NYT reporter who enabled 1+ million deaths accuses Russia of war crimes: Analyst

American journalist Don DeBar has denounced former New York Times columnist, reporter and failed Oregon governor candidate Nicholas Kristof as an apologist of US imperialism who was complicit in the death of more than a million people in Iraq.

DeBar made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Sunday after Kristof who enabled the Iraq massacre accused Russia of war crimes in a statement published on Friday.

Kristof “called for supplying more weapons to Ukraine and perhaps US military advisers as well.”

He urged the West to isolate and punish Russian President Vladimir Putin but allow Russian athletes to compete as individuals.

“I'm troubled by one Western response: the ban on Russian athletes by Wimbledon and the Boston Marathon. I understand the need to express revulsion at what Russia is doing,” he said.

“Let Russians compete as individuals, while not officially representing Russia, or perhaps even invite them to declare their opposition to the war,” he noted.

DeBar said, “The US attack on Iraq that this guy helped sell killed 6,900 people between March 20th and April 9th 2003, an average of 345 per day.”

“Thus far, in the period from February 24th until April 23rd, 2022 there have been 2,400 civilian casualties in Ukraine, or about 47 per day,” he added.

“From March 20th 2003 to date, the US has killed more than 1 million people in Iraq,” he noted.

“And they're still there by the way,” he pointed out.

“And they killed the half a million between the end of the first war in 1991 and the beginning of the 2003 war,” he continued.

“To be kind, his sense of piety and sympathy is highly selective, and his sense of justice and outrage does not include his own complicity in the death of perhaps one or two million people. Everything he says now should be looked at in that context,” he said.

“And there's another important aspect to this. Writing about the coming war in Iraq in the summer of 2002, he mused about the possibility that a US military action against Iraq might provoke a chemical or other WMD response from Iraq. Yet here he seems to harbor no such concern. As it turned out, and as millions of people told him when they marched around the world on February 15th 2003 and again on March 20th 2003, Iraq did not have such weapons. However, there is no doubt that Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons and they have pointed out that there is a redline beyond which they will use them. Is this idiot's sociopathy so great that even the prospect of perhaps a billion or two dead people are no match for his concern over his job performance (or whatever the hell he's doing)?” he said.

In March 2003, the US and Britain invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law and under the pretext of finding WMDs; but no such weapons were ever discovered in Iraq.

More than one million Iraqis were killed as the result of the US-led invasion, and subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

The US war in Iraq cost American taxpayers $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, according to a study called Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

'To end war, prosecute US, UK officials who wage it illegally'

In a previous interview with Press TV, DeBar said that the world must finally put an end to the impunity of war criminals by holding US and UK officials responsible for launching the illegal war on Iraq, done without the approval of the UN Security Council, and prosecuting them under the Nuremberg principles

He added that the Iraq war was illegal from the very beginning.

US presidents ‘never held accountable for crimes of war’: Analyst

US presidents and other American officials are “never held accountable for crimes of war and against humanity,” according to an American political analyst.

"It is illegal for a nation to make war on another nation if it does not have the approval of the UN Security Council if any of those nations are signatories to the original UN Charter. And it’s been adopted - that happened with the US as a charter member of the UN, and it was approved by the US Senate in 1940s. Consequently, the US involvement in Iraq from the beginning, and the UK involvement in Iraq from the beginning, was illegal,” he said.

“And under the Nuremberg standards, which would then apply, each and every death consequent – intentional or not - to either US or UK military action there, or condoning of the US action there by the media or public officials, or any act facilitating that, is an individual war crime. And, by the way, there’s a death penalty for that,” the journalist noted.

“No one will prosecute these people. That’s why I started with the word impunity. And we might bookend with that because that’s the problem. And until the world puts an end to that impunity, until the world sees the major contradiction in all international relations is US, UK, and EU imperialism, then it’s going to continue until this eats our species,” he stated.

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