Iraq / United States / Crime of Aggression

Fallujah's Sick Babies
By William Blum
Counterpunch.org, April 6, 2010
"[...] The BBC reported last month that doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the United States during its fierce onslaughts of 2004 and subsequently, which left much of the city in ruins. 'It was like an earthquake,' a local engineer who was running for a national assembly seat told the Washington Post in 2005. 'After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was Fallujah.' Now, the level of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than in Europe. The BBC correspondent also saw children in the city who were suffering from paralysis or brain damage, and a photograph of one baby who was born with three heads. He added that he heard many times that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children. One doctor in the city had compared data about birth defects from before 2003 -- when she saw about one case every two months -- with the situation now, when she saw cases every day. 'I've seen footage of babies born with an eye in the middle of the forehead, the nose on the forehead,' she said. ...
How can the world deal with such inhumane behavior? ... For this the International Criminal Court (ICC) was founded in Rome in 1998 (entering into force July 1, 2002) under the aegis of the United Nations. The Court was established in The Hague, Netherlands to investigate and indict individuals, not states, for 'The crime of genocide; Crimes against humanity; War crimes; or The crime of aggression.' (Article 5 of the Rome Statute) From the very beginning, the United States was opposed to joining the ICC, and has never ratified it, because of the alleged danger of the Court using its powers to 'frivolously' indict Americans. So concerned about indictments were the American powers-that-be that the US went around the world using threats and bribes against countries to induce them to sign agreements pledging not to transfer to the Court US nationals accused of committing war crimes abroad. Just over 100 governments so far have succumbed to the pressure and signed an agreement. [...]"