Sunday, April 01, 2007

TIME TO STOP, WAR CRIMES




April 2, 2007
Time to Stop Bush-Cheney's War Crimes in the Middle East
by Rodrigue Tremblay



"Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent, arrogant, and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our president."
Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Yale Law School, September 22, 2002

"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing."
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th president of the United States

"Force always attracts men of low morality."
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)

When senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) muses aloud about how the U.S. Constitution could take care of a would-be dictator president, who is dismissive of both the American people and the U.S. Congress, you know that things are getting pretty bad for George W. Bush. Underneath the thick layers of propaganda and lies, the president is stark naked. And the picture isn't pretty: incompetence, insecurity, inflexibility, arrogance, manipulation, lies, a gangster-like, sociopath and sadistic mentality, ...etc.

Bush's lack of empathy was appallingly illustrated when, in 1999, as the sitting governor of Texas, he publicly mocked convicted grandmother Mrs. Karla Faye Tucker's begging for mercy, whimpering in derision: "Please," referring to her demand, "don't kill me."—He had her executed.

On May 21, 2000, New York Times' columnist Nicholas D. Kristof warned the American people about GWB's lack of empathy, his insensitivity and his penchant for cruelty when he reported that, as a youngster, growing up in Midland, Texas, Bush Jr. was known to enjoy putting firecrackers into frogs' mouths, throwing them in the air, and then watching them blow up. Nobody paid any attention to Bush's troubling trait of character. Nevertheless, it is well known by psychiatrists that cruelty to animals among youngsters is a common precursor to later criminal violence as adults.—No one should be surprised that under the Bush-Cheney regime, the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq are killing Iraqi civilians indiscriminately and that this administration crafted an official policy of running secret prisons and of resorting to illegal torture.
To compound matters, as an incompetent and a failure, after winning a very contested election with the help of his father's rich friends, Bush made sure to surround himself with like-minded persons. He made a power-sharing agreement with co-oil-man Dick Cheney, most likely under the inducement of rich campaign money contributors: He would play the role of president while the vice-president would run the government and name the all important deputy secretaries. For secretaries, Bush chose people who would not overshadow or contradict him: Donald Rumsfeld as Defense secretary, John Ashcroft, and later, Alberto Gonzales, his small town personal lawyer from Texas, as Attorney General, and yes-woman Condoleezza Rice as Security Advisor, later to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State, etc. A competent person squeezed into Bush's inner circle by accident. This was Paul H. O'Neill, the former CEO of Alcoa and former president of International Paper Company. But he resigned two years later, disgusted at the improvisation he was witnessing, especially as the invasion of Iraq was being planned under a cloud of lies, dishonesty and misinformation.

As it turned out, the military invasion of Iraq was an apparent case of "redirected aggression", a phenomenon typically observed in the animal kingdom. Unable to retaliate effectively against the shadowy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, they saw an opportunity in Iraq, a country which they had their eyes on for a long time. The country was run by a ruthless dictator, was sitting on the second largest oil pool in the world, and was seen by Israel as financing terrorists in Palestine.

Moreover, the neocon hierarchy at the Pentagon had plans for a war without end in the Middle East, and they were ready and available. Indeed, General Wesley Clark, the former Commander of NATO, has confirmed that as early as 2001, the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz Pentagon had war plans "to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." What we have been witnessing since 2003 was the implementation of this long term plan.

After more than four years, one would think that George W. Bush's misguided personal war of aggression against the sovereign country of Iraq has lasted long enough and has killed enough people. To begin with, this is a war that was sold to the American people on the basis of lies, disinformation and misrepresentation. Democracies should never go to war on the basis of lies and misrepresentation because this means they occupy the low moral ground. Not that totalitarian regimes should launch wars of aggression on such dishonest bases, but for a democracy to do so is a fundamental contradiction in terms and is a sign of moral decay. Secondly, this is a war that has resulted in fanning the flame of terrorism not only in Iraq, but all over the world. This is a failed policy and a failed war. The British are beginning to understand that and have begun to withdraw from Iraq. The only ones who do not understand that seem to be the Bush-Cheney regime and its neocon sycophants within and outside the administration.

So far, the Iraq war has been a total human disaster. Some 3,245 American soldiers have perished (losses equivalent to ten fully loaded 747 plane crashes); an estimated 655,000 Iraqis have lost their lives, and millions of people have been impoverished and rendered miserable. But against all advice, the war goes on and Bush is pressing the escalation button. There seems to be something in George W. Bush's personality that prevents him from showing empathy toward other human beings. He seems oblivious to deaths and sufferings of other people, not the least are the hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqi families who lost love ones in this insane and illegal war.

In fact, the entire military adventure that the Bush-Cheney regime initiated in the Middle East has all the odor of a criminal enterprise. This may explain why the Bush-Cheney duo fought so much to prevent the creation of the new International Criminal Court. Indeed, for this war to have taken place, a lot of principles had to be violated and a lot of laws had to be broken. Bush's proclivity for thinking that he can violate international law with impunity is well known. In his 2004 State of the Union address, for example, he publicly showed his contempt for international law when he said: "America will never seek a permission slip [from any world body] to defend the security of our country".

What laws were broken? —First of all, the Iraq war was never approved by the United Nations. This led then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in September 2004, to declare: "The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter." Case closed as far as the United Nations is concerned. But there is more.

Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, the Iraq war is a war that violated the Nuremberg Charter. Indeed, the Nuremberg Charter (Article 6) which is both U.S. law and international law, makes it a crime for anybody to engage in the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing; ...Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan." —Article 7 of the Nuremberg Charter even specifies that "The official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government Departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment."

If a Nuremberg Court were established to judge those who planned and initiated the Iraq War of March 20, 2003, they would be reminded that “To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Moreover, "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience…therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

The Iraq War that George W. Bush initiated on his own on the basis of fabricated lies will be judged by history as one of the most blatant abuses of power ever by any American administration. It is a war based on false pretenses and on false perceptions of the Muslim Middle East. For example, it is not true that Middle Eastern Muslims hate the West "because they hate our way of life, our freedom, and our democracy." Polls indicate that such ideas are simply based on ignorant prejudices. But when Bush II sent American troops storming into private homes in Baghdad and Haditha, and elsewhere in Iraq, shooting first and asking questions later, in a juvenile Texan way, it is no surprise that the entire Muslim world started hating him. That is the way most people view lawless thugs.

If ever there were a president-by-accident, it is the present occupant of the White House. An electoral accident resulted in placing into office a candidate who had not received the democratic approval of the people. And the American people could not have been more out of luck, because it could not have fallen upon a more mediocre politician than George W. Bush. —Unfortunately, it is highly likely that the worst is still to come, with more blunders ahead, if those who have the power to act in the U.S. Congress continue to put their heads deep in the sand..
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Rodrigue Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Visit his blog site at: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/ or at:
http://www.moralitywithoutreligion.com/
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Posted, April 2, 2007, at 5:30 am

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pros: Fast-paced spy-thriller to an unbelievable ending.

Cons: Everyone thought this couldn't happen, then it did.
Mr. Spirko discusses all the issues confronting the Middle East through the minds of both the Palestinians and Israelis. His understanding of the collective mindsets (those who are continually at war with each other) brings a new dimension of reality to the Palestinian question, which has now become the ever-persistent Israeli obstacle. How to achieve peace in the Middle East? If the Palestinian problem can be solved where both sides achieve peace, then world terrorism will go away. Mr. Spirko is more right than anybody knows.


CLEVELAND, Ohio – THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY, a genre spy-thriller by Robert Spirko, was fourth on the best-seller list at Atlasbooks, Inc., a national book distributor. Ingram Books is the worldwide distributor.

Spirko, a financial and geo-political analyst who has given his advice to the National Security Council, turned his attention to the Middle East in 1987, after discovering several common elements related to the Middle East question. He wrote down his analysis, and when he was finished, he not only had a solution to the quagmire, he had a story to tell. THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY foreshadowed the Persian Gulf War by three years, and the resultant Iraq War followed by the Sept. 11 attack.

Spirko states, "The chief threat in the region I see right now is the threat to Saudi Arabia by Iran and Al Qaeda. If Al Qaeda were to overthrow the present royal family in Saudi Arabia, cutting off the oil supply to western nations including Japan and China, it would bring down entire world economies. France and Germany would be begging us to go to war to retake those oil wells. It would be World War III."

“If such a scenario were to occur,” he reiterates, “France and the European economies would collapse in a matter of weeks.”

“Another looming concern is Iran which wants to develop nuclear weapons to couple with their Shahab 4, 5 & 6 missiles on the drawing boards which have a range to hit London, Israel, all of Europe, southern Russia and the United States. Also, the Iranian government has said it initially had 300 centrifuges to enrich uranium to weapons grade material. They have increased that to 3,000. They will soon increase that again to 10,000 centrifuges,” Spirko says. “They have the additional capacity to add another 20,000 centrifuges in mass production techniques that will enable them to produce at least seven nuclear bombs in about a year. Where did they get these centrifuges?”

Spirko answers that question by stating an Arab proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“Simply put,” Spirko explains, “they probably got them from Saddam Hussein before the Iraq War started and were probably smuggled out of Iraq and into Iran just like he did his air force of 600 Soviet fighter planes. In other words, he gave them to his former enemy rather than let them be destroyed on the ground.”

“Why would he have done any differently with the 30,000 centrifuges he supposedly had on a decentralized basis inside Iraq before the war?” Spirko asks. “Isn’t it strange that Iran could come up with a nuclear weapons program in about six months to a year when it took the United States six years under the Manhattan Project with 5,000 of the world’s most brilliant scientists like Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, Seaborg, Einstein, Fermi, and others working on it?”

Another point Spirko makes on the Mideast is that, “It is time for the Israelis and Palestinians to return to the Camp David Peace Talks or some other place, resume where they left off and "freeze in place" the already-agreed-upon negotiating points,” Spirko says.

"And, it's all related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which I said back in 1987 was the crux of my book. It always has been, and always will be until it's settled,” Spirko says. “That linkage is exactly what Osama Bin Laden stated in a taped message aired the weekend before the election in November of 2004. Whether you believe him or not is beside the point. That's what's he told us, and we'd better take that into account."

The novel is a mass market paperback produced by Olive Grove Publishers, and can be purchased at area bookstores through Ingram Book Group, New Leaf Distribution, and Baker and Taylor, priced at $14.99, ISBN 0-9752508-0-9. THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY can also be ordered on the web at www.atlasbooks.com, or email orders from: order@bookmasters.com, or from Barnes & Nobles, Border's, Dalton's, efollett.com & Follett bookstores at colleges and universities, WaldenBooks, Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Target.com and other popular retail bookstores. Or, readers and store managers can call 1-800-BOOKLOG, or 800-247-6553 direct, to order.