Noam Chomsky Quotes

The thing that's most uppermost in my mind and will continue to be until I hit a brick wall is that I am dead serious, dead serious about going after George Bush, trying to get him into an American courtroom and prosecute him for what happened in Iraq.

I haven't mentioned another argument, The Hague tribunal. It is clear our generals and all of you who are sitting here now with me could end up there, too.

Some international law specialists compare the invasion of Iraq to the 'crimes against the peace' for which Nazi leaders were indicted at Nuremberg.

The International Criminal Court at present has no jurisdiction over the crime of aggression and could therefore not entertain a case concerning the lawfulness of any military action.

If Bush and Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.

The invasion of Iraq was simply a war crime. Straight-out war crime.

Attention must be given to the penal consequences of violations of the right to peace, including the punishment by domestic courts or in due time by the International Criminal Court of those who have engaged in aggression and propaganda for war.

There cannot be any greater challenge to the law than trying to adjudicate mass crimes like war crimes.

An offensive war, I believe to be wrong and would therefore have nothing to do with it, having no right to meddle with another man's property, his ox or his ass, his man servant or his maid servant or anything this is his.

Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

All war aims for impunity.

No one has the right to ignite a war and lead an occupation and armies to conquer people, invading them and make them suffer all kinds of torture, murder, expulsion, displacement, bombing and terrorism by different lethal prohibited weapons and then come and speak as the savior of the people or a defender of their rights.

I think the International Criminal Court could be a threat to American security interests, because the prosecutor of the court has enormous discretion in going after war crimes. And the way the Statute of Rome is written, responsibility for war crimes can be taken all the way up the chain of command.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, critics are arguing that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war.

The NATO forces will, to the extent that they have capacity, assist the war crimes tribunal.

Only the winners decide what were war crimes.

I think that you are a war criminal, and I am going to do everything in my power to see that you will be tried as one.

There can be no deal, no amnesty for war crimes.

Our army is really an imperial army…. We used to wonder why British imperialists went to Iraq and Afghanistan.

We have decided to bring to an end the most unequal, most unjust, most barbarous war of our age, and have chosen the road to exile in order that our people will not be exterminated and in order to consecrate ourselves wholly and in peace to the preservation of our empire's independence ... we now demand that the League of Nations should continue its efforts to secure respect for the covenant, and that it should decide not to recognize territorial extensions, or the exercise of an assumed sovereignty, resulting from the illegal recourse to armed force and to numerous other violations of international agreements.

Saddam Hussein is a serial offender -- major crimes against humanity - it's calculated that he's killed about a million people in the Iran-Iraq war, the invasion of Kuwait; gassed tens of thousands of his own Kurdish Iraqi citizens because they happen to disagree with him. Everyone knows that the case against Saddam Hussein is utterly proven. He should be on trial in the international court for crimes against humanity.

That's how we invaded Iraq, through the fear of an 'evil empire,' and it just makes people feel like bulls with the toreadors - you see red, and you charge.

Martha Stewart is being prosecuted not for who she is but what she did.

I believe in international justice. I believe it's important that you don't just turn the page without people being held to account.