Sunday, December 14, 2008
Friday, December 05, 2008
President Bush is looking to repair his image, wanting to appear more like a human who makes mistakes rather than a 'decider' who manipulated intelligence to start a war of aggression, a 'decider' who led the nation through deception and lie, a torturer whose image was that of a follower of God yet doing the Devil's work. Who can honestly forgive Bush for what he has done to the image of America, a freedom-loving, transparent Democracy? Not me. Sorry. I'll be happy to see an international tribunal try him for war crimes, because he killed 4,208 of my fellow military members needlessly and without shame, all the while hiding behind them in public appearances to keep his sham of a 'just war' alive. May he burn in Hell.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
September 12, 2008, 9:50 JTP COMMENT 29Nov08: BEFORE BUSH LEAVES OFFICE?
US to invade Iran any day now?
A few weeks ago the Russian newspaper Izvestia, a well-known and authoritive daily published nationwide and abroad, came forward with something that would have been looked upon as a conspiracy theory if published by a tabloid.
The paper suggested that by attacking South Ossetia, the Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had badly damaged a planned U.S. military operation against Iran. In the newspaper's opinion Georgia was supposed to play the role of another "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the U.S., i.e. an operational and tactical base for U.S.
aircraft that would be making bombing raids into Iran. Something akin to what Thailand was in the Vietnam war.
Thailand certainly benefited from the arrangement, and Georgia would have too, insists the paper, if its President hadn't put his ambitions above the US national interest and ended up beaten, disarmed, chewing on his neckties and totally incapable of providing whatever the U.S. needs from him.
That's why, according to Izvestia in yet another article on the matter, the U.S. response to the Russian retaliation was harsh in words but very mild in action. The latest on the issue suggests that Mikhail Saakashvili may be replaced any day now by direct order from Washington.
Having read the story in Izvestia I decided to try to figure out the extent of improbability and impossibility of the assumptions. As I was doing that, I remembered that early in August CNN had started showing U.S. generals who cried for more troops and hardware for Afghanistan which, in their opinion, was rapidly becoming a more intensive conflict than Iraq.
Shortly after that, a phone call came from a college friend who had just come back from Kandahar in Afghanistan, where he had seen American battle tanks being unloaded from a Ukrainian-registered Antonov-124 "Ruslan", the heaviest and largest cargo airplane in the world. The friend asked if I had any idea what tanks would be good for in Afghanistan, and I said I didn't. It's an established fact from the Soviet war in Afghanistan that tanks are no good for most of the country's mountainous territory. They are good for flatlands, and the main body of flat land in the region is right across the border in Iran.
Later in August there was another bit of unofficial information from a Russian military source: more than a thousand American tanks and armored vehicles had been shipped to Eastern Afghanistan by Ukrainian "Ruslans" flying in three to five shipments a day, and more flights were expected.
Somehow all this, together with the series of articles in Izvestia, the information that all U.S. troops in Afghanistan are going to be reassigned and regrouped under unified command, the arrival of NATO naval ships in the Black Sea, the appointment of a man used to command troops in a combat environment as the new commander of the US Central Command and other bits and pieces. To my total astonishment, when they all fell together the Izvestia story started looking slightly more credible than before.
Today the U.S. media reported that there had been a leak from the Pentagon about a secret Presidential order in which President Bush authorized his military (most of which is currently on Afghan soil) to conduct operations in Pakistan without the necessity for informing the Pakistani government. The U.S. military in Afghanistan - or shall we say in the whole region neighboring Iran - is getting a freer hand by the day. And it is getting more and more hardware to play with.
Of course it's quite clear now that Georgia has lost its immediate potential as a nearby airfield, but after all, the aircraft carriers in the Gulf are not so far away.
Believe me I'm not saying that the U.S. is going to start an all-out war against Iran tomorrow. But aren't there indications that it may happen the day after tomorrow, a month from now, or on any date before the official handover of Presidency in the U.S.? Or, as some suggest, before the election?
I'm just asking the questions. But there are some people, like those working for Izvestia, for instance, who answer them with a "yes".
Evgeny Belenkiy, RT.
US to invade Iran any day now?
A few weeks ago the Russian newspaper Izvestia, a well-known and authoritive daily published nationwide and abroad, came forward with something that would have been looked upon as a conspiracy theory if published by a tabloid.
The paper suggested that by attacking South Ossetia, the Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had badly damaged a planned U.S. military operation against Iran. In the newspaper's opinion Georgia was supposed to play the role of another "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the U.S., i.e. an operational and tactical base for U.S.
aircraft that would be making bombing raids into Iran. Something akin to what Thailand was in the Vietnam war.
Thailand certainly benefited from the arrangement, and Georgia would have too, insists the paper, if its President hadn't put his ambitions above the US national interest and ended up beaten, disarmed, chewing on his neckties and totally incapable of providing whatever the U.S. needs from him.
That's why, according to Izvestia in yet another article on the matter, the U.S. response to the Russian retaliation was harsh in words but very mild in action. The latest on the issue suggests that Mikhail Saakashvili may be replaced any day now by direct order from Washington.
Having read the story in Izvestia I decided to try to figure out the extent of improbability and impossibility of the assumptions. As I was doing that, I remembered that early in August CNN had started showing U.S. generals who cried for more troops and hardware for Afghanistan which, in their opinion, was rapidly becoming a more intensive conflict than Iraq.
Shortly after that, a phone call came from a college friend who had just come back from Kandahar in Afghanistan, where he had seen American battle tanks being unloaded from a Ukrainian-registered Antonov-124 "Ruslan", the heaviest and largest cargo airplane in the world. The friend asked if I had any idea what tanks would be good for in Afghanistan, and I said I didn't. It's an established fact from the Soviet war in Afghanistan that tanks are no good for most of the country's mountainous territory. They are good for flatlands, and the main body of flat land in the region is right across the border in Iran.
Later in August there was another bit of unofficial information from a Russian military source: more than a thousand American tanks and armored vehicles had been shipped to Eastern Afghanistan by Ukrainian "Ruslans" flying in three to five shipments a day, and more flights were expected.
Somehow all this, together with the series of articles in Izvestia, the information that all U.S. troops in Afghanistan are going to be reassigned and regrouped under unified command, the arrival of NATO naval ships in the Black Sea, the appointment of a man used to command troops in a combat environment as the new commander of the US Central Command and other bits and pieces. To my total astonishment, when they all fell together the Izvestia story started looking slightly more credible than before.
Today the U.S. media reported that there had been a leak from the Pentagon about a secret Presidential order in which President Bush authorized his military (most of which is currently on Afghan soil) to conduct operations in Pakistan without the necessity for informing the Pakistani government. The U.S. military in Afghanistan - or shall we say in the whole region neighboring Iran - is getting a freer hand by the day. And it is getting more and more hardware to play with.
Of course it's quite clear now that Georgia has lost its immediate potential as a nearby airfield, but after all, the aircraft carriers in the Gulf are not so far away.
Believe me I'm not saying that the U.S. is going to start an all-out war against Iran tomorrow. But aren't there indications that it may happen the day after tomorrow, a month from now, or on any date before the official handover of Presidency in the U.S.? Or, as some suggest, before the election?
I'm just asking the questions. But there are some people, like those working for Izvestia, for instance, who answer them with a "yes".
Evgeny Belenkiy, RT.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Bush and his big oil cabal would like for Americans to think that Hugo Chavez is a left wing, south American dictator. That lie couldn't be further from the truth. The people of Venezuela love him and every election they prove it. Spread this word to the people who believe everything this corrupted government tells us. They just want to demonize Chavez so we can go down there and steal his oil just like we want Bolivia's and Iran's and Iraq's oil. We want it all and those in power here in the U.S. don't care how many U.S. lives are spent enriching their corporate interests. They really couldn't care less how many American lives are spent in their quest for world domination of territory and resources. Shelley.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Opponents of President Hugo Chavez captured enough political terrain in Sunday's state and local elections to slow but not stop his grand ambitions to yank Venezuela and Latin America to the left, analysts said on Monday.
With both sides claiming victory, the results seem likely to set up another titanic battle in Venezuela. Chavez, 54, is expected to seek a national plebiscite early next year that would allow him to campaign for an additional six-year presidential term in 2012. Otherwise, Chavez would have to step down in early 2013 after 14 years in power.
"He wants to change the constitution to run again," said pollster Luis Vicente Leon. "There's no doubt about that."
Opposition party candidates on Monday celebrated winning the country's three most populous states, two smaller ones and the city of Caracas — in their best electoral showing in eight years.
Chavez, however, remains the country's dominant political figure. His candidates won about 58 percent of the overall vote in the governor's races, including 17 of the 22 contests. Chavez said his candidates won 80 percent of the mayoral races.
Chavez's older brother, Adan, was elected governor of Barinas by defeating a onetime Chavez supporter. The president's ex-wife, Marisabel Rodriguez, badly lost her race to be mayor of Barquisimeto on an anti-Chavez platform.
Following the elections, Chavez still exercises near-absolute control over the country's Congress. His appointees run the central bank, oversee the judicial system and manage state companies that his government has nationalized.
Chavez's government also runs programs highly popular in poor neighborhoods that give free health care delivered by Cuban doctors and that allow adults to return to school for no cost to get primary school, high school or university degrees.
Orlando Goncalves, a Caracas-based political consultant, said Chavez has the advantage in any upcoming referendum. "The president has a plan, and he knows what he wants," Goncalves said. "The opposition doesn't have a clear plan and remains divided."
Leon noted that the failure of opposition parties to settle on a single candidate in the winner-takes-all elections on Sunday likely cost them two governor's races.
In a nationwide televised address from the presidential palace Monday night, Chavez said opposition politicians are too busy knifing each other in the back to defeat him.
Chavez said the election results strengthened democracy in Venezuela.
So many Venezuelans voted on Sunday — turnout was 65 percent — that some didn't get to make their selections on the touch screen machines until six hours after polling stations had officially closed.
Goncalves said that in Sunday's elections, Chavez's candidates won 1.8 million votes more than Chavez did a year ago when Venezuelans rejected his proposal to abolish term limits and centralize the economy even further. Opposition candidates on Sunday won 300,000 votes less than they did a year ago.
"We won a tremendous victory," Chavez said in his nationwide talk, which lasted more than two hours. Chavez read the election results state by state to make his point that his side — or "21st Century Socialism" as he calls it — was the real victor.
Still, the opposition could take heart. Opposition parties will now hold five governor's offices, up from two, including the powerhouse states of Zulia, Miranda and Carabobo. Antonio Ledezma defeated a Chavez collaborator to be elected mayor of Caracas, the capital.
"We have to get to work to clean up Caracas," Ledezma said on Monday, noting that the city has perhaps the highest homicide rate in the world.
Carlos Ocariz, another opposition candidate, is the new mayor of Sucre, a sprawling slum district in eastern Caracas that had been a Chavez stronghold but is now beset by crime.
Manuel Rosales, who lost the 2006 presidential campaign to Chavez, was elected as mayor of Maracaibo, Zulia's capital.
"Chavez has to understand now that he has to negotiate, although I don't know if he's capable of doing that," said Alejandro Plaz, who is organizing an opposition civic group. "Chavez has just given orders to his governors, like they were his soldiers. He can't do that any more."
Plaz said Sunday's elections also likely signal problems for Chavez in congressional elections scheduled for 2010.
Plaz noted that analysts project a coming slowdown for Venezuela's oil-based economy with the sharp drop in oil prices.
"He'll have less money to spend," Plaz said.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Opponents of President Hugo Chavez captured enough political terrain in Sunday's state and local elections to slow but not stop his grand ambitions to yank Venezuela and Latin America to the left, analysts said on Monday.
With both sides claiming victory, the results seem likely to set up another titanic battle in Venezuela. Chavez, 54, is expected to seek a national plebiscite early next year that would allow him to campaign for an additional six-year presidential term in 2012. Otherwise, Chavez would have to step down in early 2013 after 14 years in power.
"He wants to change the constitution to run again," said pollster Luis Vicente Leon. "There's no doubt about that."
Opposition party candidates on Monday celebrated winning the country's three most populous states, two smaller ones and the city of Caracas — in their best electoral showing in eight years.
Chavez, however, remains the country's dominant political figure. His candidates won about 58 percent of the overall vote in the governor's races, including 17 of the 22 contests. Chavez said his candidates won 80 percent of the mayoral races.
Chavez's older brother, Adan, was elected governor of Barinas by defeating a onetime Chavez supporter. The president's ex-wife, Marisabel Rodriguez, badly lost her race to be mayor of Barquisimeto on an anti-Chavez platform.
Following the elections, Chavez still exercises near-absolute control over the country's Congress. His appointees run the central bank, oversee the judicial system and manage state companies that his government has nationalized.
Chavez's government also runs programs highly popular in poor neighborhoods that give free health care delivered by Cuban doctors and that allow adults to return to school for no cost to get primary school, high school or university degrees.
Orlando Goncalves, a Caracas-based political consultant, said Chavez has the advantage in any upcoming referendum. "The president has a plan, and he knows what he wants," Goncalves said. "The opposition doesn't have a clear plan and remains divided."
Leon noted that the failure of opposition parties to settle on a single candidate in the winner-takes-all elections on Sunday likely cost them two governor's races.
In a nationwide televised address from the presidential palace Monday night, Chavez said opposition politicians are too busy knifing each other in the back to defeat him.
Chavez said the election results strengthened democracy in Venezuela.
So many Venezuelans voted on Sunday — turnout was 65 percent — that some didn't get to make their selections on the touch screen machines until six hours after polling stations had officially closed.
Goncalves said that in Sunday's elections, Chavez's candidates won 1.8 million votes more than Chavez did a year ago when Venezuelans rejected his proposal to abolish term limits and centralize the economy even further. Opposition candidates on Sunday won 300,000 votes less than they did a year ago.
"We won a tremendous victory," Chavez said in his nationwide talk, which lasted more than two hours. Chavez read the election results state by state to make his point that his side — or "21st Century Socialism" as he calls it — was the real victor.
Still, the opposition could take heart. Opposition parties will now hold five governor's offices, up from two, including the powerhouse states of Zulia, Miranda and Carabobo. Antonio Ledezma defeated a Chavez collaborator to be elected mayor of Caracas, the capital.
"We have to get to work to clean up Caracas," Ledezma said on Monday, noting that the city has perhaps the highest homicide rate in the world.
Carlos Ocariz, another opposition candidate, is the new mayor of Sucre, a sprawling slum district in eastern Caracas that had been a Chavez stronghold but is now beset by crime.
Manuel Rosales, who lost the 2006 presidential campaign to Chavez, was elected as mayor of Maracaibo, Zulia's capital.
"Chavez has to understand now that he has to negotiate, although I don't know if he's capable of doing that," said Alejandro Plaz, who is organizing an opposition civic group. "Chavez has just given orders to his governors, like they were his soldiers. He can't do that any more."
Plaz said Sunday's elections also likely signal problems for Chavez in congressional elections scheduled for 2010.
Plaz noted that analysts project a coming slowdown for Venezuela's oil-based economy with the sharp drop in oil prices.
"He'll have less money to spend," Plaz said.
Monday, November 24, 2008
To All: I started with this basic message and then was helped by Navy Retired Commander, a personal friend of mine, who has a vast back ground in these maters and a great capability to put into words the information in support of seeing the problem clearly and objectively. It was a joint effort.
Why I Think it Could Possibly be WORSE Now than in the 1929 Crash (As I see it)
There were actually many things in our favor when FDR took office. Looking back, there was the CCC he would establish, although something like that, but more ambitious, could be established by Pres. Obama. The total national debt was only $19 billion $487 million on June 30, 1932. Debt service on the National debt was handleable. There were no Social Security or Medicare payments. There were no wars draining our treasury. Our military was mainly at home. People expected to be taxed as required to pay for what the Government was asked to do for all of us. Many attribute the final success of coming fully out of the depression to WWII and all the expenditures to build up our military hardware inventory and the preceding "Arsenal for Democracy" to help our soon-to-be allies.
At the present time, we have a $10.6 trillion debt that costs $424 billion a year just in interest at 4%, if we are lucky to get it or keep it that low. We have two wars going on at a cost of at least $10 billion a month. There is not a dime left in our Treasury. We have to borrow from those nations that are willing to buy US Treasury Bonds, many of them deep down unfriendly to the USA. How long we can keep that up is questionable. Our baby boomers are coming into Social Security and Medicare age. A total of $4.8 trillion, of which $2.4 trillion is owed to Social Security alone, is owed by Congress, in the form of US Treasury Bonds. Baby boomers are already coming on board. As people get laid off by the thousands each month, less is going into these trust funds as withholding taxes, as well as less into the Treasury in the form of income taxes. Any money we loan to financial institutions or manufacturing companies also has to be borrowed (beyond our means) from foreign sources.... basically Communist China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and other oil rich countries. We Americans just don't have the Treasure any more. It's all been spent. Again, how long will they continue to buy our Bonds, particularly when they fully realize these two facts:
Fact One: FY 2008 saw a budget of $3 trillion, with a short fall of an over one trillion dollar deficit. That simply means our government spent 50% more than we had coming in.
Fact Two: In the first 50 days of FY 2009, we already have a deficit of over $627 billion... already more than half of last full year's woeful deficit!
The government or powers to be can raise the FDIC insurance limits just as high as they want. That is purely a Good Feeling event. It would be absolutely worthless in a serious depression. The FDIC is already short of money. They are now borrowing from foreign sources to cover these losses. There is an ominous and impending limit to our borrowing ability or even debt extension capability. And to print money with no backing would further devalue the American dollar, which would be very bad (although it might help exports, of course, if anybody out there is in a position to buy anything from us.)
Again, money coming in will continue to be less available for Social Security and Medicare as more people become eligible and less people are paying into these funds due to being laid off work. Also, because of these lay offs, less money goes into the Treasury as Income Tax. It sure looks to me like it could be a never ending spiral down into the abyss unless highly creative minds and policies come very quickly to the rescue and Republicans in the Congress can free themselves from the short slogans that have prevented intelligent action in the recent past. (Just imagine if the Bush Administration had the responsibility to handle this onrushing genuine crisis on which the whole future of our Nation depends, even for a couple of additional months, or if the G.O.P. had picked up additional "NO, NEVER" seats on the Senate. We are VERY lucky as a Nation that Inauguration day was moved up to January from where it had been!)
Oh, to have it as good as FDR had it in 1932 compared to the mess left to him that Obama now has to face after eight years of ignorance, lack of observation, perception, even care, and ever present overhanging susceptibility to freezing in the headlights when prompt intelligent steps were called for. This will take some really smart maneuvering, adequate paths toward sufficient effective solutions for which are not yet obvious to me.
Oh, how I do hope I am wrong..... very, very wrong.
Colin
Why I Think it Could Possibly be WORSE Now than in the 1929 Crash (As I see it)
There were actually many things in our favor when FDR took office. Looking back, there was the CCC he would establish, although something like that, but more ambitious, could be established by Pres. Obama. The total national debt was only $19 billion $487 million on June 30, 1932. Debt service on the National debt was handleable. There were no Social Security or Medicare payments. There were no wars draining our treasury. Our military was mainly at home. People expected to be taxed as required to pay for what the Government was asked to do for all of us. Many attribute the final success of coming fully out of the depression to WWII and all the expenditures to build up our military hardware inventory and the preceding "Arsenal for Democracy" to help our soon-to-be allies.
At the present time, we have a $10.6 trillion debt that costs $424 billion a year just in interest at 4%, if we are lucky to get it or keep it that low. We have two wars going on at a cost of at least $10 billion a month. There is not a dime left in our Treasury. We have to borrow from those nations that are willing to buy US Treasury Bonds, many of them deep down unfriendly to the USA. How long we can keep that up is questionable. Our baby boomers are coming into Social Security and Medicare age. A total of $4.8 trillion, of which $2.4 trillion is owed to Social Security alone, is owed by Congress, in the form of US Treasury Bonds. Baby boomers are already coming on board. As people get laid off by the thousands each month, less is going into these trust funds as withholding taxes, as well as less into the Treasury in the form of income taxes. Any money we loan to financial institutions or manufacturing companies also has to be borrowed (beyond our means) from foreign sources.... basically Communist China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and other oil rich countries. We Americans just don't have the Treasure any more. It's all been spent. Again, how long will they continue to buy our Bonds, particularly when they fully realize these two facts:
Fact One: FY 2008 saw a budget of $3 trillion, with a short fall of an over one trillion dollar deficit. That simply means our government spent 50% more than we had coming in.
Fact Two: In the first 50 days of FY 2009, we already have a deficit of over $627 billion... already more than half of last full year's woeful deficit!
The government or powers to be can raise the FDIC insurance limits just as high as they want. That is purely a Good Feeling event. It would be absolutely worthless in a serious depression. The FDIC is already short of money. They are now borrowing from foreign sources to cover these losses. There is an ominous and impending limit to our borrowing ability or even debt extension capability. And to print money with no backing would further devalue the American dollar, which would be very bad (although it might help exports, of course, if anybody out there is in a position to buy anything from us.)
Again, money coming in will continue to be less available for Social Security and Medicare as more people become eligible and less people are paying into these funds due to being laid off work. Also, because of these lay offs, less money goes into the Treasury as Income Tax. It sure looks to me like it could be a never ending spiral down into the abyss unless highly creative minds and policies come very quickly to the rescue and Republicans in the Congress can free themselves from the short slogans that have prevented intelligent action in the recent past. (Just imagine if the Bush Administration had the responsibility to handle this onrushing genuine crisis on which the whole future of our Nation depends, even for a couple of additional months, or if the G.O.P. had picked up additional "NO, NEVER" seats on the Senate. We are VERY lucky as a Nation that Inauguration day was moved up to January from where it had been!)
Oh, to have it as good as FDR had it in 1932 compared to the mess left to him that Obama now has to face after eight years of ignorance, lack of observation, perception, even care, and ever present overhanging susceptibility to freezing in the headlights when prompt intelligent steps were called for. This will take some really smart maneuvering, adequate paths toward sufficient effective solutions for which are not yet obvious to me.
Oh, how I do hope I am wrong..... very, very wrong.
Colin
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Bringing Bush to Justice
The current (December 2008) issue of Harper’s Magazine contains an article by Scott Horton (“Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration”) that meticulously identifies and assesses the legal and political difficulties in the way of settling accounts with the Bush administration’s violations of American and international law. Horton’s article includes proposals for steering through the obstacles; a plan that, if implemented, would actually do much of what needs to be done. But, of course, nothing will happen unless Congress and the Obama administration are forced to do the right and necessary thing. That’s why the task now is to make it politically impossible for the Party of Pusillanimity to follow its usual inclinations.
Left to their own devices, Obama and the others will want to “move on.” But the stakes are too high for them to get their way. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest must be brought to justice.
Needless to say, in this instance, real justice can hardly even be approximated; there is no way any punishment could fit the enormity of the crimes for which Bush and the others could be charged. But that is no reason to accede to calls for “bipartisanship” and consensus (within the political class). If Democrats are reluctant to proceed, the first order of business must be to make it clear to them that they will pay electorally for their “reasonableness” (cowardice). It must be impressed upon them, in no uncertain terms, that justice must be done. But not just for justice’s sake.
The more urgent need is to change the political constraints under which Democrats (and Republicans) operate -- as deeply and for as long as possible, the better to deter future criminality, but also, more importantly, to remove the temptation. If anything good can emerge from the Bush Wars, it will be an Iraq (or Iraq plus Afghanistan) Syndrome more disabling than the (short-lived) Vietnam Syndrome was. As American world domination becomes increasingly untenable – at a time when capitalism itself is falling increasingly into crisis – there is no other way for the American people, and the peoples of the world, to avoid a potentially catastrophic, near term hard landing. One change we really do need that lies within the horizons of what is possible in the short run are policies aimed at making the inevitable landing as soft as possible – while the United States makes the transition from a rogue superpower to one of several world powers in more or less permanent crisis.
But, again, for that to happen we must change the constraints under which Obama and his Clintonite colleagues and advisors operate. It is becoming increasingly clear, with each passing day, that Obama won’t do anything of the kind on his own initiative; if he does it at all, it will be because he is compelled. That won’t be easy. But we can make it happen.
Posted by Andrew Levine at 10:59 AM
Bringing Bush to Justice
The current (December 2008) issue of Harper’s Magazine contains an article by Scott Horton (“Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration”) that meticulously identifies and assesses the legal and political difficulties in the way of settling accounts with the Bush administration’s violations of American and international law. Horton’s article includes proposals for steering through the obstacles; a plan that, if implemented, would actually do much of what needs to be done. But, of course, nothing will happen unless Congress and the Obama administration are forced to do the right and necessary thing. That’s why the task now is to make it politically impossible for the Party of Pusillanimity to follow its usual inclinations.
Left to their own devices, Obama and the others will want to “move on.” But the stakes are too high for them to get their way. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest must be brought to justice.
Needless to say, in this instance, real justice can hardly even be approximated; there is no way any punishment could fit the enormity of the crimes for which Bush and the others could be charged. But that is no reason to accede to calls for “bipartisanship” and consensus (within the political class). If Democrats are reluctant to proceed, the first order of business must be to make it clear to them that they will pay electorally for their “reasonableness” (cowardice). It must be impressed upon them, in no uncertain terms, that justice must be done. But not just for justice’s sake.
The more urgent need is to change the political constraints under which Democrats (and Republicans) operate -- as deeply and for as long as possible, the better to deter future criminality, but also, more importantly, to remove the temptation. If anything good can emerge from the Bush Wars, it will be an Iraq (or Iraq plus Afghanistan) Syndrome more disabling than the (short-lived) Vietnam Syndrome was. As American world domination becomes increasingly untenable – at a time when capitalism itself is falling increasingly into crisis – there is no other way for the American people, and the peoples of the world, to avoid a potentially catastrophic, near term hard landing. One change we really do need that lies within the horizons of what is possible in the short run are policies aimed at making the inevitable landing as soft as possible – while the United States makes the transition from a rogue superpower to one of several world powers in more or less permanent crisis.
But, again, for that to happen we must change the constraints under which Obama and his Clintonite colleagues and advisors operate. It is becoming increasingly clear, with each passing day, that Obama won’t do anything of the kind on his own initiative; if he does it at all, it will be because he is compelled. That won’t be easy. But we can make it happen.
Posted by Andrew Levine at 10:59 AM
Dear Newt,
I recently had the displeasure of watching you bash the protestors of the Prop 8 marriage ban to Bill O'Reilly on FOX News. I must say, after years of watching you build your career by stirring up the fears and prejudices of the far right, I feel compelled to use the words of your idol, Ronald Reagan, "There you go, again."
However, I realize that you may have been a little preoccupied lately with planning your resurrection as the savior of your party, so I thought I would fill you in on a few important developments you might have overlooked.
The truth is that you're living in a world that no longer exists. I, along with millions of Americans, clearly see the world the way it as -- and we embrace what it can be. You, on the other hand, seem incapable of looking for new ideas or moving beyond what worked in the past.
Welcome to the 21st century, big bro. I can understand why you're so afraid of the energy that has been unleashed after gay and lesbian couples had their rights stripped away from them by a hateful campaign. I can see why you're sounding the alarm against the activists who use all the latest tech tools to build these rallies from the ground up in cities across the country.
This unstoppable progress has at its core a group we at HRC call Generation Equality. They are the most supportive of full LGBT equality than any American generation ever -- and when it comes to the politics of division, well, they don't roll that way. 18-24 year olds voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8 and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. And the numbers of young progressive voters will only continue to grow. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, about 23 million 18-29 year olds voted on Nov. 4, 2008 -- the most young voters ever to cast a ballot in a presidential election. That's an increase of 3 million more voters compared to 2004.
These are the same people who helped elect Barack Obama and sent a decisive message to your party. These young people are the future and their energy will continue to drive our country forward. Even older Americans are turning their backs on the politics of fear and demagoguery that you and your cronies have perfected over the years.
This is a movement of the people that you most fear. It's a movement of progress -- and your words on FOX News only show how truly desperate you are to maintain control of a world that is changing before your very eyes.
Then again, we've seen these tactics before. We know how much the right likes to play political and cultural hardball, and then turn around and accuse us of lashing out first. You give a pass to a religious group -- one that looks down upon minorities and women -- when they use their money and membership roles to roll back the rights of others, and then you label us "fascists" when we fight back. You belittle the relationships of gay and lesbian couples, and yet somehow neglect to explain who anointed you the protector of "traditional" marriage. And, of course, you've also mastered taking the foolish actions of a few people and then indicting an entire population based on those mistakes. I fail to see how any of these patterns coincide with the values of "historic Christianity" you claim to champion.
Again, nothing new here. This is just more of the blatant hypocrisy we're used to hearing.
What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions. That's really so '90s, Newt. In this day and age, it's embarrassing to watch you talk like that. You should be more afraid of the new political climate in America, because, there is no place for you in it.
In other words, stop being a hater, big bro.
I recently had the displeasure of watching you bash the protestors of the Prop 8 marriage ban to Bill O'Reilly on FOX News. I must say, after years of watching you build your career by stirring up the fears and prejudices of the far right, I feel compelled to use the words of your idol, Ronald Reagan, "There you go, again."
However, I realize that you may have been a little preoccupied lately with planning your resurrection as the savior of your party, so I thought I would fill you in on a few important developments you might have overlooked.
The truth is that you're living in a world that no longer exists. I, along with millions of Americans, clearly see the world the way it as -- and we embrace what it can be. You, on the other hand, seem incapable of looking for new ideas or moving beyond what worked in the past.
Welcome to the 21st century, big bro. I can understand why you're so afraid of the energy that has been unleashed after gay and lesbian couples had their rights stripped away from them by a hateful campaign. I can see why you're sounding the alarm against the activists who use all the latest tech tools to build these rallies from the ground up in cities across the country.
This unstoppable progress has at its core a group we at HRC call Generation Equality. They are the most supportive of full LGBT equality than any American generation ever -- and when it comes to the politics of division, well, they don't roll that way. 18-24 year olds voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8 and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. And the numbers of young progressive voters will only continue to grow. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, about 23 million 18-29 year olds voted on Nov. 4, 2008 -- the most young voters ever to cast a ballot in a presidential election. That's an increase of 3 million more voters compared to 2004.
These are the same people who helped elect Barack Obama and sent a decisive message to your party. These young people are the future and their energy will continue to drive our country forward. Even older Americans are turning their backs on the politics of fear and demagoguery that you and your cronies have perfected over the years.
This is a movement of the people that you most fear. It's a movement of progress -- and your words on FOX News only show how truly desperate you are to maintain control of a world that is changing before your very eyes.
Then again, we've seen these tactics before. We know how much the right likes to play political and cultural hardball, and then turn around and accuse us of lashing out first. You give a pass to a religious group -- one that looks down upon minorities and women -- when they use their money and membership roles to roll back the rights of others, and then you label us "fascists" when we fight back. You belittle the relationships of gay and lesbian couples, and yet somehow neglect to explain who anointed you the protector of "traditional" marriage. And, of course, you've also mastered taking the foolish actions of a few people and then indicting an entire population based on those mistakes. I fail to see how any of these patterns coincide with the values of "historic Christianity" you claim to champion.
Again, nothing new here. This is just more of the blatant hypocrisy we're used to hearing.
What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions. That's really so '90s, Newt. In this day and age, it's embarrassing to watch you talk like that. You should be more afraid of the new political climate in America, because, there is no place for you in it.
In other words, stop being a hater, big bro.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Sarah Palin: The view from Alaska
Amid “Troopergate” and other government scandals, including killing wolf pups, an Alaskan writer explains why the Palin phenomenon rings hollow in his home state.
By Nick Jans
Oct. 11, 2008 JUNEAU, Alaska — | I sat on the bank of the Kobuk River in northwest arctic Alaska on a mid-September morning. Upstream somewhere, wolves were howling — their chorus filling the silence, close enough that I could hear the aspiration at the end of each wavering call. Behind me, the slate-gray heave of the Brooks Range spilled off toward the north, the shapes of some peaks so familiar I’ve seen them in my sleep. The nearest highway lay 250 miles away. This is the Alaska where I spent half my life, and the only place that’s ever felt like home — the land of Eskimo villages, waves of migrating caribou and seemingly limitless space.
Though I was beyond the reach of the Internet and cellphones, and life was filled with rutting bull moose, incandescent autumn light and fresh grizzly tracks, I knew that thousands of miles to the south, the rest of the country was getting a crash course on our governor, Sarah Palin — someone who believes that climate change isn’t our fault; is dead set against a woman’s right to choose; has supported creationism in the schools; and was prayed over by a visiting minister at her church to shield her against witchcraft.
How was I to explain to all my lower 48 friends and writing colleagues how such a person could have been elected to lead our state — let alone been chosen to possibly become vice-president? Truth be told, I was as startled as anyone when I heard the news. At first I thought the McCain campaign’s announcement was some sort of bad joke.
In the broadest sense, Palin is a poseur. Alaska is too large and culturally diverse (it’s only a bit smaller than the entire lower 48 east of the Mississippi, and once was divided into four time zones) to be summed up by some abstract, romanticized notion. And even if it could be, it sure wouldn’t be symbolized by Palin. “The typical Alaskan? She couldn’t be farther from it,” says Alaska House Minority Leader Beth Kertulla.
Still, Palin is a genuine Alaskan — of a kind. The kind that flowed north in the wake of the ’70s oil boom, Bible Belt politics and attitudes under arm, and transformed this state from a free-thinking, independent bastion of genuine libertarianism and individuality into a reactionary fundamentalist enclave with dollar signs in its eyes and an all-for-me mentality.
Palin’s Alaska is embodied in Wasilla, a blue-collar, sharp-elbowed town of burgeoning big box stores, suburban subdivisions, evangelical pocket churches and car dealerships morphing across the landscape, outward from Anchorage, the state’s urban epicenter. She has lived in Wasilla practically all her life, and even now resides there, the first Alaska executive to eschew the white-pillared mansion in Juneau, down on the Southeast Panhandle.
Folks in the Mat-Su Valley, as the area is known, overwhelmingly support their favorite daughter’s policies — including a state-sanctioned program where private pilots chase down and kill wolves from small aircraft, and another that favors oil drilling offshore in the arctic sea ice and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. These same voters forage at McDonald’s and Safeway in their hunter camouflage, and make regular wilderness forays up and down the state’s limited highway grid with ATVs, snowmobiles and airboats in tow behind their oversize trucks. Sometimes I imagine I can hear the roar echoing across the state, all the way to the upper Kobuk, where easements for the highways of tomorrow are already staked out across the tundra.
Like many Alaskans, I resent Palin’s claims that she speaks for all of us, and cringe when she tosses off her stump speech line, “Well, up in Alaska, we….” Not only did I not vote for her, she represents the antithesis of the Alaska I love. As mayor, she helped shape Wasilla into the chaotic, poorly planned strip mall that it is; as governor, she’s promoted that same headlong drive toward development and despoilment on a grand scale, while paying lip service to her love of the place.
As for that frontierswoman shtick, take another look at that hairpiece-augmented beehive and those stiletto heels. Coming from a college-educated family, living in a half-million-dollar view home, basking in a net worth of $1.25 million, and having owned 40-some registered motorized vehicles in the past two decades (including 17 snowmobiles and a plane) hardly qualifies Palin and her clan as the quintessential Joe Six-Pack family unit — though the adulation from that quarter shows the Palins must be fulfilling some sort of role-model fantasy.
Palin can claim to know Alaska; the fact is, she’s seen only a minuscule fraction of it — and that doesn’t include Little Diomede Island, the one place in Alaska where you actually can see Russia. So she can ride an ATV and shoot guns. Set her down in the bush on her own and I bet we’d discover she’s about as adept at butchering a moose and building a fire at 40 below zero as she is at discussing Supreme Court decisions. And that mountain-woman act is only the tip of a hollow iceberg.
Palin, and by extension, the McCain campaign, has hijacked our state for political purposes, much to the chagrin of the tens of thousands of Alaskans who loathe what she stands for. Her much-touted popularity among residents has eroded over the past six weeks to somewhere in the mid-60s — not exactly what you’d expect in support of a home girl making a White House run.
There are no doubt a variety of reasons for this decline, but many Alaskans are embarrassed — not just by her, but for our state and for ourselves. What’s with the smug posturing, recently adopted fake Minnesota accent, and that gosh-darn-it hockey mom pitch? Maybe it plays well in Peoria (and presumably Duluth), but it’s all an act. “She’s definitely put on a new persona since she’s been a vice-presidential candidate,” says Kertulla, who has worked closely with Palin for the past 18 months. “I don’t even recognize her.”
Affectations aside, there’s plenty about Palin we Alaskans do recognize, and all too well. She’s already proven to us that her promises of transparent government, attendant to the will of the people, are bear pucky. We know about her private e-mail accounts and her systematic obstruction of the Alaska Legislature’s investigation of the so-called Troopergate scandal. But let’s turn to her environmental record, where a similar pattern of obfuscation continues.
First, Palin pushed hard, along with sport hunting and guiding interests, to help defeat a ballot initiative that would have stopped the state’s current aerial wolf control program, which had been criticized by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council for flawed science. Now her administration has pointedly refused to respond to repeated public information requests (I’m one of the petitioners, and a potential litigant), regarding the apparently illegal killing of 14 wolf pups at their dens on the Alaska Peninsula this spring by state personnel, including two high-level Department of Fish and Game administrators. A biologist at the scene admitted to an independent wolf scientist that the 6-week-old pups were held down and shot in the head, one by one. This inhumane practice, known as “denning,” has been illegal for 40 years. But a simple request for information on the details of this operation, including to what extent the governor was involved in the decision, has resulted in a typical Palinesque roadblock and a string of untruths.
Our I-love-Alaska governor was also instrumental in defeating a ballot initiative to stop development of a gargantuan open-pit mine incongruously known as Pebble near the headwaters of the most productive salmon watershed in the state, Bristol Bay. The current mine design calls for building the world’s largest earthen dam to hold back an enormous lake of toxic waste — this in a known earthquake zone. Crazy stuff, yet Palin openly opposed the initiative, in lock step with international mining corporations that invested millions of dollars in a misinformation campaign.
But Palin’s certified anti-environmental whopper is her lawsuit against the Bush administration (of all outfits) for listing polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. She claimed Alaska’s own experts had completed a review of the federal data and concluded that the listing was uncalled for. The truth was, state biologists had come to the opposite conclusion. But that report was never released, and her researchers had a gag clamped on them. Palin simply didn’t want anything to get in the way of offshore oil drilling in moving pack ice — where there is no way to contain, let alone clean up, catastrophic spills.
Whenever science or rules get in Palin’s way, she blows them off. Says homesteader Mark Richards, co-founder of the Alaska Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (a moderate conservation group), “Palin, like Governor Murkowski before her, is part and parcel of the good-ol-boy network that says, ‘Alaska is open for business.’”
Want to talk to Sarah? As governor, she has been accessible only on her carefully chosen terms, a trend we’re now witnessing on the national stage. And how about those Katie Couric moments when she drifts just a skosh off a well-rehearsed script? Are those a recent phenomenon, brought on by all this new information, pressure and the liberal-gotcha media? Nah. She’s been spouting “political gibberish” (to quote gubernatorial opponent Andrew Halcro) since she arrived on the Alaska scene. Yet somehow she continues to get away with it.
In the end, Palin’s attempt to cash in on the Eau d’Alaska mystique as she supports its destruction sickens those of us who do love this land, not for what it will be some day, after the roads and mines and pipelines and cities and malls are all in, but for what it is now. What we see before us is the soul of an ambitious, ruthless, Parks Highway hillbilly — a woman who represents the Alaska you probably never want to meet, and the one we wish never existed. That said, we’re all too willing to take her back. The alternative is just too damn frightening.
Amid “Troopergate” and other government scandals, including killing wolf pups, an Alaskan writer explains why the Palin phenomenon rings hollow in his home state.
By Nick Jans
Oct. 11, 2008 JUNEAU, Alaska — | I sat on the bank of the Kobuk River in northwest arctic Alaska on a mid-September morning. Upstream somewhere, wolves were howling — their chorus filling the silence, close enough that I could hear the aspiration at the end of each wavering call. Behind me, the slate-gray heave of the Brooks Range spilled off toward the north, the shapes of some peaks so familiar I’ve seen them in my sleep. The nearest highway lay 250 miles away. This is the Alaska where I spent half my life, and the only place that’s ever felt like home — the land of Eskimo villages, waves of migrating caribou and seemingly limitless space.
Though I was beyond the reach of the Internet and cellphones, and life was filled with rutting bull moose, incandescent autumn light and fresh grizzly tracks, I knew that thousands of miles to the south, the rest of the country was getting a crash course on our governor, Sarah Palin — someone who believes that climate change isn’t our fault; is dead set against a woman’s right to choose; has supported creationism in the schools; and was prayed over by a visiting minister at her church to shield her against witchcraft.
How was I to explain to all my lower 48 friends and writing colleagues how such a person could have been elected to lead our state — let alone been chosen to possibly become vice-president? Truth be told, I was as startled as anyone when I heard the news. At first I thought the McCain campaign’s announcement was some sort of bad joke.
In the broadest sense, Palin is a poseur. Alaska is too large and culturally diverse (it’s only a bit smaller than the entire lower 48 east of the Mississippi, and once was divided into four time zones) to be summed up by some abstract, romanticized notion. And even if it could be, it sure wouldn’t be symbolized by Palin. “The typical Alaskan? She couldn’t be farther from it,” says Alaska House Minority Leader Beth Kertulla.
Still, Palin is a genuine Alaskan — of a kind. The kind that flowed north in the wake of the ’70s oil boom, Bible Belt politics and attitudes under arm, and transformed this state from a free-thinking, independent bastion of genuine libertarianism and individuality into a reactionary fundamentalist enclave with dollar signs in its eyes and an all-for-me mentality.
Palin’s Alaska is embodied in Wasilla, a blue-collar, sharp-elbowed town of burgeoning big box stores, suburban subdivisions, evangelical pocket churches and car dealerships morphing across the landscape, outward from Anchorage, the state’s urban epicenter. She has lived in Wasilla practically all her life, and even now resides there, the first Alaska executive to eschew the white-pillared mansion in Juneau, down on the Southeast Panhandle.
Folks in the Mat-Su Valley, as the area is known, overwhelmingly support their favorite daughter’s policies — including a state-sanctioned program where private pilots chase down and kill wolves from small aircraft, and another that favors oil drilling offshore in the arctic sea ice and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. These same voters forage at McDonald’s and Safeway in their hunter camouflage, and make regular wilderness forays up and down the state’s limited highway grid with ATVs, snowmobiles and airboats in tow behind their oversize trucks. Sometimes I imagine I can hear the roar echoing across the state, all the way to the upper Kobuk, where easements for the highways of tomorrow are already staked out across the tundra.
Like many Alaskans, I resent Palin’s claims that she speaks for all of us, and cringe when she tosses off her stump speech line, “Well, up in Alaska, we….” Not only did I not vote for her, she represents the antithesis of the Alaska I love. As mayor, she helped shape Wasilla into the chaotic, poorly planned strip mall that it is; as governor, she’s promoted that same headlong drive toward development and despoilment on a grand scale, while paying lip service to her love of the place.
As for that frontierswoman shtick, take another look at that hairpiece-augmented beehive and those stiletto heels. Coming from a college-educated family, living in a half-million-dollar view home, basking in a net worth of $1.25 million, and having owned 40-some registered motorized vehicles in the past two decades (including 17 snowmobiles and a plane) hardly qualifies Palin and her clan as the quintessential Joe Six-Pack family unit — though the adulation from that quarter shows the Palins must be fulfilling some sort of role-model fantasy.
Palin can claim to know Alaska; the fact is, she’s seen only a minuscule fraction of it — and that doesn’t include Little Diomede Island, the one place in Alaska where you actually can see Russia. So she can ride an ATV and shoot guns. Set her down in the bush on her own and I bet we’d discover she’s about as adept at butchering a moose and building a fire at 40 below zero as she is at discussing Supreme Court decisions. And that mountain-woman act is only the tip of a hollow iceberg.
Palin, and by extension, the McCain campaign, has hijacked our state for political purposes, much to the chagrin of the tens of thousands of Alaskans who loathe what she stands for. Her much-touted popularity among residents has eroded over the past six weeks to somewhere in the mid-60s — not exactly what you’d expect in support of a home girl making a White House run.
There are no doubt a variety of reasons for this decline, but many Alaskans are embarrassed — not just by her, but for our state and for ourselves. What’s with the smug posturing, recently adopted fake Minnesota accent, and that gosh-darn-it hockey mom pitch? Maybe it plays well in Peoria (and presumably Duluth), but it’s all an act. “She’s definitely put on a new persona since she’s been a vice-presidential candidate,” says Kertulla, who has worked closely with Palin for the past 18 months. “I don’t even recognize her.”
Affectations aside, there’s plenty about Palin we Alaskans do recognize, and all too well. She’s already proven to us that her promises of transparent government, attendant to the will of the people, are bear pucky. We know about her private e-mail accounts and her systematic obstruction of the Alaska Legislature’s investigation of the so-called Troopergate scandal. But let’s turn to her environmental record, where a similar pattern of obfuscation continues.
First, Palin pushed hard, along with sport hunting and guiding interests, to help defeat a ballot initiative that would have stopped the state’s current aerial wolf control program, which had been criticized by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council for flawed science. Now her administration has pointedly refused to respond to repeated public information requests (I’m one of the petitioners, and a potential litigant), regarding the apparently illegal killing of 14 wolf pups at their dens on the Alaska Peninsula this spring by state personnel, including two high-level Department of Fish and Game administrators. A biologist at the scene admitted to an independent wolf scientist that the 6-week-old pups were held down and shot in the head, one by one. This inhumane practice, known as “denning,” has been illegal for 40 years. But a simple request for information on the details of this operation, including to what extent the governor was involved in the decision, has resulted in a typical Palinesque roadblock and a string of untruths.
Our I-love-Alaska governor was also instrumental in defeating a ballot initiative to stop development of a gargantuan open-pit mine incongruously known as Pebble near the headwaters of the most productive salmon watershed in the state, Bristol Bay. The current mine design calls for building the world’s largest earthen dam to hold back an enormous lake of toxic waste — this in a known earthquake zone. Crazy stuff, yet Palin openly opposed the initiative, in lock step with international mining corporations that invested millions of dollars in a misinformation campaign.
But Palin’s certified anti-environmental whopper is her lawsuit against the Bush administration (of all outfits) for listing polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. She claimed Alaska’s own experts had completed a review of the federal data and concluded that the listing was uncalled for. The truth was, state biologists had come to the opposite conclusion. But that report was never released, and her researchers had a gag clamped on them. Palin simply didn’t want anything to get in the way of offshore oil drilling in moving pack ice — where there is no way to contain, let alone clean up, catastrophic spills.
Whenever science or rules get in Palin’s way, she blows them off. Says homesteader Mark Richards, co-founder of the Alaska Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (a moderate conservation group), “Palin, like Governor Murkowski before her, is part and parcel of the good-ol-boy network that says, ‘Alaska is open for business.’”
Want to talk to Sarah? As governor, she has been accessible only on her carefully chosen terms, a trend we’re now witnessing on the national stage. And how about those Katie Couric moments when she drifts just a skosh off a well-rehearsed script? Are those a recent phenomenon, brought on by all this new information, pressure and the liberal-gotcha media? Nah. She’s been spouting “political gibberish” (to quote gubernatorial opponent Andrew Halcro) since she arrived on the Alaska scene. Yet somehow she continues to get away with it.
In the end, Palin’s attempt to cash in on the Eau d’Alaska mystique as she supports its destruction sickens those of us who do love this land, not for what it will be some day, after the roads and mines and pipelines and cities and malls are all in, but for what it is now. What we see before us is the soul of an ambitious, ruthless, Parks Highway hillbilly — a woman who represents the Alaska you probably never want to meet, and the one we wish never existed. That said, we’re all too willing to take her back. The alternative is just too damn frightening.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Democratic Imperative: Bush's "Unitary Executive" Notion Must be Obliterated
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Sunday, Feb 26, 06, 6:00AM
CLOSE
SOCIAL WEBSITES
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Facebook
Newsvine
Stumble Upon
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE
Email addresses will not be stored The Washington Note works hard to provide constructive, serious critiques of Bush administration foreign policy and attempts to avoid reckless typecasting or tractionless hyperventilation regarding what this administration is up to.
We try instead to characterize honestly the power grab that the Executive Branch has been engaged in since 9/11, but we also recognize that the administration is not monolithically united behind the adminstration's most outrageous positions -- and that the loyal minority has not done its part. On both the Democratic side and among Republican moderates, those who believe in checks-and-balances have done little to compellingly challenge this White House.
I want change in policy -- not shrillness for its own sake -- but this excellent summary of the vital debate about Executive Branch power by Sidney Blumenthal has hardened my resolve to do whatever I can to delegitimate and defang Cheney's operation.
I know Bush is the big boss, but Bush's tactic has been to allow two -- and perhaps three -- contending groups inside his White House to wage war with each other while he tilts in the final analysis towards the group that seems to win out in these private gladiator contests. Most often, the winning tag-team has been Cheney-Rumsfeld over all others.
Cheney's team have been the architects of both a kind of Presidency that is exactly what the Roman "dictatorships" were defined as -- a temporary provision of unchecked executive power to a ruler -- as well as the mercurial rise in power of the Office of the Vice President. And Cheney's team is the scary sort of lot that is hell-bent on establishing a kind of permanence to their power that threatens in very, very real terms the genuineness of our democracy.
Roman dictators still had constraints on what they could do. For instance, absolute authority was granted for distinct periods of time. Certain informal norms of continued consultations with the Roman Senate continued during the period of dictatorship.
The word "dictator" in modern language implies far vaster power and many negative connotations than the Roman application of the concept carried with it.
Nonetheless, Bush has become the epitome of a Roman dictator in the 21st century in his assertion of "unitary executive" authority which this White House has argued has "inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances." The problem is that unlike Rome, where the Senate granted the dictator great powers, Congress has not -- in fact -- given Bush the authority to operate beyond his Constitutional authority. Bush has, instead, asserted that authority and taunted Congress to stop him.
This power grab should dominate our media and our civic discourse. Our President -- via a deranged, anti-democratic team of power-obsessed thugs in Vice President Cheney's office -- is engaged in a clear assault on the core architectural joists of American democracy.
Sidney Blumenthal writes in his excellent piece:
Bush operates on the radical notion of the "unitary executive," that the president has inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances. By his extraordinary order, he elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president.
The unprecedented executive order bears the earmarks of Cheney's former counsel and current chief of staff, David Addington. Addington has been the closest assistant to Cheney through three decades, since Cheney served in the House of Representatives in the 1980s. Inside the executive branch, far and wide, Addington acts as Cheney's vicar, bullying and sarcastic, inspiring fear and obedience. Few documents of concern to the vice president, even executive orders, reach the eyes of the president without passing first through Addington's agile hands.
To advance their scenario for the Iraq war, Cheney & Co. either pressured or dismissed the intelligence community when it presented contrary analysis. Paul Pillar, the former CIA national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, writes in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, "The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made."
On domestic spying conducted without legal approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Addington and his minions isolated and crushed internal dissent from James Comey, then deputy attorney general, and Jack Goldsmith, then head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
On torture policy, as reported by the New Yorker this week, Alberto Mora, recently retired as general counsel to the U.S. Navy, opposed the Bush administration's abrogation of the Geneva Conventions -- by holding thousands of detainees in secret camps without due process and using abusive interrogation techniques -- based on legal doctrines Mora called "unlawful" and "dangerous." Addington et al. told him the policies were being ended while continuing to pursue them on a separate track. "To preserve flexibility, they were willing to throw away our values," Mora said.
More later on this theme, but David Addington, Rasputin's Rasputin, needs to be outed, vilified, and removed from power.
I'm not pleased about the theatre of Scooter Libby's defense fund charade, but at least he is now occupied in a way that keeps Americans mostly safe from the harm he was unleashing.
The reality though -- hard as it is to admit -- is that Vice President Cheney shrugged off the Libby indictment in a few weeks and has roared back to a robust role in national security affairs and is now trying to strangle Condoleezza Rice's foreign policy agenda.
Addington's rise and those of his acolytes -- have given the neoconservative agenda some new faces, lesser known, but in many ways far more insidious.
-- Steve Clemons
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Sunday, Feb 26, 06, 6:00AM
CLOSE
SOCIAL WEBSITES
Digg
Del.icio.us
Newsvine
Stumble Upon
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE
Email addresses will not be stored The Washington Note works hard to provide constructive, serious critiques of Bush administration foreign policy and attempts to avoid reckless typecasting or tractionless hyperventilation regarding what this administration is up to.
We try instead to characterize honestly the power grab that the Executive Branch has been engaged in since 9/11, but we also recognize that the administration is not monolithically united behind the adminstration's most outrageous positions -- and that the loyal minority has not done its part. On both the Democratic side and among Republican moderates, those who believe in checks-and-balances have done little to compellingly challenge this White House.
I want change in policy -- not shrillness for its own sake -- but this excellent summary of the vital debate about Executive Branch power by Sidney Blumenthal has hardened my resolve to do whatever I can to delegitimate and defang Cheney's operation.
I know Bush is the big boss, but Bush's tactic has been to allow two -- and perhaps three -- contending groups inside his White House to wage war with each other while he tilts in the final analysis towards the group that seems to win out in these private gladiator contests. Most often, the winning tag-team has been Cheney-Rumsfeld over all others.
Cheney's team have been the architects of both a kind of Presidency that is exactly what the Roman "dictatorships" were defined as -- a temporary provision of unchecked executive power to a ruler -- as well as the mercurial rise in power of the Office of the Vice President. And Cheney's team is the scary sort of lot that is hell-bent on establishing a kind of permanence to their power that threatens in very, very real terms the genuineness of our democracy.
Roman dictators still had constraints on what they could do. For instance, absolute authority was granted for distinct periods of time. Certain informal norms of continued consultations with the Roman Senate continued during the period of dictatorship.
The word "dictator" in modern language implies far vaster power and many negative connotations than the Roman application of the concept carried with it.
Nonetheless, Bush has become the epitome of a Roman dictator in the 21st century in his assertion of "unitary executive" authority which this White House has argued has "inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances." The problem is that unlike Rome, where the Senate granted the dictator great powers, Congress has not -- in fact -- given Bush the authority to operate beyond his Constitutional authority. Bush has, instead, asserted that authority and taunted Congress to stop him.
This power grab should dominate our media and our civic discourse. Our President -- via a deranged, anti-democratic team of power-obsessed thugs in Vice President Cheney's office -- is engaged in a clear assault on the core architectural joists of American democracy.
Sidney Blumenthal writes in his excellent piece:
Bush operates on the radical notion of the "unitary executive," that the president has inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances. By his extraordinary order, he elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president.
The unprecedented executive order bears the earmarks of Cheney's former counsel and current chief of staff, David Addington. Addington has been the closest assistant to Cheney through three decades, since Cheney served in the House of Representatives in the 1980s. Inside the executive branch, far and wide, Addington acts as Cheney's vicar, bullying and sarcastic, inspiring fear and obedience. Few documents of concern to the vice president, even executive orders, reach the eyes of the president without passing first through Addington's agile hands.
To advance their scenario for the Iraq war, Cheney & Co. either pressured or dismissed the intelligence community when it presented contrary analysis. Paul Pillar, the former CIA national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, writes in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, "The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made."
On domestic spying conducted without legal approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Addington and his minions isolated and crushed internal dissent from James Comey, then deputy attorney general, and Jack Goldsmith, then head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
On torture policy, as reported by the New Yorker this week, Alberto Mora, recently retired as general counsel to the U.S. Navy, opposed the Bush administration's abrogation of the Geneva Conventions -- by holding thousands of detainees in secret camps without due process and using abusive interrogation techniques -- based on legal doctrines Mora called "unlawful" and "dangerous." Addington et al. told him the policies were being ended while continuing to pursue them on a separate track. "To preserve flexibility, they were willing to throw away our values," Mora said.
More later on this theme, but David Addington, Rasputin's Rasputin, needs to be outed, vilified, and removed from power.
I'm not pleased about the theatre of Scooter Libby's defense fund charade, but at least he is now occupied in a way that keeps Americans mostly safe from the harm he was unleashing.
The reality though -- hard as it is to admit -- is that Vice President Cheney shrugged off the Libby indictment in a few weeks and has roared back to a robust role in national security affairs and is now trying to strangle Condoleezza Rice's foreign policy agenda.
Addington's rise and those of his acolytes -- have given the neoconservative agenda some new faces, lesser known, but in many ways far more insidious.
-- Steve Clemons
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Latest Iran Report. Nothing to go to war over.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has just produced it’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear program. (Full report here in PDF, leaked by US officials as usual.)
All materials and centrifuges are under Agency seal and surveillance and the Agency guarantees no diversion without their knowledge. With that in place, what we have is Iran proceeding with a peaceful program, one sanctioned by the UNSC but explicitly allowed by both the IAEA charter and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It doesn’t matter that Iran could make enough enriched uranium to redirect into bomb production in two years - no matter how much the media is trying to imply otherwise - because they simply cannot do that without enough IAEA foreknowledge to enable preventative steps to be taken. Sanctions are therefore being applied because Iran is defying a UNSC resolution which is entirely based upon Iran abrogating the voluntary additional protocol it had previously agreed to.
The IAEA is vigorously defending their position that there’s no current smoking gun, too. When the UK’s Daily Telegraph ran a report by noted neoconservative shill Con Coughlin that stated Iran had diverted some Hex from the conversion facility as Isfahan, enough to make 6 bombs the IAEA made a swift rebuttal:
“The article, entitled ‘Iran renews nuclear weapons development’ published in [Friday’s] Daily Telegraph by Con Coughlin and Tim Butcher is fictitious,” IAEA Spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a statement.
“IAEA inspectors have no indication that any nuclear material is missing from the plant,” reads the statement.
Latest Iran Report. Nothing to go to war over.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has just produced it’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear program. (Full report here in PDF, leaked by US officials as usual.)
All materials and centrifuges are under Agency seal and surveillance and the Agency guarantees no diversion without their knowledge. With that in place, what we have is Iran proceeding with a peaceful program, one sanctioned by the UNSC but explicitly allowed by both the IAEA charter and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It doesn’t matter that Iran could make enough enriched uranium to redirect into bomb production in two years - no matter how much the media is trying to imply otherwise - because they simply cannot do that without enough IAEA foreknowledge to enable preventative steps to be taken. Sanctions are therefore being applied because Iran is defying a UNSC resolution which is entirely based upon Iran abrogating the voluntary additional protocol it had previously agreed to.
The IAEA is vigorously defending their position that there’s no current smoking gun, too. When the UK’s Daily Telegraph ran a report by noted neoconservative shill Con Coughlin that stated Iran had diverted some Hex from the conversion facility as Isfahan, enough to make 6 bombs the IAEA made a swift rebuttal:
“The article, entitled ‘Iran renews nuclear weapons development’ published in [Friday’s] Daily Telegraph by Con Coughlin and Tim Butcher is fictitious,” IAEA Spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a statement.
“IAEA inspectors have no indication that any nuclear material is missing from the plant,” reads the statement.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Capitalism is dead.
And I'm not surprised.
I'll explain why in a minute, but first here's Capitalism's obituary. It's the New York Times' lead story on the bailout of A.I.G....
WASHINGTON -- Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group.
The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the federally chartered mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank's history.
With time running out after A.I.G. failed to get a bank loan to avoid bankruptcy, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, convened a meeting with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to explain the rescue plan. They emerged just after 7:30 p.m. with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke looking grim, but with top lawmakers initially expressing support for the plan. But the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with.
Hmm... "...the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with."
Controversial? No. Not to me. Confirmational. That's what it is.
It confirms that our nation is not willing to let Capitalism be Capitalism, except for us little guys of course. But here's the thing. If Capitalism isn't Capitalism for the Big Guys, then it isn't Capitalism for the little guys either.
Just like there's no such thing as being a little bit pregnant, there's no such thing as having a little Capitalism over here and a little Socialism over there. You can't have two economic systems operating in one country at the same time, at least not if "all men are created equal" is written in that country's founding documents.
Sorry, my friends. You either have Capitalism or you don't.
And here in the USA, we no longer have it. It's dead.
Think about this. Our government has just decided -- without asking any of us, including our Congressional representatives -- that $85 billion more of our money should be used to cover the actions of (and pardon the unsophisticated language here) stupid, greedy, criminal people. Stupid, because they didn't have a clue that what they were doing would have such negative consequences. Greedy, because all they could see were short term dollar signs in front of their eyes. Criminal, because they just robbed you and me of $85 billion dollars by holding a "we're too big to fail" gun to the head of the US government.
They should have let A.I.G. fail, because -- if that had brought about the collapse of the global economic system -- that would have just sped up our journey to a point of systemic collapse we are destined to reach anyway. I say destined to reach not because it's God's will but because no system can continue to function when its fundamental design is flawed. You see, the current global economic system is based on a fundamental assumption that -- while it was true when the system was first set up -- is no longer true today.
Let me give you another way of thinking about this. If a car that is designed to handle any road condition at any speed suddenly finds itself traveling across the water, it will quickly sink below the surface even as its wheels keep spinning. And, if the driver remains oblivious to the fact that there's no longer a road under his or her car, that driver will die.
We are no longer on land, my friends. We are in a car when we should be in a boat (or maybe an airplane). The global reality has shifted, but our political leaders are largely blind to this reality. They think we're still on dry land.
More about all this in a minute. But first, back to the US economy...
The funny thing is, I've known that a significant portion of the US economy is Socialistic for years. "What are you talking about?", you ask? "The Military Industrial Complex," I answer.
You do know that all military weapons are purchased using "cost plus" contracts, in which businesses are guaranteed a profit, don't you? And that literally every weapons system comes in over its original budget... and that those cost overruns are absorbed by the government, not the arms manufacturer? There is no Capitalism in the Military Industrial Complex. It's all Socialism, justified by the concept that these weapons are so important to American security that the companies that manufacture them have to be guaranteed a profit, so they don't accidentally go out of business. (By the way, I worked in contracting years ago at the Army Corps of Engineers. So, I know something about how military contracts work.)
Now, getting back to the death of Capitalism in America as a whole, don't be so sad. You know the expression: "From every emergency, there's a chance for something new to emerge."? Well, that's where we are.
We are in one hell of an emergency. And - if you'll step back for a minute - you'll see it's the opportunity of a lifetime.... the opportunity to stop using what no longer works and figure out what does.
And now I'm going to surprise you by (partially) agreeing with John McCain. He says we need a Commission to study the problem. And I agree. But we don't need a Commission of the kind John McCain suggests we have. His Commission would consist of financial experts. And that won't do. Because financial experts are experts in the past.
We need to bring specific, outside of Washington expertise to the party. But they must be experts in the future, not the past.
And what kind of people are experts in the future?
Designers. That's what kind.
Designers know how to envision what's possible from the best of what we know how to do today. They know how to take a clean sheet of paper approach to figuring out how to fulfill a particular need.
Designers know how to take a system that no longer works... determine what assumptions (or design principles) used to build the system are still correct and which are incorrect... substitute new assumptions or principles where necessary... and develop and implement a new design appropriate to the reality of today.
We need people like that... people who know that a tipping point has been reached... that the ground on which our old economic system has stood has disappeared... and that, as a result, the old system is totally dysfunctional. But at the same time, these experts must know how functional - how elegantly functional - our new economic system can be!
We have a chance for something new... something beautiful... to emerge from this emergency! But to do this, we need people who understand how to take a culture through a Great Transition... a transition based on recognizing we're no longer on dry land, as I mentioned above.
So, if we are no longer on dry land, where are we?
Well, the "dry land" of the past is the zero-sum, fixed pie, scarcity of resources based economic model that has existed since the beginning... since the time when two groups of cave dwellers fought over a watering hole that contained enough water for only one group to survive. Humanity has been on that "dry land" for a long, long time. But science and technology - including the power to capture limitless amounts of energy from the Sun - has progressed to the point where we can live in a society based on an economic systems based on abundance (not scarcity).
A world where it's possible for all survival needs to be met. That's where we live now. Call it water or air, it's definitely not the dry land of the past.
And that's why Capitalism has died. Because it is a system that is compelled to try and make more and more money based on Darwinian principles that are no longer true. They were true when Capitalism was created, but they are obsolete now. This death was inevitable, because the mismatch between the world Wall Street thinks exists and the world that really exists is so fundamental... the methods needed to continue making money in a world of the past had become so complicated... that self destruction was only a matter of time.
If the universe is a giant clock, you can only last for so long if you don't work the machinery the way it's designed to work. You will blow up the clock if you don't change what you're doing.
"Oh, but humanity can never learn to stop fighting with itself," some people might say. "That's a fundamental part of how things work too."
"Really? Is a baby born wanting to fight? Is it born wanting to kill others of its own kind? No, fighting is a learned response," I say in return.
A big job? Yes, making this change will be a big job. But with the death of Capitalism, we have been given a great opportunity to take the first steps.
And with the choice of Barack Obama -- a man who knows cross-cultural, systemic, and bi-partisan issues and who does not see the world through warrior eyes as John McCain does - we have the opportunity to take a huge step (politically) in the direction of making this change.
But it's going to take more than electing Barack Obama to support the rise of a New Economics from Capitalism's grave. Barack has said this election has never been about him. And he is right. We must all contribute to this process, by learning what a post-scarcity-based world can be like, including the interpersonal skills of "interdependent living" such as those in the classic book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey.
Beyond the personal, I suggest you study the works of two masters of large-scale systemic change: Drs. W. Edwards Deming and Russell Ackoff. They developed much of the management theory needed to organize such a transformation. Dr. Deming's last book was called "The New Economics". And Dr. Ackoff's recent book "Idealized Design" is the other book I would start with as.
In the popular jargon of my friend Renee Mauborgne's book "Blue Ocean Strategy" (co-authored by W. Chan Kim), what I am suggesting is that the death of Capitalism gives us the opportunity to develop and implement a Blue Ocean Strategy for America's sociopolitical economic system.
This will be a sociological change as much as it is a financial system change. Humanity has lived in a "you or me" world for many, many centuries. Changing to a "you and me" world (as Buckminster Fuller used to call it) will be the great adventure of the 21st Century.
Thanks to the death of Capitalism, that adventure is an idea whose time has come. Let's look for leaders who understand the need to figure out how to live in this new world. Leaders like Barack Obama. And leaders (hopefully) like the person you see in the mirror every morning.
---------------------
Addendum: 10:30am Eastern
As I think about AIG saying "We're too big to fail" to the Feds, I am reminded of America's long-standing policy not to negotiate with terrorists. Well, it sure feels as if the Feds have just agreed to the demands of certain financial terrorists: people who threatened to destroy our way of life if they weren't paid $85 billion. Disgraceful... and further proof that the America we think we live in... an America of ethical, Capitalistic principles no longer exists. If AIG needed $85 billion, they should have held a big charity event and asked the American people for the money... not taken it from us by using threats of the harm they would create if they didn't get it.
Addendum 2: 12:15pm Eastern
While I responded right after a specific comment, I'll state it here so it's clearly visible to everyone. I am not advocating Socialism replace Capitalism in America. I say Socialism already exists in portions of our society, but that does not mean I think it is the solution. The solution I am advocating is a New Economics designed by people who know how to take a "clean sheet of paper" approach to problem solving.. and who will develop an economic model appropriate to an abundance-based (rather than scarcity, zero-sum based) world view. This new economic model has no name because it has not been invented yet. The closest thing I've seen to what this might look like is the concept of Developmental Economics as described by systems thinking experts such as Dr. Russell Ackoff.
I hope this clarifies things for you all.
And I'm not surprised.
I'll explain why in a minute, but first here's Capitalism's obituary. It's the New York Times' lead story on the bailout of A.I.G....
WASHINGTON -- Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group.
The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the federally chartered mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank's history.
With time running out after A.I.G. failed to get a bank loan to avoid bankruptcy, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, convened a meeting with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to explain the rescue plan. They emerged just after 7:30 p.m. with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke looking grim, but with top lawmakers initially expressing support for the plan. But the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with.
Hmm... "...the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with."
Controversial? No. Not to me. Confirmational. That's what it is.
It confirms that our nation is not willing to let Capitalism be Capitalism, except for us little guys of course. But here's the thing. If Capitalism isn't Capitalism for the Big Guys, then it isn't Capitalism for the little guys either.
Just like there's no such thing as being a little bit pregnant, there's no such thing as having a little Capitalism over here and a little Socialism over there. You can't have two economic systems operating in one country at the same time, at least not if "all men are created equal" is written in that country's founding documents.
Sorry, my friends. You either have Capitalism or you don't.
And here in the USA, we no longer have it. It's dead.
Think about this. Our government has just decided -- without asking any of us, including our Congressional representatives -- that $85 billion more of our money should be used to cover the actions of (and pardon the unsophisticated language here) stupid, greedy, criminal people. Stupid, because they didn't have a clue that what they were doing would have such negative consequences. Greedy, because all they could see were short term dollar signs in front of their eyes. Criminal, because they just robbed you and me of $85 billion dollars by holding a "we're too big to fail" gun to the head of the US government.
They should have let A.I.G. fail, because -- if that had brought about the collapse of the global economic system -- that would have just sped up our journey to a point of systemic collapse we are destined to reach anyway. I say destined to reach not because it's God's will but because no system can continue to function when its fundamental design is flawed. You see, the current global economic system is based on a fundamental assumption that -- while it was true when the system was first set up -- is no longer true today.
Let me give you another way of thinking about this. If a car that is designed to handle any road condition at any speed suddenly finds itself traveling across the water, it will quickly sink below the surface even as its wheels keep spinning. And, if the driver remains oblivious to the fact that there's no longer a road under his or her car, that driver will die.
We are no longer on land, my friends. We are in a car when we should be in a boat (or maybe an airplane). The global reality has shifted, but our political leaders are largely blind to this reality. They think we're still on dry land.
More about all this in a minute. But first, back to the US economy...
The funny thing is, I've known that a significant portion of the US economy is Socialistic for years. "What are you talking about?", you ask? "The Military Industrial Complex," I answer.
You do know that all military weapons are purchased using "cost plus" contracts, in which businesses are guaranteed a profit, don't you? And that literally every weapons system comes in over its original budget... and that those cost overruns are absorbed by the government, not the arms manufacturer? There is no Capitalism in the Military Industrial Complex. It's all Socialism, justified by the concept that these weapons are so important to American security that the companies that manufacture them have to be guaranteed a profit, so they don't accidentally go out of business. (By the way, I worked in contracting years ago at the Army Corps of Engineers. So, I know something about how military contracts work.)
Now, getting back to the death of Capitalism in America as a whole, don't be so sad. You know the expression: "From every emergency, there's a chance for something new to emerge."? Well, that's where we are.
We are in one hell of an emergency. And - if you'll step back for a minute - you'll see it's the opportunity of a lifetime.... the opportunity to stop using what no longer works and figure out what does.
And now I'm going to surprise you by (partially) agreeing with John McCain. He says we need a Commission to study the problem. And I agree. But we don't need a Commission of the kind John McCain suggests we have. His Commission would consist of financial experts. And that won't do. Because financial experts are experts in the past.
We need to bring specific, outside of Washington expertise to the party. But they must be experts in the future, not the past.
And what kind of people are experts in the future?
Designers. That's what kind.
Designers know how to envision what's possible from the best of what we know how to do today. They know how to take a clean sheet of paper approach to figuring out how to fulfill a particular need.
Designers know how to take a system that no longer works... determine what assumptions (or design principles) used to build the system are still correct and which are incorrect... substitute new assumptions or principles where necessary... and develop and implement a new design appropriate to the reality of today.
We need people like that... people who know that a tipping point has been reached... that the ground on which our old economic system has stood has disappeared... and that, as a result, the old system is totally dysfunctional. But at the same time, these experts must know how functional - how elegantly functional - our new economic system can be!
We have a chance for something new... something beautiful... to emerge from this emergency! But to do this, we need people who understand how to take a culture through a Great Transition... a transition based on recognizing we're no longer on dry land, as I mentioned above.
So, if we are no longer on dry land, where are we?
Well, the "dry land" of the past is the zero-sum, fixed pie, scarcity of resources based economic model that has existed since the beginning... since the time when two groups of cave dwellers fought over a watering hole that contained enough water for only one group to survive. Humanity has been on that "dry land" for a long, long time. But science and technology - including the power to capture limitless amounts of energy from the Sun - has progressed to the point where we can live in a society based on an economic systems based on abundance (not scarcity).
A world where it's possible for all survival needs to be met. That's where we live now. Call it water or air, it's definitely not the dry land of the past.
And that's why Capitalism has died. Because it is a system that is compelled to try and make more and more money based on Darwinian principles that are no longer true. They were true when Capitalism was created, but they are obsolete now. This death was inevitable, because the mismatch between the world Wall Street thinks exists and the world that really exists is so fundamental... the methods needed to continue making money in a world of the past had become so complicated... that self destruction was only a matter of time.
If the universe is a giant clock, you can only last for so long if you don't work the machinery the way it's designed to work. You will blow up the clock if you don't change what you're doing.
"Oh, but humanity can never learn to stop fighting with itself," some people might say. "That's a fundamental part of how things work too."
"Really? Is a baby born wanting to fight? Is it born wanting to kill others of its own kind? No, fighting is a learned response," I say in return.
A big job? Yes, making this change will be a big job. But with the death of Capitalism, we have been given a great opportunity to take the first steps.
And with the choice of Barack Obama -- a man who knows cross-cultural, systemic, and bi-partisan issues and who does not see the world through warrior eyes as John McCain does - we have the opportunity to take a huge step (politically) in the direction of making this change.
But it's going to take more than electing Barack Obama to support the rise of a New Economics from Capitalism's grave. Barack has said this election has never been about him. And he is right. We must all contribute to this process, by learning what a post-scarcity-based world can be like, including the interpersonal skills of "interdependent living" such as those in the classic book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey.
Beyond the personal, I suggest you study the works of two masters of large-scale systemic change: Drs. W. Edwards Deming and Russell Ackoff. They developed much of the management theory needed to organize such a transformation. Dr. Deming's last book was called "The New Economics". And Dr. Ackoff's recent book "Idealized Design" is the other book I would start with as.
In the popular jargon of my friend Renee Mauborgne's book "Blue Ocean Strategy" (co-authored by W. Chan Kim), what I am suggesting is that the death of Capitalism gives us the opportunity to develop and implement a Blue Ocean Strategy for America's sociopolitical economic system.
This will be a sociological change as much as it is a financial system change. Humanity has lived in a "you or me" world for many, many centuries. Changing to a "you and me" world (as Buckminster Fuller used to call it) will be the great adventure of the 21st Century.
Thanks to the death of Capitalism, that adventure is an idea whose time has come. Let's look for leaders who understand the need to figure out how to live in this new world. Leaders like Barack Obama. And leaders (hopefully) like the person you see in the mirror every morning.
---------------------
Addendum: 10:30am Eastern
As I think about AIG saying "We're too big to fail" to the Feds, I am reminded of America's long-standing policy not to negotiate with terrorists. Well, it sure feels as if the Feds have just agreed to the demands of certain financial terrorists: people who threatened to destroy our way of life if they weren't paid $85 billion. Disgraceful... and further proof that the America we think we live in... an America of ethical, Capitalistic principles no longer exists. If AIG needed $85 billion, they should have held a big charity event and asked the American people for the money... not taken it from us by using threats of the harm they would create if they didn't get it.
Addendum 2: 12:15pm Eastern
While I responded right after a specific comment, I'll state it here so it's clearly visible to everyone. I am not advocating Socialism replace Capitalism in America. I say Socialism already exists in portions of our society, but that does not mean I think it is the solution. The solution I am advocating is a New Economics designed by people who know how to take a "clean sheet of paper" approach to problem solving.. and who will develop an economic model appropriate to an abundance-based (rather than scarcity, zero-sum based) world view. This new economic model has no name because it has not been invented yet. The closest thing I've seen to what this might look like is the concept of Developmental Economics as described by systems thinking experts such as Dr. Russell Ackoff.
I hope this clarifies things for you all.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Cheney's coup
A 3-year-old executive order that vastly expanded his powers illuminates how the vice president and his minions led us into war.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Feb. 23, 2006 | After shooting Austin lawyer Harry Whittington, Dick Cheney's immediate impulse was to control the intelligence. Rather than call the president directly, he ordered an aide to inform White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card that there had been an accident but not that Cheney was its cause. Then a host of surrogates attacked the victim for not steering clear of Cheney when he was firing. Cheney attempted to defuse the subsequent furor by giving an interview to friendly Fox News. His most revealing answer came in response to a question about something other than the hunting accident.
Cheney was asked about court papers filed by his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation of the leaking of the identity of an undercover CIA operative, Valerie Plame. (She is the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of disinformation used to justify the invasion of Iraq.) In those papers, Libby laid out a line of defense that he had leaked classified material at the behest of "his superiors" (to wit, Cheney). Libby detailed that he was authorized to disclose to members of the press classified sections of the prewar National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. (The NIE was exposed as wrongly asserting that Saddam possessed WMD and was constructing nuclear weapons.) Indeed, Cheney explained, he has the power to declassify intelligence. "There is an executive order to that effect," he said. Had he ever done that "unilaterally"? "I don't want to get into that."
On March 25, 2003, President Bush signed Executive Order 13292, a hitherto little known document that grants the greatest expansion of the power of the vice president in American history. The order gives the vice president the same ability to classify intelligence as the president. By controlling classification, the vice president can in effect control intelligence and, through that, foreign policy.
Bush operates on the radical notion of the "unitary executive," that the president has inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances. By his extraordinary order, he elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president.
The unprecedented executive order bears the earmarks of Cheney's former counsel and current chief of staff, David Addington. Addington has been the closest assistant to Cheney through three decades, since Cheney served in the House of Representatives in the 1980s. Inside the executive branch, far and wide, Addington acts as Cheney's vicar, bullying and sarcastic, inspiring fear and obedience. Few documents of concern to the vice president, even executive orders, reach the eyes of the president without passing first through Addington's agile hands.
To advance their scenario for the Iraq war, Cheney & Co. either pressured or dismissed the intelligence community when it presented contrary analysis. Paul Pillar, the former CIA national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, writes in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, "The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made."
On domestic spying conducted without legal approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Addington and his minions isolated and crushed internal dissent from James Comey, then deputy attorney general, and Jack Goldsmith, then head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
On torture policy, as reported by the New Yorker this week, Alberto Mora, recently retired as general counsel to the U.S. Navy, opposed the Bush administration's abrogation of the Geneva Conventions -- by holding thousands of detainees in secret camps without due process and using abusive interrogation techniques -- based on legal doctrines Mora called "unlawful" and "dangerous." Addington et al. told him the policies were being ended while continuing to pursue them on a separate track. "To preserve flexibility, they were willing to throw away our values," Mora said.
The first vice president, John Adams, called his position "the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." John Nance Garner, Franklin D. Roosevelt's first vice president, said it was not worth "a warm bucket of spit." When Dick Cheney was secretary of defense under the first President Bush, he reprimanded Vice President Dan Quayle for asserting power he did not possess by calling a meeting of the National Security Council when the elder Bush was abroad. Cheney well knew the vice president had no authority in the chain of command.
Since the coup d'état of Executive Order 13292, however, the vice presidency has been transformed. Perhaps, for a blinding moment, Cheney imagined he might classify his shooting party top secret.
-- By Sidney Blumenthal
A 3-year-old executive order that vastly expanded his powers illuminates how the vice president and his minions led us into war.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Feb. 23, 2006 | After shooting Austin lawyer Harry Whittington, Dick Cheney's immediate impulse was to control the intelligence. Rather than call the president directly, he ordered an aide to inform White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card that there had been an accident but not that Cheney was its cause. Then a host of surrogates attacked the victim for not steering clear of Cheney when he was firing. Cheney attempted to defuse the subsequent furor by giving an interview to friendly Fox News. His most revealing answer came in response to a question about something other than the hunting accident.
Cheney was asked about court papers filed by his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation of the leaking of the identity of an undercover CIA operative, Valerie Plame. (She is the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of disinformation used to justify the invasion of Iraq.) In those papers, Libby laid out a line of defense that he had leaked classified material at the behest of "his superiors" (to wit, Cheney). Libby detailed that he was authorized to disclose to members of the press classified sections of the prewar National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. (The NIE was exposed as wrongly asserting that Saddam possessed WMD and was constructing nuclear weapons.) Indeed, Cheney explained, he has the power to declassify intelligence. "There is an executive order to that effect," he said. Had he ever done that "unilaterally"? "I don't want to get into that."
On March 25, 2003, President Bush signed Executive Order 13292, a hitherto little known document that grants the greatest expansion of the power of the vice president in American history. The order gives the vice president the same ability to classify intelligence as the president. By controlling classification, the vice president can in effect control intelligence and, through that, foreign policy.
Bush operates on the radical notion of the "unitary executive," that the president has inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances. By his extraordinary order, he elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president.
The unprecedented executive order bears the earmarks of Cheney's former counsel and current chief of staff, David Addington. Addington has been the closest assistant to Cheney through three decades, since Cheney served in the House of Representatives in the 1980s. Inside the executive branch, far and wide, Addington acts as Cheney's vicar, bullying and sarcastic, inspiring fear and obedience. Few documents of concern to the vice president, even executive orders, reach the eyes of the president without passing first through Addington's agile hands.
To advance their scenario for the Iraq war, Cheney & Co. either pressured or dismissed the intelligence community when it presented contrary analysis. Paul Pillar, the former CIA national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, writes in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, "The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made."
On domestic spying conducted without legal approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Addington and his minions isolated and crushed internal dissent from James Comey, then deputy attorney general, and Jack Goldsmith, then head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
On torture policy, as reported by the New Yorker this week, Alberto Mora, recently retired as general counsel to the U.S. Navy, opposed the Bush administration's abrogation of the Geneva Conventions -- by holding thousands of detainees in secret camps without due process and using abusive interrogation techniques -- based on legal doctrines Mora called "unlawful" and "dangerous." Addington et al. told him the policies were being ended while continuing to pursue them on a separate track. "To preserve flexibility, they were willing to throw away our values," Mora said.
The first vice president, John Adams, called his position "the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." John Nance Garner, Franklin D. Roosevelt's first vice president, said it was not worth "a warm bucket of spit." When Dick Cheney was secretary of defense under the first President Bush, he reprimanded Vice President Dan Quayle for asserting power he did not possess by calling a meeting of the National Security Council when the elder Bush was abroad. Cheney well knew the vice president had no authority in the chain of command.
Since the coup d'état of Executive Order 13292, however, the vice presidency has been transformed. Perhaps, for a blinding moment, Cheney imagined he might classify his shooting party top secret.
-- By Sidney Blumenthal
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Republican Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texas lawmaker who attracted a devoted following in the GOP primaries, said Wednesday he rejected an appeal to endorse John McCain's presidential bid.
Paul said the request came from Phil Gramm, the former McCain adviser and ex-senator whom the campaign jettisoned after he said the country was a "nation of whiners" about the economy. Gramm defeated Paul in the Republican primary for the Senate in 1984.
Speaking to reporters at a news conference, Paul said Gramm called him this week and told him, "You need to endorse McCain." The Texas congressman said he refused.
"The idea was that he would do less harm than the other candidate," Paul said.
Paul won no primaries in the Republican nomination contest but developed a strong following on the Internet.
He appeared at a news conference with three third-party candidates: independent Ralph Nader; former Georgia Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate; and Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate. Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate, was invited but said at his own news conference later that he declined because Paul didn't endorse one candidate.
"We need today, now, 55 days before this election, bold, focused, specific leadership and that is not the amorphous kind that says any of the above or none of the above," Barr said.
Barr said he had asked Paul to join him as his running mate on the Libertarian Party ticket while his current running mate, Wayne Root would step aside. "We don't anticopate that he will," Barr said.
Earlier, Paul called the presidential elections a charade and said voters are faced with the "lesser of two evils."
The majority of Americans, about 60 percent, are unhappy with their choices in the race, Paul said. He urged the three third-party candidates to bring all their supporters together to vote against the "establishment candidates."
Paul, 73, a former doctor, ran for president as the Libertarian candidate in 1988. He is unopposed in the November race for his congressional seat.
Nader derided media focus on what he called "lipstickgate," referring to the bickering between the McCain and Barack Obama campaigns over whether a phrase used by Obama was a sexist comment against Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
Nader, a consumer protection advocate, acknowledged differences among the third-party candidates such as government regulation of health and safety standards. But he added that he shares Paul's support for more opportunity in the political process for third-party candidates.
Paul said the request came from Phil Gramm, the former McCain adviser and ex-senator whom the campaign jettisoned after he said the country was a "nation of whiners" about the economy. Gramm defeated Paul in the Republican primary for the Senate in 1984.
Speaking to reporters at a news conference, Paul said Gramm called him this week and told him, "You need to endorse McCain." The Texas congressman said he refused.
"The idea was that he would do less harm than the other candidate," Paul said.
Paul won no primaries in the Republican nomination contest but developed a strong following on the Internet.
He appeared at a news conference with three third-party candidates: independent Ralph Nader; former Georgia Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate; and Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate. Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate, was invited but said at his own news conference later that he declined because Paul didn't endorse one candidate.
"We need today, now, 55 days before this election, bold, focused, specific leadership and that is not the amorphous kind that says any of the above or none of the above," Barr said.
Barr said he had asked Paul to join him as his running mate on the Libertarian Party ticket while his current running mate, Wayne Root would step aside. "We don't anticopate that he will," Barr said.
Earlier, Paul called the presidential elections a charade and said voters are faced with the "lesser of two evils."
The majority of Americans, about 60 percent, are unhappy with their choices in the race, Paul said. He urged the three third-party candidates to bring all their supporters together to vote against the "establishment candidates."
Paul, 73, a former doctor, ran for president as the Libertarian candidate in 1988. He is unopposed in the November race for his congressional seat.
Nader derided media focus on what he called "lipstickgate," referring to the bickering between the McCain and Barack Obama campaigns over whether a phrase used by Obama was a sexist comment against Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
Nader, a consumer protection advocate, acknowledged differences among the third-party candidates such as government regulation of health and safety standards. But he added that he shares Paul's support for more opportunity in the political process for third-party candidates.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Does the Truth Matter Anymore?
This is not false naivete: I am genuinely surprised that John McCain and his campaign keep throwing out false charges and making false claims without any qualms. They keep talking about Sarah Palin’s opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere without any embarrassment over the fact that she once supported it. They keep saying that Barack Obama will raise taxes, suggesting he’d raise them on everybody, when Obama’s plan, according to the Tax Policy Institute, would cut taxes for “about 80 percent of households” while “only about 10 percent would owe more.” And as Sebastian Mallaby pointed out in his recent column, Obama would cut taxes for middle-income taxpayers “more aggressively” than McCain would.
And now comes a truly vile McCain ad accusing Obama of supporting legislation to offer "'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." The announcer declares: "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."
Margaret Talev of McClatchy newspapers called the ad a “deliberate low blow.” Here’s what she wrote in an excellent fact check: “This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain's votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12. But the legislation allowed local school boards to teach ‘age-appropriate’ sex education, not comprehensive lessons to kindergartners, and it gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.”
Is McCain against teaching little kids to beware of sexual predators?
McCain once campaigned on the idea that the war on terrorism is the “transcendent” issue of our time. Now, he’s stooping to cheap advertising that would be condemned as trivial and misleading in a state legislative race. Boy, do I miss the old John McCain and wonder what became of him. And I wonder if the media will really take on this onslaught of half-truths and outright deception.
By E.J. Dionne | September 10, 2008; 12:13 AM ET
This is not false naivete: I am genuinely surprised that John McCain and his campaign keep throwing out false charges and making false claims without any qualms. They keep talking about Sarah Palin’s opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere without any embarrassment over the fact that she once supported it. They keep saying that Barack Obama will raise taxes, suggesting he’d raise them on everybody, when Obama’s plan, according to the Tax Policy Institute, would cut taxes for “about 80 percent of households” while “only about 10 percent would owe more.” And as Sebastian Mallaby pointed out in his recent column, Obama would cut taxes for middle-income taxpayers “more aggressively” than McCain would.
And now comes a truly vile McCain ad accusing Obama of supporting legislation to offer "'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." The announcer declares: "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."
Margaret Talev of McClatchy newspapers called the ad a “deliberate low blow.” Here’s what she wrote in an excellent fact check: “This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain's votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12. But the legislation allowed local school boards to teach ‘age-appropriate’ sex education, not comprehensive lessons to kindergartners, and it gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.”
Is McCain against teaching little kids to beware of sexual predators?
McCain once campaigned on the idea that the war on terrorism is the “transcendent” issue of our time. Now, he’s stooping to cheap advertising that would be condemned as trivial and misleading in a state legislative race. Boy, do I miss the old John McCain and wonder what became of him. And I wonder if the media will really take on this onslaught of half-truths and outright deception.
By E.J. Dionne | September 10, 2008; 12:13 AM ET
Monday, September 08, 2008
Sunday, September 07, 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 25, 2008) — Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) testified about President Bush’s culpability for leading the country to war today at a House Judiciary Committee hearing entitled “Executive Power and its Constitutional Limitations.” The full text of the statement follows:
Our country has been at war in Iraq, and has occupied the streets and villages of Iraq for five years, four months, and 6 days. The war has caused the deaths of 4,127 American soldiers and the deaths of as many as one million innocent Iraqis. The war will cost the American people upwards of $3 trillion and is the main contributing factor to the destruction of our domestic economy.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent to enter S.J. Res. 45 into the record. The primary justifications for going to war, outlined in the legislation which the White House sent to Congress in October of 2002, have been determined conclusively to be untrue:
* Iraq was not “continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States”
* Iraq was not “continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability. . .”
* Iraq was not “actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability”
* Iraq did not have the “willingness to attack, the United States”
* Members of Al Qaeda were not “known to be in Iraq”
* Iraq had not “demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction. . .”
* Iraq could not “launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces”
* Therefore there was not an “extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack”
* The aforementioned did not “justify the use of force by the United States to defend itself”
* Iraq had no connection with the attacks of 9/11 or with al Qaeda's role in 9/11
* Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction to transfer to anyone
* Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and therefore had no capability of launching a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces and no capability to provide them to international terrorists who would do so
However, many Members of Congress relied on these representations from the White House to inform their decision to support the legislation that authorized the use of force against Iraq. We all know present and former colleagues who have said that if they knew then what they know now, they would not have voted to permit an attack upon Iraq.
The war was totally unnecessary, unprovoked and unjustified. The question for Congress is this: what responsibility do the President and members of his Administration have for that unnecessary, unprovoked and unjustified war? The rules of the House prevent me or any witness from utilizing familiar terms. But we can put two and two together in our minds. We can draw inferences about culpability.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent to enter H. Res. 333, H. Res. 1258, and H. Res. 1345 into the record. I request that each Member read the three bills I have authored, bills which are now awaiting consideration by the Judiciary Committee. I am confident the reader will reach the same conclusions that I have about culpability.
What, then, should we do about it?
The decision before us is whether to honor our oath as Members of Congress to support and defend the Constitution that has been trampled time and again over the last seven years.
The decision before us is whether to stand up for the checks and balances designed by our founding fathers to prevent excessive power grabs by either the judicial, legislative or executive branch of government.
The decision before us is whether to restore faith in government, in justice, and in the rule of law.
The decision before us is whether Congress will endorse with its silence the methods used to take us into the Iraq war.
The decision before us is whether to demand accountability for one of the gravest injustices imaginable.
The decision before us is whether Congress will stand up to tell future Presidents that America has seen the last of these injustices, not the first.
I believe the choice is clear.
I ask this committee to think, and then to act, in order to enable this Congress to right a very great wrong and to hold accountable those who have misled this Nation.
Our country has been at war in Iraq, and has occupied the streets and villages of Iraq for five years, four months, and 6 days. The war has caused the deaths of 4,127 American soldiers and the deaths of as many as one million innocent Iraqis. The war will cost the American people upwards of $3 trillion and is the main contributing factor to the destruction of our domestic economy.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent to enter S.J. Res. 45 into the record. The primary justifications for going to war, outlined in the legislation which the White House sent to Congress in October of 2002, have been determined conclusively to be untrue:
* Iraq was not “continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States”
* Iraq was not “continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability. . .”
* Iraq was not “actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability”
* Iraq did not have the “willingness to attack, the United States”
* Members of Al Qaeda were not “known to be in Iraq”
* Iraq had not “demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction. . .”
* Iraq could not “launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces”
* Therefore there was not an “extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack”
* The aforementioned did not “justify the use of force by the United States to defend itself”
* Iraq had no connection with the attacks of 9/11 or with al Qaeda's role in 9/11
* Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction to transfer to anyone
* Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and therefore had no capability of launching a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces and no capability to provide them to international terrorists who would do so
However, many Members of Congress relied on these representations from the White House to inform their decision to support the legislation that authorized the use of force against Iraq. We all know present and former colleagues who have said that if they knew then what they know now, they would not have voted to permit an attack upon Iraq.
The war was totally unnecessary, unprovoked and unjustified. The question for Congress is this: what responsibility do the President and members of his Administration have for that unnecessary, unprovoked and unjustified war? The rules of the House prevent me or any witness from utilizing familiar terms. But we can put two and two together in our minds. We can draw inferences about culpability.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent to enter H. Res. 333, H. Res. 1258, and H. Res. 1345 into the record. I request that each Member read the three bills I have authored, bills which are now awaiting consideration by the Judiciary Committee. I am confident the reader will reach the same conclusions that I have about culpability.
What, then, should we do about it?
The decision before us is whether to honor our oath as Members of Congress to support and defend the Constitution that has been trampled time and again over the last seven years.
The decision before us is whether to stand up for the checks and balances designed by our founding fathers to prevent excessive power grabs by either the judicial, legislative or executive branch of government.
The decision before us is whether to restore faith in government, in justice, and in the rule of law.
The decision before us is whether Congress will endorse with its silence the methods used to take us into the Iraq war.
The decision before us is whether to demand accountability for one of the gravest injustices imaginable.
The decision before us is whether Congress will stand up to tell future Presidents that America has seen the last of these injustices, not the first.
I believe the choice is clear.
I ask this committee to think, and then to act, in order to enable this Congress to right a very great wrong and to hold accountable those who have misled this Nation.
U.S., Russia standoff takes to the Black Sea
Yusuf Fernandez
Press TV
September 4, 2008
Washington’s confrontation with Moscow has reached a new level now that Russia has withdrawn its troops from most of the Georgian territory it took during the war provoked by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Russian and US warships have been engaged in a standoff in the Black Sea in recent days.
The US Coast Guard Dallas carrying aid docked at the Georgian port of Batumi on August 28. US guided missile destroyer USS McFaul has also landed at the port. By choosing Batumi, the US chose a less confrontational path than docking at Poti, a Georgian port where Russian troops are still stationed. The US also allegedly feared that Poti harbor could have been mined.
The USS McFaul enjoys an array of weapons, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads. It also has a sophisticated radar system.
Washington has also ordered the flagship of the 6th Fleet, the sophisticated command ship Mount Whitney, into the area. These ships are from the NATO Maritime Group One, which normally operates in the Mediterranean.
Russia says the USS McFaul supplied new weapons to Georgia under the pretext of aid delivery. “Of course, they are bringing in weapons,” Russian President Dmitri Medvedev told the BBC in an interview. “We are not trying to prevent it.”
“Battleships do not normally deliver aid. This is battleship diplomacy, this does not make the situation more stable,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The Black Sea has seen a lot of tension since Russian troops defeated the Georgian army. The Georgian aggression against South Ossetia has brought into sharp focus the strategic value of the resource-rich area surrounding the Black Sea.
During the Cold War, shipping in the Black Sea was carried out on a small scale, as the Lower Danube region was a part of the Soviet block. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the wars in former Yugoslavia, the Danube has become a key transportation route. Now, Central European exports, especially from Germany, can be floated down the river to the Black Sea, which is much less expensive than transporting them to the ports of the Baltic Sea by land. The struggle for control over the Black Sea has been the root cause of several conflicts in the past, including the Crimean and the Russo-Turkish Wars in the 19th century and the Allied Dardanelles campaign against Turkey during World War I.
Control over the Black Sea is essential for the US in projecting its force onto the region because the Carpathian Mountains in Romania and the Caucasus Ridge restrict it from land-based action against Russia from the south. The Black Sea is therefore the only path through which a potential enemy could threaten Russia from this area. Modern weapons systems such as submarine- and ship-launched cruise missiles and carrier-launched jets would be able to target Russian territory if the US were to gain supremacy over the Black Sea.
The Black Sea is close to the Caucasus and the Russian oil-rich regions of Tatarstan and Bashkorostan. It offers any Russian enemy a direct route to two Russian energy lifelines. The Black Sea thus has special strategic significance for Russia as well; the area would become a major point of conflict in case there is a military confrontation between the US and Russia.
The US wants the Black Sea to fall under NATO control. A major part of Black Sea waters is controlled by NATO members Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria. Georgia and Ukraine, whose pro-Western presidents want their countries to join the alliance also have control of certain parts of the area. Russia has a short coastline with the important port of Novorossiisk. Now that Russia is working with Abkhazia as an independent state, however, it enjoys a longer Russian-friendly coastline and the deep-sea port of Sukhumi.
The strategic importance of the Black Sea explains why Russia responded harshly to the increased military presence of NATO there. Russian General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, who has recently claimed that 10 NATO warships are in the Black Sea with eight more on the way, says international conventions prevented the alliance from bringing more vessels into the region. “In light of the build-up of NATO naval forces in the Black Sea, the (Russian) fleet has also taken on the task of monitoring their activities,” he said.
US ships in the Black Sea are capable of carrying nuclear missiles that can hit Russian targets as far away as Saint Petersburg. Nogovitsyn has warned that US ships can only stay in the Black Sea for 21 days according to the 1936 Montreal Convention, which regulates the passage of warships to and from the Black Sea. He says if US warships do not leave, Turkey would be responsible. “Can NATO - which is not a state located in the Black Sea - continuously increase its group of forces and systems there? It turns out that it cannot,” Nogovitsyn said.
Carmen Romero, a NATO spokeswoman, said the alliance had applied for transit into the Black Sea in June and stressed that the vessels would stay less than 21 days as required by the convention.
Russia has sent its missile cruiser Moskva and two smaller ships to Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, one of the two regions whose independence Moscow has recognized. Russia has responded to the apparent -if officially denied- NATO naval deployment by increasing its warships in the Black Sea. Russia returned the Moskva to the Black Sea a mere 72 hours after the giant warship departed for its base port Sevastopol, Ukraine, from Georgian waters. Normally, Sevastopol-based Russian warships spend most of the year in port, and take to open waters after months of preparation.
In Sukhumi, Russian Deputy Admiral Sergei Menyailo said that the Russian warships had arrived to “support peace and stability”. He said, “Our tasks include the control of Abkhazia’s territorial waters and the prevention of arms shipments.”
The dockings came a day after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recognized the two Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, a move which has prompted harsh criticism from Western governments. Abkhazia’s President Sergei Bagapsh said he would invite Moscow to establish a naval base at Sukhumi and called for a military cooperation agreement with Russia.
In order to counterbalance the perceived NATO build-up, Russians have reportedly massed three destroyers, two frigates, five corvettes and scores of missile boats at the Sevastopol naval base it leased from Ukraine. Former Russian commander Admiral Eduard Baltin also said that NATO’s 10-piece naval squad is no match for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and would fall to pieces should the fleet launch a single missile salvo. “A single missile salvo from the Moskva missile cruiser and two or three missile boats would be enough to annihilate the entire group”, he declared.
Russia also enjoys vast air superiority in north of the area. It seems that it desperately seeks to prevent NATO from taking control over the strategic region. In a way, US plans to turn the Black Sea into a private lake controlled by NATO may be doomed to failure.
Yusuf Fernandez
Press TV
September 4, 2008
Washington’s confrontation with Moscow has reached a new level now that Russia has withdrawn its troops from most of the Georgian territory it took during the war provoked by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Russian and US warships have been engaged in a standoff in the Black Sea in recent days.
The US Coast Guard Dallas carrying aid docked at the Georgian port of Batumi on August 28. US guided missile destroyer USS McFaul has also landed at the port. By choosing Batumi, the US chose a less confrontational path than docking at Poti, a Georgian port where Russian troops are still stationed. The US also allegedly feared that Poti harbor could have been mined.
The USS McFaul enjoys an array of weapons, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads. It also has a sophisticated radar system.
Washington has also ordered the flagship of the 6th Fleet, the sophisticated command ship Mount Whitney, into the area. These ships are from the NATO Maritime Group One, which normally operates in the Mediterranean.
Russia says the USS McFaul supplied new weapons to Georgia under the pretext of aid delivery. “Of course, they are bringing in weapons,” Russian President Dmitri Medvedev told the BBC in an interview. “We are not trying to prevent it.”
“Battleships do not normally deliver aid. This is battleship diplomacy, this does not make the situation more stable,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The Black Sea has seen a lot of tension since Russian troops defeated the Georgian army. The Georgian aggression against South Ossetia has brought into sharp focus the strategic value of the resource-rich area surrounding the Black Sea.
During the Cold War, shipping in the Black Sea was carried out on a small scale, as the Lower Danube region was a part of the Soviet block. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the wars in former Yugoslavia, the Danube has become a key transportation route. Now, Central European exports, especially from Germany, can be floated down the river to the Black Sea, which is much less expensive than transporting them to the ports of the Baltic Sea by land. The struggle for control over the Black Sea has been the root cause of several conflicts in the past, including the Crimean and the Russo-Turkish Wars in the 19th century and the Allied Dardanelles campaign against Turkey during World War I.
Control over the Black Sea is essential for the US in projecting its force onto the region because the Carpathian Mountains in Romania and the Caucasus Ridge restrict it from land-based action against Russia from the south. The Black Sea is therefore the only path through which a potential enemy could threaten Russia from this area. Modern weapons systems such as submarine- and ship-launched cruise missiles and carrier-launched jets would be able to target Russian territory if the US were to gain supremacy over the Black Sea.
The Black Sea is close to the Caucasus and the Russian oil-rich regions of Tatarstan and Bashkorostan. It offers any Russian enemy a direct route to two Russian energy lifelines. The Black Sea thus has special strategic significance for Russia as well; the area would become a major point of conflict in case there is a military confrontation between the US and Russia.
The US wants the Black Sea to fall under NATO control. A major part of Black Sea waters is controlled by NATO members Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria. Georgia and Ukraine, whose pro-Western presidents want their countries to join the alliance also have control of certain parts of the area. Russia has a short coastline with the important port of Novorossiisk. Now that Russia is working with Abkhazia as an independent state, however, it enjoys a longer Russian-friendly coastline and the deep-sea port of Sukhumi.
The strategic importance of the Black Sea explains why Russia responded harshly to the increased military presence of NATO there. Russian General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, who has recently claimed that 10 NATO warships are in the Black Sea with eight more on the way, says international conventions prevented the alliance from bringing more vessels into the region. “In light of the build-up of NATO naval forces in the Black Sea, the (Russian) fleet has also taken on the task of monitoring their activities,” he said.
US ships in the Black Sea are capable of carrying nuclear missiles that can hit Russian targets as far away as Saint Petersburg. Nogovitsyn has warned that US ships can only stay in the Black Sea for 21 days according to the 1936 Montreal Convention, which regulates the passage of warships to and from the Black Sea. He says if US warships do not leave, Turkey would be responsible. “Can NATO - which is not a state located in the Black Sea - continuously increase its group of forces and systems there? It turns out that it cannot,” Nogovitsyn said.
Carmen Romero, a NATO spokeswoman, said the alliance had applied for transit into the Black Sea in June and stressed that the vessels would stay less than 21 days as required by the convention.
Russia has sent its missile cruiser Moskva and two smaller ships to Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, one of the two regions whose independence Moscow has recognized. Russia has responded to the apparent -if officially denied- NATO naval deployment by increasing its warships in the Black Sea. Russia returned the Moskva to the Black Sea a mere 72 hours after the giant warship departed for its base port Sevastopol, Ukraine, from Georgian waters. Normally, Sevastopol-based Russian warships spend most of the year in port, and take to open waters after months of preparation.
In Sukhumi, Russian Deputy Admiral Sergei Menyailo said that the Russian warships had arrived to “support peace and stability”. He said, “Our tasks include the control of Abkhazia’s territorial waters and the prevention of arms shipments.”
The dockings came a day after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recognized the two Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, a move which has prompted harsh criticism from Western governments. Abkhazia’s President Sergei Bagapsh said he would invite Moscow to establish a naval base at Sukhumi and called for a military cooperation agreement with Russia.
In order to counterbalance the perceived NATO build-up, Russians have reportedly massed three destroyers, two frigates, five corvettes and scores of missile boats at the Sevastopol naval base it leased from Ukraine. Former Russian commander Admiral Eduard Baltin also said that NATO’s 10-piece naval squad is no match for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and would fall to pieces should the fleet launch a single missile salvo. “A single missile salvo from the Moskva missile cruiser and two or three missile boats would be enough to annihilate the entire group”, he declared.
Russia also enjoys vast air superiority in north of the area. It seems that it desperately seeks to prevent NATO from taking control over the strategic region. In a way, US plans to turn the Black Sea into a private lake controlled by NATO may be doomed to failure.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
International War Crimes Tribunal
United States War Crimes Against Iraq
Initial Complaint
Charging
George Bush, J. Danforth Quayle, James Baker,
Richard Cheney, William Webster, Colin Powell,
Norman Schwarzkopf and Others to be named
With
Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, Crimes Against
Humanity and Other Criminal Acts and High Crimes in
Violation of the Charter of the United Nations,
International Law, the Constitution of the United States
and Laws made in Pursuance Thereof.
Preliminary Statement
These charges have been prepared prior to the first hearing of the Commission of Inquiry by its staff. They are based on direct and circumstantial evidence from public and private documents; official statements and admissions by the persons charged and others; eyewitness accounts; Commission investigations and witness interviews in Iraq, the Middle East and elsewhere during and after the bombing; photographs and video tape; expert analyses; commentary and interviews; media coverage, published reports and accounts gathered between December 1990 and May l991. Commission of Inquiry hearings will be held in key cities where evidence is available supporting, expanding, adding, contradicting, disproving or explaining these, or similar charges against the accused and others of whatever nationality. When evidence sufficient to sustain convictions of the accused or others is obtained and after demanding the production of documents from the U.S. government, and others, and requesting testimony from the accused, offering them a full opportunity to present any defense personally, or by counsel, the evidence will be presented to an International War Crimes Tribunal. The Tribunal will consider the evidence gathered, seek and examine whatever additional evidence it chooses and render its judgment on the charges, the evidence, and the law.
Background
Since World War I, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States have dominated the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region and its oil resources. This has been accomplished by military conquest and coercion, economic control and exploitation, and through surrogate governments and their military forces. Thus, from 1953 to 1979 in the post World War II era, control over the region was exercised primarily through U.S. influence and control over the Gulf sheikdoms of Saudi Arabia and through the Shah of Iran. From 1953 to 1979 the Shah of Iran acted as a Pentagon/CIA surrogate to police the region. After the fall of the Shah and the seizure of U.S. Embassy hostages in Teheran, the U.S. provided military aid and assistance to Iraq, as did the USSR, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and most of the Emirates, in its war with Iran. U.S. policy during that tragic eight year war, 1980 - 1988, is probably best summed up by the phrase, "we hope they kill each other."
Throughout the seventy-five year period from Britain's invasion of Iraq early in World War I to the destruction of Iraq in 1991 by U.S. air power, the United States and the United Kingdom demonstrated no concern for democratic values, human rights, social justice, or political and cultural integrity in the region, nor for stopping military aggression there. The U.S. supported the Shah of Iran for 25 years, selling him more than $20 billion of advanced military equipment between 1972 and 1978 alone. Throughout this period the Shah and his brutal secret police called SAVAK had one of the worst human rights records in the world. Then in the 1980s, the U.S. supported Iraq in its wrongful aggression against Iran, ignoring Iraq's own poor human rights record.[l]
When the Iraqi government nationalized the Iraqi Petroleum Company in 1972, the Nixon Administration embarked on a campaign to destabilize the Iraqi government. It was in the 1970s that the U.S. first armed and then abandoned the Kurdish people, costing tens of thousands of Kurdish lives. The U.S. manipulated the Kurds through CIA and other agencies to attack Iraq, intending to harass Iraq while maintaining Iranian supremacy at the cost of Kurdish lives without intending any benefit to the Kurdish people or an autonomous Kurdistan.[2]
The U.S. with close oil and other economic ties to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait has fully supported both governments despite the total absence of democratic institutions, their pervasive human rights violations and the infliction of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments such as stoning to death for adultery and amputation of a hand for property offenses.
The U.S., sometimes alone among nations, supported Israel when it defied scores of UN resolutions concerning Palestinian rights, when it invaded Lebanon in a war which took tens of thousands of lives, and during its continuing occupation of southern Lebanon, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza.
The United States itself engaged in recent aggressions in violation of international law by invading Grenada in 1983, bombing Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya in 1986, financing the contra in Nicaragua, UNITA in southern Africa and supporting military dictatorships in Liberia, Chile, E1 Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, and many other places.
The U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 involved the same and additional violations of international law that apply to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The U.S. invasion took between 1,000 and 4,000 Panamanian lives. The United States government is still covering up the death toll. U.S. aggression caused massive property destruction throughout Panama.[3] According to U.S. and international human rights organization estimates, Kuwait's casualties from Iraq's invasion and the ensuing months of occupation were in the "hundreds" - between 300 and 600.[4] Reports from Kuwait list 628 Palestinians killed by Kuwaiti death squads since the Sabah royal family regained control over Kuwait.
The United States changed its military plans for protecting its control over oil and other interests in the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1980s when it became clear that economic problems in the USSR were debilitating its military capacity and Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan. Thereafter, direct military domination within the region became the U.S. strategy.
With the decline in U.S. oil production through 1989, experts predicted U.S. oil imports from the Gulf would rise from 10% that year to 25% by the year 2000. Japanese and European dependency is much greater.[5]
The Charges
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.
In 1989, General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander in Chief of the Central Command, completely revised U.S. military operations and plans for the Persian Gulf to prepare to intervene in a regional conflict against Iraq. The CIA assisted and directed Kuwait in its actions. At the time, Kuwait was violating OPEC oil production agreements, extracting excessive amounts of oil from pools shared with Iraq and demanding repayment of loans it made to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Kuwait broke off negotiations with Iraq over these disputes. The U.S. intended to provoke Iraq into actions against Kuwait that would justify U.S. intervention.
In 1989, CIA Director William Webster testified before the Congress about the alarming increase in U.S. importation of Gulf oil, citing U.S. rise in use from 5% in 1973 to 10% in 1989 and predicting 25% of all U.S. oil consumption would come from the region by 2000.[6] In early 1990, General Schwarzkopf informed the Senate Armed Services Committee of the new military strategy in the Gulf designed to protect U.S. access to and control over Gulf oil in the event of regional conflicts.
In July 1990, General Schwarzkopf and his staff ran elaborate, computerized war games pitting about 100,000 U.S. troops against Iraqi armored divisions.
The U.S. showed no opposition to Iraq's increasing threats against Kuwait. U.S. companies sought major contracts in Iraq. The Congress approved agricultural loan subsidies to Iraq of hundreds of millions of dollars to benefit U.S. farmers. However, loans for food deliveries of rice, corn, wheat and other essentials bought almost exclusively from the U.S. were cut off in the spring of 1990 to cause shortages. Arms were sold to Iraq by U.S. manufacturers. When Saddam Hussein requested U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie to explain State Department testimony in Congress about lraq's threats against Kuwait, she assured him the U.S. considered the dispute a regional concern, and it would not intervene. By these acts, the U.S. intended to lead Iraq into a provocation justifying war.
On August 2, 1990, Iraq occupied Kuwait without significant resistance.
On August 3, 1990, without any evidence of a threat to Saudi Arabia, and King Fahd believed Iraq had no intention of invading his country, President Bush vowed to defend Saudi Arabia. He sent Secretary Cheney, General Powell, and General Schwarzkopf almost immediately to Saudi Arabia where on August 6, General Schwarzkopf told King Fahd the U.S. thought Saddam Hussein could attack Saudi Arabia in as little as 48 hours. The efforts toward an Arab solution of the crisis were destroyed. Iraq never attacked Saudi Arabia and waited over five months while the U.S. slowly built a force of more than 500,000 soldiers and began the systematic destruction by aircraft and missiles of Iraq and its military, both defenseless against U.S. and coalition technology. In October 1990, General Powell referred to the new military plan developed in 1989. After the war, General Schwarzkopf referred to eighteen months of planning for the campaign.
The U.S. retains troops in Iraq as of May 1991 and throughout the region and has announced its intention to maintain a permanent military presence.
This course of conduct constitutes a crime against peace.
2. President Bush from August 2, 1990, intended and acted to prevent any interference with his plan to destroy Iraq economically and militarily.
Without consultation or communication with Congress, President Bush ordered 40,000 U.S. military personnel to advance the U.S. buildup in Saudi Arabia in the first week of August 1990. He exacted a request from Saudi Arabia for U.S. military assistance and on August 8, 1990, assured the world his acts were "wholly defensive." He waited until after the November 1990 elections to announce his earlier order sending more than 200,000 additional military personnel, clearly an assault force, again without advising Congress. As late as January 9, 1991, he insisted he had the constitutional authority to attack Iraq without Congressional approval.
While concealing his intention, President Bush continued the military build up of U.S. forces unabated from August into January 1991, intending to attack and destroy Iraq. He pressed the military to expedite preparation and to commence the assault before military considerations were optimum. When Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael J. Dugan mentioned plans to destroy the Iraqi civilian economy to the press on September 16, 1990, he was removed from office.[7]
President Bush coerced the United Nations Security Council into an unprecedented series of resolutions, finally securing authority for any nation in its absolute discretion by all necessary means to enforce the resolutions. To secure votes the U.S. paid multi-billion dollar bribes, offered arms for regional wars, threatened and carried out economic retaliation, forgave multi-billion dollar loans (including a $7 billion loan to Egypt for arms), offered diplomatic relations despite human rights violations and in other ways corruptly exacted votes, creating the appearance of near universal international approval of U.S. policies toward Iraq. A country which opposed the U.S., as Yemen did, lost millions of dollars in aid, as promised, the costliest vote it ever cast.
President Bush consistently rejected and ridiculed Iraq's efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution, beginning with Iraq's August 12, 1990, proposal, largely ignored, and ending with its mid-February 1991 peace offer which he called a "cruel hoax." For his part, President Bush consistently insisted there would be no negotiation, no compromise, no face saving, no reward for aggression. Simultaneously, he accused Saddam Hussein of rejecting diplomatic solutions.
President Bush led a sophisticated campaign to demonize Saddam Hussein, calling him a Hitler, repeatedly citing reports - which he knew were false - of the murder of hundreds of incubator babies, accusing Iraq of using chemical weapons on his own people and on the Iranians knowing U.S intelligence believed the reports untrue.
After subverting every effort for peace, President Bush began the destruction of Iraq answering his own question, "Why not wait? . . . The world could wait no longer." The course of conduct constitutes a crime against peace.
3. President Bush ordered the destruction of facilities essential to civilian life and economic productivity throughout Iraq.
Systematic aerial and missile bombardment of Iraq was ordered to begin at 6:30 p.m. EST January 16, 1991, eighteen and one-half hours after the deadline set on the insistence of President Bush, in order to be reported on television evening news in the U.S. The bombing continued for forty-two days. It met no resistance from Iraqi aircraft and no effective anti-aircraft or anti-missile ground fire. Iraq was defenseless.
The United States reports it flew 110,000 air sorties against Iraq, dropping 88,000 tons of bombs, nearly seven times the equivalent of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. 93% of the bombs were free falling bombs, most dropped from higher than 30,000 feet. Of the remaining 7% of the bombs with electronically guided systems, more than 25% missed their targets, nearly all caused damage primarily beyond any identifiable target. Most of the targets were civilian facilities.
The intention and effort of the bombing of civilian life and facilities was to systematically destroy Iraq's infrastructure leaving it in a preindustrial condition. Iraq's civilian population was dependent on industrial capacities. The U.S. assault left Iraq in a near apocalyptic condition as reported by the first United Nations observers after the war.[8] Among the facilities targeted and destroyed were:
electric power generation, relay and transmission;
water treatment, pumping and distribution systems and reservoirs;
telephone and radio exchanges, relay stations, towers and transmission facilities;
food processing, storage and distribution facilities and markets, infant milk formula and beverage plants, animal vaccination facilities and irrigation sites;
railroad transportation facilities, bus depots, bridges, highway overpasses, highways, highway repair stations, trains, buses and other public transportation vehicles, commercial and private vehicles;
oil wells and pumps, pipelines, refineries, oil storage tanks, gasoline filling stations and fuel delivery tank cars and trucks, and kerosene storage tanks;
sewage treatment and disposal systems;
factories engaged in civilian production, e.g., textile and automobile assembly; and
historical markers and ancient sites.
As a direct, intentional and foreseeable result of this destruction, tens of thousands of people have died from dehydration, dysentery and diseases caused by impure water, inability to obtain effective medical assistance and debilitation from hunger, shock, cold and stress. More will die until potable water, sanitary living conditions, adequate food supplies and other necessities are provided. There is a high risk of epidemics of cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and other diseases as well as starvation and malnutrition through the summer of 1991 and until food supplies are adequate and essential services are restored.
Only the United States could have carried out this destruction of Iraq, and the war was conducted almost exclusively by the United States. This conduct violated the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, and the laws of armed conflict.
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.
The destruction of civilian facilities left the entire civilian population without heat, cooking fuel, refrigeration, potable water, telephones, power for radio or TV reception, public transportation and fuel for private automobiles. It also limited food supplies, closed schools, created massive unemployment, severely limited economic activity and caused hospitals and medical services to shut down. In addition, residential areas of every major city and most towns and villages were targeted and destroyed. Isolated Bedouin camps were attacked by U.S. aircraft. In addition to deaths and injuries, the aerial assault destroyed 10 - 20,000 homes, apartments and other dwellings. Commercial centers with shops, retail stores, offices, hotels, restaurants and other public accommodations were targeted and thousands were destroyed. Scores of schools, hospitals, mosques and churches were damaged or destroyed. Thousands of civilian vehicles on highways, roads and parked on streets and in garages were targeted and destroyed. These included public buses, private vans and mini-buses, trucks, tractor trailers, lorries, taxi cabs and private cars. The purpose of this bombing was to terrorize the entire country, kill people, destroy property, prevent movement, demoralize the people and force the overthrow of the government.
As a result of the bombing of facilities essential to civilian life, residential and other civilian buildings and areas, at least 125,000 men, women and children were killed. The Red Crescent Society of Jordan estimated 113,000 civilian dead, 60% children, the week before the end of the war.
The conduct violated the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, and the laws of armed conflict.
5. The United States intentionally bombed indiscriminately throughout Iraq.
In aerial attacks, including strafing, over cities, towns, the countryside and highways, U.S. aircraft bombed and strafed indiscriminately. In every city and town bombs fell by chance far from any conceivable target, whether a civilian facility, military installation or military target. In the countryside random attacks were made on travelers, villagers, even Bedouins. The purpose of the attacks was to destroy life, property and terrorize the civilian population. On the highways, civilian vehicles including public buses taxicabs and passenger cars were bombed and strafed at random to frighten civilians from flight, from seeking food or medical care, finding relatives or other uses of highways. The effect was summary execution and corporal punishment indiscriminately of men, women and children, young and old, rich and poor, all nationalities including the large immigrant populations even Americans, all ethnic groups, including many Kurds and Assyrians, all religions including Shia and Sunni Moslems, Chaldeans and other Christians, and Jews. U.S. deliberate indifference to civilian and military casualties in Iraq, or their nature, is exemplified by General Colin Powell's response to a press inquiry about the number dead from the air and ground campaigns: "It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in."[9]
The conduct violates Protocol I Additional, Article 51.4 to the Geneva Conventions of 1977.
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.
In the first hours of the aerial and missile bombardment, the United States destroyed most military communications and began the systematic killing of soldiers who were incapable of defense or escape and the destruction of military equipment. Over a period of forty-two days, U.S bombing killed tens of thousands of defenseless soldiers, cut off most of their food, water and other supplies and left them in desperate and helpless disarray. Without significant risk to its own personnel, the U.S. led in the killing of at least 100,000 Iraqi soldiers at a cost of 148 U.S. combat casualties, according to the U.S. government. When it was determined that the civilian economy and the military were sufficiently destroyed, the U.S. ground forces moved into Kuwait and Iraq attacking disoriented disorganized, fleeing Iraqi forces wherever they could be found, killing thousands more and destroying any equipment found. The slaughter continued after the cease fire. For example, on March 2, 1991, U.S. 24th Division Forces engaged in a four-hour assault against Iraqis just west of Basra. More than 750 vehicles were destroyed, thousands were killed without U.S. casualties. A U.S. commander said, "We really waxed them." It was called a "Turkey Shoot." One Apache helicopter crew member yelled "Say hello to Allah" as he launched a laser-guided Hellfire missile.[10]
The intention was not to remove Iraq's presence from Kuwait. It was to destroy Iraq. In the process there was great destruction of property in Kuwait. The disproportion in death and destruction inflicted on a defenseless enemy exceeded 1,000 to one.
General Thomas Kelly commented on February 23, 1991, that by the time the ground war begins "there won't be many of them left." General Norman Schwarzkopf placed Iraqi military casualties at over 100,000. The intention was to destroy all military facilities and equipment wherever located and to so decimate the military age male population that Iraq could not raise a substantial force for half a generation.
The conduct violated the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, and the laws of armed conflict.
7. The United States used prohibited weapons capable of mass destruction and inflicting indiscriminate death and unnecessary suffering against both military and civilian targets.
Among the known illegal weapons and illegal uses of weapons employed by the United States are the following:
fuel air explosives capable of widespread incineration and death;
napalm;
cluster and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs; and
"superbombs," 2.5 ton devices, intended for assassination of government leaders.
Fuel air explosives were used against troops-in-place, civilian areas, oil fields and fleeing civilians and soldiers on two stretches of highway between Kuwait and Iraq. Included in fuel air weapons used was the BLU-82, a 15,000-pound device capable of incinerating everything within hundreds of yards.
One seven mile stretch called the "Highway of Death" was littered with hundreds of vehicles and thousands of dead. All were fleeing to Iraq for their lives. Thousands were civilians of all ages, including Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Jordanians and other nationalities. Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants of tanks, armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991. The press reported that no survivors are known or likely. One flatbed truck contained nine bodies, their hair and clothes were burned off, skin incinerated by heat so intense it melted the windshield onto the dashboard.
Napalm was used against civilians, military personnel and to start fires. Oil well fires in both Iraq and Kuwait were intentionally started by U.S. aircraft dropping napalm and other heat intensive devices.
Cluster and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs were used in Basra and other cities, and towns, against the convoys described above and against military units. The CBU-75 carries 1,800 bomblets called Sadeyes. One type of Sadeyes can explode before hitting the ground, on impact, or be timed to explode at different times after impact. Each bomblet contains 600 razor sharp steel fragments lethal up to 40 feet. The 1,800 bomblets from one CBU-75 can cover an area equal to 157 football fields with deadly shrapnel. "Superbombs" were dropped on hardened shelters, at least two in the last days of the assault, with the intention of assassinating President Saddam Hussein. One was misdirected. It was not the first time the Pentagon targeted a head of state. In April 1986, the U.S. attempted to assassinate Col. Muammar Qaddafi by laser directed bombs in its attack on Tripoli, Libya.
Illegal weapons killed thousands of civilians and soldiers.
The conduct violated the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter and the laws of armed conflict.
8. The United States intentionally attacked installations in Iraq containing dangerous substances and forces.
Despite the fact that Iraq used no nuclear or chemical weapons and in the face of UN resolutions limiting the authorized means of removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the U.S. intentionally bombed alleged nuclear sites, chemical plants, dams and other dangerous forces. The U.S. knew such attacks could cause the release of dangerous forces from such installations and consequent severe losses among the civilian population. While some civilians were killed in such attacks, there are no reported cases of consequent severe losses presumably because lethal nuclear materials and dangerous chemical and biological warfare substances were not present at the sites bombed.
The conduct violates Protocol I Additional, Article 56, to the Geneva Convention, 1977.
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.
On December 20, 1989, President Bush ordered a military assault on Panama using aircraft, artillery, helicopter gunships and experimenting with new weapons, including the Stealth bomber. The attack was a surprise assault targeting civilian and non-combatant government structures. In the E1 Chorillo district of Panama City alone, hundreds of civilians were killed and between 15,000 and 30,000 made homeless. U.S. soldiers buried dead Panamanians in mass graves, often without identification. The head of state, Manuel Noriega, who was systematically demonized by the U.S. government and press, ultimately surrendered to U.S. forces and was brought to Miami, Florida, on extra-territorial U.S. criminal charges.
The U.S. invasion of Panama violated all the international laws Iraq violated when it invaded Kuwait and more. Many more Panamanians were killed by U.S. forces than Iraq killed Kuwaitis.
President Bush violated the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, committed crimes against peace, war crimes and violated the U.S.Constitution and numerous U.S. criminal statutes in ordering and directing the assault on Panama.
10. President Bush obstructed justice and corrupted United Nations functions as a means of securing power to commit crimes against peace and war crimes.
President Bush caused the United Nations to completely bypass Chapter VI provisions of its Charter for the Pacific Settlement of Disputes. This was done in order to obtain Security Council resolutions authorizing the use of all necessary means, in the absolute discretion of any nation, to fulfill UN resolutions directed against Iraq and which were used to destroy Iraq. To obtain Security Council votes, the U.S. corruptly paid member nations billions of dollars, provided them arms to conduct regional wars, forgave billions in debts, withdrew opposition to a World Bank loan, agreed to diplomatic relations despite human rights violations and threatened economic and political reprisals. A nation which voted against the United States, Yemen, was immediately punished by the loss of millions of dollars in aid. The U.S. paid the UN $187 million to reduce the amount of dues it owed to the UN to avoid criticism of its coercive activities. The United Nations, created to end the scourge of war, became an instrument of war and condoned war crimes.
The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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.
President Bush intentionally usurped Congressional power, ignored its authority, and failed and refused to consult with the Congress. He deliberately misled, deceived, concealed and made false representations to the Congress to prevent its free deliberation and informed exercise of legislature power. President Bush individually ordered a naval blockade against Iraq, itself an act of war. He switched U.S. forces from a wholly defensive position and capability to an offensive capacity for aggression against Iraq without consultation with and contrary to assurances given to the Congress. He secured legislation approving enforcement of UN resolutions vesting absolute discretion in any nation, providing no guidelines and requiring no reporting to the UN, knowing he intended to destroy the ammed forces and civilian economy of Iraq. Those acts were undertaken to enable him to commit crimes against peace and war crimes.
The conduct violates the Constitution and laws of the United States, all committed to engage in the other impeachable offenses set forth in this Complaint.
12. The United States waged war on the environment.
Pollution from the detonation of 88,000 tons of bombs, innumerable missiles, rockets, artillery and small arms with the combustion and fires they caused and by 110,000 air sorties at a rate of nearly two per minute for six weeks has caused enormous injury to life and the ecology. Attacks by U.S. aircraft caused much if not all of the worst oil spills in the Gulf. Aircraft and helicopters dropping napalm and fuel-air explosives on oil wells, storage tanks and refineries caused oil fires throughout Iraq and many, if not most, of the oil well fires in Iraq and Kuwait. The intentional destruction of municipal water systems, waste material treatment and sewage disposal systems constitutes a direct and continuing assault on life and health throughout Iraq.
The conduct violated the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the laws of ammed conflict and constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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.
Without authority from the Congress or the UN, President Bush continued his imperious military actions after the cease fire. He encouraged and aided rebellion against Iraq, failed to protect the warring parties, encouraged migration of whole populations, placing them in jeopardy from the elements, hunger, and disease. After much suffering and many deaths, President Bush then without authority used U.S. military forces to distribute aid at and near the Turkish border, ignoring the often greater suffering among refugees in Iran. He then arbitrarily set up bantustan-like settlements for Kurds in Iraq and demanded Iraq pay for U.S. costs. When Kurds chose to return to their homes in Iraq, he moved U.S. troops further into northern Iraq against the will of the government and without authority.
The conduct violated the Charter of the United Nations, international law, the Constitution and laws of the United States, and the laws of Iraq.
14. President Bush intentionally deprived the Iraqi people of essential medicines, potable water, food, and other necessities.
A major component of the assault on Iraq was the systematic deprivation of essential human needs and services. To break the will of the people, destroy their economic capability, reduce their numbers and weaken their health, the United States:
imposed and enforced embargoes preventing the shipment of needed medicines, water purifiers, infant milk formula, food and other supplies;
individually, without congressional authority, ordered a U.S. naval blockade of Iraq, an act of war, to deprive the Iraqi people of needed supplies;
froze funds of Iraq and forced other nations to do so, depriving Iraq of the ability to purchase needed medicines, food and other supplies;
controlled information about the urgent need for such supplies to prevent sickness, death and threatened epidemic, endangering the whole society;
prevented international organizations, governments and relief agencies from providing needed supplies and obtaining information concerning needs;
failed to assist or meet urgent needs of huge refugee populations including Egyptians, Indians, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Sudanese, Jordanians, Palestinians, Sri Lankans, Filipinos, and interfered with efforts of others to do so;
consistently diverted attention from health and epidemic threats within Iraq caused by the U.S. even after advertising the plight of Kurdish people on the Turkish border;
deliberately bombed the electrical grids causing the closure of hospitals and laboratories, loss of medicine and essential fluids and blood; and
deliberately bombed food storage, fertilizer, and seed storage facilities.
As a result of these acts, thousands of people died, many more suffered illness and permanent injury. As a single illustration, Iraq consumed infant milk formula at a rate of 2,500 tons per month during the first seven months of 1990. From November 1, 1990, to February 7, 1991, Iraq was able to import only 17 tons. Its own productive capacity was destroyed. Many Iraqis believed that President Bush intended that their infants die because he targeted their food supply. The Red Crescent Society of Iraq estimated 3,000 infant deaths as of February 7, 1991, resulting from infant milk formula and infant medication shortages.
This conduct violates the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other covenants and constitutes a crime against humanity.
15. The United States continued its assault on Iraq after the cease fire, invading and occupying areas at will.
The United States has acted with dictatorial authority over Iraq and its external relations since the end of the military conflict. It has shot and killed Iraqi military personnel, destroyed aircraft and materiel at will, occupied vast areas of Iraq in the north and south and consistently threatened use of force against Iraq.
This conduct violates the sovereignty of a nation, exceeds authority in UN resolutions, is unauthorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and constitutes war crimes.
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.
Among the many violations committed or condoned by the U.S. government are the following:
illegal surveillance, arrest, interrogation and harassment of Arab-American, Iraqi-American, and U.S. resident Arabs;
illegal detention, interrogation and treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war;
aiding and condoning Kuwaiti summary executions, assaults, torture and illegal detention of Palestinians and other residents in Kuwait after the U.S. occupation; and
unwarranted, discriminatory, and excessive prosecution and punishment of U.S. military personnel who refused to serve in the Gulf, sought conscientious objector status or protested U.S. policies.
Persons were killed, assaulted, tortured, illegally detained and prosecuted, harassed and humiliated as a result of these policies.
The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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.
Having destroyed lives, property and essential civilian facilities in Iraq which the U.S. concedes will require $50 billion to replace (estimated at $200 billion by Iraq, killed at least 125,000 people by bombing and many thousands more by sickness and hunger, the U.S. now seeks to control Iraq economically even as its people face famine and epidemic.[l1] Damages, including casualties in Iraq, systematically inflicted by the U.S. exceed all damages, casualties and costs of all other parties to the conflict combined many times over. Reparations under these conditions are an exaction of tribute for the conqueror from a desperately needy country. The United States seeks to force Iraq to pay for damage to Kuwait largely caused by the U.S. and even to pay U.S. costs for its violations of Iraqi sovereignty in occupying northern Iraq to further manipulate the Kurdish population there. Such reparations are a neocolonial means of expropriating Iraq's oil, natural resources, and human labor.
The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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.
The Bush Administration achieved a five-month-long commercial for militarism and individual weapons systems. The American people were seduced into the celebration of a slaughter by controlled propaganda demonizing Iraq, assuring the world no harm would come to Iraqi civilians, deliberately spreading false stories of atrocities including chemical warfare threats, deaths of incubator babies and threats to the entire region by a new Hitler.
The press received virtually all its information from or by permission of the Pentagon. Efforts were made to prevent any adverse information or opposition views from being heard. CNN's limited presence in Baghdad was described as Iraqi propaganda. Independent observers, eyewitnesses' photos, and video tapes with information about the effects of the U.S. bombing were excluded from the media. Television network ownership, advertizers, newspaper ownership, elite columnists and commentators intimidated and instructed reporters and selected interviewees. They formed a near-single voice of praise for U.S. militarism, often exceeding the Pentagon in bellicosity.
The American people and their democratic institutions were deprived of information essential to sound judgment and were regimented, despite profound concem, to support a major neocolonial intervention and war of aggression. The principal purpose of the First Amendment to the United States was to assure the press and the people the right to criticize their government with impunity. This purpose has been effectively destroyed in relation to U.S. military aggression since the press was denied access to assaults on Grenada, Libya, Panama and, now on a much greater scale, against Iraq.
This conduct violates the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and is part of a pattern of conduct intended to create support for conduct constituting crimes against peace and war crimes.
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.
The U.S. has committed the acts described in this complaint to create a permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, to dominate its oil resources until depleted and to maintain geopolitical domination over the region.
The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations, international law, and the Constitution and laws of the United States.
Scope of the Inquiry
The Commission of Inquiry will focus on U.S. criminal conduct because of its destruction of Iraq, killing at least 125,000 persons directly by its bombing while proclaiming its own combat losses as 148, because it destroyed the economic base of Iraq and because its acts are still inflicting consequential deaths that may reach hundreds of thousands. The Commission of Inquiry will seek and accept evidence of criminal acts by any person or government, related to the Gulf conflict, because it believes international law must be applied uniformly. It believes that "victors' justice" is not law, but the extension of war by force of the prevailing party. The U.S. Senate, European Community foreign ministers, and the western press, even former Nuremberg prosecutors, have overwhelmingly called for war crimes trials for Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership alone. Even Mrs. Barbara Bush has said she would like to see Saddam Hussein hanged, albeit without mentioning a trial. Comprehensive efforts to gather and evaluate evidence, objectively judge all the conduct that constitutes crimes against peace and war crimes and to present these facts for judgment to the court of world opinion requires that at least one major effort focus on the United States. The Commission of Inquiry believes its focus on U.S. criminal acts is important, proper, and the only way to bring the whole truth, a balanced perspective and impartiality in application of legal process to this great human tragedy.
Ramsey Clark
May 9, 1991
Final Judgement: International War Crimes Tribunal
The Basis in International Law
Testimony and Evidence
International Law
Notes
Covert Operations: The Persian Gulf and the New World Order (Washington, DC: Christic Institute, 1991).
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 206.
Independent Commission of Inquiry on the U.S. Invasion of Panama, The U.S. Invasion of Panama: The Truth Behind Operation Just Cause(Boston: South End Press, 1990).
Amnesty International Reports, 1991, pp. 122-124.
Congressional Record, June 12, 1990, S8605.
"Saddam's Oil Plot." London Observer, October 21, 1990.
Rick Atkinson, "U.S. to Rely on Air Strikes if War Erupts," Washington Post, September 16, 1990: Al + . Eric Schmitt, "Ousted General Gets A Break," New York Times, November 7, 1991: Al9.
Joint WHO / UNICEF Team Report: A Visit to Iraq (New York: United Nations, 1991). A report to the Secretary General, dated March 20, 1991 by representatives of the U.N. Secretariat, UNICEF, UNDP, UNDRO, UNHCR, FAO and WHO.
Patrick E. Tyler, "Powell Says U.S. Will Stay In Iraq," New York Times, March 23, 1991: Al + .
Patrick J. Sloyan, "Massive Battle After Cease Fire," New York Newsday, May 8, 1991: A4+.
"U.S. Prepares UN Draft on Claims Against Iraq," New York Times, November 1, 1990.
Next » Final Judgement: International War Crimes Tribunal
The Basis in International Law
Testimony and Evidence
International Law
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Index
WWW URL: http://deoxy.org/warcrim2.htm
Copyright © 1992 by The Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal
United States War Crimes Against Iraq
Initial Complaint
Charging
George Bush, J. Danforth Quayle, James Baker,
Richard Cheney, William Webster, Colin Powell,
Norman Schwarzkopf and Others to be named
With
Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, Crimes Against
Humanity and Other Criminal Acts and High Crimes in
Violation of the Charter of the United Nations,
International Law, the Constitution of the United States
and Laws made in Pursuance Thereof.
Preliminary Statement
These charges have been prepared prior to the first hearing of the Commission of Inquiry by its staff. They are based on direct and circumstantial evidence from public and private documents; official statements and admissions by the persons charged and others; eyewitness accounts; Commission investigations and witness interviews in Iraq, the Middle East and elsewhere during and after the bombing; photographs and video tape; expert analyses; commentary and interviews; media coverage, published reports and accounts gathered between December 1990 and May l991. Commission of Inquiry hearings will be held in key cities where evidence is available supporting, expanding, adding, contradicting, disproving or explaining these, or similar charges against the accused and others of whatever nationality. When evidence sufficient to sustain convictions of the accused or others is obtained and after demanding the production of documents from the U.S. government, and others, and requesting testimony from the accused, offering them a full opportunity to present any defense personally, or by counsel, the evidence will be presented to an International War Crimes Tribunal. The Tribunal will consider the evidence gathered, seek and examine whatever additional evidence it chooses and render its judgment on the charges, the evidence, and the law.
Background
Since World War I, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States have dominated the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region and its oil resources. This has been accomplished by military conquest and coercion, economic control and exploitation, and through surrogate governments and their military forces. Thus, from 1953 to 1979 in the post World War II era, control over the region was exercised primarily through U.S. influence and control over the Gulf sheikdoms of Saudi Arabia and through the Shah of Iran. From 1953 to 1979 the Shah of Iran acted as a Pentagon/CIA surrogate to police the region. After the fall of the Shah and the seizure of U.S. Embassy hostages in Teheran, the U.S. provided military aid and assistance to Iraq, as did the USSR, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and most of the Emirates, in its war with Iran. U.S. policy during that tragic eight year war, 1980 - 1988, is probably best summed up by the phrase, "we hope they kill each other."
Throughout the seventy-five year period from Britain's invasion of Iraq early in World War I to the destruction of Iraq in 1991 by U.S. air power, the United States and the United Kingdom demonstrated no concern for democratic values, human rights, social justice, or political and cultural integrity in the region, nor for stopping military aggression there. The U.S. supported the Shah of Iran for 25 years, selling him more than $20 billion of advanced military equipment between 1972 and 1978 alone. Throughout this period the Shah and his brutal secret police called SAVAK had one of the worst human rights records in the world. Then in the 1980s, the U.S. supported Iraq in its wrongful aggression against Iran, ignoring Iraq's own poor human rights record.[l]
When the Iraqi government nationalized the Iraqi Petroleum Company in 1972, the Nixon Administration embarked on a campaign to destabilize the Iraqi government. It was in the 1970s that the U.S. first armed and then abandoned the Kurdish people, costing tens of thousands of Kurdish lives. The U.S. manipulated the Kurds through CIA and other agencies to attack Iraq, intending to harass Iraq while maintaining Iranian supremacy at the cost of Kurdish lives without intending any benefit to the Kurdish people or an autonomous Kurdistan.[2]
The U.S. with close oil and other economic ties to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait has fully supported both governments despite the total absence of democratic institutions, their pervasive human rights violations and the infliction of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments such as stoning to death for adultery and amputation of a hand for property offenses.
The U.S., sometimes alone among nations, supported Israel when it defied scores of UN resolutions concerning Palestinian rights, when it invaded Lebanon in a war which took tens of thousands of lives, and during its continuing occupation of southern Lebanon, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza.
The United States itself engaged in recent aggressions in violation of international law by invading Grenada in 1983, bombing Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya in 1986, financing the contra in Nicaragua, UNITA in southern Africa and supporting military dictatorships in Liberia, Chile, E1 Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, and many other places.
The U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 involved the same and additional violations of international law that apply to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The U.S. invasion took between 1,000 and 4,000 Panamanian lives. The United States government is still covering up the death toll. U.S. aggression caused massive property destruction throughout Panama.[3] According to U.S. and international human rights organization estimates, Kuwait's casualties from Iraq's invasion and the ensuing months of occupation were in the "hundreds" - between 300 and 600.[4] Reports from Kuwait list 628 Palestinians killed by Kuwaiti death squads since the Sabah royal family regained control over Kuwait.
The United States changed its military plans for protecting its control over oil and other interests in the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1980s when it became clear that economic problems in the USSR were debilitating its military capacity and Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan. Thereafter, direct military domination within the region became the U.S. strategy.
With the decline in U.S. oil production through 1989, experts predicted U.S. oil imports from the Gulf would rise from 10% that year to 25% by the year 2000. Japanese and European dependency is much greater.[5]
The Charges
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.
In 1989, General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander in Chief of the Central Command, completely revised U.S. military operations and plans for the Persian Gulf to prepare to intervene in a regional conflict against Iraq. The CIA assisted and directed Kuwait in its actions. At the time, Kuwait was violating OPEC oil production agreements, extracting excessive amounts of oil from pools shared with Iraq and demanding repayment of loans it made to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Kuwait broke off negotiations with Iraq over these disputes. The U.S. intended to provoke Iraq into actions against Kuwait that would justify U.S. intervention.
In 1989, CIA Director William Webster testified before the Congress about the alarming increase in U.S. importation of Gulf oil, citing U.S. rise in use from 5% in 1973 to 10% in 1989 and predicting 25% of all U.S. oil consumption would come from the region by 2000.[6] In early 1990, General Schwarzkopf informed the Senate Armed Services Committee of the new military strategy in the Gulf designed to protect U.S. access to and control over Gulf oil in the event of regional conflicts.
In July 1990, General Schwarzkopf and his staff ran elaborate, computerized war games pitting about 100,000 U.S. troops against Iraqi armored divisions.
The U.S. showed no opposition to Iraq's increasing threats against Kuwait. U.S. companies sought major contracts in Iraq. The Congress approved agricultural loan subsidies to Iraq of hundreds of millions of dollars to benefit U.S. farmers. However, loans for food deliveries of rice, corn, wheat and other essentials bought almost exclusively from the U.S. were cut off in the spring of 1990 to cause shortages. Arms were sold to Iraq by U.S. manufacturers. When Saddam Hussein requested U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie to explain State Department testimony in Congress about lraq's threats against Kuwait, she assured him the U.S. considered the dispute a regional concern, and it would not intervene. By these acts, the U.S. intended to lead Iraq into a provocation justifying war.
On August 2, 1990, Iraq occupied Kuwait without significant resistance.
On August 3, 1990, without any evidence of a threat to Saudi Arabia, and King Fahd believed Iraq had no intention of invading his country, President Bush vowed to defend Saudi Arabia. He sent Secretary Cheney, General Powell, and General Schwarzkopf almost immediately to Saudi Arabia where on August 6, General Schwarzkopf told King Fahd the U.S. thought Saddam Hussein could attack Saudi Arabia in as little as 48 hours. The efforts toward an Arab solution of the crisis were destroyed. Iraq never attacked Saudi Arabia and waited over five months while the U.S. slowly built a force of more than 500,000 soldiers and began the systematic destruction by aircraft and missiles of Iraq and its military, both defenseless against U.S. and coalition technology. In October 1990, General Powell referred to the new military plan developed in 1989. After the war, General Schwarzkopf referred to eighteen months of planning for the campaign.
The U.S. retains troops in Iraq as of May 1991 and throughout the region and has announced its intention to maintain a permanent military presence.
This course of conduct constitutes a crime against peace.
2. President Bush from August 2, 1990, intended and acted to prevent any interference with his plan to destroy Iraq economically and militarily.
Without consultation or communication with Congress, President Bush ordered 40,000 U.S. military personnel to advance the U.S. buildup in Saudi Arabia in the first week of August 1990. He exacted a request from Saudi Arabia for U.S. military assistance and on August 8, 1990, assured the world his acts were "wholly defensive." He waited until after the November 1990 elections to announce his earlier order sending more than 200,000 additional military personnel, clearly an assault force, again without advising Congress. As late as January 9, 1991, he insisted he had the constitutional authority to attack Iraq without Congressional approval.
While concealing his intention, President Bush continued the military build up of U.S. forces unabated from August into January 1991, intending to attack and destroy Iraq. He pressed the military to expedite preparation and to commence the assault before military considerations were optimum. When Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael J. Dugan mentioned plans to destroy the Iraqi civilian economy to the press on September 16, 1990, he was removed from office.[7]
President Bush coerced the United Nations Security Council into an unprecedented series of resolutions, finally securing authority for any nation in its absolute discretion by all necessary means to enforce the resolutions. To secure votes the U.S. paid multi-billion dollar bribes, offered arms for regional wars, threatened and carried out economic retaliation, forgave multi-billion dollar loans (including a $7 billion loan to Egypt for arms), offered diplomatic relations despite human rights violations and in other ways corruptly exacted votes, creating the appearance of near universal international approval of U.S. policies toward Iraq. A country which opposed the U.S., as Yemen did, lost millions of dollars in aid, as promised, the costliest vote it ever cast.
President Bush consistently rejected and ridiculed Iraq's efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution, beginning with Iraq's August 12, 1990, proposal, largely ignored, and ending with its mid-February 1991 peace offer which he called a "cruel hoax." For his part, President Bush consistently insisted there would be no negotiation, no compromise, no face saving, no reward for aggression. Simultaneously, he accused Saddam Hussein of rejecting diplomatic solutions.
President Bush led a sophisticated campaign to demonize Saddam Hussein, calling him a Hitler, repeatedly citing reports - which he knew were false - of the murder of hundreds of incubator babies, accusing Iraq of using chemical weapons on his own people and on the Iranians knowing U.S intelligence believed the reports untrue.
After subverting every effort for peace, President Bush began the destruction of Iraq answering his own question, "Why not wait? . . . The world could wait no longer." The course of conduct constitutes a crime against peace.
3. President Bush ordered the destruction of facilities essential to civilian life and economic productivity throughout Iraq.
Systematic aerial and missile bombardment of Iraq was ordered to begin at 6:30 p.m. EST January 16, 1991, eighteen and one-half hours after the deadline set on the insistence of President Bush, in order to be reported on television evening news in the U.S. The bombing continued for forty-two days. It met no resistance from Iraqi aircraft and no effective anti-aircraft or anti-missile ground fire. Iraq was defenseless.
The United States reports it flew 110,000 air sorties against Iraq, dropping 88,000 tons of bombs, nearly seven times the equivalent of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. 93% of the bombs were free falling bombs, most dropped from higher than 30,000 feet. Of the remaining 7% of the bombs with electronically guided systems, more than 25% missed their targets, nearly all caused damage primarily beyond any identifiable target. Most of the targets were civilian facilities.
The intention and effort of the bombing of civilian life and facilities was to systematically destroy Iraq's infrastructure leaving it in a preindustrial condition. Iraq's civilian population was dependent on industrial capacities. The U.S. assault left Iraq in a near apocalyptic condition as reported by the first United Nations observers after the war.[8] Among the facilities targeted and destroyed were:
electric power generation, relay and transmission;
water treatment, pumping and distribution systems and reservoirs;
telephone and radio exchanges, relay stations, towers and transmission facilities;
food processing, storage and distribution facilities and markets, infant milk formula and beverage plants, animal vaccination facilities and irrigation sites;
railroad transportation facilities, bus depots, bridges, highway overpasses, highways, highway repair stations, trains, buses and other public transportation vehicles, commercial and private vehicles;
oil wells and pumps, pipelines, refineries, oil storage tanks, gasoline filling stations and fuel delivery tank cars and trucks, and kerosene storage tanks;
sewage treatment and disposal systems;
factories engaged in civilian production, e.g., textile and automobile assembly; and
historical markers and ancient sites.
As a direct, intentional and foreseeable result of this destruction, tens of thousands of people have died from dehydration, dysentery and diseases caused by impure water, inability to obtain effective medical assistance and debilitation from hunger, shock, cold and stress. More will die until potable water, sanitary living conditions, adequate food supplies and other necessities are provided. There is a high risk of epidemics of cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and other diseases as well as starvation and malnutrition through the summer of 1991 and until food supplies are adequate and essential services are restored.
Only the United States could have carried out this destruction of Iraq, and the war was conducted almost exclusively by the United States. This conduct violated the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, and the laws of armed conflict.
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.
The destruction of civilian facilities left the entire civilian population without heat, cooking fuel, refrigeration, potable water, telephones, power for radio or TV reception, public transportation and fuel for private automobiles. It also limited food supplies, closed schools, created massive unemployment, severely limited economic activity and caused hospitals and medical services to shut down. In addition, residential areas of every major city and most towns and villages were targeted and destroyed. Isolated Bedouin camps were attacked by U.S. aircraft. In addition to deaths and injuries, the aerial assault destroyed 10 - 20,000 homes, apartments and other dwellings. Commercial centers with shops, retail stores, offices, hotels, restaurants and other public accommodations were targeted and thousands were destroyed. Scores of schools, hospitals, mosques and churches were damaged or destroyed. Thousands of civilian vehicles on highways, roads and parked on streets and in garages were targeted and destroyed. These included public buses, private vans and mini-buses, trucks, tractor trailers, lorries, taxi cabs and private cars. The purpose of this bombing was to terrorize the entire country, kill people, destroy property, prevent movement, demoralize the people and force the overthrow of the government.
As a result of the bombing of facilities essential to civilian life, residential and other civilian buildings and areas, at least 125,000 men, women and children were killed. The Red Crescent Society of Jordan estimated 113,000 civilian dead, 60% children, the week before the end of the war.
The conduct violated the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, and the laws of armed conflict.
5. The United States intentionally bombed indiscriminately throughout Iraq.
In aerial attacks, including strafing, over cities, towns, the countryside and highways, U.S. aircraft bombed and strafed indiscriminately. In every city and town bombs fell by chance far from any conceivable target, whether a civilian facility, military installation or military target. In the countryside random attacks were made on travelers, villagers, even Bedouins. The purpose of the attacks was to destroy life, property and terrorize the civilian population. On the highways, civilian vehicles including public buses taxicabs and passenger cars were bombed and strafed at random to frighten civilians from flight, from seeking food or medical care, finding relatives or other uses of highways. The effect was summary execution and corporal punishment indiscriminately of men, women and children, young and old, rich and poor, all nationalities including the large immigrant populations even Americans, all ethnic groups, including many Kurds and Assyrians, all religions including Shia and Sunni Moslems, Chaldeans and other Christians, and Jews. U.S. deliberate indifference to civilian and military casualties in Iraq, or their nature, is exemplified by General Colin Powell's response to a press inquiry about the number dead from the air and ground campaigns: "It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in."[9]
The conduct violates Protocol I Additional, Article 51.4 to the Geneva Conventions of 1977.
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.
In the first hours of the aerial and missile bombardment, the United States destroyed most military communications and began the systematic killing of soldiers who were incapable of defense or escape and the destruction of military equipment. Over a period of forty-two days, U.S bombing killed tens of thousands of defenseless soldiers, cut off most of their food, water and other supplies and left them in desperate and helpless disarray. Without significant risk to its own personnel, the U.S. led in the killing of at least 100,000 Iraqi soldiers at a cost of 148 U.S. combat casualties, according to the U.S. government. When it was determined that the civilian economy and the military were sufficiently destroyed, the U.S. ground forces moved into Kuwait and Iraq attacking disoriented disorganized, fleeing Iraqi forces wherever they could be found, killing thousands more and destroying any equipment found. The slaughter continued after the cease fire. For example, on March 2, 1991, U.S. 24th Division Forces engaged in a four-hour assault against Iraqis just west of Basra. More than 750 vehicles were destroyed, thousands were killed without U.S. casualties. A U.S. commander said, "We really waxed them." It was called a "Turkey Shoot." One Apache helicopter crew member yelled "Say hello to Allah" as he launched a laser-guided Hellfire missile.[10]
The intention was not to remove Iraq's presence from Kuwait. It was to destroy Iraq. In the process there was great destruction of property in Kuwait. The disproportion in death and destruction inflicted on a defenseless enemy exceeded 1,000 to one.
General Thomas Kelly commented on February 23, 1991, that by the time the ground war begins "there won't be many of them left." General Norman Schwarzkopf placed Iraqi military casualties at over 100,000. The intention was to destroy all military facilities and equipment wherever located and to so decimate the military age male population that Iraq could not raise a substantial force for half a generation.
The conduct violated the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, and the laws of armed conflict.
7. The United States used prohibited weapons capable of mass destruction and inflicting indiscriminate death and unnecessary suffering against both military and civilian targets.
Among the known illegal weapons and illegal uses of weapons employed by the United States are the following:
fuel air explosives capable of widespread incineration and death;
napalm;
cluster and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs; and
"superbombs," 2.5 ton devices, intended for assassination of government leaders.
Fuel air explosives were used against troops-in-place, civilian areas, oil fields and fleeing civilians and soldiers on two stretches of highway between Kuwait and Iraq. Included in fuel air weapons used was the BLU-82, a 15,000-pound device capable of incinerating everything within hundreds of yards.
One seven mile stretch called the "Highway of Death" was littered with hundreds of vehicles and thousands of dead. All were fleeing to Iraq for their lives. Thousands were civilians of all ages, including Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Jordanians and other nationalities. Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants of tanks, armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991. The press reported that no survivors are known or likely. One flatbed truck contained nine bodies, their hair and clothes were burned off, skin incinerated by heat so intense it melted the windshield onto the dashboard.
Napalm was used against civilians, military personnel and to start fires. Oil well fires in both Iraq and Kuwait were intentionally started by U.S. aircraft dropping napalm and other heat intensive devices.
Cluster and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs were used in Basra and other cities, and towns, against the convoys described above and against military units. The CBU-75 carries 1,800 bomblets called Sadeyes. One type of Sadeyes can explode before hitting the ground, on impact, or be timed to explode at different times after impact. Each bomblet contains 600 razor sharp steel fragments lethal up to 40 feet. The 1,800 bomblets from one CBU-75 can cover an area equal to 157 football fields with deadly shrapnel. "Superbombs" were dropped on hardened shelters, at least two in the last days of the assault, with the intention of assassinating President Saddam Hussein. One was misdirected. It was not the first time the Pentagon targeted a head of state. In April 1986, the U.S. attempted to assassinate Col. Muammar Qaddafi by laser directed bombs in its attack on Tripoli, Libya.
Illegal weapons killed thousands of civilians and soldiers.
The conduct violated the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter and the laws of armed conflict.
8. The United States intentionally attacked installations in Iraq containing dangerous substances and forces.
Despite the fact that Iraq used no nuclear or chemical weapons and in the face of UN resolutions limiting the authorized means of removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the U.S. intentionally bombed alleged nuclear sites, chemical plants, dams and other dangerous forces. The U.S. knew such attacks could cause the release of dangerous forces from such installations and consequent severe losses among the civilian population. While some civilians were killed in such attacks, there are no reported cases of consequent severe losses presumably because lethal nuclear materials and dangerous chemical and biological warfare substances were not present at the sites bombed.
The conduct violates Protocol I Additional, Article 56, to the Geneva Convention, 1977.
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.
On December 20, 1989, President Bush ordered a military assault on Panama using aircraft, artillery, helicopter gunships and experimenting with new weapons, including the Stealth bomber. The attack was a surprise assault targeting civilian and non-combatant government structures. In the E1 Chorillo district of Panama City alone, hundreds of civilians were killed and between 15,000 and 30,000 made homeless. U.S. soldiers buried dead Panamanians in mass graves, often without identification. The head of state, Manuel Noriega, who was systematically demonized by the U.S. government and press, ultimately surrendered to U.S. forces and was brought to Miami, Florida, on extra-territorial U.S. criminal charges.
The U.S. invasion of Panama violated all the international laws Iraq violated when it invaded Kuwait and more. Many more Panamanians were killed by U.S. forces than Iraq killed Kuwaitis.
President Bush violated the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, committed crimes against peace, war crimes and violated the U.S.Constitution and numerous U.S. criminal statutes in ordering and directing the assault on Panama.
10. President Bush obstructed justice and corrupted United Nations functions as a means of securing power to commit crimes against peace and war crimes.
President Bush caused the United Nations to completely bypass Chapter VI provisions of its Charter for the Pacific Settlement of Disputes. This was done in order to obtain Security Council resolutions authorizing the use of all necessary means, in the absolute discretion of any nation, to fulfill UN resolutions directed against Iraq and which were used to destroy Iraq. To obtain Security Council votes, the U.S. corruptly paid member nations billions of dollars, provided them arms to conduct regional wars, forgave billions in debts, withdrew opposition to a World Bank loan, agreed to diplomatic relations despite human rights violations and threatened economic and political reprisals. A nation which voted against the United States, Yemen, was immediately punished by the loss of millions of dollars in aid. The U.S. paid the UN $187 million to reduce the amount of dues it owed to the UN to avoid criticism of its coercive activities. The United Nations, created to end the scourge of war, became an instrument of war and condoned war crimes.
The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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.
President Bush intentionally usurped Congressional power, ignored its authority, and failed and refused to consult with the Congress. He deliberately misled, deceived, concealed and made false representations to the Congress to prevent its free deliberation and informed exercise of legislature power. President Bush individually ordered a naval blockade against Iraq, itself an act of war. He switched U.S. forces from a wholly defensive position and capability to an offensive capacity for aggression against Iraq without consultation with and contrary to assurances given to the Congress. He secured legislation approving enforcement of UN resolutions vesting absolute discretion in any nation, providing no guidelines and requiring no reporting to the UN, knowing he intended to destroy the ammed forces and civilian economy of Iraq. Those acts were undertaken to enable him to commit crimes against peace and war crimes.
The conduct violates the Constitution and laws of the United States, all committed to engage in the other impeachable offenses set forth in this Complaint.
12. The United States waged war on the environment.
Pollution from the detonation of 88,000 tons of bombs, innumerable missiles, rockets, artillery and small arms with the combustion and fires they caused and by 110,000 air sorties at a rate of nearly two per minute for six weeks has caused enormous injury to life and the ecology. Attacks by U.S. aircraft caused much if not all of the worst oil spills in the Gulf. Aircraft and helicopters dropping napalm and fuel-air explosives on oil wells, storage tanks and refineries caused oil fires throughout Iraq and many, if not most, of the oil well fires in Iraq and Kuwait. The intentional destruction of municipal water systems, waste material treatment and sewage disposal systems constitutes a direct and continuing assault on life and health throughout Iraq.
The conduct violated the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the laws of ammed conflict and constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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.
Without authority from the Congress or the UN, President Bush continued his imperious military actions after the cease fire. He encouraged and aided rebellion against Iraq, failed to protect the warring parties, encouraged migration of whole populations, placing them in jeopardy from the elements, hunger, and disease. After much suffering and many deaths, President Bush then without authority used U.S. military forces to distribute aid at and near the Turkish border, ignoring the often greater suffering among refugees in Iran. He then arbitrarily set up bantustan-like settlements for Kurds in Iraq and demanded Iraq pay for U.S. costs. When Kurds chose to return to their homes in Iraq, he moved U.S. troops further into northern Iraq against the will of the government and without authority.
The conduct violated the Charter of the United Nations, international law, the Constitution and laws of the United States, and the laws of Iraq.
14. President Bush intentionally deprived the Iraqi people of essential medicines, potable water, food, and other necessities.
A major component of the assault on Iraq was the systematic deprivation of essential human needs and services. To break the will of the people, destroy their economic capability, reduce their numbers and weaken their health, the United States:
imposed and enforced embargoes preventing the shipment of needed medicines, water purifiers, infant milk formula, food and other supplies;
individually, without congressional authority, ordered a U.S. naval blockade of Iraq, an act of war, to deprive the Iraqi people of needed supplies;
froze funds of Iraq and forced other nations to do so, depriving Iraq of the ability to purchase needed medicines, food and other supplies;
controlled information about the urgent need for such supplies to prevent sickness, death and threatened epidemic, endangering the whole society;
prevented international organizations, governments and relief agencies from providing needed supplies and obtaining information concerning needs;
failed to assist or meet urgent needs of huge refugee populations including Egyptians, Indians, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Sudanese, Jordanians, Palestinians, Sri Lankans, Filipinos, and interfered with efforts of others to do so;
consistently diverted attention from health and epidemic threats within Iraq caused by the U.S. even after advertising the plight of Kurdish people on the Turkish border;
deliberately bombed the electrical grids causing the closure of hospitals and laboratories, loss of medicine and essential fluids and blood; and
deliberately bombed food storage, fertilizer, and seed storage facilities.
As a result of these acts, thousands of people died, many more suffered illness and permanent injury. As a single illustration, Iraq consumed infant milk formula at a rate of 2,500 tons per month during the first seven months of 1990. From November 1, 1990, to February 7, 1991, Iraq was able to import only 17 tons. Its own productive capacity was destroyed. Many Iraqis believed that President Bush intended that their infants die because he targeted their food supply. The Red Crescent Society of Iraq estimated 3,000 infant deaths as of February 7, 1991, resulting from infant milk formula and infant medication shortages.
This conduct violates the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other covenants and constitutes a crime against humanity.
15. The United States continued its assault on Iraq after the cease fire, invading and occupying areas at will.
The United States has acted with dictatorial authority over Iraq and its external relations since the end of the military conflict. It has shot and killed Iraqi military personnel, destroyed aircraft and materiel at will, occupied vast areas of Iraq in the north and south and consistently threatened use of force against Iraq.
This conduct violates the sovereignty of a nation, exceeds authority in UN resolutions, is unauthorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and constitutes war crimes.
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.
Among the many violations committed or condoned by the U.S. government are the following:
illegal surveillance, arrest, interrogation and harassment of Arab-American, Iraqi-American, and U.S. resident Arabs;
illegal detention, interrogation and treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war;
aiding and condoning Kuwaiti summary executions, assaults, torture and illegal detention of Palestinians and other residents in Kuwait after the U.S. occupation; and
unwarranted, discriminatory, and excessive prosecution and punishment of U.S. military personnel who refused to serve in the Gulf, sought conscientious objector status or protested U.S. policies.
Persons were killed, assaulted, tortured, illegally detained and prosecuted, harassed and humiliated as a result of these policies.
The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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.
Having destroyed lives, property and essential civilian facilities in Iraq which the U.S. concedes will require $50 billion to replace (estimated at $200 billion by Iraq, killed at least 125,000 people by bombing and many thousands more by sickness and hunger, the U.S. now seeks to control Iraq economically even as its people face famine and epidemic.[l1] Damages, including casualties in Iraq, systematically inflicted by the U.S. exceed all damages, casualties and costs of all other parties to the conflict combined many times over. Reparations under these conditions are an exaction of tribute for the conqueror from a desperately needy country. The United States seeks to force Iraq to pay for damage to Kuwait largely caused by the U.S. and even to pay U.S. costs for its violations of Iraqi sovereignty in occupying northern Iraq to further manipulate the Kurdish population there. Such reparations are a neocolonial means of expropriating Iraq's oil, natural resources, and human labor.
The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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.
The Bush Administration achieved a five-month-long commercial for militarism and individual weapons systems. The American people were seduced into the celebration of a slaughter by controlled propaganda demonizing Iraq, assuring the world no harm would come to Iraqi civilians, deliberately spreading false stories of atrocities including chemical warfare threats, deaths of incubator babies and threats to the entire region by a new Hitler.
The press received virtually all its information from or by permission of the Pentagon. Efforts were made to prevent any adverse information or opposition views from being heard. CNN's limited presence in Baghdad was described as Iraqi propaganda. Independent observers, eyewitnesses' photos, and video tapes with information about the effects of the U.S. bombing were excluded from the media. Television network ownership, advertizers, newspaper ownership, elite columnists and commentators intimidated and instructed reporters and selected interviewees. They formed a near-single voice of praise for U.S. militarism, often exceeding the Pentagon in bellicosity.
The American people and their democratic institutions were deprived of information essential to sound judgment and were regimented, despite profound concem, to support a major neocolonial intervention and war of aggression. The principal purpose of the First Amendment to the United States was to assure the press and the people the right to criticize their government with impunity. This purpose has been effectively destroyed in relation to U.S. military aggression since the press was denied access to assaults on Grenada, Libya, Panama and, now on a much greater scale, against Iraq.
This conduct violates the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and is part of a pattern of conduct intended to create support for conduct constituting crimes against peace and war crimes.
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.
The U.S. has committed the acts described in this complaint to create a permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, to dominate its oil resources until depleted and to maintain geopolitical domination over the region.
The conduct violates the Charter of the United Nations, international law, and the Constitution and laws of the United States.
Scope of the Inquiry
The Commission of Inquiry will focus on U.S. criminal conduct because of its destruction of Iraq, killing at least 125,000 persons directly by its bombing while proclaiming its own combat losses as 148, because it destroyed the economic base of Iraq and because its acts are still inflicting consequential deaths that may reach hundreds of thousands. The Commission of Inquiry will seek and accept evidence of criminal acts by any person or government, related to the Gulf conflict, because it believes international law must be applied uniformly. It believes that "victors' justice" is not law, but the extension of war by force of the prevailing party. The U.S. Senate, European Community foreign ministers, and the western press, even former Nuremberg prosecutors, have overwhelmingly called for war crimes trials for Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership alone. Even Mrs. Barbara Bush has said she would like to see Saddam Hussein hanged, albeit without mentioning a trial. Comprehensive efforts to gather and evaluate evidence, objectively judge all the conduct that constitutes crimes against peace and war crimes and to present these facts for judgment to the court of world opinion requires that at least one major effort focus on the United States. The Commission of Inquiry believes its focus on U.S. criminal acts is important, proper, and the only way to bring the whole truth, a balanced perspective and impartiality in application of legal process to this great human tragedy.
Ramsey Clark
May 9, 1991
Final Judgement: International War Crimes Tribunal
The Basis in International Law
Testimony and Evidence
International Law
Notes
Covert Operations: The Persian Gulf and the New World Order (Washington, DC: Christic Institute, 1991).
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 206.
Independent Commission of Inquiry on the U.S. Invasion of Panama, The U.S. Invasion of Panama: The Truth Behind Operation Just Cause(Boston: South End Press, 1990).
Amnesty International Reports, 1991, pp. 122-124.
Congressional Record, June 12, 1990, S8605.
"Saddam's Oil Plot." London Observer, October 21, 1990.
Rick Atkinson, "U.S. to Rely on Air Strikes if War Erupts," Washington Post, September 16, 1990: Al + . Eric Schmitt, "Ousted General Gets A Break," New York Times, November 7, 1991: Al9.
Joint WHO / UNICEF Team Report: A Visit to Iraq (New York: United Nations, 1991). A report to the Secretary General, dated March 20, 1991 by representatives of the U.N. Secretariat, UNICEF, UNDP, UNDRO, UNHCR, FAO and WHO.
Patrick E. Tyler, "Powell Says U.S. Will Stay In Iraq," New York Times, March 23, 1991: Al + .
Patrick J. Sloyan, "Massive Battle After Cease Fire," New York Newsday, May 8, 1991: A4+.
"U.S. Prepares UN Draft on Claims Against Iraq," New York Times, November 1, 1990.
Next » Final Judgement: International War Crimes Tribunal
The Basis in International Law
Testimony and Evidence
International Law
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Index
WWW URL: http://deoxy.org/warcrim2.htm
Copyright © 1992 by The Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
