US Lawmakers Face War Crime Charges for Their Role in Yemen

by James Corbett
corbettreport.com

September 19, 2020

Remember that whole Yemen thing? You know, that little genocide that Saudi Arabia has been perpetrating out in the Arabian peninsula? If you're like most people in the Western world, the answer is probably "no." After all, you've got racist pancake syrup characters and other pressing political matters to attend to.

But it turns out that there are prosecutors out there who do remember the Yemen thing. These prosecutors are armed with a raft of documents showing that US lawmakers ignored their government's own legal warnings about arming the Saudis during their siege of Yemen. And, if the latest reports are anything to go by, a number of congress critters are lawyering up in the fear that they may soon face war crimes charges for their role in the affair.

Now, perhaps you have absolutely no idea what has been taking place in Yemen over the last several years. If you're a newbie to the alternative media who's just waking up to the world of conspiracy realism as a result of this COVID scamdemic, you can surely be forgiven for not knowing the first thing about Yemen or the bloodbath that's happening there. After all, you're certainly not going to get up to speed on the situation from the one or two 30-second "news blast" updates that the MSM news have run on the issue over the last half decade.

But if you're a die-hard Corbett Reporteer, you have no such excuse. You see, I wrote a summary and review of the conflict in Yemen and how the entire Saudi-led, US-supported genocide there developed back in 2015. If you want all of the details, please go read it.

In summary, back during the phony baloney "Arab Spring," the US government actively supported a color revolution-style change in political leadership in Yemen. Obama even held the Yemen regime change operation up as a model for how Syria's President Assad should be ousted. But Obama and his gaggle of neolib R2P love bombers got more than they bargained for when the installation of the US-approved puppet (Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi) was rejected by a significant portion of the country and Yemen devolved into an intense civil war.

Enter Clown Prince Mohammed, ruler-in-waiting of Saudi Arabia, who—in addition to proving he's a Big Bad Military Leader—wanted to punish Yemen's rebel groups for rejecting the globalist puppet Hadi and rebuffing the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council’s ultimatums and expansionism.

What has followed has been a nightmare of nearly unimaginable proportions, including the largest cholera outbreak in human history, the mass starvation of millions of Yemeni children, and the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in a years-long series of Saudi air strikes. The slaughter has been identified as an ongoing genocide and many war crimes charges have been leveled at Saudi Arabia for committing these crimes and the US and UK governments for knowingly supporting them.

The latest report, entitled "Situation of human rights in Yemen, including violations and abuses since September 2014," comes from the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen, a body authorized by the UN Human Rights Council to identify "all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law and all alleged violations of international humanitarian law committed by all parties to the [Yemen] conflict since September 2014."

After a lengthy examination of the conflict and the possible war crimes arising from it—including the arbitrary murder of civilians, the indiscriminate use of air strikes, attacks on hospitals, the deployment of landmines, arbitrary detentions, torture, and a range of other atrocities—the panel does not mince words in its key conclusions. To wit:

"The Group of Experts has reasonable grounds to believe that the Governments of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Southern Transitional Council, to the extent they exercise jurisdiction, and as applicable to each party, are responsible for human rights violations [. . .]."

But it is a passage buried in the section on the "Military, political and humanitarian context" that is most worrying to the Western lawmakers who have signed off on the arms transfers that have helped fuel the Saudis' reign of terror in Yemen:

"Notwithstanding the strong recommendations by the Group of Experts in its previous reports, third States, including Canada, France, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America, continued their support of parties to the conflict including through arms transfers, thereby helping to perpetuate the conflict."

Don't let the mealy-mouthed diplomaspeak fool you: This passage raises serious questions about the legal liability of all of those countries that aided and abetted these war crimes by supplying and arming the Saudis in full knowledge that those arms were being used to target civilians.

Lest there be any doubt about the group's stance on the matter, they released a statement in conjunction with the report in which they said "Yemen has been ravaged in ways that should shock the conscience of humanity" and urged the Human Rights Council and Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court for a formal criminal probe and potential prosecution.

This is keeping American congress critters up at night because there is ample evidence that the US government actively and knowingly skirted their own laws and their own legal advisors' opinions in order to arm the Saudis. After ignoring internal reports detailing the civilian casualties in the conflict and legal opinions spelling out the US role in aiding and abetting war crimes, Trump infamously invoked a national emergency in order to flout the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which would have prevented the US from arming the Saudis. When the State Department Inspector General's office began looking into the move, Trump fired the inspector general. Even so, the OIG still issued a (watered down) report that noted that while the invocation of the national emergency did follow the letter of the law, "the Department did not fully assess risks and implement mitigation measures to reduce civilian casualties and legal concerns associated with the transfer of PGMs (precision-guided munitions) included in the May 2019 emergency certification."

Needless to say, this is not good news for those US officials hoping to claim ignorance that all those war toys they were selling the Saudis were being used for actual, you know, war (who'd'a thunk?). Perhaps this is why, as Colin Kalmbacher of the Law & Crime blog notes:

"Trump administration officials successfully buried the details of those legal flubs in a classified portion of that report–meaning that public oversight of the legal issues at stake here is effectively limited to knowing that they exist. Additionally, the relevant classified information is substantially redacted–meaning that congressional oversight of the administration’s legal foibles in this regard is also extremely limited."

Still, anyway you slice it, this is a potential legal nightmare for all those personnel who signed off on the arms tranfers.

. . . or it would be, if we lived in a just universe. Unfortunately we still live in Pax Americana, where it is highly unlikely that these crimes will ever be investigated let alone brought to court. This should not be surprising to those old hand Corbett Reporteers who know that the International Criminal Court is a kangaroo court that has only ever been used to prosecute Africans (with one notable exception).

And, heck, if push ever did come to shove, Uncle Sam could just threaten any prosecutor who brings charges against American officials or any judge who would hear such a trial. Sound outlandish? Of course it is! And that's exactly what happened when the ICC mooted the idea of investigating American war crimes in Afghanistan.

Yes, this is the context that the MSM is withholding from its readers in a ploy to convince them that there is some sort of international body that could actually bring the world's unquestioned unitary superpower to justice. Regardless of what one thinks of the concept of international law, we can at least be certain of this: there is no such body. I make the bold prediction that these charges will never even be investigated, let alone brought before a court of law.

. . . And yet, it is possible that this prediction is incorrect. As the readers may have noticed, we are reaching an inflection point in world history where it is increasingly likely that the age of Pax Americana is coming to an end and the next international order (the New World Order, if you will) is taking shape. One of the hallmarks of the arrival of that New World Order will be the occurence of events that were long though impossible. Like the prosecution of Americans for international war crimes.

In the meantime, however, as always, rather than holding our breath and waiting for a court of law to rule on an obvious truth—namely, that war crimes are taking place in Yemen and that the US, UK, Canada and France are aiding and abetting those crimes—we should instead be focusing our attention on trying (and winning) the case in the other incredibly important court: the court of public opinion. Unless and until the peoples of these countries make this into a pressing political issue, what hope is there of ever achieving justice for these crimes?

But then, that would involve indicting the criminals on both sides of the phony Coke/Pepsi political aisle. And there are pancake syrup characters and other important political matters to attend to . . .

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