Dirk Adriaensens: U.S. Destruction of Iraq

Dirk Adriaensens is a member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal. From Wikipedia: "The BRussells Tribunal refers both to a series of hearings taking place in Brussels, April 14-17, 2004, as part of the World Tribunal on Iraq, and to the group of people who organised these hearings."

In November 2005 Adriaensens described the origins of the BRussells Tribunal and its mission in an interview with independent filmmaker and journalist Gabriele Zamparini:

"The BRussells Tribunal was originally a hearing committee composed of academics, intellectuals and artists in the tradition of the Russell Tribunal, set up in 1967 to investigate war crimes committed during the Vietnam War. The hearing took place on 14-17th April 2004 at The Beursschouwburg and Les Halles in Brussels, 2 prestigious venues in Belgium. It was presided by Professor Fran�ois Houtart, who participated in the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal on US Crimes in Vietnam in 1967, and who is one of the founding fathers of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. The hearing committee was directed against the war in Iraq and the imperial war policies of the Bush II administration. Its main focus was the �Project for the New American Century�, the think tank behind this war, in particular three of the co-signatories of the mission statement: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz."

On Wednesday November 3rd, 2010, Adriaensens gave a presentation in Geneva on how the United States government systematically destroyed the Iraq. On November 5th, Truth-out.org published the lecture with a headline called "Beyond the WikiLeaks Files: Dismantling the Iraqi State."

Adriaensens concluded the presentation by demanding that the United Nations's Human Rights Council take legal action. The BRussells Tribunal recommends that the United Nations records U.S. violations of human rights in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Ninth Session of the Universal Periodic Review, which is taking place in Geneva from November 1 - 12, 2010. Adriaensens said:

Although the UN did not authorize the invasion of Iraq, it did "legalize" the occupation a posteriori in UNSC resolution 1483 (22 May, 2003), against the will of the overwhelming majority of the world community which did not accept the legality or the legitimacy of that UN resolution. And it was during the occupation that the war crimes brought to light by WikiLeaks took place. Like the US, the UN has the moral and legal duty to respond.

The world community has the right to know the complete and unbiased truth about the extent and responsibilities of American involvement in Iraq's killing fields and demands justice for the Iraqi people.

We appeal to all states to ask the US about all these crimes against the Iraqi people during the UPR on the 5th of November.

We also demand that procedures be set up to compensate the Iraqi people and Iraq as a nation for all the losses, human and material destruction and damages caused by the illegal war and the occupation of the country lead by the US/UK forces.

On October 23, 2010, Adriaensens spoke in Stockholm about U.S. war crimes and the purposeful destruction of Iraq. Here is the video of that presentation:

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Part 4:


Part 5: