Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture

Harold Pinter, the 2005 Nobel prizewinner for literature, said today that he believes US President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be brought before the International Criminal Court of Justice for having initiated the war on Iraq. "The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.", said the British playwright in a pre-recorded address that Swedish academy has made available in several languages:

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? (...) Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice....But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution....We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

[The USA's] official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'.... 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources....The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. (...) The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning....Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama Bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Blow? China? Paris ? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy.

Both audio and text files may be found Nobelprize.org