Obama, Biden are war criminals under UN Charter: Analyst

Press TV: An award-winning American investigative journalist says US President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden should face charges of war crimes for the continuation of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Dave Lindorff, a contributor to Press TV website, quoted international law expert Francis Boyle as saying that President Obama and his administration are engaged in an “ongoing criminal conspiracy under international law” both to cover up and protect criminals like his predecessor George W. Bush.

He said Bush and many of his appointees were convicted at a tribunal in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, earlier this month of war crimes in connection with the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Under the Geneva Convention, failing to take action to prosecute those guilty of war crimes such as the “crime against peace” (invading a country that does not pose an imminent threat to the attacker), and torture, are war crimes in and of themselves,” wrote Lindorff, who has authored The Case for Impeachment about the Bush administration.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on of terror.

The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but led to years of invasion and insecurity is rising across the country despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The US-led war in Afghanistan, which has caused record-high civilian and military casualties, has become the longest military conflict in the American history.

US-led forces also attacked Iraq in 2003 and toppled Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussein on the pretext of possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but no WMD was ever discovered in Iraq. At the peak of the US-led military operation in Iraq, there were 170,000 US troops and more than 500 bases in Iraq.

Lindorff went on to say that President Obama is practically a “war criminal” under the “UN Charter and the Nuremberg principles, which declare that covering up war crimes by government and military leaders, and failure to prosecute such war crimes, are in themselves war crimes.” Source