Notable Quotable from Co-President & CEO-USA, Dick Cheney

“Principle is okay up to a certain point, but principle doesn’t do any good if you lose.” Richard B. Cheney.

But, then again Mr Vice-President, what good is a man who has lost his principles? What good is a man without honor? A man who is neither principled nor honorable is not a man worthy of the office of Vice-President of the United States of America or anything else worth winning or losing.

Want to know why our republic is in such perilous straits? Our leaders are men, like Mr Cheney, who have abandoned honor and the principles upon which our nation was founded for their personal gain.

Quote taken from John W. Dean’s ‘Worse Than Watergate’ and attributed to Ron Nessen’s ‘It Sure Looks Different from the Inside’ (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1978), p 230

Three Pots Calling the Kettle Black

I hope that you haven’t missed the most recent revival of this old Vaudeville shtick. The sublime comedic timing displayed by these three pros of the greasepaint is simply not to be missed!

Senator John McCain, playing the irascible codger: "My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression."

President George W Bush, in the role of the baudy, BMoC: "With its actions in recent days, Russia has damaged its credibility and its relations with the nations of the free world. Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the twenty-first century."

As the saucy hat-check girl, Condi Rice:”Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used whenever it wishes to deliver a message and that's its military power. That's not the way to deal in the 21st century.”

Then, all three pull missile defense systems out of their pants, plant ‘em in Poland and nuke Iran!

You got to see it to believe it!

The Myth of American Moral Authority

Pulitzer Prize winner, Ron Suskind, has come out with a book entitled ‘The Way of the World’ that asserts convincingly that the Bush administration ordered the CIA to forge a letter covering their collective derriere about WMDs in Iraq and Saddam’s taking delivery of yellow cake uranium from Niger.

As despicable as this recounted action is (one of so many the Bushites have perpetrated that a whole new lexicon is presently being developed by the Oxford Dictionary) and as dismally unsurprising as this latest criminal subterfuge is (the Bushies, after all, have been preparing for the ‘End Time’; with ‘Owl-mighty Gawwd’ on your side, you can do whatever the Hell you want, apparently) there is, regrettably, one ‘Revelation’ that Mr Suskind has not experienced; that regarding the prevailing myth of American moral authority. At least, not as evidenced by his interviews on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! there isn’t.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=178981

Mr Suskind ended his pitch on the Daily Show by reiterating his ‘book-tour blurb’, which Stewart had stifled half-way through the interview with a jibe about how crassly Suskind was touting his book. Suskind, in summation, stated melodramatically that “The book’s all about how America’s moral authority has bled away and we need to restore it to fight the battles that we need to fight and, y’know, the way to do it’s with truth!”

Can I get an ‘Ay-man’ for the rapturous delusion of American moral authority?

The vain, prideful fantasy that America possesses intrinsic moral authority is both a ludicrous and harmful one. It has been used to white-wash the ruinous, foul effects of American foreign and domestic policy for centuries. The American people, from the cradle to the grave, are inculcated with the precept that America can do no moral wrong; that America has a ‘lock’ on righteousness and so, ipso facto, any apparent wrong-doing is done by ‘loose cannons’ and renegades. The promulgation of this appealing, though unsubstantiated testament has resulted in its being piously accepted as a basic tenet of the secular pseudo-religion of ‘Americanism’.

Supporting examples which demonstrate this claim of moral authority are rarely if ever offered. Why should they be? Like any belief system, ‘Americanism’ requires no proof. Notwithstanding ‘faith’ in Americanism, the maxim has little relationship to fact and so creates a cognitive dissonance amongst the citizens of the United States. The specious myth of American moral authority is worn by American leaders (and the American people) as a precious, reverential vestment to cover up the numerous, depraved, heinous acts of murderous violence and dehumanizing social injustice that comprise the history of the American Republic. Given America’s contemptible history, Americans cannot rightly lay claim to moral authority or the moral high ground yet, they do. For to reject the tenet of American moral authority is to renounce one’s faith in Americanism, declare oneself ‘unpatriotic’ and so suffer derision and ostracism from the body politic.

Although doctrines of faith, by definition, are held to be unassailable by logic, even so, examples of America’s moral failures might serve to contravene the indiscriminant, unthinking acceptance of the sacrosanct belief in America’s inherent moral ascendency.

Let’s start with the unconscionable exclusion of indigenous Americans, African-Americans and women of all races from those who were granted ‘Liberty’ at the signing of America’s most hallowed documents and the effective denial of the rights of full citizenship to those citizens for the greater part of the life of the Republic. Not exactly brimming with righteousness and moral rectitude, one might say. Then again, such injustice was part and parcel of early, less civilized times and one might facilely shoo away guilt over these shameful inequities, if one were a true believer in the dogma of Americanism.

Moving on from social injustice to the atrocities of war, perhaps the ‘True Believe’ will consider the slaughter and subjugation of (fill-in-the-blank) by America the righteous as permissible evidence of moral turpitude.

1. The indigenous people of the American continent, the Native Americans
2. The indigenous people and citizens of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War
3. The indigenous people of the Hawaiian archipelago
4. The civilian population of Viet Nam
5. The people of Haiti
6. The people of Guatemala
7. The people of El Salvador
8. The people of Nicaragua
9. The people of Panama
10. The people of Iraq
11. All of the above and more

If could be argued that war is a monstrous aberration in which atrocities are an unfortunate, yet integral part. (Collateral damage is the modern, accepted terminology for the slaughter of civilians and while euphemisms such as this and ‘non-combatant’ are wide spread, they do not negate or excuse criminal, immoral acts.) Notwithstanding the parenthetical proviso, as General William Tecumseh Sherman correctly observed, “War is Hell!”. Thus one might be disposed to dismiss the aberrant behavior of men on the field of battle fighting for their lives as admissible to this argument.

The heat of battle, however, would not mitigate the murderous result of aerial bombardment, as the orders and the executions for such ruthless assaults are done at a cool, calculated distance. Since the Second World War, the people of China, Korea, Indonesia, Cuba, Peru, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, Iran, Kuwait, Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia have all suffered ‘death from above’ delivered by the United States in undeclared wars. These horrific, cold-blooded incidences of mayhem might register as contravening evidence with those whose faith in American’s moral strength is less certain.

Furthermore, if the many adherents of Americanism would stop even for a moment to meditate on the documented assassinations committed by CIA operatives as part of numerous coup d’états when the brutal and corrupt dictatorships of Mobuto, Trujillo, Somoza, Marcos, the Duvaliers (pere et fil), Suharto, Noriega and Saddam Hussein were installed and maintained to suit American interests, they would start to sense that not even the US State Department could be so naïvely bumbling in the matters of statecraft as to fail to recognize the glaring lack of moral fiber displayed, not only by these despots - certainly not by the murderers in the service to these men - but also by the US administration officials who befriended them and ordered and carried out extra-legal executions.

(Visit the site of ‘Friendly Dictator Trading Cards’ for more fun facts about America’s propensity to support fascist autocrats when the money is right.) http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Dictators_Home.html

Possibly, borderline apostates should more closely examine and consider the presidentially ordered, CIA directed and financed coups in Chile, Guatemala, Haiti, Iran, etc. that violently and bloodily over-threw the democratically elected governments of those nations because their policies, which strove to place the needs of their own people above the greed of US-based multi-nationals in defiance of the long-standing dictum for subservience to American interests, were perceived and propagandized as committing the odious ‘crime’ of promoting ‘leftist/Marxist’ policies.

Conceivably, the Faithful might note America’s determined, decades-long obstruction by veto of repeated UN resolutions calling for a Palestinian State and fair and equitable distribution of vital resources – resolutions supported by near world-wide unanimity which in all likelihood would end most of the animus and violence in the region - while at the same time successive American administrations have been politically, materially and financially supporting the continued dehumanization of the Palestinian people in gruesome, slow-motion genocide by the State of Israel. How might 30 years of America stone-walling the basic human rights of the people of Palestine be viewed as just and righteous?

Should the adherents to the creed think the above examples reference events too remote in the past to be conveniently pondered, how ‘bout the recent spate of bi-partisan windging and grousing over the astronomical costs of rebuilding Iraq and the accompanying morally bankrupt proposal that the Iraqis pony up and pay for reparations themselves for the diabolical mess the Bush administrations have made of their country? Such a base, execrable retreat from accountability can hardly be seen as a manifestation of charity, fair-mindedness or moral superiority.

Indeed, if the Faithful were simply to focus on the holy ‘War on Terror’ as decreed by Bush the Second in his infamous State of the Union speech in January, 2002, there is a virtually endless list of atrociously immoral actions committed, codified and condoned that coldly testify to a deplorable absence of virtuousness, moral strength, honor and honesty.

To Wit:

• The suspension of habeas corpus, the keystone of the British and American legal systems
• The denial of due process,
• The kidnapping and extraordinary rendition of suspects,
• The torture and dehumanizing abuse of those illegally detained,
• The lying, dissembling and prevaricating about torture, kidnapping, extraordinary rendition, etc.
• The murder of thousands upon thousands of Afghani men, women and children,
• The slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children,
• The criminal, forced displacement of 5 millions Iraqis,
• The slaughterous assaults on the people inhabiting the tribal areas of Pakistan,
• The effective revocation of the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of:
• freedom of speech
• freedom of assembly
• redress of grievances
• freedom from self-incrimination
• freedom of privacy
• The forging of documents indemnifying and exonerating Bush apparatchiks of wrong-doing
• The perjurious and evasive testimonies given before Congress by Bush operatives
• The blatant, contemptuous refusal to answer Congressional subpoena to give testimony regarding the aforementioned points
• Etc
• Etc

In light of the extremely long check list of recent atrocities, war crimes and institutionalized injustice, coupled with those committed over the course of the history of the American Republic and presented with rigorous brevity herein, what justification does anyone have to profess America’s moral authority?

A chorus of indignation at the effrontery of the charge laid here that America’s traditional claim to the cherished tenet of its ‘moral authority’ is naught but vapid propaganda must surely have reached a fevered pitch of apoplexy, sending some to grope for needed cardiovascular medication and compelling others to furiously bang out flaming blogs of condemnation and setting still other devotees to shrieking vile epithets and accusations of un-Americanism.

Heaven, forefend!

“At least, Americans don’t strap C4 to the backs of women and children to blow up shopping malls.” one can hear the patriots piously clamor. “At least, Americans don’t suicidally fly airliners into buildings killing thousands of innocent people!”

The response to this straw man’s retort should be obvious: When America has cruise missiles, smart bombs, cluster bombs, bunker busters approaching the destructive power of small nuclear devices, unmanned aircraft armed with laser-guided Hellfire missiles, F-16’s and satellite surveillance, where is the need for such primitive methods of assault as suicide bombers or kamikaze flight plans?

The disparity in the result of an attack by a flight of B-52s or B-2s or A-10s or AC-130s or even a single MQ-1 Predator ‘drone’ when compared to that of a young extremist liveried in a bandoleer of high explosives or that of the 9-11 hijackers need not be examined in detail except by those irredeemably blinded by their faith in Americanism or those simply depraved. All of the aforementioned methods of attack are horrific but, to belabor the obvious for the sake of completing the argument, coordinated attacks by the most formidable military force in human history leave tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties in their wake. Even the horrendous loss of life on September 11, 2001 pales in comparison to the probably casualties wrought during the opening night of Operation Enduring Freedom. Though the comparison in no way decriminalizes the malevolent acts perpetrated on that bright, sunny day it may provide a fresh perspective from which to view the murderous immoral acts of the American government.

Granted, the American people and American administrations have undertaken many noble, humanitarian projects. The premise being argued here is not that Americans are wholly without merit or virtue. The contention is that Americans, demonstratively, do not have the right to claim intrinsic moral authority. There is no denying that the Marshall Plan was of true benefit to the people of Europe, for instance. (Never mind that the lion’s share of the funds went directly into the pockets of American corporations.) Charitable, humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, C.A.R.E. and others depend on the contributions of generous, compassionate Americans. Moreover, slavery was eventually abolished though its abolition in the USA took place long after all other industrialized nations had made slavery illegal and anathema. Suffrage was eventually won by American women after a prolonged struggle though glass ceilings and inequality in the work-place persist to this day.

Therefore, no doubt, there are a few bright lights in American history which play a counterpoint to the many harsh, immoral discordances outlined previously. These contrapuntal incidences only obscure, as through a distorted lens, the sanguine, savage landscapes which have been the result of American foreign and domestic policy and serve as rationale for the reprehensible, megalomaniacal, holier-than-thou conceit expressed by the aphorism in question.

We, as Americans, must ask ourselves if there has ever been any other nation on earth that has so brazenly used such a hypocritical, self-serving, self-deluding, propagandistic platitude to gloss over inveterate wrong-doing. Indeed, there are and there have been, but none of the possible comparisons are in the least bit complimentary.

That this polemic has not made effort to differentiate the citizens of the United States from the policies of the government is not an oversight nor a tactful omission. As a republic, we, the people, are ultimately responsible for the actions of our elected representatives and their appointees. Claiming that the White House, the Houses of Congress, the State Department, the CIA or any other branch or agency of our government have taken actions for which the American electorate shares no responsibility or culpability is an untenable assertion if America is a truly functioning democracy. To excuse American citizens from the sins of its government is to confess that the United States is a ‘failed state’, one having only hollow, insubstantial rituals of democracy rather than viable democratic processes. Much more can and will be said on this matter at another time.

America’s supposed ‘moral authority’ is a sham; a fantasy that any bright adolescent could perceive as a charade if only the straight, unspun facts were presented honestly. It is regrettable that a journalist of Mr Suskind’s stature has not seen beneath the reverential cloak that disguises the bitter, sorry truth of America’s political character and as an apostate, publically renounced the false creed of America’s moral authority. By so doing, his investigative journalism would be under-scored and elevated to loftier heights and his service to Truth and the American public would have greater, lasting effect than does merely exposing the political iniquities, however heinous, of specific culprits.

Should Iraq Be Forced to Pay For Its Own Reconstruction?

NO!

Put the shoe on another foot: Russia invades Afghanistan, destroys the country, and then demands that the Afghanis pay for the cost of reconstruction to Russian corporations.

Or better yet, Iraq invades the US, destroys the American infrastructure, kills upwards of 1.25 million in the course of nightmarish devastation and adds insult to injury by demanding through a quisling government that the American people pay for its own reconstruction. How would that sit with the American people?

Asking Iraq to pay for its own reconstruction is insane, reprehensible and unbelievably immoral.

First, before the illegal invasion, the Bush administration told the American people that Iraqi oil would pay for the reconstruction. What presumption! - to commit resources of the sovereign nation of Iraq to a project without the consent of the Iraqi people.

Now, after dumping billions into a very ineffective, inept reconstruction effort, Americans want the Iraqis to pay for the destruction and devastation that American forces (both mercenary and DOD) have wreaked?

Utter nonsense! Alice had less illogic to deal with in Wonderland.

Like many other facets of this atrocity, the American people were lied to; the invasion and 5-year occupation and suppression of the resultant civil war have been far costlier in all terms than Rumsfeld and the others guestimated.

The proposition that the Iraqi people should pay for the ghastly mess that the Bush administration has made of their country should be abhorrent to any civilized, fair-minded person.

It should be said again that the number of Iraqis who have been murdered in this conflict are estimated to be in excess of 1.25 million. That is a horrendous death toll. The USA is morally obligated to pay restitution for these lives and reparations for the destruction of the Iraq.

Moreover, the companies paid to rebuild Iraq must be Iraqi-owned companies, not American companies. The self-evident righteousness of that proviso should be accepted as an unquestionable moral imperative by which the American people might regain a sense of decency and respectability.

Kissinger, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Iran's Nuclear Program

Those beating the drum about Iran’s nuclear program should be made aware that the United States has been complicit in the Iranian program since the Ford administration. Then Secretary-of-State, Henry Kissinger offered a ‘strange deal’ to Pakistan that had been formulated by Richard Cheney, Ford’s Chief -of-Staff and Donald Rumsfeld, Ford’s Defense Secretary according to an extremely well-researched and copiously foot-noted book by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark entitled, ‘Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons’.

While focusing on Pakistan’s nuclear program and the Reagan administration’s turning a blind eye to it and General Zia’s blood-thirsty military rule while recruiting and funding the Afghani Freedom Fighters (better known as the mujahedeen, a.k.a. Al Qaeda), ‘Deception’ references the unlawful proliferation of nuclear technology by the United States to Iran under the Shah.

The ‘strange deal’ that Cheney and Rumsfeld devised and which Kissinger offered to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s Prime Minister (before Zia had him executed), was an effort to persuade Pakistan to forego its plans to pursue a nuclear program. In 1976, Kissinger begrudgingly proposed that if Bhutto terminated Pakistan’s own nascent uranium enrichment project, the United States would arrange to supply Pakistan with its needed enriched materials from a facility, funded and supplied by the US, and based in Iran.

Cheney and Rumsfeld had master-minded the scheme, arguing that Iran – even though awash in oil and gas - would need a nuclear program to meet its future energy needs. This plan was to be the first nuclear deal with Iran and would have been extremely lucrative for US corporations such as Westinghouse and General Electric “which stood to earn $6.4 billion from the project”. (The plan to lead Iran into the Nuclear Age was supported by Kissinger although the offer to involve Pakistan was not to his liking, hence his reluctance to propose the plan to Bhutto.)

Furthermore, according to an article in the Washington Post, written by Dafna Linzer, published on March 27, 2005, confirms “US involvement with Iran’s nuclear program until 1979” which involved “large-scale intelligence-sharing and conventional weapons sales”. The Linzer article goes on to assert that “Even with many key players in common” (editor’s note: such as Cheney and Rumsfeld), “the U.S. government has taken opposite positions on questions of fact as its perception of U.S. interests has changed.”

The compete Washington Post article can be read at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3983-2005Mar26.html

Although publicly opposed to President Bush’s hard-line stance on Iran and while favoring diplomacy over force of arms, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, has voiced her dismay over Iran’s nuclear program. It has been reported by Cheryl Biren-Wright at OpEdNews.com that Madam Pelosi stated at a recent event that Iran has received "a lot of technology from China, from Pakistan, probably from Russia and other places…”.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Nancy-Pelosi-Book-Signing-by-Cheryl-Biren-Wrigh-080807-772.html

It would be very surprising, indeed, ludicrous to think Madam Speaker was not aware that the United States – one of those ‘other places’ - had initiated the proliferation of nuclear technology in Iran. Moreover, it is not surprising that Ms Pelosi purposely omitted reference to the US role in the unlawful proliferation of nuclear technology. By avoiding a mention of the US complicity in Iran’s nuclear program, Pelosi avoided the obvious pit-falls of obfuscation and deflected attention to tried and true adversaries past and future; the People’s Republic of China, Pakistan and the Russian Confederation.

Once again, the chickens - hatched by brood hens obsessed with imperial foreign policies - are coming home to roost. What is more, they once again carry nuclear eggs in flimsy baskets.

Post Script: A truly illuminating speech given at the World Affairs Council of Northern California by ‘Deception’ co-author Adrian Levy can be viewed at FORA.TV. http://fora.tv/2007/10/30/Pakistan_and_the_A_Q__Khan_Network

A Summer Reading List for Madam Pelosi

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has been telling us over and over on television, on-line and in print that she can find no reason to put the impeachment of George W Bush back on the table. If Representative Pelosi cannot find adequate reason for the impeachment of Mr Bush, then she is simply stupid, blind or both.

Books detailing and documenting the many high crimes and misdemeanors of George W Bush (et al) have been written, published and have made the ‘Best Seller’ lists. Here is but a small sampling that is strongly recommended for Ms Pelosi’s summer reading list:

The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky

Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush by Center for Constitutional Rights

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan

Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush by John W. Dean

The Constitution in Crisis: The High Crimes of the Bush Administration and a Blueprint for Impeachment by John C. Conyers and Elizabeth Holtzman

A Bird in the Bush: Failed Domestic Policies of the George W. Bush Administration by Dowling Campbell

The Lies of George W. Bush by David Corn

The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America by Eric Alterman and Mark J. Green

United States v. George W. Bush et al. by Elizabeth de la Vega

The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky

George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying by John Conyers Jr., Anita Miller, and Joseph C. Wilson

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky

Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values by Philippe Sands

The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens by Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia L. Cooper

Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney by Dennis Loo, Peter Phillips, and Howard Zinn

The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration by Jack L. Goldsmith

Abu Ghraib: The Politics of Torture (The Terra Nova Series) by David Levi Strauss, Charles Stein, Barbara Ehrenreich, and John Gra

Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush by Walter Brasch

Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution by James P. Pfiffner

Bush, the Detainees, and the Constitution: The Battle over Presidential Power in the War on Terror by Howard Ball

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer

Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Blackwell Public Philosophy Series) by Bob Brecher

Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law by Marjorie Cohn and Richard Falk

Beyond the Law: The Bush Administration's Unlawful Responses in the "War" on Terror by Jordan J. Paust

Empire Burlesque - High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium by Chris Floyd

The Bush Betrayal by James Bovard

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program by Stephen Grey

Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War by Tara McKelvey

Torture Central: E-mails From Abu Ghraib by Michael Keller

Bush and Cheney's War: A War Without Justification by Homer Duncan

Bushit!: An A-Z Guide to the Bush Attack on Truth, Justice, Equality, and the American Way by Jack Huberman

The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America by Jennifer Van Bergen

The Unraveling of the Bush Presidency by Howard Zinn

Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond by Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh

George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying by John Conyers Jr., Anita Miller, and Joseph C. Wilson

And last but not least…

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi

This should fill up your summer reading list, Madam Speaker. Do us all a favor and ask one of your aides to Google ‘Bush Impeachment’; I got 580,000 hits in 0.28 seconds on August 8^th.

Then, Madam Speaker, do yourself a favor: up-date your curriculum vitae and start preparing a defense against own impeachment for gross dereliction of your duty to the Constitution of the United States of America.

In the Company of Tyrants

The opening of the war crimes tribunal against Radovan Karadzic in The Hague and the recent indictment of Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court, invites a rather unfavorable comparison to the results of the policies of George W Bush; what has become known as the ‘Bush Doctrine’.

Corporate and independent news services have been all a-buzz now that Radovan Karadzic has finally been brought to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity after hiding in plain sight for 13 years.

An amended indictment against Karadzic was confirmed on 31 May 2000, and included one count of a grave breach of the Geneva conventions of 1949, three counts of violations of the laws or customs of war, two counts of genocide and five counts of crimes against humanity.

The case information sheet issued by the U.N. Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia charging Radovan Karadzic with genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia can be found here:

http://www.un.org/icty/cases-e/cis/karadzic/CIS-Karadzic.pdf

In the small office of the Association of the Mothers of Srebrenica, about 20 widows watched the broadcast of the initial tribunal hearing of Karadzic.

"I have not found one bone of my children yet and there he is ... alive," said Ramiza Music, 52, who lost two teenage sons, a husband and two brothers in the Srebrenica massacre. "Today I feel there is a bit of justice in this otherwise really pitiful world."

In the Bosnian capital, Alena Tiro, 42, said: "I'm happy and sad at the same time; happy because the world seems to be not as bad as I thought so far if it forced him to the courtroom. Sad because 100,000 people he killed are not watching this."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24114235-2703,00.html

A fortnight ago, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an indictment against Omar al-Bashir, the serving president of Sudan, who is also the military commander-in-chief of the country. This case sets a precedent as the ICC has never indicted a sitting head of state before.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, is confident of his case. "I believe that peace and justice should go hand in hand," he said, adding that justice can be a part of the peace process. But peace without justice cannot be sustainable. "I don't have the luxury to look away," he said. "I have evidence."

The current toll in Sudan's civil war involves hundreds of thousands killed, thousands of villages burned and millions of refugees on the verge of starvation. Al-Bashir's regular troops, along with the gruesomely helpful militias under his command, have waged an ethnic-cleansing campaign in Darfur for several years, under the pretext of a revolt by Sudanese rebels.

An estimated two million residents have been displaced and tens of thousands killed in the civil war in Sudan's Darfur region. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague says they are the victims of genocide and crimes against humanity committed by the government.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,565924,00.html

Considering the amount of blood on the hands of these two men is horrifying to be sure.

Pikers, I say.

Pikers and neophytes.

If one had the stones to compare body counts with George W Bush, Karadzic and al-Bashir are clumsy wanna-be tyrants and amateur despots.

With an estimated 4.7 million Iraqi refugees, and an Iraqi death toll of more than 1,250,000, George W. Bush should be ready to pack his bags and take up residence in The Hague, alongside Karadzic.

According to an extrapolation of the results of a survey published in the prestigious medical journal ‘The Lancet’, more than one and a quarter million Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of the American-British invasion of Iraq. The survey was conducted between May 20 and July 10 by eight Iraqi physicians organized through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimated in 2006 that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq as a result of the illegal invasion in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, was far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.

This estimate is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December of 2005. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died has received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007: Opinion Research Business estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US invasion.

More than 4.7 million Iraqis displaced and more than 1.25 million Iraqis killed as a direct result of the Bush Administration’s illegal invasion and occupation of the Republic of Iraq.

Karadzic and al-Bashi, eat your black tyrant hearts out. You are in the presence of a Master of Disaster!

Lest some apologist for GW Bush protest that whereas not all of the Iraqi deaths can be attributed to military action hence not all the dead Iraqis can be laid at the door of the White House, it should be noted that according to the principles set forth at Nuremberg by the chief American prosecutor, Justice Robert Jackson, any and all deaths, injuries and displacement of the civilian population that result from the act of invasion – the highest, most egregious of international criminal acts – must be attributed to the head of state of the invading nation and prosecuted.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/imt.htm

Compared to the current crop of war-mongering despots, George W. Bush is without equal in the magnitude of his crimes against humanity.

In the words of the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, during his visit to the Tribunal in 1997, "impunity cannot be tolerated, and will not be. In an interdependent world, the Rule of the Law must prevail."

Let the nascent impeachment hearings proceed. Come what may, with or without formal charges of impeachment, those who seek justice must actively and diligently work toward bringing George W Bush and his Neo-con cohorts to The Hague to answer for their heinous, despicable actions before the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/index.php#iraqi

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/