NATO's Canadian Commander in Libya, Charles Bouchard, Must Stand Trial for Warcrimes 3

War Criminals Are Not Welcome in Halifax  -  by Tony Seed

http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/11/war-criminals-are-not-welcome-in-halifax/

"...From Panetta on down, the participants (300 in all) have been summoned from a select handful of countries: the US, Canada, Germany and those who wish to subordinate national sovereignty to the strategic interests of the imperialists and NATO...

The Harper government is sending Lieutenant General Charles ['The Butcher'] Bouchard to the HISF as its star representative and saviour of the Libyan people. Bouchard should also be put on trial for war crimes; he was commander of the overthrow of the country's government and the extrajudicial killing of Gadhafi and others.

Bouchard made clear he held final authority for approving all targets. On November 6, CBC Newsworld interviewed Bouchard about the need for 'action' against Syria with the Libyan war as 'a template'.

In short the US and Canadian governments remain committed to varying forms of interference and intervention throughout the world in order to safeguard the interests of the big monopolies and financial institutions in the same measure that foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Canada as exemplified by the HSIF is escalating.

It is in these circumstances that all democratic people must take a stand..."

Will the UN Insist on Fair Trials For Ex Regime Loyalists in Libya?  -  by Franklin Lamb

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/22/will-the-un-insist-on-fair-trials...

"What the White House and NATO want is for former key Gadhafi loyalists like Seif al Islam to be silenced (reminding one of Saddam, Osama ande Muammar) before they can reveal criminal dealings by NATO country leaders. Chances are the jailed defendants will be killed unless the UN Security Council, which allowed the destruction of Libya via UNSC Resolution 1973, intervention to uphold UN humanitarian principles.."

Harper Government Snubs Afghan Veterans With His Large-Scale Celebration of Canada's Libyan War 'Heroes' Say Afghan Veterans  -  by David Pugliese

http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2011/11/23/harper-government-snubs-afghan...

"There seems to be a growing anger - maybe resentment is a better word - about the celebrations scheduled for Thursday for the Libya mission. The Harper government has planned a full-on extravaganza with a flyby of 10 aircraft over Parliament Hill and a medal award ceremony, attended by the Prime Minister himself for Lt. Gen Charles Bouchard who oversaw the NATO mission..."

Former Libyan PM Exposes US-NATO Machinations  -   by Oliver Campbell

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/liby-n24.shtml

"Revealing comments by the former prime minister of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) government, Mahmoud Jibril, have further exposed the predatory character of the US-NATO campaign in Libya. Far from being a humanitarian mission to 'save the Libyan people' the war to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was aimed at seizing control of the country's oil wealth...

Not surprisingly, Jibril's revealing comments have largely gone unnoticed by those who aligned themselves with the US-NATO attack, falsely claiming that it was a humanitarian mission to protect the Libyan people. A significant layer of liberals, former pacifists and ex-lefts openly sided with the attack on Libya, strenuously denying that imperialist interests were at play.

Not that the predatory character of the war is increasingly exposed, they maintain a deafening silence..."

'Victory in Libya No Cause for Celebration  -  by Scott Taylor

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/37286-victory-libya-no-cause-celebr...

"If your technological advantage over the enemy allows you to hover for two hours with impunity over an air defense system, before destroying it at your leisure, then it is not really war - it's murder.

If a world champion boxer climbed into the ring against a blind paraplegic in a wheelchair and proceeded to pound the helpless victim to death, we would not consider it a sport. It would be equally laughable if it took eight full rounds - or in the case of combating Libya, eight full months - to pulverize the opponent into submission..

In recognition of Canada's not-yet-fully-disclosed special forces role played in Libya, members of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment also had a colour party in the parade.

Singled out for personal recognition was Lt.-Gen. Charles Bouchard, the Canadian air force officer who had been in overall command of the NATO mission in Libya. 'He was tough, he was able, he took no prisoners,' claimed US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta..."

It Was An Operation to Eliminate the Libyan Leader Planned by NATO (and vid)

http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2011/12/it-was-operation-to-eliminate-libya...

Convoy of Leader Moammar Al Gaddafi After NATO Humanitarian Intervention (and vid)

http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2011/12/convoy-of-leader-moammar-al-gaddafi...

NDPP wrote:

What our General Bouchard and his NATO bombing wrought

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePtsbkmVBlw

What Moammar Gaddafi wrought (among many incl disco bombings etc)

[img]http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/sherwood_crescent.jpg[/img]

No one ever said tit-for-tat is kosher, but if Libya hadn't been ruled by a deranged man for 42 years it's probable that the relations between it and the world would never have resulted in Berlin disco bombings, followed by Gulf of Sidra/Gaddhafi compound, followed by Lockerbie, followed by Operation Unified Protector. The chain of events seems to be one of action and re-action with larger and larger body counts.

I find the unrelenting focus on alledged Canadian war crimes in Libya to be offensive, considering that:

1. Canada did not target any weapons on civilians, or in areas where there was a valid military target but the blast would have placed civilians in danger;

2. Canada did not drop any weapons inside built up urban areas or use DU or other nastier weapons (and yes a 500 lb bomb is nasty enough);

3. LGen Bouchard was acting under a legal mandate (i.e. the UN, and yes the original rationale of "protecting civilians" soon morphed into "get Gaddafi" by the politicians); and

4. [and this is important] every effort was made by NATO as a whole to limit civilian casualties, as opposed to certain leaders who desired maximum civilian deaths.

Now, it would be a waste of time to start a new thread calling for the trial of Gaddafi on war crimes charges. But if someone would post information showing that Canada deliberately targeted civilians, or targeted a military site knowing civilians would also be killed, I'd be the first to condemn those involved.

Is the "Col Klink" moniker necessary, M. Spector?

I suppose it appeals to those who like to make Nazi allusions.

CDN_FORCES wrote:

No one ever said tit-for-tat is kosher, but if Libya hadn't been ruled by a deranged man for 42 years it's probable that the relations between it and the world would never have resulted in Berlin disco bombings, followed by Gulf of Sidra/Gaddhafi compound, followed by Lockerbie, followed by Operation Unified Protector. The chain of events seems to be one of action and re-action with larger and larger body counts.

I find the unrelenting focus on alledged Canadian war crimes in Libya to be offensive, considering that:

1. Canada did not target any weapons on civilians, or in areas where there was a valid military target but the blast would have placed civilians in danger;

2. Canada did not drop any weapons inside built up urban areas or use DU or other nastier weapons (and yes a 500 lb bomb is nasty enough);

3. LGen Bouchard was acting under a legal mandate (i.e. the UN, and yes the original rationale of "protecting civilians" soon morphed into "get Gaddafi" by the politicians); and

4. [and this is important] every effort was made by NATO as a whole to limit civilian casualties, as opposed to certain leaders who desired maximum civilian deaths.

Now, it would be a waste of time to start a new thread calling for the trial of Gaddafi on war crimes charges. But if someone would post information showing that Canada deliberately targeted civilians, or targeted a military site knowing civilians would also be killed, I'd be the first to condemn those involved.

Of course Gaddafi was deranged. He was the Bad Guy after all! They're always deranged! Now, George Bush, Tony Blair who between them butchered thousands more than Gaddafi aspired to - NOT deranged.

And Obama - he who rains Hellfire from the sky, terrorizing Pakistan and a few other nations besides, who in his still unfinished first term has also despatched more innocent mortals to their maker than one Moammar - also not deranged, I'm sure. 

That Canada did not target civilians is IRRELEVANT. The undeniable reality of modern warfare - as practiced by Nato, including Canada - GUARANTEES 'collateral damage', such as the tragedy described in Franklin Lamb's account. Even if you dismiss its credibility there are far too many other such reports to be able to deny, in good conscience, that modern warfare is anything but a sordid and disgusting business that destroys innocents as readily as 'the enemy' - whatever brown person in an oil-bearing nation that happens to be. ENOUGH of this shrugging of the shoulders and fumbling for rationalization! War is a criminal enterprise, far surpassing the most bestial of civilian crimes in the scale and depth of the misery and suffering it visits upon the innocent. Think of kidnapping, raping and killing a small child. THAT is the substance of war, its flesh and bone - the repulsive Stephen Harpers' hapless 'Highway of Heroes' notwithstanding.

The criminality of the act must then be in the very decision to go to war, because it is then that hundreds or thousands of innocents are condemned to die. This is an important point. This is why Bouchard, and ultimately Stephen Harper, will burn in hell for the obscenities they have instigated and been party to.

The 'legality' of the war criminal Bouchard's mandate is immaterial. It is obscene to use the term 'war' and 'legality' in the same sentence. The stuff of war is contrary to the very concept of law, it is by its very nature transgressive, using overwhelming violence to impose one party's order upon another. Bouchard oversaw the systematic destruction of a sovereign state's ability to defend itself before going on to pursue the Bad Guy so relentlessly they tracked him down to a culvert, stuck a carving knife up his arse and murdered him. (Yeah, Oopsie! That one's on NATO too, even if they didn't hold the knife. Extra-judicial killings'r'us!)

Would that the problems of Attawaspikat inspired such determined response! (And at @ $100,000 a pop, each of those Raytheon bombs takes the place of one domestic Attawaspikat dwelling!) But I'm sure it's a lot less fun than flying over someone else's country and blowing stuff - and thousands of human beings - to bits.

The trouble is, to the powerful western nations war is something WE do to other people. We're never at risk of anything worse than missing lunch. It is too easy for our imaginations to shrink from the task of picturing the reality of 'war' and in truth, few in the west have much of a clue, Hollywood and the MSM have seen to that.

I note you've provided a fine picture of presumably the hole left by one of the planes destroyed over Lockerbie - as an example of the sort of violent transgression of civilized behavior that meritted the Nato response.

Which was to produce a whole lot of similar holes across the once-sovereign land of Libya. Do you not see the folly in that? 

CDN_FORCES wrote:

No one ever said tit-for-tat is kosher, but if Libya hadn't been ruled by a deranged man for 42 years it's probable that the relations between it and the world would never have resulted in Berlin disco bombings, followed by Gulf of Sidra/Gaddhafi compound, followed by Lockerbie, followed by Operation Unified Protector. The chain of events seems to be one of action and re-action with larger and larger body counts.

There is probably more evidence that Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups bombed the Berlin disco and leading to the US blitzkrieg attack in Libya. That was one of the first times the West tried to murder Gadaffi. And one of the accused Berlin disco bombers confessed to working for Mossad. Later the US and MI6 would recruit London-based cleric Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the "emir" of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group al-Muhajiroun, in the U.S. and NATO's drive to create a militant Islamic base in 1990s Bosnia.

See William Bowles copy of a wsws.org essay: German TV exposes CIA, Mossad links to 1986 Berlin disco bombing By a German correspondent

And there is little evidence that Gadaffi was behind the Lockerbie bombing. A key witnesses for the prosecution in that trial admitted to perjury.

Gadaffi was innocent of most of the West's frame-ups of him. They wanted Libya's oil, CD_FORCEs. And your fellow Canadian Forces comrades have helped to prop-up Al-CIA'duh militants tin Tripoli.

I'm afraid it's true, CDN_FORCES. Your comrades in arms are merely errand boys, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill. Our boys in green should put in for pensions with Conoco and BP.

He gets few things correct.

Some facts:

1. "as eight American bombs and rockets pulverized their neighbor’s homestead".

The US had stopped dropping any weapons by about the end of April, and Canada certainly never dropped weapons there.

2. "NATO records for June 20 as well as subsequent reports of bombing attacks listed for June 20th and June 21st in its daily logs have never included the bombing attack on Sorman or the attack on the Al-Hamedi residence".

That's because NATO aircraft never dropped any bombs on Sorman.

3. There were "other", non-NATO airforces involved in Libya. I'll let you fill in the blanks.

Blanks? You must be referring to our old allies in the anticommunist jihad made new again after 1992...

Congressman Kucinich on the Al-Qa'eda flag now flying over Libya & Langley YouTube Nov.

Never forget.

NATO's Depraved Disregard for Libya  - by Glen Ford

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30048.htm

"By the standard of international law, the entire NATO chain of command, civilian and military, should face trial for war crimes.."

'Victory' In Libya A Stretch  -  by Scott Taylor

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/50043-victory-libya-stretch

"I noted with interest that in the latest crop of Order of Canada recipients was none other than recently retired Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard...

After a major firefight between two militia groups in Tripoli last week, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the NTC leader, had to concede that Libya is on the brink of civil war. According to Jalil, the two options available are to either have the fledgling national security force attempt to disarm the militias and 'put the Libyans in a military confrontation, which we don't accept, or we split and there will be civil war.'

As neither of these options precludes further senseless bloodshed in Libya, one has to wonder what medal Harper will next present to Bouchard in the Conservative government's continuing attempts to polish an ever stinkier turd."

Rumor and Anger Mount in Libya  -  by Franklin Lamb

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/13/rumor-and-anger-mount-in-libya/

"...The population today in Libya is increasingly furious because more and more cases are coming to light concerning the high number of children who have been killed by NATO.."

'We did our part. We did important work. We are proud of the work done by our soldiers. We are proud of their actions. I would like to personally thank them for their excellent work and I know that all of my colleagues of all political stripes, join me in thanking them.." NDP

NATO's Grisly Crimes in Libya

http://nsnbc.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/natos-grisly-crimes-in-libya/

"...The report exposes the human rights and democratic pretexts employed by the US, France, Britain, [Canada] and other NATO accomplices to carry out a colonial style war of conquest. It makes clear that UN Security Council Resolution 1973, imposing a 'no-fly zone' and arms embargo on Libya supposedly to protect civilians from repressive actions by Muammar Gaddafi, was in fact used to carry out a ruthless air war waged in coordination with 'rebel' forces on the ground.

The report on US-NATO war crimes is also a further indictment of the assortment of 'left' parties, intellectuals and academics who parroted the human rights pretexts of Washington and NATO and thus gave open or backhanded support to the invasion of Libya.."

yes, just so they can't claim they didn't know. Send them this as well..

Blame NATO For the Mess in Libya  - by Ramzy Baroud

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=17742

"...As for the accused, it is no other than the NTC, which itself was a NATO political construct aimed at leading the political transition in Libya to serve Western interests. It turned out that 'mission accomplished' in Libya was yet another hoax. The result is no less devastating than what transpired in Iraq.

The NATO war on Libya was commanded by a Canadian, Lt. Gen. Charles ['The Butcher'] Bouchard. Last June, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird was quoted as saying that Libya should not be expected to go from 'Gaddafi to Thomas Jefferson'. He failed to elaborate on what kind of democracy NATO intended to achieve with its 9,600-strike mission.

To berate Libyans for failing to adhere to human rights is brazen hypocrisy, especially as many of NATO's victims are still not fully accounted for. The behaviour of militias, and the unrepresentative NTC are simply a continuation of the very violent legacy set forth by the very NATO countries that are demanding accountability, democracy and the rule of law."

All you global legalists who want to put Bush or Bouchard on trial are living in some kind of totalitaian utopia. Why has so much  of the Left such deference for this ICC created by Western powers to serve their interests in Africa. To niavely accuse NATO of WAR CRIMES in Libya is to politically sanction the intervention  EXCEPT FOR the children killed. The ICC is a kangaroo court with no real legitamcy except in its name and its not even supported by the four largest powers. Now African pro-Western elites are using it in their interest (Ivory Coast and Kenya)

Of course - a fixed game. And the ICC especially  is purely for official enemies not their own,  Butchers like Bouchard or Bush. However...

'a trial is never a binary operation that can be completely programmed like a computer. What you might call the 'Frankenstein syndrome' is ever present, especially in international affairs...'

international lawyer Jacques Verges on his 'Rupture' defence strategy

Unlike the ICC, our domestic courts, judges and judicial system, however imperfect, do have essential democratic legitimacy. They are under the control of our democratic government, its executive and legislative bodies.

The UN Security Council and General Assembly, created largely by the USA
and other powers after WWII, are not a democratic world legislature or government.
Lacking a democratic legislature, the ICC is much more totalitarian than
democratic and its "justice" is selective to a degree that certainly no normal
jurisdiction would ever accept.  

The ardent founders of the ICC took much of their inspiration from the 1945/46 Nuremberg Tribunal, usually seen as a triumph of "justice", and a welcome precedent.
At the time this was far from the opinion of some observers. One was
Hannah Arendt; another, the award-winning journalist Paul Soriol writing in
the Devoir (Montreal) on October 1, 1946. Under the headline "A dangerous
jurisprudence for civilization" he recalls that the Allies' position of
"unconditional surrender/no impunity", announced in early 1943, prolonged WWII

into the deadly years of 1944/45 which saw the firebombing of German
and Japanese cities, their civilians and children and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Nuremburg and Japan tribunals are still seen by critics as "victors' justice".

The Libya war may prove to be a serious setback for R2P (Responsibility to Protect) so beloved by much of the "Humanitarian Left" but not by Margaret Wente (G&M)

This XXIth century neo-colonialism should remind us of XIXth century colonialism (White Man's Burden) which often used R2P (« Protectorates ») and often found elites ready to collaborate.

UK Government Lies About Use of DU in Libya

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/230961.html

"...Do you think we will again use these WMDs on Syria and Iran? You bet.."