“When law can do no right,
let it be lawful that law bar no wrong”

(King John act 3, sc. 1)

Comments. This is the information that you will NOT find in the corporate media. In April 2011, the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Croatian general Ante Gotovina and Assistant Interior Minister Mladen Markac guilty of war crimes committed during 1995’s Operation Storm military offensive and sentenced them to 24 years’ and 18 years’ imprisonment, respectively. They were involved in what the court described as a Joint Criminal Exercise. That is, in the “permanent removal of the Serb population from the Krajina region by force, fear or threat of force, persecution, forced displacement, transfer and deportation, appropriation and destruction of property or other means” More than 150 Croatian Serbs died, hundreds disappeared and 200,000 fled in what was described as the biggest act of ethnic cleansing in the Balkan Wars. Half of the refugees have still not returned to their former homes.
In January 2012, 12 US, Canadian and British military experts, three of whom had served as judge advocate generals (senior military lawyers) and one as the top legal adviser to the US Army, launched an appeal to overturn the convictions.
They argued that the court was wrong to use a “200-metre standard” by which artillery bomb craters located more than 200 metres from a legitimate military target were deemed evidence of unlawful indiscriminate attacks on civilians. If the standard became enshrined in international law, they declared, future Western military operations would be put in jeopardy and commanders would run the risk of being hauled in front of human rights courts accused of war crimes.
The appeal document concluded with a letter from General Ronald H. Griffith, vice chief of staff, the second highest officer in the US Army, from 1995 to 1997 and current executive vice president of the private military company Engility, formerly known as Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI). Griffith declared, “Should the standard of review adopted by the Trial Chamber gain traction as a controlling interpretation of international law it will ultimately expose commanders who have conducted military operations in compliance with accepted doctrinal principles and in a morally responsible manner to the threat of being brought before some international court and charged, as was General Gotovina, with war crimes.”
In other words, if the Croatian uniformed hoodlums are condemned so should be the perpetrators of US similar or identical atrocities.
Guess what happened…
Last month, the ICTY Appeals Court overturned the convictions of the Croatian hoodlums declaring that the original court had “erred” by using the “200-metre standard”. The rest of the charges against the two war criminals were also dismissed. By a 3-to-2 majority, the court declared that the mass exodus of Serb civilians “cannot be qualified as deportation” and the existence of a JCE (Joint Criminal Exercise )“cannot be sustained”. The murderers were released.
Hence the Shakespearean befitting quote.

Tips for Use.  Express your frustration at the powerlessness of law against the powerful. Justify taking the law into your own hands.

In the Play. Constance fights for the rights of her young son Arthur to the throne of England.

Site for Image.  http://www.medical-cannabis-poems-and-parodies.webs.com/