From Al Arabiya:
A United Nations team of war crimes investigators will not probe air strikes by foreign countries in Syria, its chairman said on Wednesday, despite concerns that some attacks by foreign militaries could have violated the laws of war."Besides," UN officials would have loved to add, "we all know that there is only one Western nation that we hold to any standards whatsoever. And even when that nation exceeds all standards that we set for ourselves, we find them guilty anyway!"
The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria is not intended to investigate air strikes in Syria by foreign nations, Chairman Paulo Pinheiro said.
“It is not our mandate to investigate the behavior of powers involved in the crisis of Syria,” Pinheiro told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.
It would not probe potential cases of violations of international human rights law involving nations conducting military strikes in Syria, he said.
“There is no possibility that we will investigate the American air strikes or French or British or Russian,” he said.
The decision reflected a desire not to meddle into the affairs of powers outside Syria as well as limited means at the group’s disposal, Pinheiro added.
Some observers have cited instances that disproportionately hit civilians and civil infrastructure, and Pinheiro and his three co-commissioners have repeatedly cautioned powers to follow the laws of war.
I love the "limited means" argument. The UN holds meetings practically every week all over the world to denounce Israel (we mentioned one in Jakarta last week), it has multiple committees and groups dedicated to nothing else but demonizing Israel, yet they can't scrape the money together to investigate any other nations that are far worse in their wartime activities. Funny, that.
(h/t Gilbert)
