included captured American soldiers-General Shiro Ishii, along with a number of his colleagues, had been granted immunity and freedom in exchange for providing the United States with details about their experiments, and were promised that their crimes would not be revealed to the world. The justification for this policy, advanced by American scientists and military officials, was, of course, the proverbial, ubiquitous national security. 2

Apart from the hypocrisy of the Justice Department including Unit 731 members on such a list, we are faced with the fact that any number of countries would be justified in issuing a list of Americans barred from entry because of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Such a list might include the following:

William Clinton, president, for his merciless bombing of the people of Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights, taking the lives of many hundreds of civilians, and producing one of the greatest ecological catastrophes in history; for his relentless continuation of the sanctions and rocket attacks upon the people of Iraq; and for his illegal and lethal bombings of Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan and Afghanistan.

General Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, for his direction of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia with an almost sadistic fanaticism... He would rise out of his seat and slap the table. Tve got to get the maximum violence out of this campaign- now! 3

George Bush, president, for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including many thousands of children, the result of his 40 days of bombing and the institution of draconian sanctions; and for his unconscionable bombing of Panama, producing widespread death, destruction and homelessness, for no discernible reason that would stand up in a court of law.

General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for his prominent role in the attacks on Panama and Iraq, the latter including destruction of nuclear reactors as well as plants making biological and chemical agents. It was the first time ever that live reactors had been bombed, and ran the risk of setting a dangerous precedent. Hardly more than a month had passed since the United Nations, under whose mandate the United States was supposedly operating in Iraq, had passed a resolution reaffirming its prohibition of military attacks on nuclear facilities in the Middle East.4 In the wake of the destruction, Powell gloated: The two operating reactors they had are both gone, theyre down, theyre finished. 5 He was just as cavalier about the lives of the people of Iraq. In response to a question concerning the number of Iraqis killed in the war, the good general replied: Its really not a number Im terribly interested in. 6

And for his part in the cover up of war crimes in Vietnam by troops of the same brigade that carried out the My Lai massacre. 7

General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander in Chief, US Central Command, for his military leadership of the Iraqi carnage; for continuing the carnage two days after the cease-fire; for continuing it against Iraqis trying to surrender.

Ronald Reagan, president, for eight years of death, destruction, torture and the crushing of hope inflicted upon the people of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Grenada by his policies; and for his bombings of Lebanon, Libya and Iran. Hes forgotten all this, but the world shouldnt.

Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State under Reagan, for rewriting history, even as it was happening, by instituting lying as public policy. He was indispensable to putting the best possible face on the atrocities being committed daily by the Contras in Nicaragua and by other Washington allies in Central America, thus promoting continued support for them; a spinmeister for the ages, who wrestled facts into ideological submission. When history is written, he declared, the Contras will be folk heroes. 8

Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense for seven years under Reagan, for his official and actual responsibility for the numerous crimes against humanity perpetrated by the United States in Central America and the Caribbean, and for the bombing of Libya in 1986. George Bush pardoned him for Iran-Contra, but he should not be pardoned for his war crimes.

Lt. Col. Oliver North, assigned to Reagans National Security Council, for being a prime mover behind the Contras of Nicaragua, and for his involvement in the planning of the invasion of Grenada, which took the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians.

Henry Kissinger (who has successfully combined three careers: scholar, Nobel peace laureate, and war criminal), National Security Adviser under Nixon and Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford, for his Machiavellian, amoral, immoral roles in the US interventions into Angola, Chile, East Timor, Iraq, Vietnam and Cambodia, which brought unspeakable horror and misery to the peoples of those lands.

Gerald Ford, president, for giving his approval to Indonesia to use American arms to brutally suppress the people of East Timor, thus setting in motion a quarter-century-long genocide.

Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, a prime architect of, and major bearer of responsibility for, the slaughter in Indochina, from its early days to its extraordinary escalations; and for the violent suppression of popular movements in Peru.

General William Westmoreland, Army Chief of Staff, for the numerous war crimes under his command in Vietnam. In 1971, Telford Taylor, the chief US prosecutor at the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal, cited the Yamashita case as grounds for indicting Westmoreland. Following the war, a US Army Commission had sentenced Japanese general Tomayuki Yamashita to be hung for atrocities committed by his troops in the

Philippines. The Commission held that as the senior commander, Yamashita was responsible for not stopping the atrocities. The same ruling could of course apply to General Powell and General Schwarzkopf. Yamashita, in his defense, presented considerable evidence that he had lacked the communications to adequately control his troops; yet he was still hung. Taylor pointed out that with helicopters and modern communications, Westmoreland and his commanders didnt have this problem.9

The crime of bombing

As mentioned in the Bombings chapter, the bombing of cities from airplanes goes not only unpunished but virtually unaccused. This is a legacy of World War II. The Nuremberg and Tokyo judgments are silent on the subject of aerial bombardment. Since both sides had played a terrible game of urban destruction-the Allies far more successfully-there was no basis for criminal charges against Germans or Japanese, and in fact no such charges were brought. But as Telford Taylor has asked: Is there any significant difference between killing a babe-in-arms by a bomb dropped from a highflying aircraft, or by an infantrymans point-blank gunfire?...The aviators act [is described] as more impersonal than the ground soldiers. This may be psychologically valid, but surely is not morally satisfactory. 10

No one ever thinks theyre guilty of anything...theyre all just good ol patriots

Asked whether he wants to apologize for the suffering he caused, he looks genuinely confused, has the interpreter repeat the question, and answers No...I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country. Journalist Nate Thayer interviewing a dying

Pol Pot, 1997 11

How to deal with the unthinkable

At the close of World War II, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East was held. At the trial in Tokyo of former Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo, his lawyers asked why Tojos crimes were any worse than dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At that moment, the prosecution interrupted the Japanese translation and ordered the removal of the remarks in the official trial record and in the press.12

Another unthinkable

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ( Genocide Convention ), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948... The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish. The Convention then goes on to define genocide as certain acts, listed therein, committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.