Free Iraq

Whisper wrote: And, please, always remember when Americans are around that the US has never made any mistakes (forget about the crimes against humanity) in her entire history.

can you tell me any country or people in existance today that have never committed crimes against humanity ?  people are not all good and not all bad, there is a mixture in all parts of the world.

The Swiss helped arm the Germans in WW2 recieving payment with stolen gold and stolen art profiting from the German Nazi's.  They seem to have been quite supportive of Nazi Germany, probably the biggest committers of crimes against humanity the world has ever seen.

The Swiss are hardly exempt. 

The most famous case of stolen art which has occupied art historians, journalists and politicians since the 50ies is the origin of the private collection of the Swiss arms manufacturer Dieter B�hrle (Oerlikon-B�hrle).  The B�hrle dynasty has provided Germany essential weapons in both world wars.  In WW2 some 80 % of all German anti-aircraft weapons and ammunition were manufactured in Switzerland [particularly by Oerlikon-B�hrle], with deliveries continuing [into] 1945.  For these last deliveries Germany paid with stolen art treasures, much of which collected by Feldmarschall Hermann G�ring.  One large and clearly identifiable Jewish collection stolen in Paris thus found its way to the Dieter B�hrle collection and - due to Swiss law and practices - Mr.B�hrle has been able to fend off French government-supported recovery attempts over the last 40 years.  The Swiss penal code gives good title to anybody who managed to hold on to stolen art for more than 30 years.  Moreover, Swiss wartime emergency legislation and postwar judgements presume good title for any asset, irrespective of criminal or non-criminal origin, acquired by Swiss citizens from Germany during the Nazi period.  The only limitation seems to have been robbery committed by the Swiss acquirer himself.

Another question of stolen goods which have passed through Switzerland concerns the gold reserves of France and several other countries.  In 1940, the gold reserves of theBanque de France by far exceeded the combined reserves of Fort Knox and the Bank of England.  The Nazis stole the entire French reserves before the end of 1940, and much of it ended up in Swiss vaults. 

Sweden supposedly another "nuetral" contry in ww2, hardly exempt.

Toward the end of World War II, an unspecified number of Latvian and Estonian Nazi war criminals escaped to Sweden among a wave of Baltic refugees fleeing the advancing Soviet Army. Although the Swedish government established a special commission to investigate their wartime activities, no legal action was ever taken against any of these escaped Holocaust perpetrators.

In 1986, the Simon Wiesenthal Center exposed the presence in Sweden of several Baltic Nazi war criminals and asked the Swedish government to investigate the entry of Nazi collaborators into the country and to take legal action against those who could be brought to trial. The Swedish authorities refused to investigate, let alone prosecute these cases, citing the existing statute of limitations which prohibited the prosecution of any crimes more than 25 years after they were committed.

This has remained the position of the Swedish government even after it was revealed in 2000 that those who had participated in Nazi atrocities were alive and living in Sweden. All the efforts to induce a change in Swedish policy on this issue have hereto failed. Sweden is currently weighing the abolition of the statute of limitations on genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes but will not do so retroactively, so there is no chance that any Nazi war criminal will ever be prosecuted in Sweden.