Showing posts with label civilian casualties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civilian casualties. Show all posts

Friday, June 15, 2007

How the GOP/Neocon Axis of Evil Threatens America, Advocates Terrorism

Recently, the GOP has been caught wishing more Americans might die that Bush may be vindicated! How evil is that? Can the GOP sink any further? Thanks to Buzzflash for reporting the following:
"At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country," Milligan said.

--Dennis Milligan, the head of the Arkansas GOP, said this just a few days ago, posted in a June 3 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Buzzflash called the statement "barbarous and treasonous" and so it is. Literally, this is a GOP Chairman advocating terrorist attacks against the US, most certainly on US soil and/or US interests abroad!

If a democrat had done that FOX and the rest of the media would have been seized with grimace and teeth gnashing. The airwaves would be filled with squeals of "treason"! Bill O'Reilly would have blown his last gasket. William F. Buckley would have rolled up his sleeves in search of Gore Vidal. The village idiots, torches lit, would march en masse into the hills in search of monsters, or worse, liberals!

But that's only if a Democrat had said it. The GOP, however, gets away with advocating mass murder. Of Americans.

It would make great parody if the implications were not so sinister. This is not just an isolated incident. The Project for the New American Century, a cabal of NEOCON war fanatics had been planning a "transformation" of US defense policy even before the GOP would steal the White House for Bush. In fact, a document entitled "Rebuidling America's Defenses" characterized their own mission as that of "buidling on the defense strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush Administration [Bush Sr.]
The Defense Police Guidance (DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint for maintaining US preeiminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.

- Rebuilding America's Defense, Project for the New American Century

Even NEOCONS foresaw the nature if not the legitimacy of the criticism literally begging to be made. When the document was leaked it was, indeed, attacked as an effort to begin anew the long cold war which had drained the American psyche to say nothing of the many lives it ruined. The American people were happy and relieved to have been rid of it. Conservatives, however, were adrift without the commie bogeyman. The right wing was in need of another phantom menace to take its place.
This report proceeds from the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeiminence of US military forces.
More specifically, the PNAC document sought to Establish Four Core Missions for US Military Forces:
  • defend the American homeland;
  • fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
  • perform the "contabulary" duties associated iwth shaping the security environment in critical regions;
  • transform US forces to exploit the "revolution in military affairs;"
By now, however, the ideologues of the PNAC are just warming up.
Until another great power challenger emerges, the United States can enjoy a respite from the demands of international leadership. ... But, as we have seen over the poast decade, there has been no shortage of powers around the world who have taken the collapse of the Soviet empire an opportunity to expand their own influence and challenge the American-led security order. ...Behind the smallest proxy war in the most remote region lurked the possibility of Armageddon. Thus, despite numerous miscalculations through the five decades of Cold War, the United States reaped an extraordinary measure of global security and stability simply by building a credible and, in relative terms, inexpensive nuclear arsenal.
And, at last, we come to it --the reason Ronald Reagan blew the world's best chance for world peace when Mikhail Gorbachev put total nuclear disarmament on the table at Rekjavik.

Reagan might have achieved a safer world, even a millennium of peace free of the specter of total nuclear annihilation. He might have achieved that but for this radical, reactionary extremist right wing base.

The critics might not have spelled out the utter failure of the Ronald Reagan administration to end the cold war when he had a chance. And now, the Project for the New American Century was proposing to bring it all back despite the fall of the Soviet Union.

Their plan called for war against the people of Iraq amid huge hikes in defense spending. In order to achieve a popular consensus behind this radical agenda, the NEOCONS describe "a process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." Rebuilding America’s Defenses, their stated goals would never be realized “absent some catastrophic catalyzing event –like a new Pearl Harbor”. (page 52) Indeed, Paul Wolfowitz was warning of Pearl Harbor-like events just months before 911. What did he know? When did he know it?

Such an event was considered absolutely necessary to mobilize an otherwise complacent public. How cynical, how callous are bastards of the right wing that they appear willing, perhaps eager, to sacrifice American lives to achieve a radical, right-wing, militaristic agenda.

What is that if not high treason?

PNAC, founded in 1997, is the monstrous creation of well-known Zionist, neo-conservatives Robert Kagan and William Kristol of The Weekly Standard. PNAC is actually a part of a "larger" organization, the New Citizenship Project, chaired by William Kristol. Other conspirators include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz. All signed what is called a pact, a "Statement of Principles", on June 3, 1997. Until he joined the Bush White House, Paul Wolfowitz was a director of PNAC.

A prominent PNAC member is Dick Cheney, the power behind the throne. He doesn't like to be questioned...

Some of those "conspirators" were confronted as you will see in this video:

From the standpoint of normal and patriotic Americans, Bush is a stunning and monumental failure. We often wonder why he continues to receive the support of as much as 28% of the American public. Look at it this way -- for an increasingly small minority of Americans, Bush is still a hero. He has, in fact, accomplished the PNAC agenda, however disastrous it may be to the welfare of the American people, our civil liberties under the Constitution, the separation of powers which is the very cornerstone of our Constitution.

Bush has pleased his shrinking, radical constituency. Since 911, huge increases in US military spending threaten to bankrupt the nation. They were planned, however, well in advance of the GOP balloting coup in Florida. The piece de resistance was a cynical decision by SCOTUS called Bush v Gore, so bad, so disingenuously argued that SCOTUS itself felt obliged to offer up in the decision an apologia. It's reasoning, its legal arguments were not to be applied in future cases. Heretofore, the making of case law had been considered a major role of the court. Bush v Gore was, in fact, the law that made no law, the case that is not case law, the law that is no law. It is, in fact, an illegal fiat disingenuously applied in one case and one case only. Such is the cynical, revolutionary nature of the manner in which George W. Bush seized the Oval Office and corrupted the nation's highest court.

Had the war against Iraq been planned by the time Bush v Gore went to court? If so, then a petition charging George W. Bush with high treason should be prepared immediately amid demands that he be impeached, charged, and arrested.

The billions squandered on Bush's phantom menace has already bankrupted the nation. Iraq alone, premised as it was upon a pack of lies, should be enough to convict.

That our presence in Iraq required of Bush the loss of some 3,000 American citizens in 911 alone and many more in Iraq is treason enough! That it was done upon a pack of deliberate and malicious lies makes this a case of mass murder. If that is not high treason, then what the hell is?

Some background on the right wing conspiracy to dominate the world:
March 8, 1992

U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop

A One-Superpower World

Pentagon’s Document Outlines Ways to Thwart Challenges to Primacy of America

By Patrick E. Tyler

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, March 7 – In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting phase, the Defense Department asserts that America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territories of the former Soviet Union.

A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks, and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney expects to release later this month, states that part of the American mission will be “convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”

The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.

Rejecting Collective Approach

To perpetuate this role, the United States “must sufficiently account for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order,” the document states.
An update on the war crimes issue:

Blair to Face War Crimes Trial?

Tony Blair could face prosecution for war crimes in Iraq following a legal bid launched yesterday. Former SNP MP Jim Sillars has handed a 10,000-word dossier to Lord Advocate Eilish Angiolini urging her to charge the PM under Scots law. He claims Blair should be held to account for conspiring to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime and for starting the war in Iraq.

-Chimes of Freedom
If Tony Blair is guilty of war crimes, Bush is more so. Bush, after all, put Blair up to it. Following a night in which they shared toothpaste? How sweet!

And now for something completely different. If you are not already into the music of Keith Jarrett you will be after checkin' this out at: Le Thé Chez Vierotchka. And from the same creative blog: All You Need is Love

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Monday, June 11, 2007

US Arrogance, atrocities and crimes guarantee generations of terrorism and Jihad against the US

Bush's order to attack and invade Iraq was and remains a war crime. -- a capital offense under US Codes. There is evidence that US troops are ordered to murder civilians. There is also probable cause to suspect that widespread atrocities are hushed up and go unpunished.

Bush himself is culpable and should be tried in an international court. Later, he should be tried in the US for the capital crime of ordering a war of aggression resulting in death. As did Nixon, Bush will claim to be above the law, assuming powers that even English monarchs dared not claim. Notably, Charles I asserted a "divine right" and, notably, he lost his head for having done so. Bush claims powers that would have made Charles I blush. Yet, Charles was called a tyrant and executed. Bush is called stupid and let off the hook. Where is justice?

“L’État, c’est moi” is attributed to Louis X1V (1638-1715) of France. Often called the "Sun King", his belief that he was the state flies in the face of those who believe that a nation is, in fact, its people. In the US, that principle is summed up by the words of James Madison whose draft of the Constitution establishes "popular sovereignty" as its first order of business. The founders of the United States, perhaps foreseeing a Bush-like megalomaniac, tried to build into the Constitution as many safeguards as could be envisioned.

I am angry! But worse, I despair that my government has abandoned the democratic ideals of millions of Americans who must now bear the shame that Bush has brought upon them. Once a beacon of hope and freedom, the US now stands for atrocity and repression. This is not my America.

Bush fails every American still loyal to the Constitution. Bush fails every American still hoping that we might redeem our reputation. Bush fails every American who's only crime was believing in the Constitution and the ideals of our founders. I am especially angered that George W. Bush, utterly unqualified to hold any public office, usurps power and presumes to carry out, in our name, a program of heinous war crimes.

I am pissed!

All Americans are tarred. All US citizens are shamed by his conduct and incompetence, his criminality and disdain for the rule of law.

Now --just some of the reasons that the US cannot claim to be the "good guys" in Iraq. We are, rather, villains who have no legitimate reason to be there in the first place.

"Allied" military personnel, possibly hired guns, firing at civilians at random in Iraq.

US soldiers making Iraqi children run for water.

US Marines firing at Iraqi civilians in cars

Yet more atrocities --US Marines Charged With Murder

US Tank crushes Iraqi civilian's car

For stealing wood, arrogant, stupid assholes who dare to assume that they represent US values, crush a civilian's car, just one of numerous atrocities. They should be made to forage for wood themselves before standing trial at the Hague.

And should you think that an isolated incident:

Americans! Get a clue! The rest of the world hates your sorry asses. But the American people might redeem themselves if they but overthrow George W. Bush and his gang of criminals, mass murderers and malicious liars and bring them to justice.

What is meant by justice? The Mikado said "Let the punishment fit the crime". There is, likewise, a clue to be found in the laws of the United States, laws that are reviled and flouted daily by the illegitimate and criminal dictatorship of one George W. Bush.
US Codes Title 18 § 2441 War crimes

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

(b) Circumstances.— The circumstances referred to in subsection (a) are that the person committing such war crime or the victim of such war crime is a member of the Armed Forces of the United States or a national of the United States (as defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act).

    (c) Definition.— As used in this section the term “war crime” means any conduct—

    (1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party;

    (2) prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907;

    (3) which constitutes a violation of common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party and which deals with non-international armed conflict; or

    (4) of a person who, in relation to an armed conflict and contrary to the provisions of the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended at Geneva on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996), when the United States is a party to such Protocol, willfully kills or causes serious injury to civilians.
How Current is This?

You will find amendments to Section 3 at: Congressional Record: September 14, 2006 (Senate), Page S9586-S9588

The latest war is not the only war in which the US, under the leadership of a Bush, has engaged in thuggery and war crimes. Don't forget Bush Sr and Persian Gulf I.

A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal

by Ramsey Clark and Others

Index of CrimesIndex of Crimes

  1. The United States engaged in a pattern of conduct beginning in or before 1989 intended to lead Iraq into provocations justifying U.S. military action against Iraq and permanent U.S. military domination of the Gulf.
  2. President Bush from August 2, 1990, intended and acted to prevent any interference with his plan to destroy Iraq economically and
    militarily.
  3. President Bush ordered the destruction of facilities essential to civilian life and economic productivity throughout Iraq.
  4. The United States intentionally bombed and destroyed civilian life, commercial and business districts, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, residential areas, historical sites, private vehicles and civilian government offices.
  5. The United States intentionally bombed indiscriminately throughout
    Iraq.
  6. The United States intentionally bombed and destroyed Iraqi military personnel, used excessive force, killed soldiers seeking to surrender and in disorganized individual flight, often unarmed and far from any combat zones and randomly and wantonly killed Iraqi soldiers and destroyed materiel after the cease fire.
  7. The United States used prohibited weapons capable of mass
    destruction and inflicting indiscriminate death and unnecessary suffering against both military and civilian targets.
  8. The United States intentionally attacked installations in Iraq containing dangerous substances and forces.
  9. President Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Panama, resulting in the deaths of 1,000 to 4,000 Panamanians and the destruction of thousands of private dwellings, public buildings, and commercial structures.
  10. President Bush obstructed justice and corrupted United Nations functions as a means of securing power to commit crimes against
    peace and war crimes.
  11. President Bush usurped the Constitutional power of Congress as a means of securing power to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and other high crimes.
  12. The United States waged war on the environment.
  13. President Bush encouraged and aided Shiite Muslims and Kurds to rebel against the government of Iraq causing fratricidal violence, emigration, exposure, hunger and sickness and thousands of deaths. After the rebellion failed, the U.S. invaded and occupied parts of Iraq without authority in order to increase division and hostility within Iraq.
  14. President Bush intentionally deprived the Iraqi people of essential medicines, potable water, food, and other necessities.
  15. The United States continued its assault on Iraq after the cease fire, invading and occupying areas at will.
  16. The United States has violated and condoned violations of human rights, civil liberties and the U.S. Bill of Rights in the United States, in
    Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to achieve its purpose of military domination.
  17. The United States, having destroyed Iraq's economic base, demands reparations which will permanently impoverish Iraq and threaten its people with famine and epidemic.
  18. President Bush systematically manipulated, controlled, directed, misinformed and restricted press and media coverage to obtain constant support in the media for his military and political goals.
  19. The United States has by force secured a permanent military presence in the Gulf, the control of its oil resources and geopolitical domination of the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region.
Meantime, Colin Powell, on Meet the Press, says that if he had his way, he would close Guantanamo and give "detainees" access to the Federal Courts.

Of course, detainees should have had access to the Federal Courts from the get go. What was Bush afraid of?


Bush, typifies -One Tin Soldier



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Friday, April 06, 2007

Iraq is Lost; Bush War Crimes Continue

I never liked the term "war of choice". The better term, the legal term, is "war crime". War crimes resulting in death are capital crimes under US criminal codes. Check out Section 2441. Also check out the Nuremberg Principles. That Bush committed capital offenses by treasonously committing his nation to a war of naked aggression in Iraq is old news.

In his rush to unleash the dogs of war, George W. Bush knowingly lied about the situation in Iraq, discounting out of hand information countering his various pretexts for war. Indeed, Valerie Plame would not be a household name if the lies Bush told about Iraq had not been deliberate. Indeed, there would have been no reason to retaliate against Ambassador Joe Wilson for daring to tell the truth, for daring to expose the Bush administration's treasonous fraud.

Confident that he had hoodwinked a gullible nation, Bush said:
In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following orders."

-George W. Bush, March 2003

If war criminals are to be held to account, then the prosecution must begin with the Bush administration. I would hope that someone, presumably at the Hague, is drafting indictments against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, and Alberto Gonzales. If the concept of International Law is to have any validity, all war criminals must be held to account.

That Bush has lost the very war he started is a fact often lost on the mass media, Fox kiss ups, and the terminally stupid. Bush has, in fact, lost all the wars he started. His administration has not merely failed, it has done so catastrophically. At least three of the criminals -Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld -should one day stand trial for high treason and capital crimes, having committed this nation to a catastrophic war upon a pack of deliberate, malicious lies. There are some 650,000 counts of murder to be included in the indictment.
The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.

The same group in 2004 published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths in the first 18 months after the invasion. That figure was much higher than expected, and was controversial. The new study estimates that about 500,000 more Iraqis, both civilian and military, have died since then -- a finding likely to be equally controversial.

-Washington Post, Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000

Bush partisans have tried to downplay Iraqi civilian deaths while debunking more credible estimates. An early example was the number of Iraqis killed in the Shock and Awe campaign. "Official" numbers were in the range of 2,000 to 3,000, as I recall. But it was Jude Wanniski, a supply side economist with the Wall Street Journal, who reported the more credible number: 40,000. Wanniski's report was conducted by Iraqis in Baghdad and consisted of actual, verifiable body counts in the various neighborhoods. Each city, town and region was broken out and tabulated. It was the best available information until Lancet.

Bushy numbers -at the time -were mere estimates, wishful thinking, propaganda. The US, we were told, didn't do body counts. By the time the administration warmed up to the 40,000 figure, credible estimates had risen. To some 650,000, as we have seen. For Bushies, a mere 40,000 dead civilians sounded good by comparison. It is not surprising that Fox news -in reality a right wing lie machine -tried to debunk credible claims that Iraqi civilian deaths exceeded 650,000. Fox was and is dead wrong. And perhaps deliberately so.

In the end, however, it is Fox that looks stupid and utterly lacking credibility. The Lancet study is sound.

A monstrous war crime

With more than 650,000 civilians dead in Iraq, our government must take responsibility for its lies

Richard Horton
Wednesday March 28, 2007
The Guardian

Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.

Consider Iraq. Several years ago, I asked my Congressman a pointed question: which side would Bush take when the Iraqi Civil War breaks out? Instead of an answer, I was lectured to about patriotism, about how Bush was the commander-in-chief, about how much better it was to fight terrorism "there" than "here", about how the US is exempt from international laws having to do with war crimes. It was all nonsense and bullshit and I told them that. I also told my congressman that the GOP was not a political party. It is a crime syndicate, I said. And still say.

In the meantime, the civil war has broken out between Sunnis and Shias and Bush has taken sides. He has bet the farm on the Shi'ite regime of Nouri Kamel Mohammed Hassan al-Maliki. By taking sides, Bush loses the role of "honest broker", our only hope for peace. By taking sides, Bush embroils the US in a sectarian struggle all but impossible to confine inside the borders of Iraq. Neighboring states are not only worried, they have already absorbed at least 2 million Iraqi refugees at great cost to local economies. The Iraqi civil war threatens to destabilize the Middle East.

But Lancet is not the only under-reported study. Some six months ago, Foreign Policy asked more than 100 US foreign policy experts if Bush was, in fact, winning the so-called "war on terrorism". FP reports that the answer was a resounding --NO! Since that time, FP surveyed them again. The news is still not good. The chaotic civil war in Iraq continues to deteriorate, the death count continues to rise, and, on several fronts FP reports, the Bush strategy has failed utterly. The report directly refutes and contradicts Bush's various claims. In fact, the US occupation of Iraq has made us less safe; another attack may be imminent; and that "...the United States may be distracted from the threats that matter most."

Bush has lost his war against Iraq because he lost the battle for Iraqi "hearts and minds". He lost that battle because no one in administration bothered to inform themselves. It was deliberate. There are, obviously, informed people in the apparatus of US government. Valerie Plame was just such a person, an operative with the CIA. For her trouble and because her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson dared to tell the truth, she was "outed". Those in the Bush administration who ordered her cover blown are guilty of treason.

"Insurgent attacks", likewise, grow stronger and more deadly despite or because of the "surge". I don't like the term "insurgent". It implies an illegitimate opposition to a legitimate authority. But, in Iraq, it is the US occupation that is illegitimate, in fact, illegal. Iraqis claim the right to defend themselves, to oppose an illegitimate occupation by arms, if necessary. They are absolutely correct. This should not come as news to the dead heads in Bush's irresponsible and incompetent administration. Perhaps they never bothered to attend a high school history class. It was William Pitt who, in 1778, told Parliament:
"My lords, if I were an American as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I would never lay down my arms- never, never, never".
Pitt was approaching 70 at the time he made those remarks and, as the story goes, he collapsed before ending his speech denouncing British policies in America. He died a month later, a statesman -not a politician.

Bush insists on victory but he cannot define it. He is stuck on flypaper, repeating the same tired slogans, the same bullshit about fighting "terrorists" there instead of here. In the meantime, US casualties, already far higher than anyone imagined, continue to climb. Deaths of Iraqi civilians, likewise, exceed all early estimates.

In retrospect, Bush was altogether too eager for dictatorship. He gave himself away. He said "This would be a whole lot easier if this was a dictatorship...heh heh heh ...just as long as I'm the dictator." But in his analysis of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, W. H. Auden cautions would be dictators that they must not appear too eager for power and glory. Even Caesar, Auden points out, denied the crown not once...but three times.