Pynchon in-law quote making the rounds

[pynchonoid]

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for
which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that
they lost the war, but that they started it. And we
must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of
the causes of the war, for our position is that no
grievances or policies will justify resort to
aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned
as an instrument of policy."
--Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson, U.S.
Representative to the International Conference on
Military Trials, August 12, 1945


"[...] The old Scorched Earth Strategy is already
beginning to unfurl, as the talk of Precision Attacks
fades, and the B-52s slowly widen their attack
patterns, and “softening up” the Republican guard
means bombing neighborhoods in Baghdad. Three hundred
miles south, the British are already committing war
crimes by cutting off the water supplies of Basra, an
attack on a civilian population that has not gone
unnoticed back in London, where Tam Dalyell, Labor MP
for Linlithgow and Father of the House of Commons
writes today in the Guardian of Blair as a war
criminal who should be sent for trial in the Hague.

“My constituency Labour party has just voted to
recommend that Tony Blair reconsider his position as
party leader because he gave British backing to a war
against Iraq without clearly expressed support from
the UN .I agree with this motion. I also believe that
since Mr Blair is going ahead with his support for a
US attack without unambiguous UN authorisation, he
should be branded as a war criminal and sent to The
Hague. I have served in the House of Commons as a
Labour member for 41 years,and I would never have
dreamed of saying this about any one of my previous
leaders. But Blair is a man who has disdain for both
the House of Commons and international law. This is a
grave thing to say about my leader. But it is far less
serious than the results of a war that could set
western Christendom against Islam.The overwhelming
majority of international lawyers, including several
who advise the government (such as Rabinder Singh, a
partner in Cherie Booth's Matrix Chambers), have
concluded that military action in Iraq without proper
UN security council authorisation is illegal under
international law. The Foreign Office's deputy legal
adviser, Elizabeth Wilmhurst, resigned on precisely
this point after 30 years' service. This puts the
prime minister and those who will be fighting in his
and President Bush's name in a vulnerable legal
position. Already lawyers are getting phone calls from
anxious members of the armed forces.” [...] 
March 27, 2003
CounterPunch Diary
>From "Plain Sailing" to "Where the Hell Are We?" to
"Up the Creek" 
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
<http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03272003.html>


-Doug



__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com