How America lost its moral authority throughout the world

The Bush administration had planned to perpetrate torture even before it ordered the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; and it sought to exempt U.S. troops from international prosecutions. In the process, the United States has lost whatever moral authority it might have exerted throughout the world. [See Amendment to H.R. 1646, The Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2001]

It was not too long ago that many people looked to the U.S. for leadership and not so long ago, our nation was still thought to be a democratic nation of laws, due process, and a prudent separation of powers. Now the U.S. is reviled; Bush is seen the world over as having betrayed his own people as he wages aggressive war against a nation that even he concedes had nothing whatsoever to do with 911, a nation about which he lied in order to justify his dirty, evil little war. The war on terrorism is phony.

And now, Bush proves everything that is said about him by refusing to close Guantanamo, by refusing to end practices of torture and rendition which he denies —even as he defends them.

I recommend Robert Jackson’s Place in History by Henry King Jr. An excerpt:

In his final report, after he resigned as U.S. Chief Counsel for War Crimes, Jackson stated that “[i]t is not too much to hope that this example of a full and fair hearing, and tranquil and deliberative judgment, will do something toward strengthening the process of justice in many countries.” I believe that after fifty years it can be maintained with considerable credibility that these visions have largely come to pass.

Perhaps —at the time of the writing —"these visions" had come to pass. But thanks to the Bush administration's deliberate effort to undermine the very foundations of International Law, that important progress has been undone.

One rightly suspects Bush's motives. Even before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, before the attack on Afghanistan, Tom DeLay sponsored legislation that exempted U.S. soldiers from war crimes prosecution at the International Tribunal at the Hague. Did anyone in Congress stop to ask why? Were we planning to commit crimes for which we sought exemption from prosecution? Wasn't it clear to any thinking person what Bush was up to? Are we not the good guys? [Amendment to H.R. 1646, The Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2001]

Clearly --the Bush administration was, in fact, planning to commit war crimes but wanted to make them legal if done by the U.S. I cannot possibly hope to document in a short internet essay the various circumlocutions that have been indulged by the Bush administration and its chief apologist: Alberto Gonzales. All, however, are intended to make legal the very acts that are prohibited by Nuremberg —but only if those acts are done by Americans. Bush is at least consistent in this respect: neither would he press for trials for non-Americans. He would simply decree their imprisonment and torture.

Nazis engaged in similar polemical campaigns. The results were tragic. So too with Bush who most certainly boasted of what can only be the summary executions of thousands who were most certainly murdered before they could assert their innocence:

...more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way -- they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.

-George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 2003

This statement must be soberly examined; note that Bush refers to 3,000 suspects. Yet —he smirks that "...they have met a different fate." He boasts that "...they are no longer a problem to the United States...".

They were only suspects. Since when does the United States summarily execute mere suspects? Do we not know who our enemies are? What were the conditions of their detention? Why are we rounding up mere "suspects" —and not actual combatants? How is the execution of suspects justified under any standard, any morality, any legal system?

I am frankly surprised that Bush maintained the pretense when he has since arrogated unto himself the power to define terrorists. "Terrorists" are what Bush says they are. Bush is the judge and jury. Detainees are never charged and, by Bushs' own words, "suspects" are caused to be "...no longer a problem". Others are "terrorists" not because they are "terrorists" but because Bush —the decider —says they are. Some may be combatants. Some may be "evil doers". Others may be innocent. No matter. Bush —the all powerful decider —has thrown them all in the same wire cage, the same suicide factory.

Contrast Bush's remarks with those of American Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson uttered when America still had credibility and moral authority:

“That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”

— Opening Statement before the International Military Tribunal,Robert Jackson, Chief American Prosecutor, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

At the end of World War II, when even Winston Churchill espoused the summary executions of Nazi war criminals and Joseph Stalin favored mere show trials, it was the United States, under the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt, that insisted upon war crimes trials. Nazis would not be summarily shot merely because they were Nazis by definition or decree. Rather, they would be given a trial. Even Nazis would be allowed the right of counsel, the right to present a defense.

How can Bush hope to defend democracy —as he has claimed —when he subverts every Democratic principle that has been fought and died for over the last four hundred years? How can Bush justify his war of aggression against Iraq when he subverts the very "democracy" that he claims to bring them? How can Bush accuse anyone outside the United States of "...just hat[ing] freedom" when Bush is himself democracy's most insidious enemy?

If Nazis had engaged in the same disingenuous activities with regard to the incarceration and ultimate extermination of the jews, what moral authority could the U.S. have extended if its own policies differed not a whit in principle?

Bush should be careful not to indulge his delusions. Under his mal-administration, America is no longer a beacon of hope and freedom. Bush is reviled. He is not a liberator. Several polls suggest that he is seen as a threat to world peace and, in others, he is likened unto Saddamn Hussein. At least three issues and/or Bush policies have given the lie to Bush's rhetoric and U.S. posturing:

1. Tom DeLay sponsored legislation in which the U.S. unilaterally exempted U.S. citizens from prosecution for war crimes in the Hague; the measure actually empowered Bush to invade the Hague should an American find him/herself standing trial there on war crimes charges;
2. Bush unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of Kyoto because his base are lobsters denying that they are boiling even as they are thrown into the pot.
3. The Bush administration has sought over the last five years to exempt itself from widely agreed upon international conventions with regard to torture. But, of course, we are not torturing!
   

Bush is on the wrong side of the torture issue. Torture is morally wrong, prima facie, a priori. Moreover, torture is completely ineffective and unreliable; a victim of torture will say anything to make it stop. Torture inflames a victim and gives them yet another cause celebre. In many cases, if not all, torture legitimizes the opposition cause.

Bush will deny U.S. torture even as he defends it with lies and ex post facto rationales. Since nothing said by Bush on this topic can be believed, torture is, therefore, made policy for other, hidden, nefarious reasons. Those who practice it do so because they are heinously perverted; as "official policy" it can be practiced with impunity and with the blessings of the state. The source of American "torture policy" at Abu Ghraib and throughout the eastern european gulag archipelago is Bush himself, a man who is credibly reported to have reveled in blowing up toads with firecrackers.

I cite the case of Richard Topcliffe -Elizabeth I's "torturer in chief". He was a twisted, perverted lunatic who would have made Torquemada blush. He sent to Elizabeth his long, barely lucid ramblings, consisting of hysterical, psycho-sexual fantasies, hysterical religous overtures and graphic descriptions of what he had done to his "victims" for her Majesty's greater "glory".

I don't want to know how Bush's fevered brain thinks. I don't care! The source of his various sadistic perversions is of no interest to me. My only concern is getting Bush out of the Oval Office and neutralized so that he can't kill anyone else. For selfish reasons —the good of this nation and the world —I want to live to see Bush removed and replaced with someone who —if not a genius on the level of Jefferson or Madison — is at least someone who can be trusted not to undo their great work.

Is that too much to ask?

From Robert Jackson’s place in history:

Jackson drafted the original charges against the Nazis, outlining three categories of crimes for which the defeated Germans would be called to account. The first category included in the draft was the crime of aggressive war (Crimes Against Peace). Jackson considered this to be the most heinous international crime. He set as a priority that German aggression would be subject to prosecution, and he intended that the crime of aggression’s ambit be as broad as possible.

Jackson’s second category of substantive crimes was that of war crimes - crimes against the laws or customs of war. This category was more traditional, as international law had already recognized limits on the ability of nations to conduct war. These crimes had since been codified in The Hague and Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of civilians and prisoners of war during the course of international conflict.

The third category of crimes envisioned by Jackson were crimes against humanity - crimes committed in the course of aggressive war against individuals for racial, religious, or political reasons. Within this category lay the crime of genocide, the slaughter of millions of Jews and other ethnic groups. The substance of this crime, calling rulers accountable for their treatment of nationals within their borders, was revolutionary. Genocide had been defined in scholarship and political discussion years earlier, but Jackson’s vision extended beyond mere identification of atrocities. The International Military Tribunal would, for the first time, punish genocide as one might punish the murder of an individual.

—Robert Jackson's Place in History, Henry King Jr

Updates and other related materials:

Detainees not given access to witnesses

But in one case, 3 quickly found

By Farah Stockman and Declan Walsh, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent | June 18, 2006

GARDEZ, Afghanistan -- The US government routinely failed to give detainees at Guantanamo Bay access to witnesses who might have helped them prove their assertions of innocence, saying it could not locate the vast majority of the witnesses the terror suspects requested at special military hearings. But within a three-day span, a Globe reporter was able to locate three of those witnesses in the case of one detainee. The Globe found two of them in Afghanistan, and located a third in Washington, D.C., where he is teaching at the National Defense University. ...

The cover up continues:

UPDATE: Pentagon Orders U.S. Reporters to Exit Guantanamo

By Greg Mitchell and Joe Strupp
Published: June 14, 2006 10:55 AM ET, Updated 12:30 PM ET

NEW YORK In the aftermath of the three suicides at the controversial Guantanamo prison facility in Cuba last Saturday, reporters with the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald were ordered by the office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to leave the island today.

A third reporter and a photographer with the Charlotte Observer were given the option of staying until Saturday but, E&P has learned, were told that their access to the prison camp was now denied. An E&P "Pressing Issues" column on Tuesday covered an eye-opening dispatch by the Observer's Michael Gordon carried widely in other papers.

He had listened in, with permission, as the camp commander gave frank instructions to staff on how to respond to the suicides. All four journalists left the island today and arrived in Miami about 12:30 p.m.

A Pentagon spokesman, J.D. Gordon, confirmed the order to leave the island this morning, but told E&P it was unrelated to the stories produced by the journalists, while admitting that Gordon's piece had caused "controversy." He asserted that the move was related to other media outlets threatening to sue if they were not allowed in. He did not say why, instead of expelling the reporters already there, the Pentagon did not simply let the others in, beyond citing new security concerns.

"All three have been screaming [about the order to leave] like it is going out of style," he said. A curt e-mail to reporters Carol Rosenberg of the Herald (who spoke to E&P about the expulsion) and Carol Williams of the L.A. Times mentioned a directive from the office of Rumsfeld, and stated: "Media currently on the island will depart on Wednesday, 14 June 2006 at 10:00 a.m. Please be prepared to depart the CBQ [quarters] at 8:00 a.m.''

Rich Bard, deputy world editor for the Herald, said "It was our hope that we could work out an arrangement with the Department of Defense to keep her in Guantanamo. We thought it in the best interest of our readers to have access."

J.D. Gordon, the Pentagon press officer, told E&P that Rosenberg and Williams had been invited to come to Guantanamo last weekend for the start of tribunals. Mike Gordon and Observer photographer Todd Sumlin, meanwhile, arrived to produce a profile of the camp commander, who hails from North Carolina. The suicides of the three detainees happened to occur in this time period and the tribunals were cancelled.

The reporters, with the approval of the base commander, covered the aftermath of the suicides, and interviewed attorneys who ripped the legal horrors for the inmates, few of whom have been formally charged with any crime. A lawyer who had tried to represent one of the dead men was accusing the U.S. government "of thwarting his efforts with bureaucratic maneuvers" and lamented that justice can never be done for his client now that he is dead.

After stories started appearing the reporters ordered to leave, on a hastily arranged military flight to Miami, over the protests of their editors.

Tom Fiedler, the editor of the Herald, wrote to the Pentagon, "Ms. Rosenberg arrived at Guantanamo and proceeded to report on the suicides with the full support of base personnel and with the direct knowledge of Gen. John Craddock, who arrived on Sunday. At no time did anyone state or suggest that Ms. Rosenberg's presence was unauthorized or even undesired.

"Neither Ms. Rosenberg nor The Miami Herald seek to remain indefinitely at Guantanamo nor to have exclusive or special access. However, we respectfully suggest that, while aspects of the suicides remain undetermined it is in the best interest of the DOD and the public that the news media be present."

The Pentagon spokesman told E&P that Rumsfeld's office was overruling any of the permissions from military at the base.
Mike Gordon of the Charlotte Observer told E&P today he had not received the letter from Rumsfeld's office but had been told that he could leave Wednesday or stay until Saturday -- but access to the prison had been ended.

"He was doing a hometowner, a hometowner takes one day," J.D. Gordon, the Pentagon's press officer, said. "You would think that a man allowed down for a whole week would be a bit more gracious about it. Have the good grace and class to leave."

The Pentagon spokesman told E&P that recent activities surrounding the suicides of three detainees required heavier security and the removal of outside media.
"We told [the journalists] on Monday that we are in a difficult position," said Gordon, the Pentagon press officer. "We are trying to be impartial and fair." He added that pressure from other media outlets to be given similar access also forced the complete press ban. "We are between a rock and a hard place," he said.

He told E&P that Williams and Rosenberg were originally part of a 10-person media group invited to arrive Saturday to cover a military tribunal set for this week. But on Saturday, the tribunal, also known in the military as a commission, had been postponed following last week's suicides of three detainees. Press Officer Gordon said the Pentagon informed all 10 journalists on Saturday that they were not allowed to visit. All 10, including reporters from Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal, had planned to arrive via military aircraft.

But he said that Williams and Rosenberg arrived on their own, via a commercial aircraft, and were allowed to be on. Michael Gordon, who had also arrived Saturday, was allowed to remain for his story. "We didn't like it, we didn't think it was appropriate," the press officer said of their arrivals. "But it was plausible."

By Sunday, however, J.D. Gordon said he began getting complaints from other news outlets, such as Fox News, AP, CNN, and Reuters, claiming that their reporters should be allowed on the island if the three other journalists were there. "The other media started to have a mini-phone riot," he told E&P. "'Hey, why are they there?' We had a major issue on our hands for other media to 'either get them in there or we have to see you in court.'"

He would not identify which media outlets threatened legal action, but said more than a dozen news outlets called to complain between Sunday and Monday. Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of AP, said her outlet was among those who sought equal access -- but said legal action was never threatened. "We never begrudge other reporters being there as long as we can be there, too," she told E&P, adding that the military could have accomodated more reporters on the site. "The Pentagon makes lots of complicated logistical decisions that are more difficult than that one. We are not the most difficult problem for them to manage."

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, issued a statement today declaring, “If the United States wants to restore its credibility as a democracy in the eyes of the world, it should be inviting journalists in, not kicking them out. Our government insists it has nothing to hide, but its actions show otherwise."
Still, J.D. Gordon said the decision was made that all of the media had to leave the island. But he denied any accusation that such expulsions were in reaction to any of the tough-minded reporting.

"No, totally not true," he said. "Some of the things [Gordon] wrote caused controversy, about changing detainees clothes and forced entry. But we are not into content management. The issue was that other media were threatening to take us to court."

Bard, the Herald editor, told E&P: "Our knowledge of some of the details is limited." When asked about the Pentagon's contention that other media outlets barred from the island had complained, he said that should not affect his own reporters.

The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which was representing the three men who committed suicide, released a statement today: "At a time when the administration must be transparent about the deaths at Guantanamo, they are pulling down a wall of secrecy and avoiding public accountability. This crackdown on the free press makes everyone ask what else they are hiding down there. This press crackdown is the administration's latest betrayal of fundamental American values. The Bush Administration is afraid of American reporters, afraid of American attorneys and afraid of American laws."

Greg Mitchell and Joe Strupp (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com)

An update. The link as it appeared in Buzzflash:

2 U.S. troops missing, 1 killed in attack at a traffic checkpoint in Yusifiya. Zarqawi's death was a media event and it was unrelated to the violence on the ground. Our soldiers will continue to die until we bring them home.

Bush is the anti-thesis of the Plato's ideal of the "Philosopher King". Marcus Aurelius, alone among the many Roman Emperors, seems to have epitomized that ideal:

Marcus Aurelius: The Meditations (167 CE)

The emperor Marcus Aelius Aurelius Antoninus who reigned from 161-160 was the only Roman emperor besides Julius Caesar whose writings were to become part of the canon of Western classics. His Meditations are a loosely-organized set of thoughts relating to the stoic philosophy which had been popular among the better-educated citizens of Rome for some centuries.

It stressed self-discipline, virtue, and inner tranquillity. Aurelius was also a social reformer who worked for the improvement of the lot of the poor, slaves, and convicted criminals. Non-Christians in the Western World have often looked to him as a role model. He was also a fierce persecutor of Christianity, doubtless because he felt that the religion threatened the values that had made Rome great.

Aurelius was not an original or brilliant thinker, but his Meditations reflect well the stoic strain in Greco-Roman civilization. The emphasis on morality combined with emotional detachment is strongly reminiscent of Buddhist thought, with which Stoicism has often been compared.

The Existentialist Cowboy
Torture

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The Existentialist Cowboy

How Bush defrauded the world and, in the process, murdered tens of thousands of innocent civilians

Bush had planned to attack and invade Iraq even before he stole the election of 2000. The public record is replete with direct, verifiable evidence of this as well as coincidences of the truly GOP kind. To wit:

• Insiders —Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill —have stated that the Bush administration was focused on invading Iraq from the outset. [See CBS News: Bush Sought ‘Way’ To Invade Iraq? ]
  
• Evan as George Bush was assuming the Oval Office, someone did a "Watergate" on the Niger Embassy in Italy, that is to say: it was burglarized.
  
• Bob Woodward —in "Plan of Attack" —described a Saudi government offer of some $1 billion to the Bush administration for what were called "...joint intelligence operations" designed to overthrow Saddam Hussein by April of 2002. [See Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Page 229]
  
• The deal was sweetened. Saudi Prince Bandar promised that Saudi Arabia would lower crude oil prices prior to the Presidential re-election campaign.

Clearly —all the pieces had been put into place: the Saudi payoff, a "sweetener" to seal the deal, the pretext, the timing!

The Pretext

Bush's official terrorist conspiracy theory morphed into a world-wide campaign of disinformation, or black propaganda, involving the White House, the Pentagon, Britain's MI6, and thousands of outlets throughout the American media. The lie became a chorus —Saddam Hussein was or had developed nukes and posed an imminent threat to the entire world.

The timing is unbelievably convenient. Bush now held in his hand the pretext he needed: the Niger yellow cake forgeries. The weight of evidence and GOP coincidence supports the conclusion: Bush knew them to be forgeries at the time. Else —why "out" Valerie Plame?

According to Vanity Fair, there were 14 instances —prior to the 2003 State of the Union Address —in which C.I.A. analysts, the State Department, or other government agencies and/or officials who had examined the Niger documents, raised serious doubts about the legitimacy of the forgeries and were rebuffed by Bush-administration. The Plame case proves that Bush would refuse to hear the truth; he would punish those who dared to tell it. The Bush administration would commit treason in order to shut up its critics and it would rewrite a sorry history to cover up its crimes against humanity and the people of the United States.

Bush would try to discredit his critics with timed and illegal leaks; but Bush himself would brazenly claim to have made the leaks legal because he —the "decider" —authorized them. The magnitude of these crimes upon crimes is hard to sum up in a mere paragraph or two, an article, or even a book. But should any American still doubt the stain left by Bush on American history, the following two paragraphs are essential reading:

The story of the Niger forgeries is definitely woven into the major Bush Administration scandals - the fake war intelligence, the AIPAC spy scandal, the Chalabi-defector manipulations, and it directly spawned the Valerie Plame scandal. When Plame's husband publicly called out the forgeries, Scooter Libby and others "outed" his wife as a CIA agent, more or less because they wanted to "play dirty" to defend fake elements of the war propaganda, such as the forgeries.

The great Meta-Story – the major narrative, the center of gravity of the past few years – is the "core reality" of why the war in Iraq started, and its interesting corollary, the Republican claim that "investigations will make us sad and hurt America." More or less, all along, the plan was to scare the shit out of America and make the Democrats appear weak. This was done by planting fake stories about evil foreign menaces, and as time goes by, more and more details about this essential backdrop to the 'War on Terror' burble up from the morass of this young, dumb century.

—Yellowcake & Black PSY OPS: insiders call Niger forgeries WH "Black Propaganda"

Among the many lies told by Bush about Iraq, the "Yellow Cake" story is the most damning. Unlike Bush's false claims about aluminum tubes and other plumbing, that Saddam was conspiring with Al Qaeda, that he was making chemical weapons in a beat up old trailer with a hole in the tarpaulin, etc, the "Yellow Cake" story is one of a deliberate intention to defraud, to hoax the American people and the world. This was not a mistake, it was a bald-faced lie! The war was not a response to terrorism, it was a capital crime. Bush knowingly intended to deceive and mislead.

But whatever term they use, at least nine of these officials believe that the Niger documents were part of a covert operation to deliberately mislead the American public.

—Craig Unger, Vanity Fair

It is not an innocent error; it cannot be attributed to mere faulty intelligence. Rather, this was faulty intelligence that was sought out for its propaganda value. This was fraud with lethal consequences. Not a simple mistake of judgement, this was mass murder! This was a war crime.

"This wasn't an accident; this wasn't 15 monkeys in a room with typewriters."

—Milt Bearden, C.I.A. veteran, station chief in Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria, and Germany, head of the Soviet-East European division.

Since Bush ordered the war of aggression against Iraq, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed. This makes Bush guilty of war crimes. Much of the case against George W. Bush can be found in official documents —just as at Nuremberg —and in various verifiable items in the public record. Each death as a result of the U.S. invasion is, in fact, a capital crime under 18 S 2441. One day George W. Bush and other complicit members of his administration will be so charged.

The Crime of the Millenium

George Bush's war crime has been a disaster of unimaginable proportions. The war has cost hundreds of billions of dollars in "out of pocket" expenses alone. The final number will most certainly exceed several trillion dollars when disability payments, pensions, and liabilities are at last factored. By all reasonable standards, the U.S. is bankrupt, kept afloat by China, Japan, and Europe.

Bush's folly has de-stabilized the Middle East. Just as Ronald Reagan's vaunted "war on terrorism" sparked an exponential increase in terrorism during the time it was waged, Bush's war of aggression has made of Iraq a hot bed, a magnet for terrorist activity when there had been none in that country before the U.S. invasion.

Bush's war has forever stained American credibility throughout the world. No price can be put on credibility and no government can last long when nothing said by it can be believed. In the seventies, the label "Great Satan" may have been over the top. But what can be said to our detrators now that Bush has played into their hands and proven to the world that everything said by U.S. critics was and is true? If American credibility is not beyond repair, it is at least on life support. If it is resuscitated at all, it will take generations.

In the meantime, Greg Palast's new book speaks to the issue of motivation:

Greg Palast: Bush had a secret plan for Iraq’s oil. Make that, he had two, and I got them. It was not easy, let me tell you. The first plan that I found was crafted by the Neo-cons – Wolfowitz and the whole Rumsfeld gang. Their program for oil in Iraq was to sell off the oil fields. We have it in black and white. They called this privatization, which means slice, dice and sell. Of course, since Iraqis only have Iraqi currency, it wouldn’t go to Iraqis, right?

That plan was handed to General Jay Garner, our first vice counsel there. I showed him the secret plan and he said, “Yes, that’s it.” I said, “Why didn’t you implement it?” He said basically that he told Rumsfeld to take the plan and stick it where the desert sun doesn’t rise.

BuzzFlash: And then Garner got relieved of duty.

Greg Palast: That night, Rumsfeld said, well, don’t unpack. You’re fired.

BuzzFlash: Then they sent Paul Bremer.

Greg Palast: They sent in Paul Bremer, whose sole qualification for the job was that he was managing director of Kissinger Associates. But the plan to sell off Iraq’s oil fields was blocked by something I didn’t expect – big oil, the big oil companies. They said: Listen guys, this isn’t how it’s done in the Mideast. You let the Iraqis pretend that they own the oil, and what we do is we have no-bid production sharing agreements. The key thing is to make sure – and here’s the kicker – make sure we don’t get too much oil.

I have the actual 323-page document drafted by big oil executives in Houston, working with James Baker’s people. Remember, James Baker represents Exxon Oil Company. He also represents the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. These are the guys drafting the plans – our plans for Iraq’s oil. By the way, why aren’t the Iraqis drawing up their own plan? That’s another issue. But the plan was that we don’t sell off Iraq’s oilfields. Rather they have lock-up agreements with U.S. oil companies. ...

—Greg Palast, Buzzflash Interview

Some updates:

CIA covered for Nazi war criminals during Cold War

Efforts to use former Nazis as spies led the CIA to keep mum about the location of criminals such as Adolf Eichmann.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published June 7, 2006

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WASHINGTON - Determined to win the Cold War, the CIA kept quiet about the whereabouts of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in the 1950s for fear he might expose undercover anticommunist efforts in West Germany, according to documents released Tuesday.

The 27,000 pages released by the National Archives are among the largest post-World War II declassifications by the Central Intelligence Agency. They offer a window into the shadowy world of U.S. intelligence - and the efforts to use former Nazi war criminals as spies, sometimes to detrimental effect.

The war criminals "peddled hearsay and gossip, whether to escape retribution for past crimes, or for mercenary gain, or for political agendas not necessarily compatible with American national interests," Robert Wolfe, an expert on German history and former archivist at the National Archives, said at a news briefing announcing the document release.

In a March 19, 1958, memo to the CIA, West German intelligence officials wrote that they knew where Eichmann was hiding. Eichmann played a key role in transporting Jews to death camps during World War II. "He is reported to have lived in Argentina under the alias 'Clemens' since 1952," authorities wrote. ...

Ramadi Becomes Another Fallujah

Brian Conley

AMMAN, Jun 5 (IPS) - These days, Ramadi is nearly impossible to enter. Against the backdrop of the Haditha massacre, IPS has received reports of civilians killed by snipers, and homes occupied with American snipers on their roof, while families were detained downstairs.

One man, who wishes to be known simply as 'an Iraqi friend,' met with IPS in Amman to describe the situation in Ramadi and detail recent events there as he saw them.

"To enter Ramadi (about 100 km west of Baghdad) you have to pass the bridge on the Euphrates and the electrical station for Ramadi. This is occupied by the U.S. troops. The checkpoint is there, the glass factory nearby is occupied by American snipers. Here they inspect cars and you will need more than four hours just to pass the bridge."

Reports from Ramadi have been few and far between in recent months, and always filed by reporters embedded with U.S. troops working in the area.

Witnesses interviewed by IPS in Amman provided a nuanced picture of the situation, one that is very different from the military focus of embedded journalists.

Their stories describe death happening any moment, without signals or warning. ...

Poll: US bigger threat than Iran

Reuters

The world increasingly fears Iran's suspected pursuit of a nuclear bomb but believes the U.S. military in Iraq remains a greater danger to Middle East stability, a survey showed on Tuesday.

As Washington campaigns to highlight the threat it sees from Tehran, the good news for the United States in a Pew Research Center poll of 17,000 people in 15 countries is that publics, particularly in the West, are worrying more about Iran. ...

Poll: U.S. in Iraq clouds Mideast stability

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The presence of U.S. troops in
Iraq is a greater threat to Mideast stability than the government in
Iran, according to a poll of European and Muslim countries.

People in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Russia rated America's continuing involvement in Iraq a worse problem than Iran and its nuclear ambitions, according to polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Views of U.S. troops in Iraq were even more negative in countries like Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan.

America's image rebounded in some countries last year after the U.S. offered aid to tsunami victims, but those gains have disappeared, the Pew poll found.

Iraq is one of many issues that pushes a negative view of the U.S., said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. ...

A Little White Lie: Bush and the Niger Forgeries

By Joel Wendland

Sometime in 2000, reports Craig Unger in an exposé piece in the latest edition of Vanity Fair, a current member of Italy’s secret Service (SISMI) approached Rocco Martino, a former Italian spy who had fallen on hard times, with a deal that might make him some money. A woman who worked in the Niger Embassy, Martino was told, frequently sold stolen documents that Martino might be able to sell to foreign intelligence agencies. According to Unger’s article, Martino obtained a cache of documents from this woman in January 2001, which he promptly circulated in Europe’s spooky underworld.

Martino now believes he was set up in order to pass the documents along to various intelligence services in Europe and the US for the Italians without being officially connected to them. In his article titled, "The War They Wanted, the Lies They Needed," Unger describes Martino as having a reputation as someone who sold secrets to the highest bidders, sometimes even double dealing. He was the perfect patsy, he told Unger.

Indeed, the crux of Unger’s article is that Italian spy agencies, in collusion with ex-US spies with ties to the most hawkish neo-cons in the Bush administration, may have orchestrated the distribution of the Niger documents for far more nefarious purposes than making a few bucks.

As it turns out, some of those documents had an enormous impact on the course of world events. They helped start Bush’s war in Iraq.

Unbeknownst to Martino, Unger reports, the aging ex-spy had passed on the infamous Niger forgeries that purported to show that Saddam Hussein’s government had made arrangements with the government of Niger to buy 500 tons of uranium "yellow cake" ore.

Dossiers reporting the contents of the documents quickly made the rounds of the various intelligence branches. But, according to Unger’s investigation, between their surfacing in January 2001 and the fateful January 2003 State of the Union Address in which President Bush used specific information from the forgeries to make his case for war to the American people, the documents had been discredited on 14 separate occasions by CIA analysts, State Department WMD experts, foreign intelligence agencies, current and former US diplomats, and others.

Additional resources:

• A Little White Lie: Bush and the Niger Forgeries
• Yellowcake & Black PSY OPS: insiders call Niger forgeries WH "Black Propaganda"
• Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Special Counsel
• The Most Heinous Crime of the New Millennium
• Bush Administration’s Lies About Iraq: A Compendium
  

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Ding Dong! Zarqawi's still dead and Bush's campaign of war crimes is still alive

The media celebration of Al Zarqawi's alleged death last week is uninformed, stupid, obscene. No one ever said Zarqawi was a boy scout. The media ignores some important facts. The "insurgency" could not target U.S. troops if they weren't there! Bin Laden —about whom this war we were told was begun —was never said to have been in Iraq, but, nevertheless, Iraq was Bush's first choice for attack. Iraq had better targets, it was said. That's the logic of the drunk who searches for his lost keys under the street light because the light is better. It's also Bush's logic.

Bin Laden is most certainly safe in the mountains of Pakistan secure in the knowledge that Bush's second statement about him is correct:

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

—George W. Bush, Press Conference by the President, The James S. Brady Briefing Room, March 13, 2002, 4:00 P.M. EST

Earlier, September of 2001, Bush launched his fraudulent war on "tuhruhrr" with one of his first broken promises. Bush called upon the Afghan people to break with the Taliban and help him "...smoke [Islamic "terrorists] out; get them running so we can get them." Bush promised to "...bring them to justice".

None of that happened! Secondly, I would like to know when Bin Laden ever took over a country. When did Bin Laden call the "...shots for the Taliban"? When is the MSM ever going to challenge Bush's seemingly endless string of lies, absurdities, stupid remarks, and inanities? George W. Bush has most certainly murdered more Iraqi citizens than Al Zarqawi and Saddam Hussein together.

It's hard to believe that it was in the year 2004 that the Washington Post reported that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died because of the U.S. invasion.[100,000 Civilian Deaths Estimated in Iraq, Rob Stein, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, October 29, 2004; Page A16] On January 9, 2006, Bush himself estimated Iraqi civilian deaths may be well over 180,000. By now, possibly, half a million. Deaths attributed solely to Zarqawi are not nearly so high. Moreover, Zarqawi most certainly would not be in Iraq had not Bush invaded that country to begin with. Tragically —Bush cannot be trusted to sort out the dead. He merely delivers them up and leaves to bereathed families the task of burying his victims.

Oddly, Donald Rumsfeld told the truth —however inadvertently. "It [insurgency] was more than had been predicted," Rumsfeld told CNN. He blamed the insurgency itself on "imperfect intelligence" and acknowledged that the American presence had been been "feeding" the "insurgency".

The word "insurgency" is Bush newspeak. Bush won his first propaganda battle when the MSM picked up the word and repeated it without questioning its appropriateness. It's called "framing". Insurgency does not describe a situation characterized by sectarian violence, possibly civil war. Insurgency does not describe a chaotic anarchy fed and purposefully aggravated by the very presence of U.S. troops. U.S. troops now appear to have waged a deliberate war of atrocity against the civilian population; the word "insurgency", therefore, sounds hollow, disingenuous, purposefully untruthful. Better terms to describe Iraq are "civil war" and "resistance to an aggressor".

The fact never reported by MSM is that the U.S. attack and invasion of Iraq, a sovereign nation, was from the very start an illegal war of naked aggression, a capital crime under U.S. law. But, I am wasting my breath. When Bush is charged under 18 § 2441, a packed, GOP appeals court will uphold his decree that if " the President does it, it's legal!". Why didn't Hermann Goring and the hanged Nazi war criminals think of that? They might have survived to advise the GOP!

Already, the United States has unilaterally exempted U.S. troops from war crimes prosecution in the Hague. A bill entitled To protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States Government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not party was introduced by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) as an amendment to H.R. 1646, The Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2001, on May 8, 2001. It passed the House 282-137 on May 10 and introduced as S. 857 in the Senate on May 9 by Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC), Zell Miller (D-GA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), John Warner (R-VA), Trent Lott (R-MS), Richard Shelby (R-AL), and Frank Murkowski (R-AK).

The bill authorized Bush "...to use all means (including the provision of legal assistance) necessary to bring about the release of covered U.S. persons and covered allied persons held captive by or on behalf of the Court [International Criminal Court, ICC, in the Hague]. Some highlights:

The President is authorized to invade The Hague. Specifically, the bill empowers Bush to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release from captivity of U.S. or Allied personnel detained or imprisoned against their will by or on behalf of the Court. Dutch cartoonists have depicted U.S. paratroopers dropping down on the international court; U.S. assault forces hitting Netherlands beaches like D-Day!

No U.S. governmental entity --including State or local governments and court of any U.S. jurisdiction --may cooperate with the ICC in arrests, extraditions, searches and seizures, taking of evidence, seizure of assets, or similar matters.

No classified national security information can be transferred directly or indirectly to the ICC or to countries Party to the Rome Statute.

These provisions are in addition to existing U.S. law (the 2000-2001 Foreign Relations Authorization Act) which prohibits any U.S. funds going to the ICC once it has been established unless the Senate has given its advice and consent to the Rome Treaty.

Here's some more ancient history. Forty-four members of the U.S. House of Representatives on July 19, 2001 urged Bush "... to remain engaged with the Court, and demonstrate America's commitment to the often-difficult and complicated international effort to promote justice and human rights", the Bush administration, nevertheless, rejected the ICC treaty. A letter from US envoy Ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that Washington had no intention of ratifying the treaty and considered itself “...no longer bound in any way to its [the treaty's] purpose and objective.”

Clearly —this represented at the time an unprecedented rift between the United States and its European allies; American isolation has only increased since then. Over the five years or so since Bush declared the U.S. above international laws that the U.S. had, in fact, insisted upon, Bush continues to thumb his nose at the civilized world while the United States plays the roll of a rogue, out of control nation dominated by a militant, extremist, right wing junta.

Iraqis are worse off under Bush —an undeniable fact glossed over by a kool-aid addicted American media. It's time to connect the dots. The United States is building permanent bases in Iraq. The observable permanent state of turmoil and chaos in Iraq is as good a pretext as any for a continued U.S. aggression and war crime. After all, there is little chance of appealing to law and treaty when it is the "President" of the United States who thumbs his nose at them. Denial and delusion are more palatable than truth: Bush invaded Iraq in order to steal its oil for his base back home: big oil! Additional resources:

• UN panel condemns U.S. torture
• The Logic of War Crimes in a Criminal War
• Rumsfeld: Iraq timetable wouldn't 'do any good' (Except, maybe, save lives!)
• How Many Iraqis Have Died Since the US Invasion in 2003?
• Iraq death toll 'soared post-war'
• International Shame for Bush

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Forget the Iraq civil war; the U.S. cultural war rages on

In 1992 Pat Buchanan addressed the Republican National convention with talk of great "culture war" that would be waged in America. What he didn't tell the convention was that the right wing would declare the war by attacking the U.S. Constitution.

Buchanan didn't tell his audience that his culture war would pit Americans against one another. He didn't tell America that his culture war was purely partisan. He didn't tell those not supporting that convention that they would become targets of a right jihad.

He didn't tell the nation that his culture war would be an entirely negative, destructive war that would treat citizens as enemies of the state —though they are protected by the Constitution and are, in fact, on the right and historically correct side of the Constitution.

From the psychotic viewpoint of the increasingly radical right wing, it must destroy and subvert the Constitution in order to wage this war on the American population. Put another way: under Bush, the right wing has learned how to make legal what had been illegal under the Constitution.

In a monument to backward thinking and circular logic, the GOP will justify its subversion of the rule of law because it is necessary in order to achieve the right wing agenda.

Since 1992, the GOP has waged this war on many fronts: the schools, congressional districts, the courts, and, most insidiously, the validity of the ballot box itself. It is a war on anyone disagreeing with a narrow, increasingly rabid, fanatical Weltanschauung.

Under George W. Bush, the GOP has waged this war on fellow Americans as Hitler waged his war on the Jew, that is, by denying the blessings of Due Process of Law to anyone who dares to dissent. It is a political war that exploits the advantages of corporate power by forging a fascistic partnership with the corporate community. In alliance with big, corporate media, for example, the right wing junta slanders individuals, undermines the Bill of Rights, and, in other ways— legal and illegal —destroys the very underpinnings of American society. This is, for them, as it was for Hitler, a single-minded quest for raw power. It is total cultural war.

The mere impeachment and imprisonment of George W. Bush will not begin to address the crisis. As many bloggers have pointed out recently: Bush is —as he has said —a war President. What escapes mere words is Bush's role. He has become the impresario of a radical, right wing, fascist agenda that pits American against American, citizen against citizen. Bush's war is not against Iraq; it is against America, the American people, the Constitution, the rule of law, and Due Process of Law. We have seen the enemy and it is George W. Bush, the GOP and all their "fellow travelers"!

Revolution is not always waged with violence in the streets. But, with Bush, there seems to be a resurrection of old tactics. Among more prominent examples is the gang of GOP "brownshirts" who feloniously attacked the recount rooms in Florida. More recently in Sugar Land, TX, a gang of thugs —supporting Tom DeLay --violently attacked a peaceful rally held by DeLay's Democratic opponent. Clearly —the right wing will not be satisfied until the Constitution is overthrown and a dictatorship installed; it has shown itself capable of violence and thuggery to make it happen.

Some recent events here at home illustrate how the right wing has racheted up their practices, strategies, lies and histrionics. Recent comments by Bill O'Reilly illustrate the extremes to which they will resort. It was bad enough that Ronald Reagan paid his "respects" to the Nazi SS at Bitburg, saying that they were likewise "victims" of Hitler's right wing regime, now we are expected sit quietly while Bill O'Reilly blames Amercans —not Nazi SS —for the massacre at Malmedy.

R. Reagan Paying Homage to SS at Bitburg

Zarqawi: Dead Again

Al-Zarqawi dies for the umpteenth time but now the US government says sincerely Zarqawi is really, really dead again.

The story goes something like this:

(Munchkins)
The house began to pitch, the kitchen took a slitch
It landed on the wicked witch in the middle of a ditch
Which was not a healthy situation for the wicked witch
Who began to twitch, and was reduced to just a stitch
Of what was once the wicked witch

But we've got to verify it legally

To see...

(Mayor)
To see...

(Judge)
If he...

(Mayor)
If he...

(Judge)
Is morally, ethically

(Munchkin 1)
Spiritually, physically


(Munchkin 2)
Positively, absolutely

(Munchkin Men)
Undeniably and reliably dead

(Coroner)
As Coroner , I thoroughly examined him
And he's not only merely dead
He's really most sincerely dead

Zarqawi has been upheld both in official statements and the media as head of "the Sunni insurgency", leader of "al-Qaeda in Iraq", allegedly responsible for the killings of thousands of civilians.

To be less than satirical, the pictures of his alleged corpse are surprisingly photogenic considering that the U.S. Military does not claim to have dropped a house on Zarqawi —merely two 500-pound bombs at the conclusion of a three day operation. Amazing that he is both recognizable and in one piece. But the U.S. Military would not lie about this...would they?

Ding-dong the witch is dead
Which old witch? The wicked witch
Ding-dong the wicked witch is dead
Wake up you sleepyhead
Rub your eyes, get out of bed
Wake up the wicked witch is dead
She's gone where the goblins go

Below - below - below

Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out
Ding Dong' the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low
Let them know the Wicked Witch is dead

In the meantime, there is evidence even in the MSM that Zarqawi was part of a Pentagon disinformation campaign. It was said to have been launched in 2003 to justify Bush's attack and invasion of Iraq. Zarqawi played so valuable role in U.S. propaganda that he was killed and revived many times. I've lost count. According to leaked military documents published by the Washington Post, the Pentagon had set up a "Zarqawi program" in which Zarqawi's role was deliberately "magnified" to galvanized U.S. public support for Bush war of aggression in Iraq:

"The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work..."

"the Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

—Washington Post, April 10, 2006)

I have no idea how Bush plans to capitalize on the death of a man who obviously had more than one life to give for his cause. And to be fair, there is no reason to believe that he will not be resurrected again.

I would not be just a nuffin'
My head all full of stuffin'
My heart all full of pain
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain

—Possibly G.W. Bush in an unguarded moment

But try to have a nice day knowing that all is screwed up in Kansas, Texas, and most certainly Washington D.C. where the U.S. Military has no credibility whatsoever.

Some day I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me

Ah! Lost innocence!

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How the U.S. Military deliberately lied about Haditha and tried to cover it up

The official military cover story goes like this:

[Fifteen Iraqis] "...were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately after the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another."

—Marine spokesman, Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, Iraq,

It's hard not to conclude that the lie is deliberate.

Here's one of the best summaries of what really happened to be found on the internet:

On the morning of 19 November 2005, U.S. Marines were on their way to Haditha, in northwest Iraq. When they were attacked and later failed to find their attackers, they deliberately and indiscriminately massacred 24 Iraqi civilians in the Subhani district of Haditha. The victims ”range from little babies to adult males and females." Initially, the U.S. Marines alleged that 15 “insurgents” and civilians were killed in “cross fire." As usual, the U.S. Marines lied about the massacre and tried to cover it up. It was the video of an Iraqi journalism student from Haditha which prompted Time magazine to investigate the massacre.

—Ghali Hassan, Online Journal

What is known about the massacre at Haditha? We know that a responding unit found the bodies of 24 Iraqi civilians —babies, women, children shot in the head. The body of an old man was found still in his wheelchair, shot nine times. One wonders if the man in the wheelchair is the one referred to by 9 year old Eman Waleed, who survived by faking her own death.

Eman Waleed, a 9-year-old girl who survived the massacre told the told Time: “First, they went into my father’s room, where he was reading the Koran, and we heard shots. Then, the soldiers came back into the living room. I couldn’t see their faces very well -- only their guns sticking into the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny."

—Online Journal

Girls —ages 1 to 14 —lay dead.

Clearly —none of them had been killed by a bomb as the U.S. military would have had you believe. Rather —all 24 dead had been killed by U.S. military gunfire. The source for that information are the death certificates themselves.

The U.S. military deliberately ignored accounts by eyewitnesses, letting stand a U.S. cover story for a period of six months. The truth about the case is still hidden under the cover of an "on-going" investigation. It is doubtful that any meaningful investigation has ever been conducted into the "...countless My Lai massacres" in Iraq.

"Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports.

At least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according to military officials

In Fallujah, 40% of the buildings were completely destroyed, 20% had major damage, and 40% had significant damage. That is 100% of the buildings in that city."

—Mike Ferner, Lew Rockwell

Among the "...countless My Lai massacres" that have been referred to in recent days, three incidents are under current investigation: Ishaqi, Haditha and Hamandiya.

Given the utter collapse of credibility in the U.S. military and Rumsfeld Pentagon specifically, there is no reason not to believe that many other incidents are still covered up and will remain forever un-investigated. Rumsfeld's Pentagon no longer has the benefit of the doubt. The latest revelations must not be considered in isolation and higher ups —to include Donald Rumsfeld himself —must not be left off the hook.

The only way to get at the truth now is to convene a Federal Grand Jury and a Special Prosecutor with sweeping subpoena powers. Just as Sy Hersh connected the Abu Ghraib abuses to Donald Rumsfeld and even George W. Bush himself, a real investigation must not stop before it implicates the higher ups. The pattern of heinous and insane atrocities that characterize the Bush administration's illegal and treasonous occupation of Iraq can be found in various "snapshots" available from time to time. One of the most vivid is from Abu Ghraib:

In her video diary, a prison guard said that prisoners were shot for minor misbehavior, and claimed to have had venomous snakes bite prisoners, sometimes resulting in their deaths. By her own admission, that guard was "in trouble" for having thrown rocks at the detainees.^[11] Hashem Muhsen, one of the naked men in the human pyramid photo, said they were also made to crawl around the floor naked and that U.S. soldiers rode them like donkeys. After being released in January 2004, Muhsen became an Iraqi police officer.

More pieces of this evil mosaic can be found in the following links courtesy Cindy Sheehan writing for Buzzflash:

The invasion of Iraq is a preventive war of aggression against a country that was no threat to the USA or the world and was expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

• The invasion was not sanctioned or approved of by the United Nations.
• "Shock and awe " targeted civilian centers and killed many innocent people.
• Abu Ghraib.
  
• Guantanamo.
  
• "Extreme rendition."
• Use of chemical weapons, especially white phosphorous enhanced with napalm, particularly in the second siege of Fallujah.
• Targeting hospitals, clinics, and threatening Medical Doctors with execution if one treats "insurgents" (which can apparently include babies and pregnant women).
  
• Using highly compensated mercenaries to carry out executions and torture.
• Forcing a style of government on the citizens and manipulating the outcome of the elections.

Additional resources:

• Bruce Jackson: Why Haditha Happened
• Impeachable Treason
• The Road to Abu Ghraib

It's time the American people demanded an end to the Bush pattern of cover up, white wash, and lies. This illegitimate administration must be ended, and, if it is not, America is finished.

An update on the American cover up of "...countless My Lai massacres":

Press Accounts Suggest Military 'Cover-up' in Ishagi Killings

By Greg MitchellPublished: June 03, 2006 1:40 PM ET

NEW YORK The U.S military said Saturday it had found no wrongdoing in the March 15 raid on a home in Ishaqi that left nine Iraqi civilians dead. But, as with the apparent massacre in Haditha, will a military "coverup" in this case come undone? E&P coverage from back in March, and other evidence, suggest that the official story may soon unravel.

The Iraqi police charge that American forces executed the civilians, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old baby. The BBC has been airing video of the dead civilians, mainly children, who appeared to be shot, possibly at close range. Photographs taken just after the raid for the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, and reports at the time by Reuters and Knight Ridder, also appear to back up the charge of an atrocity. ...

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An Emerging Pattern of U.S. War Crimes and Atrocities in Iraq Suggests a Heinous Policy

The "few bad applies" defense falls apart in the face of "...countless My Lai massacres" in Iraq and new revelations. A pattern of war crimes emerges. News of other incidents supports the proposition that the Bush administration has deliberately waged a war on the civilian population of Iraq. The new allegations first.

BBC video footage shows bodies of Iraqis

By Julian E. Barnes
Originally published June 3, 2006

Senior Defense officials pushed back yesterday against the latest accusations of wrongdoing, denying accounts that U.S. soldiers deliberately killed civilians in a March raid but acknowledging that more civilians might have died than the military first reported.

Iraqi police and other witnesses had claimed that U.S. forces had killed as many as 13 civilians in the small hamlet of Ishaqi, near the Iraqi city of Balad, tying up some and shooting them in the head. Video obtained by the British Broadcasting Corp. and the Associated Press showed bodies of victims, including several children, who apparently had been killed by gunshot wounds or shrapnel.

The U.S. military initially reported that there were four people, one insurgent and three civilians, killed in the Ishaqi raid. But yesterday, they acknowledged that eight other noncombatants had been killed, calling the additional casualties "collateral deaths." ...

From another source today:

BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- In the wake of an alleged massacre of unarmed civilians in Haditha by U.S. Marines, new video has emerged with fresh allegations of U.S. troops killing Iraqi civilians in an attack on the village of Ishaqi. ...

—Global National Online

Various British media have released video footage that depicts a bloody aftermath of a U.S. attack in March that resulted in the murders of 11 Iraqis —including at least five children.

Overshadowed by the events at Haditha is an earlier account of a U.S. attack near Baghdad:

Other eyewitness reports state that American military forces surrounded the Al Mustafa mosque in northeast Baghdad, while helicopters buzzed overhead and a fleet of heavily armed Humvees sealed off the exits. The mosque's 80-year-old imam, and many other civilians, were killed in the attack.

Videotape showed a pile of bodies with gunshot wounds on the floor of the Imam's living quarters in the mosque. There were also 5.56mm shell casings on the floor, which is the type of ammunition used by U.S. soldiers.

Another massacre of Iraqis occurred on November 19, when marines shot dead at least 15 Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children. The shooting took place in the village of Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad in the western province of Anbar.

—U. S. Massacres in Iraq, Anti-Imperialist News Service

The lid is at last off this story. And it just doesn't end:

Countless My Lai Massacres in Iraq

The media feeding frenzy around what has been referred to as "Iraq's My Lai" has become frenetic. Focus on US Marines slaughtering at least 20 civilians in Haditha last November is reminiscent of the media spasm around the "scandal" of Abu Ghraib during April and May 2004.

Yet just like Abu Ghraib, while the media spotlight shines squarely on the Haditha massacre, countless atrocities continue daily, conveniently out of the awareness of the general public. Torture did not stop simply because the media finally decided, albeit in horribly belated fashion, to cover the story, and the daily slaughter of Iraqi civilians by US forces and US-backed Iraqi "security" forces has not stopped either. ...

The war itself is illegal under the Principles of Nuremberg. The subsequent murders of civilians and the cover-ups throughout the chain of command are most certainly prosecutable at the Hague. When it is learned that there is probable cause that Bush himself conspired with Donald Rumsfeld to "...export death and destruction to the four corners of the earth", then the people of the United States must rise up and demand that Bush step down and surrender for arrest and war crimes trials.

Let's have a real investigation for a change. I would put forward this testable proposition: that there is more probable cause that Bush is culpable for these crimes under 18 § 2441 and the Nuremberg Principles than there is reason to believe that any one of the millions of Americans whose rights to Due Process of Law have been denied by Bush's widespread domestic surveillance program have been engaged in any way at any time with "terrorism". Let's make public the probable cause that Bush himself is responsible for the policies that have been executed in Iraq.

It's time that the real "bad applies" be brought to book!

Robert Fisk: On the shocking truth about the American occupation of Iraq

Could Haditha be just the tip of the mass grave? The corpses we have glimpsed, the grainy footage of the cadavers and the dead children; could these be just a few of many? Does the handiwork of America's army of the slums go further?

I remember clearly the first suspicions I had that murder most foul might be taking place in our name in Iraq. I was in the Baghdad mortuary, counting corpses, when one of the city's senior medical officials - an old friend - told me of his fears. "Everyone brings bodies here," he said. "But when the Americans bring bodies in, we are instructed that under no circumstances are we ever to do post-mortems. We were given to understand that this had already been done. Sometimes we'd get a piece of paper like this one with a body." And here the man handed me an American military document showing the hand-drawn outline of a man's body and the words "trauma wounds".

What kind of trauma? Indeed, what kind of trauma is now being experienced in Iraq? Who is doing the mass killing? Who is dumping so many bodies on garbage heaps? After Haditha, we are going to reshape our suspicions. ...

Press Accounts Suggest Military 'Cover-up' in Ishagi Killings

By Greg MitchellPublished: June 03, 2006 1:40 PM ET

NEW YORK The U.S military said Saturday it had found no wrongdoing in the March 15 raid on a home in Ishaqi that left nine Iraqi civilians dead. But, as with the apparent massacre in Haditha, will a military "coverup" in this case come undone? E&P coverage from back in March, and other evidence, suggest that the official story may soon unravel.

The Iraqi police charge that American forces executed the civilians, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old baby. The BBC has been airing video of the dead civilians, mainly children, who appeared to be shot, possibly at close range. Photographs taken just after the raid for the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, and reports at the time by Reuters and Knight Ridder, also appear to back up the charge of an atrocity. ...

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Dante Lee: Short Memories

Adolf Hitler once said to one of his advisers worrying about how History might look on the Fuhrer’s plan for the Jews: “Who remembers about the Armenian genocide?” The monster unfortunately nailed it right on the head.

History of wars and genocides can be compared to labor pain. It is absolutely excruciating but instantly forgotten at the very first cry of the child. And humans, just like the mothers who infant them, have an incredibly short memory when it comes to History.

Even the names of the men and women who have contributed to shape the world history, who have died for the sake of its progress, often get the hardest time to be remembered in our classrooms: who, for instance, remembers Hypatia, the last scholar of Alexandria; woman mathematician, neo-Platonian philosopher, astronomer and charismatic orator, who was the very first scientist martyr into being forcibly undressed, lynched, skinned by rough sea shells and tiles, and finally dismembered by an angry Christian mob in the streets of Alexandria in 415 AD?

Who remembers Margaret Sanger, the inventor of Family planning? She was lynched seven times -often closed to death – by angry men for her passion to help early 19th century women whose husbands only regarded them as mere baby factories. I can go on and on and write a huge list of reformers, an encyclopedia out of those forgotten heroes. But my point is, why are hard earned progress and reforms endangered once again —and so soon? And why do the battles have to be re-fought anew?

When it comes to genocides, massacres, abuses and atrocities, our memory skills get even more pathetic. If it is already challenging to feel personally the pain inflicted to an individual other than oneself, it is just impossible to funnel the pain of an entire community into one’s brain. How can we feel all these different pains at the same time?

In movies depicting such events like the Holocaust in WWII, directors show the need to focus their cameras on scenes involving a sole victim, in order to illustrate the crime committed on a group. When screening the Spielberg’s movie, “Schindler’s list”, one can witness how murderous acts committed on one individual result often in a buzzing of tear jerking throughout the theater, while the emotionally charged shot of a mountain of human corpses is invariably taken with a solemn silence from the crowd.

A mass of people dying is too much of a fuzzy thought for the common news readers. For instance, is there a newspaper out there that has ever published anything more than a few reader’s comments about the 36 millions Africans left to die since the day when Dick Cheney went to Davos, Switzerland, in order to defend the un-defendable: the “right” of American pharmaceutical industries to hold on to their patents on the AIDS drug cocktail and prevent the third world countries to be able to produce them cheaply? Or the billions confiscated by the Bush administration from the UN war chest for the war against AIDS, because this administration can not tolerate that the world’s NGOs preaching condoms instead of abstinence.

Genocides have become a bore. A journalist from Time magazine on the ground in Darfour, complained last week on National Public Radio for the fact that world news agencies pick up and relate a massacre only if it contains sexual contents such as rapes and sexual tortures.

Networks have understood this long ago. The near half-million dead from the Christmas 2004 Tsunami, the sinking of a ferry-boat, the last big earthquake in Iran, Katrina; these are just “sensationalist” events. Meanwhile, the genocide in Darfour, in Rwanda, or the major human and economic disaster that is unfolding inside the republic of Congo, are treated in the news as mere natural disasters. We tend to have accepted that, for Western networks and media, blacks killing blacks, even by the millions, is just a natural thing, in the same level as a category 3 Hurricane or a bad monsoon.

When it comes to wars waged by our country, if you think that abuses and cruelties perpetrated by American soldiers are committed in a different state of mind than, say, My Lai or during the gruesome Spanish-American war - most particularly in Philippines - ask yourself this question: What is the difference between the infamous 1904 letter, sent by a Marine fighting in Philippines to her mother, describing “the nigger paradise” in which Marines were free to go into a bonanza of “nigger killing”, and a cellular phone video shot inside Abu-Ghraïb?

Another important reason for our short memory and for our tendency to continuously perpetrate these evil acts upon other nations or people is greed.

If a serious poll were conducted to determine the percentage of Americans who would prefer paying 50 bucks more for their sneakers, if consumers were guaranteed that those shoes were to be made by a company that works their employees within the full range of human rights, I’m sure that the reflection in the mirror would be painful to watch for most of us.

And it’s not just the greed for money. It’s deeper than that. It’s a genuine greed of gene. The Jewish community, for instance, quite vocally denounces the atrocities committed against them; and not only by the Nazis. With their high pitch lamentation and great skills as portraying themselves – justly - as victims, westerners still have a good memory of the Spanish massacres on their Jewish community during the 15 and 16th century.

But the Jewish community rarely talks about the mass of Gypsies, Poles, Russians, gays, and common resistance to Nazi occupations who died alongside their folk. Where are they when it comes to Darfour? Where were they during the genocide in Rwanda? Have you ever heard Israel lobbying for Turkey to apologize for the Armenian genocide?

And where are the Armenians for Darfour? Where are the American Indians talking for Aborigines?

The greed of gene affects all of us —but affects Americans in a somewhat a different tone. It is best exemplified thus:

"I eat more than you. I grow taller than you. I have more freedom than you. I have a bigger car, a bigger house. I piss on public schools because I want to show the world that I have paid more for the education of my children than you have. My oil is cheaper than you so I can go faster than you while my car is bigger than yours. My church is bigger than yours and will soon eat up all the followers from your church too. My country is bigger than yours, or if it’s not it’ll be soon. My country has more goodies hidden inside its underground than your country. And if it’s not the case, heck, you don’t have the money nor the industry to get what's under your own soil anyway: You’ll soon need us to dig and pump your stuff and you’ll be praising us for leaving you a few crumb!… at night, We go to bed praying out loud for the return of a Christ who, I’m sure, has blessed MY COUNTRY. When we dream, however, We see another JC for America: a Julius Caesar! ... or a Napoleon. What kind of Duke of Wellington any nation will oppose against the superpowers God had bestowed on us?”

You see, Imperialism is the oldest ideal of a human government. It is here to endure as it shows up time and time again when you expect it the least. Ask Beethoven how he felt when Bonaparte was declared Emperor! Imperialism has always been considered the ultimate award a civilization can obtain, once it has reached the top the world’s peaking order.

It is amusing how people get only shocked and disturbed by the atrocities perpetrated by other Empires, while coming up with the most stunning excuses for tolerating the same abuses done by their own empire.

American Protestants, who stunningly chose to call themselves Christians, believe staunchly that the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire is comparable to the Jewish Holocaust. What they don’t want to know - or even hear - is that the Roman Empire had actually been, in the beginning, quite tolerant toward the strange new Jewish sect; following the Roman spirit of inclusiveness of other religion and cultures. As long as Arabs, Jews, Greeks or others accept to pledge allegiance to Rome, despite of whatever they want to pray or believe, Rome accepted them as full citizen of her Empire. Racism did not exist under Rome, from Augustus to Constantine.

Christians under Rome, however, started, early, to aggressively proselytize their religion based on the axiom of civil disobedience, “Give Caesar what belong to Caesar and to God what belongs to Him.” The Empire justly saw this as a threat but opted for the wrong solution: scaring them. Therefore Rome started the gruesome episodes of sending the Christians to the lions, for the joy and entertainment of the mass.

Today’s America evinces the same attitude toward Muslims. Because of a few bad apples The United States feels threatened by the entire muslim community. True —we don’t send them to the lions; instead, we lock them up in Guantanamo Bay for indefinite lengths of time. But wait, we do send them to the lions: In Syria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, or anywhere where the CIA can operate torture chambers in perfect secrecy, or, if they cannot, outsource the torturing job.

The greed of gene, folks: The thing that makes us all forgetting the past, the heroes, the martyrs, the victims. The thing that made me understand why Colleges and High schools all have history books that always come into a new edition every year, despite the fact that the information they contain does not change overtime.

Because History is just like that: For every generation the same stories, framed into spanking new editions.

—Dante Lee, Guest Columnist.