[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 13 (Monday, February 23, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S847-S850]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SENATE RESOLUTION 179--RELATING TO THE INDICTMENT AND PROSECUTION OF
SADDAM HUSSEIN FOR WAR CRIMES AND OTHER CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Mr. SPECTER submitted the following resolutions; which was referred
to the Committee on Foreign Relations:
S. Res. 179
Whereas, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg
was convened to try individuals for crimes against
international law during World War II;
Whereas, the Nuremberg tribunal provision which held that
``crimes against international law are committed by men, not
by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who
commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be
enforced'' is as valid today as it was in 1946;
Whereas, on August 2, 1990 and without provocation, Iraq
initiated a war of aggression against the sovereign state of
Kuwait;
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Whereas, the Charter of the United Nations imposes on its
members the obligations to ``refrain in their international
relations from the threat or use of force against the
territorial integrity or political independence of any
state'';
Whereas, the leaders of the Government of Iraq, a country
which is a member of the United Nations, did violate this
provision of the United Nations Charter;
Whereas the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of
Civilian Persons in Times of War (the Fourth Geneva
Convention) imposes certain obligations upon a belligerent
State, occupying another country by force of arms, in order
to protect the civilian population of the occupied territory
from some of the ravages of the conflict;
Whereas, both Iraq and Kuwait are parties to the Fourth
Geneva Convention;
Whereas, the public testimony of witnesses and victims has
indicated that Iraqi officials violated Article 27 of the
Fourth Geneva Convention by their inhumane treatment and acts
of violence against the Kuwaiti civilian population;
Whereas, the public testimony of witnesses and victims has
indicated that Iraqi officials violated Articles 31 and 32 of
the Fourth Geneva Convention by subjecting Kuwaiti civilians
to physical coercion, suffering and extermination in order to
obtain information;
Whereas, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, from
January 18, 1991 to February 25, 1991, Iraq did fire 39
missiles on Israel in 18 separate attacks with the intent of
making it a party to war and with the intent of killing or
injuring innocent civilians, killing two persons directly,
killing 12 people indirectly (through heart attacks, improper
use of gas masks, choking), and injuring more than 200
persons;
Whereas, Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states
that persons committing ``grave breaches'' are to be
apprehended and subjected to trial;
Whereas, on several occasions, the United Nations Security
Council has found Iraq's treatment of Kuwaiti civilians to be
in violation of international law;
Whereas, in Resolution 665, adopted on August 25, 1990, the
United Nations Security Council deplored ``the loss of
innocent life stemming from the Iraq invasion of Kuwait'';
Whereas, in Resolution 670, adopted by the United Nations
Security Council on September 25, 1990, it condemned further
``the treatment by Iraqi forces on Kuwait nationals and
reaffirmed that the Fourth Geneva Convention applied to
Kuwait'';
Whereas, in Resolution 674, the United Nations Security
Council demanded that Iraq cease mistreating and oppressing
Kuwaiti nationals in violation of the Convention and reminded
Iraq that it would be liable for any damage or injury
suffered by Kuwaiti nationals due to Iraq's invasion and
illegal occupation;
Whereas, Iraq is a party to the Prisoners of War Convention
and there is evidence and testimony that during the Persian
Gulf War, Iraq violated articles of the Convention by its
physical and psychological abuse of military and civilian
POW's including members of the international press;
Whereas, Iraq has committed deliberate and calculated
crimes of environmental terrorism, inflicting grave risk to
the health and well-being of innocent civilians in the region
by its willful ignition of 732 Kuwaiti oil wells in January
and February, 1991;
Whereas, President Clinton found ``compelling evidence''
that the Iraqi Intelligence Service directed and pursued an
operation to assassinate former President George Bush in
April 1993 when he visited Kuwait;
Whereas, Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials have
systematically attempted to destroy the Kurdish population in
Iraq through the use of chemical weapons against civilian
Kurds, campaigns in 1987-88 which resulted in the
disappearance of more than 182,000 persons and the
destruction of more than 4,000 villages, the placement of
more than 10 million landmines in Iraqi Kurdistan, and ethnic
cleansing in the city of Kirkuk;
Whereas, the Republic of Iraq is a signatory to
international agreements including the Universal Declaration
on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the POW Convention,
and is obligated to comply with these international
agreements;
Whereas, Section 8 of Resolution 687 of the United Nations
Security Council, adopted on April 3, 1991, requires Iraq to
``unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or
rendering harmless, under international supervision of all
chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and
all related subsystems and components and all research,
development, support, and manufacturing facilities'';
Whereas, Saddam Hussein and the Republic of Iraq have
persistently and flagrantly violated the terms of Resolution
687 with respect to elimination of weapons of mass
destruction and inspections by international supervisors;
Whereas, there is good reason to believe that Iraq
continues to have stockpiles of chemical and biological
munitions, missiles capable of transporting such agents, and
the capacity to produce such weapons of mass destruction,
putting the international community at risk;
Whereas, on February 22, 1993, the United Nations Security
Council adopted Resolution 808 establishing an international
tribunal to try individuals accused of violations of
international law in the former Yugoslavia;
Whereas, on November 8, 1994, the United Nations Security
Council adopted Resolution 955 establishing an international
tribunal to try individuals accused of the commission of
violations of international law in Rwanda;
Whereas, more than 70 individuals have faced indictments
handed down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia in the Hague for war crimes and crimes
against humanity in the former Yugoslavia, leading in the
first trial to the sentencing of a Serb jailer to 20 years
in prison;
Whereas, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has
indicted 31 individuals, with three trials occurring at
present and 27 individuals in custody;
Whereas, a failure to try and punish leaders and other
persons for crimes against international law establishes a
dangerous precedent and negatively impacts the value of
deterrence to future illegal acts;
Whereas, on February 17, 1998, the President of the United
States outlined his policy on engaging in a military action
against Iraq and stated that his purpose is ``to seriously
diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction program'' and further stated that if a United
States military operation does not prevent Saddam Hussein
from rebuilding his weapons of mass destruction, future
military strikes will be necessary;
Whereas, current plans are grossly inadequate because it is
insufficient to ``seriously diminish'' the threat posed by
Saddam Hussein to the international community through the use
of weapons of mass destruction;
Whereas, there is a need for a long-term approach to
removing Saddam Hussein from his position as President of
Iraq; Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the President should--
(1) call for the creation of a commission under the
auspices of the United Nations to establish an international
record of the criminal culpability of Saddam Hussein and
other Iraqi officials; and
(2) call for the United Nations to form an international
criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting,
and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials who
are responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and
other violations of international law; and
(3) devise a long-term plan, in consultation with allies of
the United States, for the removal of Saddam Hussein from his
position as President of Iraq, so that he can be prosecuted
fully for war crimes and other violations of international
law.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I now offer a resolution that seeks to
deal with the international crisis caused by Saddam Hussein's amassing
of weapons of mass destruction. There are reports as of this morning
that Secretary General Kofi Annan has solved the problem after
discussions with Saddam Hussein. A diplomatic solution is always
preferable to a military solution, even though Saddam Hussein has
carried the world to the brink of war. Before we will know whether or
not Secretary General Kofi Annan has succeeded, we will have to read
the fine print.
In the event that the Secretary General's efforts to end the crisis
are unsuccessful, I submit that it is a constitutional imperative that
Congress consider, debate, deliberate, and vote on a resolution on how
to deal with this threat before the President takes unilateral action
with air and missile strikes.
Air and missile strikes constitute acts of war. Under the U.S.
Constitution, only the Congress has the authority to involve our Nation
in war. In his constitutional capacity as Commander in Chief, the
President may act in emergencies, but there is now time for
deliberative action by the Congress.
During the week of February 9, when this issue was the talk of the
caucuses and the cloakrooms, Congress spoke loudly by not speaking at
all because there was no agreement on what should be done. On February
16, I wrote the President urging that no military action be taken until
Congress returned from the recess today, February 23. With the prospect
of unilateral Presidential action, if Secretary General Annan is
unsuccessful, I believe it is our duty in both the Senate and the House
to take a position on this obviously critical issue of war or peace
before the President takes unilateral action with a military strike.
My resolution is an alternative to the approach outlined by the
President on February 17. Without deciding whether I would vote to
support the President's plan, I am submitting this alternative because
I think it is a preferable course of action and, perhaps even more
importantly, to stimulate debate in the Congress which could produce an
even better course of U.S. action. The issues that now confront our
Nation are complex, controversial, and could produce unintended
consequences. I do not contend that my
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resolution provides all the answers, or even necessarily the best
answer, but it could lead to the least of the available undesirable
alternatives, and that is what I think we face, Mr. President--a
question of which is the least of the undesirable alternatives.
At the outset, let there be no doubt that it is my view that Saddam
Hussein's amassing weapons of mass destruction is intolerable and must
be stopped. If the United States takes action, there must be national
unity behind our fighting forces, but that doesn't mean giving the
President a blank check in advance by delegating to the executive the
Congress' constitutional duties.
Again, without committing myself on how I will vote if the
President's plan is submitted to Congress in a resolution, I do wish to
express my deep reservations and concerns for the following reasons:
First, the President's plan does not reach the core issue of removing
Saddam Hussein as Iraq's leader or in eliminating his weapons of mass
destruction. The maximum result, as articulated by the President in his
own words, is ``to seriously diminish the threat posed by weapons of
mass destruction.'' But there is the understanding or concession in
that statement that there would only be a serious diminution, not an
elimination, of weapons of mass destruction. The President then noted
that if such weapons are rebuilt, there would be another strike. Such a
series of strikes, which could be indefinite for all we know, are
hardly the answer.
Saddam Hussein's continuous flouting of his specific agreements and
U.S. mandates since 1991 requires removing him from office as the only
adequate answer.
My second concern is that U.S. air and missile strikes, aided only by
Great Britain, could materially hurt our position as the world leader,
or at least as the leader of the free world. We are, after all, seeking
to enforce the U.N. position on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass
destruction and that Iraq must comply with those U.N. resolutions and
yield to U.N. inspections.
When we arrogate unto ourselves, with only Great Britain's
concurrence, the decision to undertake air and missile strikes, on this
state of the record, we are likely to be viewed by the world as
arrogant, which is the root meaning of arrogating unto ourselves that
ultimate decision.
In my foreign travels, I have found enormous respect and admiration
for the United States around the world. People everywhere admire and
really envy our freedom, our democratic values, our standard of living,
and our power. But, in a January trip to Europe, the Mideast and North
Africa, I heard virtually unanimous objections to the proposed U.S. air
and missile strikes on Iraq as an abuse of power and U.S. arrogance.
The key part of that arrogance involves projected Iraqi civilian
casualties and our insistence on acting as we see fit, contrasted with
the views of the other nations, almost uniformly with the exception of
Great Britain.
Third, air and missile strikes may cause devastating unintended
consequences. Our experience has demonstrated that we may expect
retaliation from terrorists. The bombing of Libya in 1986 produced the
bombing of Pan Am 103. Our so-called covert proposals against Iran most
probably produced the terrorist attack on Khobar Towers in June of
1996.
On the issue of unintended consequences, who can be sure what will
happen if we detonate Iraq's biological and chemical weapons of mass
destruction and those substances enter the atmosphere? In March 1991,
allied forces detonated Iraq's chemical weapons at Kamasia. Those
substances became airborne and may have been a significant contributing
cause to Gulf War syndrome, an issue now under intensive investigation
by the Veterans Affairs Committee, which I chair.
The resolution, which I am submitting today, strikes at the core of
the problem: removing Saddam Hussein as Iraq's leader by prosecuting
him as an international war criminal; and, if he is not taken into
custody as a war criminal, by then implementing a long-term plan for
his removal as Iraq's President.
My basic proposal to try Saddam Hussein as an international war
criminal was advanced on March 5, 1991, at the conclusion of the Gulf
War. On that day I introduced a Senate resolution which articulated the
applicable principles of international law, and then concluded with
this clause.
Resolve . . . , that it is the sense of the Senate that the
President should confer with Kuwait and other member nations
of the coalition of the United Nations to establish an
international criminal court or an international military
tribunal to try and punish all individuals involved in the
planning or execution of the above-referenced crimes
including Saddam Hussein.
Had we pursued that course of action at that time we would very
likely--almost certainly, in fact--be in a different position today.
Since my resolution was offered, and this is an ongoing effort which
I have made, along with Congressman Jim Leach in the House, and Senator
Christopher Dodd here in the Senate, a War Crimes Tribunal has been
established by U.N. Security Council Resolution 808 on February 22,
1993, establishing an international tribunal to try individuals accused
of international war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, and Resolution
955 adopted on November 8, 1994, to establish a similar war crimes
tribunal for Rwanda. By extending the jurisdiction to Iraq, the War
Crimes Tribunal could prosecute Saddam Hussein.
There is an abundance of evidence which would warrant the conviction
of Saddam Hussein and the imposition of the death penalty. While the
U.N. resolutions on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda do not provide for
the death penalty, the United Nations may well be persuaded that Saddam
Hussein's conduct warrants the death penalty. I believe the evidence
speaks loudly to that effect. Beyond his war of aggression against
Kuwait and his missile attacks killing U.S. personnel in Saudi Arabia
and Israelis in Tel Aviv, there is powerful evidence of Saddam
Hussein's systematic action to destroy the population of civilian Kurds
in Iraq through the use of chemical weapons in 1997-1998, with more
than 182,000 missing persons and the destruction of more than 4,000
villages, including the placement of more than 10 million land mines in
Iraq's Kurdistan and ethnic cleansing in the city of Kurkuk.
Those international crimes certainly warrant the death penalty by all
existing standards. With an international judicial determination that
the death penalty should be imposed on Saddam Hussein, we would then
have the high moral ground to carry out that verdict.
The removal of Saddam Hussein as Iraq's President does pose questions
as to who would take over and what would happen to Iraq's ability to
counterbalance Iran in that region. It is hard to imagine an
international situation worse than the one currently posed by Saddam
Hussein, and it is hard to imagine a new Iraqi leader worse than Saddam
Hussein. It may well be that a covert action or covert actions might
succeed in deposing Saddam Hussein. That was the subject of an op-ed
piece in the New York Times yesterday by former CIA Director John
Deutch. The Voice of America could be intensified giving encouragement
to his many enemies in Iraq. An alternative government could be
established with those dissident forces. And, a no-fly zone could be
established over all of Iraq. A naval blockade could further tighten
the noose and perhaps bring Saddam Hussein to his knees. These and
other proposals could lead to his removal without targeting him.
As a generalization, our national policy is sound, not to kill a
foreign leader for political purposes. But it is important to note that
that prohibition is mandated only by a Presidential Executive order. It
does not have the force of law of congressional enactment.
Let me now pursue a series of questions relating to that policy.
First, should that policy be applied to Saddam Hussein after he
attempted to assassinate former President George Bush?
Second, should that policy be applied to Saddam Hussein, considering
his atrocious record of war crimes, or at least after he is convicted
and sentenced to death?
Three, would targeting Saddam Hussein constitute a lesser use of
force and a more justifiable use of force than the President's
contemplated air and missile strikes?
Fourth, is it time to reexamine that policy as it applies to the
likes of Saddam Hussein?
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Fifth, is it sensible to tie our own hands for self-defense by such a
Presidential Executive order when Saddam Hussein amasses weapons of
mass destruction which threaten the United States and the whole world
with horrible consequences?
Sixth, if we are justified in preemptive air and missile strikes,
which will inevitably kill Iraqi civilians, why are we not justified in
preemptive actions against Saddam Hussein who is a mass murderer and a
certified international war criminal?
Mr. President, it is a rapidly changing world scene. It is time to
consider those questions.
I have no doubt about two propositions. First, a trial of Saddam
Hussein as an international war criminal would be preeminently just.
Second, solving the international threat posed by Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction mandates removing Saddam Hussein as Iraq's leader.
Perhaps Saddam Hussein could be replaced by the people of Iraq with
additional U.N. sanctions, a stronger Voice of America, and nonlethal
covert action. If not, then we may have to change our answers to those
six questions, just as Saddam Hussein has changed the world with his
weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my letter to the
President, dated February 16, be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Veterans' Affairs
Washington, DC, February 16, 1998.
The President,
The White House,
Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. President: I strongly urge you not to take
military action against Iraq until Congress has an
opportunity to consider a resolution to authorize the use of
force.
Bomber and missile strikes constitute acts of war. Only
Congress has the Constitutional prerogative to authorize war.
The Congress spoke loudly last week by not speaking at all.
It is not too long to wait until next week for Congress to
consider and vote on this issue.
Our national experience in Vietnam is a relatively recent
reminder that public and Congressional support are
indispensable to successful military involvement. I am glad
to note you plan to address the nation tomorrow night. I held
five town meetings last Monday and Friday, and can tell you
that my constituents are very uneasy about air and missile
strikes. There are concerns about inflicting casualties on
innocent Iraqis, about potential terrorist reprisals, and the
possibilities of expanding the conflict.
There is general agreement that Saddam Hussein is an
intolerable menace and cannot be alloweded to threaten the
world with weapons of mass destruction. But are there near-
term alternatives such as a blockade to tighten the noose on
his oil exports? Or can our allies be persuaded to tighten
economic sanctions if they will not join us on the use of
force?
I compliment Secretary Cohen and Secretary Albright, but
their visits have not produced the coalition which was formed
for the successful prosecution of the 1991 Gulf War. Have you
considered personal meetings with the leaders of France,
Russia, China, Germany, Egypt, etc?
There has been unanimity in our Congressional discussions
to support the men and women of our military forces. But that
unanimity does not extend to giving the President a blank
check when the Constitution calls for independent
Congressional action to decide whether to involve the United
States in war.
There is yet time to pursue alternatives. Diplomacy and
other sanctions short of war should be given every chance to
work.
Sincerely,
Arlen Specter.
Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Chair.
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