder how many Americans could hear something like that, I mean, really listen. Most, it seems, prefer their news as sanitized as the airport. Waiting out plane delays due to bad weather, I watch with amused detachment as CNN delivers their version of domestic and international events. I have that very surreal feeling we’ve all had when no one wants to talk about the elephant that’s clearly sitting in the middle of the living room. Listening to Karl Rove being described as the next “Deep Throat” is a clear indication I’m back in the States.

     As for Iraq, hardly a word is mentioned until a suicide bomber, who’s targeted American troops giving out candy, kills a number of small children. As horrible as this is, the stations play it out as if it’s the only news from Iraq, as if US troops aren’t also killing small children.

     As a friend later tells me after reading my report about US attacks on Western Iraq’s hospitals, “I know this kind of stuff is happening, but I don’t want to believe it.” I agree with him, it’s painful to look at what your country is capable of. And it’s much easier to turn away from it if we’re not reminded of it each night when we turn on the news, which is why they don’t show us.

     But, it is happening.

     Right now.

     As I write this.

     As you read it.

     Now, what will we do… now that we know?

     A few days back I sat with an Iraqi doctor recently arrived in Amman, listening to his eyewitness accounts of the last two months in American-occupied Iraq. The doctor, who asked not to be identified due to fears of US reprisals, is with Doctors for Iraq Society. This is the same group that put out a frantic plea some ten days ago for US troops to pull out of Western Iraq, specifically Haditha, Al-Qaim and Karabila, and allow humanitarian organizations access to the medical facilities they’d attacked and were now denying aid to.

     I will call the doctor ‘Sami.’

     Dr. Sami described how US troops laid siege on the main hospital in Haditha for five days in early May after a bomb exploded 500 meters from the hospital. Troops accused the hospital of harboring resistance fighters and attacked it as part of their “Operation Matador.” Electricity was cut, without warning, leaving those on the operating table and in the midst of other sensitive procedures without recourse. US snipers killed anyone attempting to enter or leave the hospital. One lab technician was shot and killed when he ran out of the hospital in an attempt to collect an injured patient.

     At midnight, troops stormed the facility and began arresting doctors. When they began knocking down doors, the hospital’s director, Dr. Walid Abdul Khalik al-Hadithi, attempted to stop them by telling them he had keys to all the rooms. Instead, Dr. Sami tells me, they preferred exploding the locks. When they reached the patient’s ward, they threw a sound bomb inside and entered shooting. Most of the patients escaped, leaping from their beds and running for cover. Said J. was not so lucky.

     Said had been admitted to the hospital a few days earlier when the car he was driving in nearby Haklania was shot by US troops during their attacks on Haditha. Both of Said’s legs were fractured, so he couldn’t walk, much less run to escape the Americans for a second time. Dr. Sami shows me video he took of Said’s room where there are signs of a recent family visit. Fresh oranges roll across the floor. Chocolates lie scattered, some in a pool of blood near the bed where Said bled to death after he was shot in his bed.

     Dr. Walid warned the troops about flammables in the medical storehouse, but they ignored him.

     I watch footage of what’s left, a room with blackened walls and bent metal shelves from a fire that lasted nine hours. Dr. Sami tells me troops didn’t try to extinguish the fire and prevented nearby residents, who rushed to the hospital with sand bags, from helping.

     “You must understand,” he says, “Haditha is the main hospital in western Iraq, from which other hospitals receive their medical supplies. The destruction of these medications means that other hospitals have now gone without.”

When the military finally left, local residents pooled their money and were able to rehab about ten percent of the hospital before the Americans returned on 29 May. This time they arrested Dr. Walid (he was later released) and destroyed everything the community had rebuilt.

     “I was there. I can tell you for certain that 100 percent of the medical stores are destroyed. Thirty to 40 percent of the patient wards are now destroyed. And they destroyed the laundry department. They are now washing all the linens in the toilets and hanging them in the sun to dry.

     The Americans have done $230 million (about $153,000 USD) in destruction and this does not include equipment. Why?”

     Then in early June US troops began “Operation Spear” in al-Qaim and nearby Karabila. Once again, the hospital was targeted. According to Dr. Riadh al-Obaidi, a doctor who had come from Ramadi to volunteer during the crisis, the city was bombed, turning neighborhoods into piles of rubble. During the day, snipers targeted people in the streets, preventing many who may have survived under the rubble from being rescued. Helicopters continued shooting throughout the night. Snipers also targeted ambulances.

     Dr. Riadh says troops arrested a surgeon they accused of treating insurgents.

     Dr. Sami, in Haditha since the attacks there on the 29th, heard about the attacks in al-Qaim and Karabila and immediately went there to help. However, he and another doctor were both denied entrance to by US troops.

     “I saw at least 200 people running from the city with their belongings,” Dr. Sami says. Looking intensely into my eyes, he continues, “I saw one grave where a whole family of thirteen had been buried by their house.

     “Now, there is a severe medical shortage in Al-Qaim because they get their medical supplies from Haditha and Haditha is destroyed.”

     After a second attack in mid-June, the situation became desperate. According to Dr Hamed al-Alousi, director at the nearby al-Qaim general hospital, “The situation is critical in the village of Karabila. Hundreds of injured people are inside the town requiring urgent medical treatment but have been prohibited to leave the village by US forces and we are not authorized to enter there,” said in an interview with IRIN News.

     The Red Crescent Society estimates there are more than 7,000 families now displaced from Operation Sword and camped in the desert, all in urgent need of food and medical supplies.

     Then came “Operation Sword” on the first of July in Heet, also near Haditha. Once again, US troops raided the hospital, arresting doctors, patients prevented from receiving medical care, snipers targeting ambulances. The hospital’s director is still in detainment, Doctors for Iraq Society unable to determine where he is being held.

    "Like the Spanish bullfight where it is first speared and made tired, then stabbed with a sword, this is what the Americans just did,” says Dr. Sami. “Our communities are like the bull they want to kill.”

     Throughout Iraq, the story is the same. American military actions are rife with violations of the Geneva Conventions. US troops have been consistently targeting hospitals and health care facilities, arresting doctors and medical personnel, shooting patients, sniping ambulances, and sealing off medical centers, preventing both treatment and the arrival of desperately needed supplies.

     The medical facilities of larger cities like Ramadi, Baquba, Mosul, and, of course, Fallujah, have all been targeted in the same way, often strangling the lifeline of medical supplies to smaller communities, whose clinics are also targeted.

     A health crisis is now underway in Iraq. Recent reports have found that hospitals are suffering more under the occupation than during twelve years of sanctions. Millions of dollars allocated for the health care system are diverted instead to projects like redoing the marble walkways outside Baghdad’s Medical City or supplying new laptops, while families purchase medications from the black market for their relatives being treated at the hospitals. Corruption is rampant. Doctors, fearing violence and kidnapping, are leaving the country in droves. But, exacerbating this situation is an apparent US plan to stranglehold the country’s hospital and health care facilities.

     Why are troops employing this strategy? Depends on whom you ask. The Pentagon consistently denies targeting hospitals. Doctors consistently cite troops as saying the hospitals are either shielding resistance fighters or are treating them. But as Dr. Sami points out, doctors treat injuries first and foremost, as they are trained to do. It’s not their job to ask where the injury came from.

     He pauses, then ends with another story. “At the beginning of the war, in mid-April 2003, there was a US soldier who was shot in front of Medical City. He was shot through the subclavian artery and bleeding heavily. I remember his face very clearly. He was looking me in the eyes.”

     He looks away, shaking his head, “He was so young, only about 19. He was just a child.”

     The he looks back, and with a type of fierceness continues, “He was an American, but we have to treat him. It’s our job to do this as doctors. We don’t ask who people are.”

     Some 150 worldwide news outlets have been reporting from the World Tribunal on Iraq, though only two smaller outlets, independents Big Noise and Deep Dish, are from the States.

     This was even more evident this morning as news outlets swarmed the WTI press conference at the Armada Hotel where we awaited their decision. But again, the Americans were absent.

     After twenty hearings of the WTI worldwide over the past two years, this culminating session heard 54 testimonies from ten different countries, the majority from Iraqis who risked a great deal to arrive here.

     Arundhati Roy read the recommendations on behalf of the Jury of Conscience.

     "We are people of conscience demanding justice and a peaceful future," she read. "Our collective conscience is our legitimacy."

     The Jury acknowledged the crimes of Saddam Hussein, but he was not the focus of this Tribunal because, "Iraqis must investigate these crimes" as part of their own sovereignty.

     In summation, the Jury of Conscience found:

     In recognition of the right of Iraqis to resist & develop their own independent institutions, the WTI declares solidarity with the resistance in Iraq and calls for

1. Immediate & unconditional withdrawal of occupation forces.

2. War reparations on behalf of the people.

3. All laws, contracts, institutions and treaties established under the occupation that Iraqis don't support declared null and void.

4. Guantanamo and all other offshore prisons must be closed.

5. Exhaustive investigation of those responsible, including Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and all other governments from Coalition forces.

6. Accountability of those responsible such as journalists, CEOs, and media outlets who deliberately lied and promoted violence and racism.

7. Accountability and worldwide actions against the corporations that have profited, such as Bechtel, CACI, Titan, KBR, Halliburton, Boeing, Texaco, BP, Chevron, and all the others. Calls for direct action, pressure to shareholders, and boycotts of these companies.

8. Call for soldiers resist and become conscientious objectors and ask for their political asylum.

9. All US bases in Iraq to be removed.

10. Call upon the people of the world to resist any of their government's support to occupation.

     The verdict will be delivered to those listed as responsible. All breaches of international law have been listed and will be forward on to the International Criminal Court. This includes Arab countries such as Jordan, Eygpt, Kuwaiti and Yeman

     When asked if the goals of the WTI will be reached, Roy responded by saying while it's doubtful the UK and US will pull out of Iraq tomorrow, the attempt of the WTI is act both is resistance and in solidarity. She cited, for example, the findings of the WTI strengthening conscientious objector's arguments.

     The documents list certain media outlets and journalists, such as The New York Times and its journalist Judith Miller, who was cited for her false stories.

     Any plan by the WTI to count on the mainstream media to broadcast this historical verdict was quickly dispelled by Roy. "It is a myth that the CEOs of corporate media support the global project, they ARE the global project."

     Roy responded to the question of the WTI supporting armed resistance in words reminiscent of John F. Kennedy's famous statement, "Those who make peaceful resolution impossible, shall make violent revolution inevitable."

     Roy laid responsibility for creation of the resistance squarely on the occupation. "When a government illegally occupies another country and then does everything in its power to use deadly force on the nonviolent protest, what is it doing? The American occupation is creating the armed resistance.

     After the WTI, what? This remains the big question, and depends on who is asked.

     Denis Holliday, former UN Assistance General-Secretary told me in a recent interview he believes the obligation to try governments is domestic. "The correct path," he said about Mr. Bush, "must be impeachment."

     Each country and individual will have to chose where they take the WTI rendering. And, as Roy, concluded, "This [verdict] doesn't belong to the WTI, it belongs to you."

For the full World Tribunal on Iraq Declaration, go to
http://www.worldtribunal.org/main/?b=91

     The old stone building that was once the mint of the Ottoman and Byzantine empires, and is now host to the World Tribunal in Iraq, was packed for a third long day of testimony. Also packed was the courtyard across the way where informal meetings and interviews took place, performance artists and musicians performed, and gallons of tea and coffee were consumed. It also served as a break from the intense back-to-back sessions that have lasted 8-10 hours a day.

     Today's proceedings marked the final day of the Tribunal, and dealt with the loss of Iraq's cultural heritage, ecological impacts of the war, global security, and future alternatives.

     The devastation to Iraq's people, its environment and economy are only part of the chronicle, as Dr. Gul Pulhan so clearly articulated in her testimony. "As we speak, the sites, i.e. ancient mounds that bear all the evidence for our past, are being looted and destroyed. The loss of knowledge and the destruction of the record for a very crucial period of human history is unmatched."

     Most are aware of the Iraq National Museum's looting in Baghdad during the spring of 2003. US troops stood by and watched as the world's richest collection of ancient Mesopotamia and Islamic artifacts were carried out the doors. Sadly, the story doesn't end there.

     "Some of the world famous sites such as Babylon and Kish were turned into military bases and destroyed by the occupier. Others such as Umma, Larsa and Ninova became prey for wanton looters.

     "In Dr. Neil Brodie's terminology 'the archaeological record soon will become extinct.'"

     While Iraq's historical record is being erased, it is being replaced by a legacy of cancers and birth defects that the enormous use of so-called 'depleted' uranium will leave on generations to come. These weapons are more honestly referred to as uranium munitions or low-grade nuclear weapons, since 'depleted' gives the incorrect impression that they are somehow benign.

     Instead, these weapons have a half-life of 4.5 million years and are highly carcinogenic.

     In 1991, the US used more than 300 tons of these weapons on southern Iraq where cancers have now risen sharply, especially in children. As Dr. Thomas Fasy's testimony showed, in 1990 only 2 children under the age of five were diagnosed with leukemia in Basrah, compared to 2002 in which 53 children were diagnosed.

     During the first two months of the current war alone, the UN and Pentagon estimate up to 2,200 tons of uranium munitions were used. Current figures from the Department of Defense for the subsequent two years are unavailable, but if only a quarter of the amount of weapons have been used since, it means at least 8500 tons of low-grade nuclear weapons have been spread, this time across the whole of Iraq.

     As Dr. Souad N. Al-Azzawi reminded us, Iraq is only one recipient of this weapon banned by the United Nations. The US used uranium munitions first in the Balkans and later in Afghanistan.

     The cold calculation, testified to yesterday, of the Bush Administration's invasion and privatization of Iraq was not without consequences to other nations, as long-time Mexico resident and correspondent John Ross told us.

     Over 100 Mexican nationals have lost their lives in Iraq thus far, Ross, testified, and the government's will has been bent by US might.

     "With the world's 11th largest reserves and currently its eight largest producer, Mexico accounts for about 14%of the U.S. oil basket, a percentage that has become increasingly vital to U.S. supplies, given uncertain relations with Venezuela.

     "In the first months of the Iraq conflict, and in an effort to improve relations with a Washington that had become estranged over Mexico's intended vote against the invasion in the United Nations Security Council, President Vicente Fox upped Mexico's daily export platform from 1.2 million barrels to 1.6.

     "With between only 10 and 12 years of proven reserves left, Mexico is essentially betting its energy future on Bush's faltering war in Iraq.

     "Mexico's refusal to back the U.S. invasion provoked swift retaliation from Washington. Any prospect of much-needed immigration reform was shelved indefinitely."

     As Denis Halliday, former UN Assistance Secretary-General and Oil-for-Food program told me, "Mr. Bush is famous about consequences, as long as it is someone else who is paying them."

     When, at the end of the day WTI organizers held a session to address concerns voiced by some about the legitimacy of the Tribunal, Arundhati Roy closed by declaring, "Our legitimacy comes from the people. To question why we are here is like asking someone why did they stop at the scene of a car accident."

     To look at Iraq in such depth is to stop at the accident scene and ask if everyone is all right. And now that we have found out that the answer is definitively no, the question of legitimacy becomes irrelevant.

     Tomorrow, we await the Jury's decision and with that who will pay the consequences.

     Hundreds sat through a day of testimony, photos and films primarily from Iraqis about the effects of the US-led war/occupation in Iraq. I thought I knew most of what has been happening in Iraq, but listening, I realized how tight the grip of news censorship really is.

     With hours of testimony, it is impossible to report back on what the day entailed, but it was mostly one that told the story of daily occupation and of the forces in place, which have made it possible.

     First of these was Eman Khammas's photographs of the current US military actions, 'Operation Spear,' in the west of Iraq, close to the Syrian border. Like Fallujah, the US military dropped bombs (this time, 2000-pounds each) on the civilian population for days, after which they conducted systematic house raids. According to doctors, the majority killed, as in Fallujah, were women, children and the elderly. This was done, by the military's own admission, in the communities of Khaim, also called al-Qaim, and nearby Karabila whose collective population is about 100,000, in order to find 100 resistance fighters.

     Also like Fallujah, the crimes committed in contravention to international humanitarian law were numerous. Hospitals were targeted, a medical warehouse blown up, the injured from Karabila were denied access to medical facilities in Khaim, and ambulances were blocked entrance to the city. A desperate Dr. Al Allusy, Director of Khaim's hospital, pleaded on national television, "I am pleading to humanity, to NGOs, to everyone: Let the American forces allow ambulances to pass through to the hospitals so that we can look after the injured. Dr Al Allusy also pleaded to American and British forces to stop the operations in Khaim."

     Witness Eman Khammas, scheduled to talk about on The Ruin of Daily Life, said, "I feel compelled to talk about something more important than the power cuts, the lack of water and the contamination of the environment. I will be talking about certain cities under embargo and cities being bombed, such as Khaim and Fallujah. Even now Fallujah is under the same embargo and it is probably going through a worse process than it did
before.

     Since November 2004 it has been under constant bombardment. These cities are characterized as cities of resistance."

     Indeed, we were interrupted by an update from Iraq. Bombing had just occurred in Fallujah.

     "In these so-called 'cities of resistance' there are in fact no camps filled with resistors; there are no fortifications. These cities are constantly bombed. Houses are blown up with people inside. Unfortunately, crowded families living in these houses bear the brunt of all this. When a hospital or a government office is bombed, people are left under the rubble for days until they die because no one will or can save them.

     "The American forces occupy the buildings, mostly private houses, where they imprison the whole family. They put them in one of the rooms, using the rest of the house as their quarters, as a temporary military station.

     When the U.S. imposes an embargo on a city, or when it encircles a city, the routes are blocked and any vehicle which approaches the city is shot at, without discrimination as to who is in the car - women, children, all will be killed. I personally witnessed the result of this in the hospital of Hadissa [also called Haditha, where the same type of military operations are in effect]."

     Those arrested are taken and often the families have no idea where they are being kept. "We don't know what happened to tens of thousands of people whose families are looking for them in prisons. There are children looking for their parents; fathers looking for their sons. I am pleading to you all, pleading to all organizations working on human rights, to the UN: something must be done. We need to know what happened to these people: are they dead or are they alive?"

     Longtime Ahram Weekly correspondent Nermin Al Mufti began, "I cannot start before saying we are the 'people' of Iraq, not 'peoples.' We will not bend to the American agenda" of trying to divide Iraq. "Please call us by this name only."

     Prior, she had told me during an interview, "The US is trying to separate Iraqis. In Najaf, for example, they referred to 'Sadr al-Muqtadr's Shi'a' instead of the 'resistance.' Why?" She and other Iraqis have pointed out many examples of this, and it is, in fact introduced as part of the body of evidence.

     "You can see this most prominently with the Parliament being divided by Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurd. This is not our way," another testifies. The American-installed interim government prior for the January elections introduced this form of government. This is repeated often throughout the day.

     Al Mufti calls Iraq a prison these days. "Abu Ghraib is terrible, yes. But for 26 million people this is also the situation. For example, on Haifa Street [in Baghdad, near the so-called Green Zone], there are checkpoints, barbed wire, the homes are like a prison," where people stay out of fear for their lives. "Potable water is a dream. Journalism is not exercised freely. English has become compulsory in the schools. University courses are saying the US brought freedom to Iraq. The psychological warfare is creating a prison of Iraq. Before, there were no abductions; no killings like there are now. "The Iraq of yesterday," she says, "has gone away."

     Fallujah-born al-Jazeera photojournalist Fadhil Al Bedrani was present during the attacks on Fallujah in April and November. "We would need volumes to document this. No houses have survived. Only 30 per cent of Fallujah is still standing."

     Al Bedrani continued, "I could never forget the killing of 25 members of two families gathered in one house in Goulan area; this crime happened on April 11."

     Numerous reports of illegal weapons being used in Fallujah were further substantiated. Al Bedrani met with survivors who told him how they were suffocating from a cloud of gas the Americans released.  He saw the bodies of those who didn't survive, where no gunshots were present.

     Next, the multi-national audience and 15-member Jury of Conscience watched two powerful films. The first documented US bombardment of Fallujah, families running, terrified, in attempts to flee the aerial bombing and avoid being shot by snipers, and, finally, the devastation that was once a city about the size of Anchorage. People are shown standing in long lines as they await permission to enter their city through one of only four gates where they must consent to a retina scan and fingerprinting before being issued an ID in English. It is only with this identification that Fallujan's are allowed entrance and exit to their city. Non-Fallujans are denied access. Those identified as Fallujans outside of the city are often considered terrorists by Coalition forces.

     This short 16-minute film is all that's left from 28 tapes of footage, stolen during a break-in from filmmaker Mark Manning's hotel days after his return to the US. His computer, digital camera and other equipment left behind, the only things stolen were the tapes and his video camera.

    Following, 28-year veteran Iraqi photojournalist Abdul Wahib Al-Obeidi summed up his powerful presentation by submitting his call to the Jury for a human rights tribunal to be held in Iraq. Beside him, the images spoke for themselves. Consisting primarily of children, the clips show children, some very young, perhaps three or four, being searched by US forces. Others show them playing on a piles of rubble, once the buildings that made up their neighborhoods, or running scared with their parents through streets that are afire, plumes of smoke behind them, or in the hospital, their bodies covered with shrapnel wounds.

     There is one that stands out in particular. An adult man sits, cross-legged, behind a barbed wire fence. His body is slumped, his head covered with a black hood. In his lap lies a small child. The man has his hand on the child's head, as if to try to comfort him though he cannot see the child's eyes, which are full of fear.

     These eyewitness accounts are the result, argued many, of a US agenda of military dominance in order to secure control of the world's resources. The so-called War on Terror has given the Bush Administration and their neo-conservative political allies their sanction.

     Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) counsel Barbara Olshansky gave a chilling timeline of changes to US law since 9.11, beginning with 12 September. "The day after the attack," she said,  "fifteen hundred undocumented people of Middle Eastern descent and/or Muslims were immediately rounded up" in a massive sweep across the US. "We'll never know exactly how many," she testified, because in a lawsuit brought by CCR and eventually heard by the Supreme Court, "we were told it wasn't our right to know."

     "What we do know is that when they were released they were immediately deported," she said, some without notification to their families.

     "That was the first chapter." Next, came Mr. Bush's "revision of law that made Guantanamo possible." To do this, Mr. Bush, former Counsel Gonzales and Cabinet members wanted a prison, Olshansky said was made clear from memos now public, that was beyond the law, where detainees could "be held indefinitely and they could be questioned under torture." This is why Guantanamo, located in Cuba, was selected.

     Under this revision, torture, as defined by international law, was redefined to mean only that which would "cause major organ failure or death."

     Guantanamo was the blueprint for subsequent prisons in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It was the first place where the types of sexual humiliation, naked detainment, extremes of hot and cold, religious desecration and isolation tactics were used.

     Next, came the advent of 'enemy combatants.' "You must understand," she said, "this is a new phrase. It doesn't exist in human rights law. It permits the US government to kidnap anyone from any country and any time, with no charges, no trial," without even "notification to the country of origin."  And with what's called 'extraordinary rendition,' people can be "seized, hooded, shackled, and sent to third countries where they are tortured at the request of the United States. Charter companies do this under contract" in what are referred to as 'snatch and grab' operations.

     Herbert Docena, from Focus on the Global South summed up the current US foreign policy agenda calling it the most ambitious, most radical, and most violent project to reconstruct an economy along neo-liberal lines in recent history.  In his Twelve Steps of 'Shock and Awe' Therapy he documents the steps taken by the US in revamping Iraq's laws and economic structure in what Reuters called a "free market manifesto" and the Wall Street Journal referred to as "one of the most audacious hostile takeovers ever."

     Contracts between USAID and Bering Point declare the "new government will seek to open up its trade and investment linkages."

     "It's sovereignty, but some of that sovereignty will be exercised on our behalf," declared then Secretary of Defense Colin Powell in what the Wall Street Journal realized was "to remake Iraq's economy in the US image."

     A friend turned to me after this, commenting that it felt like a day in Baghdad; there was so much and nowhere to turn to get away from it. It was a very emotional day and so necessary for all of us non-Iraqis to hear. For the hundreds listening, most were in tears throughout much of the day.

     I can feel it now, the next morning, even as I write this. I cannot imagine what being Iraqi must feel like. I am reminded how important this Tribunal is, how important it is for the people and not governments to write history.

     The leading governments waging this war and their media may ignore the Tribunal, but it is being well covered elsewhere, especially in Turkey. This is an aspect, of course, of how the American public continues to be convinced that supporting a war/occupation which is illegal, creating a world that is less secure, destroying the country it was supposed to "liberate," and draining the US economy is the best course to take.

     After two years and some twenty sessions, the World Tribunal on Iraq convened yesterday for its final session in Istanbul, Turkey. The Tribunal is a worldwide initiative established to create an historical record of the wrongdoings in the lead up, invasion and occupation  of Iraq by George Bush's so-called Coalition of the Willing.

     The historical event is patterned after the Russell Tribunal, which documented the Viet Nam war in 1967.

     Both Tony Blair and George Bush were delivered summons in May. Mr. Blair declined the invitation. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan denied ever receiving one.

     Jury of Conscience Chair author Arundhati Roy opened by responding to concerns that this will be a kangaroo court of prosecution without defense and the verdict certain.

     "This view seems to suggest a touching concern that in this harsh world, the views of the U.S. government and the so-called Coalition of the Willing headed by President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have somehow gone unrepresented.

     "If in the era of the multinational corporate media and embedded journalism anybody can seriously hold this view, then we truly do live in the Age of Irony, in an age when satire has become meaningless because real life is more satirical than satire can ever be.

     "Let me say categorically that this tribunal is the defense. It is an act of resistance in itself. It is a defense mounted against one of the most cowardly wars ever fought in history, a war in which international institutions were used to force a country to disarm and then stood by while it was attacked with a greater array of weapons than has ever been used in the history of war.

     "Second, this tribunal is not in any way a defense of Saddam Hussein. His crimes against Iraqis, Kurds, Iranians, Kuwaitis, and others cannot be written off in the process of bringing to light Iraq's more recent and still unfolding tragedy.

     "Saddam Hussein is being tried as a war criminal even as we speak. But what about those who helped to install him in power, who armed him, who supported him - and who are now setting up a tribunal to try him and absolve themselves completely?

     "The evidence collated in this tribunal should, for instance, be used by the International Criminal Court (whose jurisdiction the United States does not recognize) to try as war criminals George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, Silvio Berlusconi, and all those government officials, army generals, and corporate CEOs who participated in this war and now profit from it.

     "The assault on Iraq is an assault on all of us: on our dignity, our intelligence, and our future."

     Thus, the tone was set.

     The Tribunal being set in Turkey bears a few distinctions. First is the fact that while the Turkish government aided the US-led invasion, it did so in the face of enormous opposition by the people. Second, as noted by Richard Falk, international law professor and member of the Panel of Advocates, past tribunals were European. "Now," he said, "the moral, political, and legal platform is moving away from the Christian West."

     He called the Iraq war "the eye of a larger global storm," in which there lies an "American project to dominate the world by force of arms, to exploit the peoples of the world through the medium of economic globalization, and to administer its idea of security from its Washington headquarters."

     To say the remainder of the day was full and intense is an understatement. Images of the February 15 global demonstration against the US/UK invasion reminded everyone where majority opinion lies and where the resistance lives, despite the daily doses of propaganda which tell us why the Iraq war was necessary, how much Iraqis welcomed it, how well the democracy project is going and how "we" - those of us still opposed to the war/occupation - are in the minority.

     Witnesses on this day included Phil Shiner, who gave a brilliant legal framework on the illegality of preventative attack, use of force in inter-state relations, and of the occupation. The war in Iraq is important, he warned, as, "It is plain that the neo-cons and Bush and Blair wish to restructure international law to make it weaker but more flexible, and less concerned with the peaceful resolution of disputes."

     Hans Van Sponek, formerly with the United Nations oil-for-food program, accused Security Council member governments who hid behind its screen of being complicit both before the war (during the twelve years of sanctions) and after. "The failure of the Council to make a humanitarian, ethical and legal difference is much more monumental than is commonly known. There is not only the betrayal of the Iraqi people but also the betrayal of the UN Charter and the betrayal of the international conscience."

     This is "a low point in the history of the UN," he continued as he laid out how sanctions paved the way for Iraq's eventual takeover in 2003.

     Canadian professor of law Amy Bartholomew, Canadian human justice expert Jim Harding, Pilipino Walden Bello, director of Focus on the Global South, Tanzanian professor of international law, Issa Shivji, and Turkish journalist Mete Cubukcu were some of the additional witnesses who wove a web of responsibility for governments and accountability of the media.

     Today, the legal framework was set, tomorrow, we will hear the eyewitness testimony of Iraqis who've borne the brunt of the neo-colonial brutality.

     To read testimony of the witnesses and presenters, which I highly recommend, go to http://www.worldtribunal.org/main/# or for livestream, go to http://www.deepdishtv.org