"'We regret that civilians are hurt or killed while Coalition forces search to rid Iraq of terrorism,' said (US) military spokesman Brad Leighton'', according to a newsfeed carried on the Forbes news web-site dated October 12, 2007, which carried a report on the US killing of 15 women and children in Iraq in an airstrike north of Baghdad. This is only one in the series of atrocities that has been going on, on a daily basis, in Iraq ever since the US led war against Iraq which began in 2003 and for which there seems to be no end in sight. There are instances after instances of destruction of towns and cities, including the by now infamous destruction of Fallujah in which countless civilians have been killed, reckless bombings of civilian areas before the fall of the Saddam Hussein, each of which could constitute a specific war crime.

Having launched a war of occupation and imperial conquest and facing a stiff resistance, the US has now been reduced to labeling every act of resistance on part of the Iraqi people against its military presence and against the security forces or installations of its puppet “democratically elected” Iraqi Government as a terrorist act. Being supreme pragmatists, the US declares that while there may have been problems with its post-war planning, and while it admits that it may have made a mistake in disbanding the Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein and purging of “Baatist elements” after its initial success, and that it did not envision the rise of “sectarian strife”, it does not admit that its actions constitutes an atrocity of unparalleled proportions on a sovereign nation, on the peoples of a region, and indeed on all of humanity.

Today the debate there has turned into when there will be a “phased withdrawal” or whether Iraq should be partitioned, or whatever. There is almost no debate on whether there should be war reparations and how to provide justice to a country that has been violated so immensely.

While each event of the type that took place north of Baghdad on which the Forbes web-site has carried a report fills any thinking human being with horror, it is worthwhile to turn to the words of the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Robert H. Jackson, who says, "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.''

Indeed, the Nuremberg Trials led to the formulation of the Nuremberg Principles which includes the Principle of "Crimes against Peace.'' According to an entry in Wikipedia, "A crime against peace, in international law, refers to the act of military invasion as a war crime, specifically referring to starting or waging war against the integrity, independence, or sovereignty of a territory or state, or else a military violation of relevant international treaties, agreements or legally binding assurances.'' As per the definition above, the war against Iraq by the US led so-called "Coalition of the Willing" qualifies in no small measure as indeed a crime against peace. It may be further noted here that the next paragraph of the Wikipedia entry reads, "An important exception to the forgoing are defensive military actions taken under Article 51 of the UN Charter.''

The basis of the launch of the war (to provide the pretext required to circumvent the "crime against peace" charge), was that the Saddam Hussein regime possessed "weapons of mass destruction" which was always known to be bogus, and was covered with the fig leaf of "intelligence failure". However, what is also known is that the Bush administration in the US has been suffused with enthusiasm for a doctrine of preemptive strike and regime change and for the use of massive force against an inimical government with nary a thought for the peoples of the country. Therefore, it may be readily concluded that it would not be possible for the Bush administration to credibly hide behind the exception referred to earlier.

As per all the definitions of Crimes against Peace which include "(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).'', the leaders of the US, UK, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Australia and a host of other participating countries of the "coalition of the willing" at the time of the launch of the war could be considered as culpable of war crimes. The most notable among these include Mr. George W. Bush, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, Mr. Dick Cheney, Ms. Condoleeza Rice, Mr. Tony Blair, Mr. Jack Straw and Mr. John Howard. The peoples of the world must settle scores with them for their manifest crime against peace.