The Downing Street Minutes Won’t Go Away

Six More British Documents Leaked. Rice Implicated in the lie now.

Later today RawStory.com will be posting an article that they have been researching for several days. Six new secret British documents have been leaked and made widely available on the internet. These were retyped from the originals to protect the source, but RawStory.com has verified the authenticity and will be reporting on that research, on the significance of the documents, and on the timeline of the events illuminated by this information, known to the British media but new on this side of the pond.

What does this new information show? That British officials worried about creating the conditions in which they could legally support military action — because they knew the facts made no case for the war Bush had decided to wage. Worse, it confirms the rudely obvious fact that Bush had no clue how to deal with Iraq after toppling the regime. The facts in these documents, the minutes, and the briefings can’t be twisted, and they can’t be fixed.

All this time the mainstream media (MSM) has been saying that since there was no proof, this was a non-story. Now that there’s proof (and more proof being revealed as the days go by) they’re saying it’s an old story not worth covering, and give this Administration a pass. The hell if it’s not worth covering! This Administration has waged war on the basis of a pack of lies and the documentation proves it! The lies that led to this war misled our Senate and the American people, therefore our governmental representatives could not make a rational, informed decision on waging a war of aggression against a sovereign nation.

Legalities

No one is above the law, and no one should be denied its protection. International law is legally binding upon all countries. In the United States however, international law is spoken of differently, as a tool that our government can use selectively to enforce its will on other nations, or else circumvent when it conflicts with sufficiently important U.S. interests. When the president of the United States signs a treaty and it is ratified by the U.S. Senate, our country is making a solemn undertaking. The seriousness of such commitments is exemplified by the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials and subsequent international trials, in which individual national leaders have been held criminally responsible for treaty violations and, when convicted, have been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment or even death by hanging. Article VI Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, known as the “Supremacy Clause,” grants international treaties the same “supreme” status as federal law and the Constitution itself.

It is important to understand that war crimes fall into two classes: 1) war crimes relevant to battlefield conduct; and 2) waging a war of aggression. The treaty which outlawed the waging of aggressive war was the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War, otherwise known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact or the Pact of Paris. The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 has been replaced in international law with the UN Charter and the customs and laws of war of the modern era. Its rather sweeping exclusion of force is modified by newer legal obligations and standards. At the same time, the spirit of the Kellogg-Briand treaty lives on in Article 2 Clause 4 of the UN Charter.

In 1945, the United Nations Charter, Article 2 Clause 4, reiterated the principles of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, stating simply, “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Article 39 established the authority of the Security Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” and to “decide what measures shall be taken.”

So these lies are NOT newsworthy? I hardly think so.

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***Update :: As promised above, here is:
The Path of War Timeline - By Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane, Raw Story