AMY GOODMAN: John Bonifaz, I wanted to ask you about what appears later in the Sunday Times of London piece, it says, "The July meeting was later mentioned by Lord Butler in his report on the use of intelligence on W.M.D. as a key stage in the road to war, but its details have never been revealed until now. The minutes show that Goldsmith warned Blair eight months before war started -- that was March 19, 2003 -- that finding legal justification would be difficult. The Attorney General only ruled unambiguously war was lawful a few days before the war started, after Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, Chief of the Defense Staff, demanded unequivocal written confirmation. Boyce was never shown Goldsmith’s more equivocal advice to Blair and says today ministers failed to give him protection from prosecution at the International Criminal Court. He said, ‘I have always been troubled by the I.C.C.,’ adding that if British service men are put on trial, ministers should be brought into the frame, as well. Asked if that should include Blair and Goldsmith, the Attorney General, he told the Observer newspaper, ‘Too bloody right.’” Can you talk about liability here and what he means?

JOHN BONIFAZ: Clearly, there's liability for British officials, including Tony Blair under the International Criminal Court since Britain is a signatory to the treaty that created that court. The United States decided not to sign that treaty in part because it did not want to have its officials held liable for any of these kinds of potential war crimes and other crimes under international law. However, it's important to note that the United States forces used U.K. bases out of Diego Garcia and Cyprus, which if in fact there were war crimes or violations of international law that have occurred, the United States could also be implicated by having used those British airbases. So, I think that we have to look at all of the questions here both in terms of violations of international law, as well as our United States Constitution, and we as a people have a recourse under the U.S. Constitution and that's the impeachment clause to remove any president for violations of the Constitution, for violations of federal law, and this President needs to be held accountable if he committed high crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill?

JEREMY SCAHILL: To look at the politics of this, it's very interesting that John Kerry, Senator John Kerry, raised this issue last week and said that he's going to be raising the Downing Street minutes publicly, and there's been a firestorm of controversy. In fact, the far right-wing publications, Newsmax, all of these Ann Coulter clique of people have made a big deal about this. John Kerry is going to bring articles of impeachment against President Bush. But I think we need to step back and look at something here. If an honest assessment was done, what we’re looking at is George Bush picking up from where Clinton left off and just taking it a step further. Bill Clinton systematically attacked Iraq throughout his entire presidency. He oversaw the largest sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam. What a Congressional committee with subpoena power should really do is go back and subpoena every military official who’s ever had anything to do with these so-called no-fly zones, bring them in front of Congress, swear them in and ask them, “What were your orders, both given and received?” And what you’ll see is a systematic violation of international law and the U.S. Constitution that was supported openly by Democrats.

{mosgoogle left}And so John Conyers who’s been consistently against these things is the perfect person to raise these kinds of charges because his voting record shows that he has been consistently opposed to it. Many of the Democrats in the Senate and the House have big problems because they supported the Iraq Liberation Act, they supported the pummeling of Iraq, the punishment of Iraqi civilians through these bombings. And I have met people whose children have been killed in these bombings. And that’s what we have to remember. There was a human price here that was very heavy. And we have reported on that on Democracy Now! This is a case of -- the media need to follow these events in real time. This was a bombing that was happening very publicly, and it was documentable in real time. And it's great that now it's getting attention, but one of the problems that the Democrats are going to run into on Capitol Hill is you need to go back and look at their policies, their positions, their votes. And it’s going to be damning of them.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring in Hans Von Sponeck here, the former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. You were in office during some of the time that Jeremy is now just talking about. Can you talk about you being on the ground in Iraq and what you understood was happening?

HANS VON SPONECK: Well, let me first say, in addition to my role as the Humanitarian Coordinator for the Oil for Food Program, I was also the designated official for security of United Nations staff in Iraq, and in that context, of course, we paid attention to what was happening in the no-fly zones. And what was quite noticeable is that after Operation Desert Fox of December 1998, there was a very distinct increase in the number of incidents perpetrated by the U.S. and U.K. air forces involving civilian property, involving civilians, and we ascribed that at the time as a result of instructions given by the two governments in Washington and London to allow pilots to operate under what is known as “enlarged rules of engagement,” giving pilots more freedom to decide whether to attack an installation or whether to engage in other destabilization attempts in the two no-fly zones, and, by the way, at times also straying over into the fly zone. The fly zone was not entirely without incidents during the time since Operation Desert Fox in 1998.

And as a result of this development, we in Baghdad decided very quickly that we would begin to record these incidents, not as they affected the military -- that wasn't our business -- but as they affected the security of United Nations staff, and, of course, the civilian population in Iraq. And that meant that we started to issue air strike reports where we every three months issued such a report for the consumption of the U.N. Security Council, for the Office of the Secretary General and other officials at the U.N. in New York, and we made sure at the time to be discreet about this, not to give it to the press, but to give it to those who had something to do with these incidents. I, myself, would, when I visited New York, see the U.S. Ambassador, see the British Ambassador and hand to them these copies. And I remember on one occasion, I told both of them that, when I gave them a report with pictures, I said, your pilots see it from up there, 10,000 meters above, and this is how we see it on the ground, and it was striking to see the reaction, which was extremely angry and negative. I was told by a British official that all we were doing, we’re putting the imprint of legality, of legitimization on Iraqi propaganda, which was not at all the case.