Contrary to subsequent insinuations that she did not know what she was talking about, Del Ponte had chosen her words carefully. She had said that witness testimony made it appear that “some chemical weapons were used, in particular nerve gas.” And it appeared to have been used by the “opponents, by the rebels.” There is “no indication at all that the Syria government … used chemical weapons.”
Deepak Tripathi, Counterpunch May 13, 2013 On March 15, Mandel sent another complaint to Justice Carla del Ponte, the new chief prosecutor for the tribunal, who replaced Justice Louise Arbour in October. Mandel’s sharply worded letter protests the tribunal’s refusal to investigate NATO’s actions, saying that del Ponte has turned “the investigation into more of a farce than a judicial proceeding.” Mandel’s letter makes a solid case that far from being an independent investigator, the tribunal has conducted itself “as if it were an organ of NATO and not the United Nations.” Alexander Cockburn and Jeff St. Clair, Counterpunch May 22, 2000 When I broke ranks with Fidel Castro in 2011 and chose to back the Libyan rebels, a lot of my old pals wrote me wondering why I was turning into the new Christopher Hitchens. After all, wasn’t I the guy who wrote all those articles attacking NATO’s war in the Balkans? I suppose I was. And I wouldn’t take back a word I wrote. One of the things that really struck in my craw back then was the way that people like Carla del Ponte were using the Hague to persecute Slobodan Milosevic, a politician who was demonized by people like Christopher Hitchens. History will record, however, that Milosevic stepped down after he lost an election in Serbia, something that did not assuage the opposition. They used violence after the elections to cement their rule. Meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad, who won 97 percent of the vote in the last “election” in Syria, uses MIG fighters against poor people simply demanding the right for true democracy. I haven’t changed. It is the rest of the left that now has the gall to cite del Ponte as a trustworthy expert that has changed. full: http://louisproyect.org/2013/08/31/carla-del-ponte-and-the-anti-imperialist-left-an-unprincipled-combination/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
