An Analysis of Compromised Remailers
This came in response to Cryptome's posting of Len Sassman's comments on remailers. - From: S Subject: Re: remailers-tla.htm Compromised Remailers, December 15, 2003 Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 16:16:17 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-Id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thank you for posting the Compromised Remailers article: http://cryptome.org/remailers-tla.htm Over the past year, many remailer users have noticed that the reliability of the Mixmaster type II network has steadily degraded. Although it may well be the result of TLA interference, the remailer community's statistical methods of selecting a reliable remailer chain contribute significantly to the network's degradation. As a former employee of the United States Army Communications Command [USACC] Headquarters, I was amazed to stumble upon the existence of a publicly available communications medium permitting truly anonymous communication by hampering the government's ability at traffic analysis, or tracking an email message from its source to its destination. One would have to be foolish to believe that TLAs are not hard at work trying to pierce the veil of anonymity afforded by the Mixmaster type II, and, the yet to be released, type III remailers. I ran tests in September, October November, and provided the Mixmaster developers remail operators with the same results I've included below. My testing was extremely simple: send a bunch of messages, and note which messages arrived. [The same procedure an accountant would use in tracking a financial transaction from its origin to its destination.] What I found was that a handful of remailers accounted for virtually all of the un-delivered email messages. Yet, these same remailers, that never delivered my email messages to the alt.anonymous.messages news group, where also listed as among the most reliable remailers in mixmaster stats used to select remailer chains. I've included my recommendations to improve the network's reliability in the test results below. - Mixmaster II Reliability Issues Test Results - The major issue currently plaguing the Mixmaster remailer network is the true reliability of the LAST remailer in a chain. A considerable number of these remailers habitually act like Black Holes for email messages destined for alt.anonymous.messages and other news groups. Unfortunately, most of these Black Hole remailers also happen to be listed as among the most reliable remailers in mixmaster stats, with ratings ranging from the upper 90's to 100; consequently, it's highly probable that messages sent to newsgroups will frequently hit one of these demon remailers, never to reach their intended recipient. Over the past 2 months, I've sent tracked over 5,124 email messages consisting of either 4 or 6 copies of 1,220 unique messages, each routed through 11 Mixmaster type II remailers, to the alt.anonymous.messages news group. --- Last Remailer Lost Msgs Delivered Msgs% Reliability --- antani 63 0 0 cripto 65 0 0 hastio 41 0 0 george 31 718 paranoia 41 1020 futurew33 921 edo27 925 starwars 54 2935 itys7 956 italy 7 1059 bog 3 1482 freedom 3 4594 tonga 510695 liberty 2 5196 panta 3 6996 bigapple310497 metacolo3 9997 bogg1 5298 dizum 210698 jmbcv 1 5998 frell 0 34 100 randseed0 3 100 --- Sub-totals39582568 --- Total 1,220 --- Surprisingly - at first - I found that sending messages through chains of remailers rated, in mixmaster stats, at 98% or greater was FAR LESS reliable
Re: An Analysis of Compromised Remailers
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, John Young wrote: This came in response to Cryptome's posting of Len Sassman's comments on remailers. (BTW, John -- while the threat originally started out as being about compromised remailers, my comments had little to do with that title. Perhaps remailer security would be a better index term for cryptome?) Over the past year, many remailer users have noticed that the reliability of the Mixmaster type II network has steadily degraded. Although it may well be the result of TLA interference, the remailer community's statistical methods of selecting a reliable remailer chain contribute significantly to the network's degradation. There are conflicting opinions on that statement. For instance, have a look at this threat on alt.privacy.anon-server: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=8eb77bbdadfd2a6d1b21efabc1e1e090%40firenze.linux.itoe=UTF-8output=gplain So, on one hand we have the claim that remailer reliability is degrading because of how we select reliable remailer chains, and on the other hand there is the claim that the reliability is increasing, because TLAs are the only entities competent to run reliable remailers. (Apparently, if you believe this theory, you also believe I work for the FBI.) The facts are that the remailer network's reliability has increased over the past few years, largely due to the renewed development attention that Mixmaster has received. I ran tests in September, October November, and provided the Mixmaster developers remail operators with the same results I've included below. My testing was extremely simple: send a bunch of messages, and note which The tests below unfortunately do not provide any really useful data. What is really being tested isn't the remailer reliability, but the mail to news gateway reliability. It would be much more useful for the tester to isolate which remailer/mail2news combinations are resulting in lost news, and post that data instead. --Len.
Remailers and TLAs
Even though I agree this issue is important I wouldn't be surprised if NONE were run by TLAs today and NONE has ever been run by TLAs. We will never get any such answer and therefore these speculations will continue. Personally I think it sounds really stupid when I read comments like you can only trust remailers from pre 9/11 (these kinds of silly/stupid/dumb-paranoid comments are often seen on A.P.A-S). The reason being really that I think they are too stupid and perhaps doesn't really understand what good it would do them to actually operate a few. I may be wrong I guess. When thinking of these things I also remeber having read several comments by remops that actually have been visited by police. Both in U.S. and abroad. The feeling I got from reading their comments is that the police (in case of U.S. I think it was FBI who was inviolved) actually didn't even know what a remailer was. If (and this is a bif if) that is true in general amongst FBI agents I don't think th ere's a major risk of beeing flooded by TLA operated remailers any time soon. But who knows.
U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
-- On 16 Dec 2003 at 2:36, Anonymous wrote: I saw several people commenting the issue of Geneva convention on CNN during the day. Also I saw an expert on this field from another country commenting on the issue stating that it was a clear violation of the convention. In either of these interviews were there any discussion on whether it didn't apply to this specific case due to what clothings he happened to wear or whattever. I got the impression that it was clear that the U.S. treatment wasn't fully appropriate. If you were watching the BBC, you would have thought most of the Iraqi population were outraged by his capture. I think you are suffering from New York Times syndrome If even the New York Times admits that the kulaks are happy and prosperous under Stalin, that shows you how great the Soviet Union really must be when you discount all that capitalist propaganda. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Lh9C/c3J2U0bybWlK/P0f5hnnZT1z+2QEe1K9Ev2 4cVVWOLkCVsvYQG/u75vRB5xVrL2GjBeaEl+j6x07
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Dec 15, 2003, at 5:36 PM, Anonymous wrote: I am not sure I agree. I am no expert on this however. I saw several people commenting the issue of Geneva convention on CNN during the day. Also I saw an expert on this field from another country commenting on the issue stating that it was a clear violation of the convention. In either of these interviews were there any discussion on whether it didn't apply to this specific case due to what clothings he happened to wear or whattever. I got the impression that it was clear that the U.S. treatment wasn't fully appropriate. The U.S. would have screamed up and down in front of the U.N. and threatened severe reprisals if a U.S. prisoner were to have his (or her) mouth, hair, and medical exam televised by the Iranians, Syrians, Serbians, Iraqis, Panamanians, or any of the other nations we have gone to war with. There are specific clauses which refer to not publically humiliating a prisoner. I'm surprised the Agitprop Division didn't show video of Saddam taking his first dump while in custody. Saddam is not a good guy. But this went beyond the pale. I hope the next time a U.S. fighter is captured he is shown publically humiliated, with an Iranian or Syrian or French doctor forcing his mouth open and checking his hair for lice. The U.S. would be in no position to complain. (But they would, of course.) But, what can one expect of a country which refers to its own terrorists who blow up commercial Cuban planes as freedom fighters and to Palestinians seeking to expel the Zionist Jew invaders as terrorists? We are in Wonderland and the Republicrats are the Mad Hatters. --Tim May We are at war with Oceania. We have always been at war with Oceania. We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia. We are at war with Iraq. We have always been at war with Iraq. We are at war with France. We have always been at war with France.
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
At 8:43 PM -0600 12/15/03, J.A. Terranson wrote: This report contains all the earmarks of pure propaganda. :-) Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re:Textual analysis
At 10:36 AM 12/14/03 -0500, John Kelsey wrote: It's not obvious to me how you'd change your writing style to defeat these textual analysis schemes--would it really be as simple as changing the average length of sentences and getting rid of the big words, or would there still be ways to determine your identity from that text? Its like steganalysis. Its an arms race between measuring your own signatures vs. what the Adversary can measure. If sentence length is a metric known to you, you can write filters that warn you. Similarly for the Adversary. You end up in an arms race over metrics ---who has the more sensitive ones that the other does not control for?
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
-- On 15 Dec 2003 at 20:06, privacy.at Anonymous Remailer wrote: The image of an Arab leader (however terrible) being objectivised by a white gloved American medic like a bug on a lab bench, will not be read in the Arab world as a moment of liberation. It will be seen as a special kind of humiliation, the kind which typifies the depth of ignorance which has inspired this campaign from its outset. Arabs respect power. Well, everyone respects power, but arabs more so. The image of Saddam being poked around will devastate the insurgents just as much as his bullet ridden body would have done. Either one works. If he was cocky and defiant after being taken prisoner, that would have been a problem -- and I suspect that problem would have been swiftly solved. What was done was an excellent use of him, perhaps the best possible use of him. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG DijbC0CdsDlDq+JMzf6Soaoy/uQpAPvQzIqw+vZV 4V4l1cML3B68fAUZdXEQULOypQU+iOODMqAEAhN3z
Re: Textual analysis
Adam Shostack wrote: ... | It's not obvious to me how you'd change your writing style to defeat these | textual analysis schemes--would it really be as simple as changing the | average length of sentences and getting rid of the big words, or would | there still be ways to determine your identity from that text? So, the question boils down to economics. There's how much you need to communicate, how much someone is willing to spend to tag you, and how good their proof needs to be. I suspect that for most purposes, proof does not need to be very strong in relation to your need to communicate. An interesting ad-hoc test subject might be Eleusis/ZWITTERION from a.d.c.; I've wanted to see someone apply these techniques against his writing after following his posts and being amused/surprised myself. http://groups.google.com/groups?safe=offq=Eleusis+group%3Aalt.drugs.chemistry http://groups.google.com/groups?safe=offq=ZWITTERION+group%3Aalt.drugs.chemistry Strangely enough, the powers that be showed little interest in his electronic trail ... [ http://www.rhodium.ws/chemistry/eleusis/memoirs.html ]
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, R. A. Hettinga wrote: At 5:21 PM + 12/15/03, Dave Howe wrote: Iraq was somehow involved in the Trade Center attacks too For those who wondered why Abu Nidal took two in the hat shortly before the daisycutters came to play: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/14/wterr14.xmlsSheet=/portal/2003/12/14/ixportaltop.html This report contains all the earmarks of pure propaganda. It includes informations that repeats the Niger yellowcacke canard, the non-existent AlQuaeda connection, etc. 99 44/100ths percent bullshit. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unbridled nationalism, as distinguished from a sane and legitimate patriotism, must give way to a wider loyalty, to the love of humanity as a whole. Bah'u'llh's statement is: The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens. The Promise of World Peace http://www.us.bahai.org/interactive/pdaFiles/pwp.htm
Re:Textual analysis
Its like steganalysis. Its an arms race between measuring your own signatures vs. what the Adversary can measure. If sentence length is a metric known to you, you can write filters that warn you. Similarly for the Adversary. You end up in an arms race over metrics ---who has the more sensitive ones that the other does not control for? But unlike stego, where the issue is faking the noise, personal fingerprints can be removed from the message more reliably. You just need the right gloves. One way is to use automated translators. They all have an internal language and modules that translate to and from it. The internal language is far more restricted than the natural one, so it doesn't leak many aspects of the linguistic fingerprint. Going to the internal form is lossy compression. There is no way to recreate the original. The simplest method is an englih-to-english translator. Better method, and thicker gloves, can be used by going through several from/to modules for different languages. In commercial engines the meaning starts to suffer after 3-4 steps but just before that happens the word ordering and use gets completely skewed. Of course, you have to buy the translator and not use the online google/babelfish access. It's the small things that get you ... = end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: __ Do you Yahoo!? New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing. http://photos.yahoo.com/
Re: cpunk-like meeting report
Tim May wrote: On Dec 14, 2003, at 6:07 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I've been admiring your and Tim's contributions, and I was wondering if either of you were planning to subscribe to the (new) news list. http://lists.cryptnet.net/mailman/listinfo/cpunx-news No, we don't need a cpunx-news list. This is what Google and the ability to see hundreds of various lists and sites is for. I don't even plan on subscribing myself. I just wanted to get the traffic off of cypherpunks. Back when I first joined this list, cypherpunks where known for making news, not reading it. I recognized some addresses posting here recently from other lists that may suggest a revival is possible if we can clean things up a bit. For the most part, the only people who subscribed to the new list are the people who tend to forward news announcements. There seems to be very few consumers (4 out of 7 subscribers on the new list - there's 8 total so far, one person subscribed twice). - VAB -- V. Alex Brennen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cryptnet.net/people/vab/ F A R B E Y O N D D R I V E N !
Re: cpunk-like meeting report
On Dec 16, 2003, at 7:50 AM, V Alex Brennen wrote: Tim May wrote: On Dec 14, 2003, at 6:07 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I've been admiring your and Tim's contributions, and I was wondering if either of you were planning to subscribe to the (new) news list. http://lists.cryptnet.net/mailman/listinfo/cpunx-news No, we don't need a cpunx-news list. This is what Google and the ability to see hundreds of various lists and sites is for. I don't even plan on subscribing myself. I just wanted to get the traffic off of cypherpunks. Back when I first joined this list, cypherpunks where known for making news, not reading it. I recognized some addresses posting here recently from other lists that may suggest a revival is possible if we can clean things up a bit. For the most part, the only people who subscribed to the new list are the people who tend to forward news announcements. There seems to be very few consumers (4 out of 7 subscribers on the new list - there's 8 total so far, one person subscribed twice). This figures. And I doubt subscriptions will ever climb much higher. We've heard similar clamorings for chat and technical and announcement sub-lists many times in the past. Nevermind that the main list is not terribly high-volume. Nevermind that sub-lists tends to wither away. (As when a relatively small city like Monterey gets monterey.config, monterey.events, monterey.forsale, monterey.general, and monterey.test, all of which are nearly empty or filled only with Usenet spam. But, hey, someone thought that what Monterey needed to boost traffic was a bunch of newsgroups. Didn't happen, the traffic, that is.) As for Cypherpunks, this was done. Several Usenet newsgroups, which are perfectly fine for news announcements, were created by someone (no doubt long-since gone on to other projects). Here they are: alt.cypherpunks alt.cypherpunks.announce alt.cypherpunks.social alt.cypherpunks.technical But, hey, I hope the subscribers to the new list send their dumpings there. --Tim May I think the root of the problem is that we tend to organize ourselves into tribes. Then people in the tribe are our friends, and people outside are our enemies. I think it happens like this: Someone uses Perl, and likes it, and then they use it some more. But then something strange happens. They start to identify themselves with Perl, as if Perl were part of their body, or vice versa. They're part of the Big Perl Tribe. They want other people to join the Tribe. If they meet someone who doesn't like Perl, it's an insult to the Tribe and a personal affront to them. --Mark Dominus, Why I Hate Advocacy, 2000
Re: cpunk-like meeting report
On Tue, Dec 16, 2003 at 10:50:51AM -0500, V Alex Brennen wrote: I don't even plan on subscribing myself. I just wanted to get the traffic off of cypherpunks. Fair enough. You can remove the list, as far as I'm concerned. I don't give a damn about posting copyrighted content; no point posting to a closed-archive list if you've got cold feet. I can hide that information on my own hard drive as well. Back when I first joined this list, cypherpunks where known for making news, not reading it. I recognized some The world has moved on since, unfortunately. Wake up, and smell the Kafka. addresses posting here recently from other lists that may suggest a revival is possible if we can clean things up a bit. Yeah, you and John Galt. For the most part, the only people who subscribed to the new list are the people who tend to forward news announcements. There seems to be very few consumers Which part of collaborative news filtering you don't understand? Ideally, one should a producer and consumer in one person. Alas, most people are passive slobs, so it takes a lot of them to become critical. (4 out of 7 subscribers on the new list - there's 8 total so far, one person subscribed twice). Transhumantech has 300 subscribers. Five of them are active posters. I consider the list a success, and read it daily. It took several years to get there. Cypherpunk agenda is supposed to be a _widely_ held secret. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
CarBomb Rips Berkeley, CA
CarBomb Rips Berkeley California A large though prude carbomb rips through the student community of Berkeley, CA at exactly 4:20 am pacific time on friday Dec. 12th. Friday December 12th, 4:20am Pacific, Berkeley California: The device, a 10 element remotely detonated carbomb rips through the dense student populated section of Berkeley, CA less than 4 blocks from the southwest corner of the UCB campus. An audio recording by a student preparing her oral component of a final documents the sequential detonation of a 3-element primary fired by a tap off the vehicles car horn security system, followed by between 5 and 8 secondary charges detonated presumably by burnout. Students in the area have exactly 2 comments on the event: Most living in the adjacent appartments say in a monotonic way: I'm sorry, I do NOT know what you are talking about. and a limited few others, also from the same areas, say I am not at liberty to discuss these issues. Students from the surrounding appartment complexes are concerned about the excessive secrecy regarding this explosion that woke over half the people within a quarter mile radius, early friday morning. The explosive elements, after audio analysis, appear to be roughly equivalent to 10 cases of TNT. At least one Berkeley Police Department officer has said that they had a NO RESPONSE VECTOR during and prior the time of the explosion. This author has not yet determined the meaning of this phrase. Numerous appartment complexes in the surrounding area have had multiple unexplained fire alarms and other strange activities in the last few days. No mass media coverage or documentation has been available to this author, and most parties researching this event are hesitant to discuss for obvious reasons. (forwarded - WLG)
[fc-announce] FC'04: Call for Participation
--- begin forwarded text Status: U From: Hinde ten Berge [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: Embryo To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [fc-announce] FC'04: Call for Participation Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Id: Financial Cryptography Conference Announcements fc-announce.ifca.ai List-Post: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Help: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Subscribe: http://mail.ifca.ai/mailman/listinfo/fc-announce, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Archive: http://mail.ifca.ai/pipermail/fc-announce/ Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 19:56:27 +0100 Financial Cryptography '04 9-12 February 2004 Key West, Florida, USA Call for Participation Financial Cryptography is the premier international forum for education, exploration, and debate at the heart of one theme: Money and trust in the digital world. Dedicated to the relationship between cryptography and data security and cutting-edge financial and payment technologies and trends, the conference brings together top data-security specialists and scientists with economists, bankers, implementers, and policy makers. Financial Cryptography includes a program of invited talks, academic presentations, technical demonstrations, and panel discussions. These explore a range of topics in their full technical and interdisciplinary complexity: Emerging financial instruments and trends, legal regulation of financial technologies and privacy issues, encryption and authentication techologies, digital cash, and smartcard payment systems -- among many others. The conference proceedings containing all accepted submissions will be published in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series after the conference. A pre-proceedings containing preliminary versions of the papers will be distributed at the conference. More information on the invited speakers is available on the web site, as well as the list of accepted papers and the preliminary schedule (see below as well). Registration for Financial Cryptography 2004 is now open; details and online registration can be found at http://fc04.ifca.ai along with information about discounted hotel accommodation and travel. Financial Cryptography is organized by the International Financial Cryptography Association (IFCA). More information can be obtained from the IFCA web site at http://www.ifca.ai or by contacting the conference general chair, Hinde ten Berge, at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Financial Cryptography '04 Preliminary Schedule Sunday February 8 [tba] Registration and Welcome Reception Monday February 9 08:45-09:00 Opening Remarks 09:00-10:00 Keynote Speaker: Jack Selby 10:00-11:00 Keynote Speaker: Ron Rivest 11:00-11:30 Coffee Break 11:30-12:30 Loyalty and Micropayment Systems Microcredits for Verifiable Foreign Service Provider Metering Craig Gentry and Zulfikar Ramzan A Privacy-Friendly Loyalty System Based on Discrete Logarithms over Elliptic Curves Matthias Enzmann, Marc Fischlin, and Markus Schneider 12:30-14:00 Lunch 14:00-15:00 User Authentication Addressing Online Dictionary Attacks with Login Histories and Humans-in-the-Loop S. Stubblebine and P.C. van Oorschot Call Center Customer Verification by Query-Directed Passwords Lawrence OGorman, Smit Begga, and John Bentley Tuesday February 10 09:00-10:00 Keynote Speaker: Jacques Stern (Session Chair: Moti Yung) 10:00-11:00 Keynote Speaker: Simon Pugh (Session Chair: Moti Yung) 11:0011:30 Coffee Break 11:30-12:30 E-voting (Session Chair: Helger Lipmaa) The Vector-Ballot E-Voting Approach Aggelos Kiayias and Moti Yung Efficient Maximal Privacy in Voting and Anonymous Broadcast Jens Groth 12:30-14:00 Lunch 14:00-15:00 Panel: Building Usable Security Systems Moderator: Andrew Patrick Usability and Acceptablity of Biometric Security Systems Andrew Patrick, National Research Council of Canada Risk Perception Failures in Computer Security L. Jean Camp, Harvard University Visualization Tools for Security Administrators Bill Yurcik, NCSA, Univeristy of Illinois 20:00-21:00 General meeting 21:00- Rump session Wednesday February 11 09:00-10:00 Keynote Speaker: Jon Peha 10:00-10:30 Coffee Break 10:30-12:30 Auctions and Lotteries (Session Chair: Roger Dingledine) Interleaving Cryptography and Mechanism Design: The Case of Online Auctions Edith Elkind and Helger Lipmaa Secure Generalized Vickrey Auction without Third-Party Servers Makoto Yokoo and Koutarou Suzuki Electronic National Lotteries Elisavet Konstantinou, Vasiliki Liagokou, Paul Spirakis, Yannis C. Stamatiou, and Moti Yung Identity-based Chameleon Hash and Applications Giuseppe Ateniese and Breno de
Re: U.S. in violaton of Geneva convention?
This makes me a bit curious. Tell me, is your opinion then that the U.S. has done nothing questionable here? You don't feel that treating a former head of state (regardless of what you happen to think of that person) in this manner and videorecording it AND transmitting it to the entire globe violates the spirit of the convention? You feel this was the right thing to do? You would have no problem seing a U.S. or European leader being treated the same way? I think we do have to take into consideration too that a lot of people (I'm not saying it's the majority or anything but still a lot of people) in some arab countries like Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia do have some sympathy with Saddam. This has nothing to do with supporting his crimes like the chemical warfare but more general the fact that he was a leader in the region who stood up against U.S. and Israel. Also the Palestinians received a lot of finansial help from Saddam. I don't know, but I have this feeling that just maybe this wasn't the most appropriate way to behave all things considered. This is a tense and volatile region as it is. I think we all should exercise caution and careful considerations and try to not humiliate the pride of the people in this region. Remember that in many cases this is almost all they have left. Just my 2c.
Re: U.S. in violaton of Geneva convention?
On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, Nomen Nescio wrote: This makes me a bit curious. Tell me, is your opinion then that the U.S. has done nothing questionable here? No one seems to question certain facts: * Saddam had hundreds of thousands of Iraqis tortured and killed * he used chemical weapons casually, wiping out at least one Kurdish village of several thousand people * he deliberately destroyed the swamp Arabs and the environment that they lived in * his regime treated POWs brutally; few people in Britain will forget the pilot who was badly beaten during the first Gulf War and then displayed on TV; few Americans will forget the wounded POWs interrogated on TV in the second The people on this list are less likely to remember that Saddam's coming to power was marked by the public humiliation and hanging of Americans unfortunate enough to be in Baghdad at the time. You don't feel that treating a former head of state (regardless of what you happen to think of that person) in this manner and videorecording it AND transmitting it to the entire globe violates the spirit of the convention? You mean, do I think that it is somehow immoral to have examined him for head lice and then checked his teeth? Well, no. Do I think that the Geneva convention is there to protect bandits, thugs, and tyrants? Well, no. If you read it, the focus is on protecting civilians and captured soldiers from the sort of abuse that Saddam considered normal. You feel this was the right thing to do? You would have no problem seing a U.S. or European leader being treated the same way? Hitler, you mean? Or did you have Milosevic in mind? You should try to remember how the US Civil War ended. The armed forces of the South surrendered. Lee handed his sword to Grant. I believe that Grant returned it - and allowed each Southern soldier to keep a rifle and a mule. Lee and the other leaders of the South lived out their lives in peace. There were of course acts of terror on both sides, but on the whole the combatants behaved decently. There was considerable mutual respect, because both sides recognized that the other had behaved honourably. The same cannot be said of Saddam Hussain. The people of the South did not walk in terror of Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis. The people of the North were not murdered, raped, and tortured by Grant and Lincoln. I think we do have to take into consideration too that a lot of people (I'm not saying it's the majority or anything but still a lot of people) in some arab countries like Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia do have some sympathy with Saddam. This has nothing to do with supporting his crimes like the chemical warfare but more general the fact that he was a leader in the region who stood up against U.S. and Israel. Also the Palestinians received a lot of finansial help from Saddam. Yeah, you're right. I forgot that Saddam paid $25,000 or so to the family of each Palestinian 'soldier' who blew himself up, slaughtering innocent civilians in the sort of attack that the Geneva conventions were designed to prevent. The Palestinian suicide bombers wear no uniforms, they conceal their weapons, they deliberately target civilians. This has nothing to do with the justice for the Palestinians or whether the Israelis are right or wrong. The Geneva conventions, which you seem to be advocating, were established to set limits on the behaviour of combatants in war, to encourage the sort of peaceful resolution that marked the end of the American Civil War. What Saddam wanted was just the opposite. He advertised and paid for routine violations of the Geneva conventions in Israel. He wanted hatred and endless violence. I don't know, but I have this feeling that just maybe this wasn't the most appropriate way to behave all things considered. This is a tense and volatile region as it is. I think we all should exercise caution and careful considerations and try to not humiliate the pride of the people in this region. Remember that in many cases this is almost all they have left. The US plan appears to intend to stall until the Iraqis have regained sovereignty and then turn Saddam over to the new government, which will probably follow local practice and execute him. This will please tens of millions of Iraqis. The UK government, which has a long tradition of ignoring the wishes of the British people in regard to capital punishment, will tut-tut. The ex-governor of Texas will doubtless say again that he does not intend to express any personal opinions in the matter -- and smile. I spent several years travelling in that part of the world. From my experience, I think that the people of the region, who are rightfully proud of their heritage, of their traditions and beliefs, will respect the US and the UK more for having shown obviously superior strength, and for having
Re: U.S. in violaton of Geneva convention?
At 03:18 PM 12/16/2003, Jim Dixon wrote: You should try to remember how the US Civil War ended. The armed forces of the South surrendered. Lee handed his sword to Grant. I believe that Grant returned it - and allowed each Southern soldier to keep a rifle and a mule. Lee and the other leaders of the South lived out their lives in peace. There were of course acts of terror on both sides, but on the whole the combatants behaved decently. There was considerable mutual respect, because both sides recognized that the other had behaved honourably. The same cannot be said of Saddam Hussain. I have no idea what led to believe this. The North behaved so dishonorably during the war that it essentially rewrote the book on the rules of war for the rest of the world. Most academic historians, without legal training, have played down the war crimes issue, as if it has no bearing on those who win a war. It does. In the early seventeenth century, Hugo Grotius, a Dutch lawyer, came forth with The Law of War and Peace, which was translated into English in 1646. It immediately became the bible of the law of nations and found its way into the courts, libraries, and governments of Europe. Grotius soon became the father of modern international law. Grotius held that states, like people, are bound by a code of law, with duties and prohibitions that are universal, reasonable, and unchangeable. One nation, for example, may not attack another. After reviewing the practices of ancient nations, philosophers and legists, Grotius concluded that authorities generally assign to wars three justifiable causes: defence, recovery of property, and punishment. Grotius noted that the German barbarians of the north had a strong code and were the most just: they refrained from war unless attacked. The Roman lawyer Cicero would have been the father of ancient international law. In his De Republica (30.23) he set forth the principle that wars undertaken without reason are unjust wars. Except for the purpose of avenging or repulsing an enemy, no just war can be waged. By the nineteenth century, the concept of a just war became a part of the law of nations even though it had been an unwritten rule of society since the Middle Ages. Many of the tax rebellions in Europe, Spain, and England were resisting revenue demands of unjust wars, wars that were not for the defense of the realms. That same principle became part of the U.S. Constitution, which restricted tax expenditures for the common Defense. At West Point cadets were taught the principles of Grotius and international law under General Order no. 12, by none other than Lincoln's top commander, General Henry Halleck, who wrote the book. No general during the Civil War can claim ignorance of the laws of wars, especially the laws against the plunder and devastation of private property. Here is an excerpt from General Order no. 12, written by Halleck on the wanton plunder of private property: The inevitable consequences . . . are universal pillage and a total relaxation of discipline; the loss of private property, and the violation of individual rights . . . and the ordinary peaceful and noncombatants are converted into bitter and implacable enemies. The system is, therefore, regarded as both impolitic and unjust, and is coming into general disuse among the most civilized nations. But Halleck's book and teachings weren't the only condemnation of plunder of civilian property. On 24 April 1863, under Lincoln's signature, the army promulgated to its officers General Order no. 100, which came to be known as the Lieber Code and eventually received acclaim throughout the military in the Western world. Halleck was a close friend of its author, Professor Francis Lieber of Columbia University. A month after this order was given to the officers in the Union army, Professor Lieber wrote to the top commander, General Halleck I know by letters . . . that the wanton destruction of property by our men is alarming. It does incalculable injury. It demoralizes our troops, it annihilates wealth irrevocably and makes a return to a state of peace and peaceful minds more and more difficult. Your order [to the officers] . . . with reference to the Code, and pointing out the disastrous consequences of reckless devastation, in a manner that it might not furnish our reckless enemy with new arguments for his savagery. Halleck remained general in chief until Lincoln fired him in 1864 and appointed Grant as top commander. 1t was under Grant that the Lieber Code, now in the hands of all leading officers, was disregarded, and pillage and plunder became the general order of the final year of the war. Sherman and Sheridan could not possibly have undertaken their devastation of the South if they had followed this new military code on the laws of war. They also turned away from their education at West Point and the laws of war they had learned there under Halleck. Years after the war Sherman wrote a letter to a friend in
