Irak 144

De International Herald Tribune bericht

´U.S. questioned Iraq on rush to hang Saddam.

BAGHDAD: With his plain pine coffin strapped into a U.S. military helicopter for a predawn journey across the desert, Saddam Hussein, the executed dictator who built a legend with his defiance of America, completed a turbulent passage into history on Sunday.
Like the helicopter trip, just about everything in the 24 hours that began with Saddam's being taken to his execution from his cell in a U.S. military detention center in the post-midnight chill of Saturday morning had a surreal and even cinematic quality.
Part of it was that the Americans, who turned him into a pariah and drove him from power, proved to be his unlikely benefactors in the face of Iraq's new Shiite rulers, who seemed bent on turning the execution and its aftermath into a new nightmare for the Sunni minority privileged under Saddam.
The journey, 180 kilometers, or 110 miles, aboard a Black Hawk helicopter, brought Saddam's body to Camp Speicher, a U.S. military base north of Tikrit named for a U.S. Navy pilot who was lost over Iraq in the first hours of the Gulf war in 1991. From there, an Iraqi convoy carried Saddam's body to Awja, the humble town beside the Tigris River that Saddam, in the chandeliered palaces that became his habitat as ruler, spoke of as emblematic of the miseries of his lonely and impoverished youth.
The U.S. role extended beyond providing the helicopter that carried Saddam home. Iraqi and U.S. officials who have discussed the intrigue and confusion that preceded the decision late on Friday to rush Saddam to the gallows have said that it was the Americans who questioned the political wisdom — and justice — of expediting the execution, in ways that required Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to override constitutional and religious precepts that might have ensured Saddam the prospect of a more dignified passage to his end.´

Lees verder http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/01/africa/web.0101iraq.php

The Empire 116

'Let's Do It Again!
Doubling Down on the Imperial Mission in 2007.
By Tom Engelhardt

Okay, folks, it's time for a year-opening sermon. And like any good sermon, this one will be based on illustrative texts, in this case from 2006, and inspirational passages plucked from them. Its goal, as in any such quest, will be to reveal a world normally hidden from us in our daily lives.
Every day, it seems, essential choices are being made in our names by our top officials, civilian and military, many of whom, as the year ended, only reaffirmed that our country is headed down an imperial path in the Middle East and elsewhere, a path based on dreams of domination and backed, above all else, by the principle of force. No matter their disagreements over the administration's Iraq catastrophe, on this, agreement has remained so widespread as to make all discussion of the basics seem beside the point. Despite recent failures on the imperial path, consideration of other paths remains almost inconceivable.
Naturally, the continual act of choosing the path we are on, and the hardly noticed Pentagonization and Homeland Securitization of our own society that goes with it are never presented to Americans as such. If no alternatives to what we are doing are ever suggested, then logic is with the doers, no matter the staggering problems on the horizon.
In fact, what we do in the world -- how, for instance, we choose to garrison the planet -- is seldom presented as a matter of choice at all. Either it's been forced on us by "them" -- the rogues, the jihadis, the madmen, the evil ones -- and so is the only path to our obvious safety (as defined by our betters in Washington); or it's so obvious that nothing needs to be done but reaffirm it. As in all Washington debates at this moment, what's truly important is simply to decide how to make that imperial path less rocky and those dreams of domination that pass for American "security" more achievable (or even, as in Iraq, less noticeably catastrophic).
End of introduction to sermon. Now to the illustrative texts and examples.
Expand the Mission
For my first text, let me take an e-letter that the college-age daughter of a friend received the other day from a Marine Corps Officer Selection Officer, inviting her to "an awesome summer training program called the Platoon Leader's Course." Think of it as Marine Corps summer camp. No uniforms ("This is not ROTC!"), but reasonable amounts of moolah. Here's some of what was on offer to her, part of a desperate military's Iraq-era appeal to citizenly duty:
"You will earn approximately $2,400 (six weeks) or $4,000 (ten weeks) plus room and board during the training. How's that for a summer job?... You will not incur any obligation to the Marine Corps even after completing the training. (You can choose whether or not to continue with the program)... Tuition assistance will be available to you after you complete training this summer. You could potentially earn $8,000 to $25,000 for school, depending on graduation date."
Imagine! The Marine Corps is willing to pay young people to go to a uniform-less summer camp to test their "leadership potential," with no commitment to the Corps necessary. Consider that; then consider what was certainly the President's only significant decision of the holiday season past -- to permanently expand the U.S. military by as many as 70,000 troops.
Now, as in some old math problem, the question is: How do you connect these two points. (Hint: Not with a straight line.)
Faced with a public shot across the bow in testimony before Congress by Army Chief of Staff Peter J. Schoomaker, who warned that the Army "will break" under present war-zone rotation needs, President Bush responded on December 19th. He brought up the "stressed" nature of the U.S. Armed Forces and, while still officially hesitating about his "way forward" in Iraq, said, "I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops -- the Army, the Marines. And I talked about this to Secretary [Robert A.] Gates, and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building [the Pentagon], come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea." All this was, he added, "to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists."
Ah… that makes things clearer.'

Lees verder: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=152999

De Bush Bende 35

'Bush Silences a Dangerous Witness.
By Robert Parry.

Like a blue-blood version of a Mob family with global reach, the Bushes have eliminated one more key witness to the important historical events that led the U.S. military into a bloody stalemate in Iraq and pushed the Middle East to the brink of calamity.
The hanging of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be – as the New York Times observed – the “triumphal bookend” to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. If all had gone as planned, Bush might have staged another celebration as he did after the end of “major combat,” posing under the “Mission Accomplished” banner on May 1, 2003.
But now with nearly 3,000 American soldiers killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush may be forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately.
Still, Bush has done his family’s legacy a great service while also protecting secrets that could have embarrassed other senior U.S. government officials.
He has silenced a unique witness to crucial chapters of the secret history that stretched from Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979 to the alleged American-Saudi “green light” for Hussein to attack Iran in 1980, through the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War during which high-ranking U.S. intermediaries, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, allegedly helped broker supplies of war materiel for Hussein.
Hussein now won’t be around to give troublesome testimony about how he obtained the chemical and biological agents that his scientists used to produce the unconventional weapons that were deployed against Iranian forces and Iraqi civilians. He can’t give his perspective on who got the money and who facilitated the deals.
Nor will Hussein be available to give his account of the mixed messages delivered by George H.W. Bush’s ambassador April Glaspie before Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Was there another American “green light” or did Hussein just hear what he wanted to hear?
Like the climactic scene from the Mafia movie “Casino” in which nervous Mob bosses eliminate everyone who knows too much, George W. Bush has now guaranteed that there will be no public tribunal where Hussein gives testimony on these potentially devastating historical scandals, which could threaten the Bush Family legacy.
That could have happened if Hussein had been turned over to an international tribunal at the Hague as was done with other tyrants, such as Yugoslavia’s late dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Instead Bush insisted that Hussein be tried in Iraq despite the obvious fact that the Iraqi dictator would receive nothing close to a fair trial before being put to death.
Hussein's hanging followed his trial for executing 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail in 1982 after a foiled assassination attempt on Hussein and his entourage. Hussein's death effectively moots other cases that were supposed to deal with his alleged use of chemical weapons to kill Iraqi civilians and other crimes that might have exposed the U.S. role.
[For details on what Hussein might have revealed, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege or Consortiumnews.com’s “Missing U.S.-Iraq History” or “The Secret World of Robert Gates.”]
Thrill of the Kill
Some observers think that Bush simply wanted the personal satisfaction of seeing Hussein hanged, which would not have happened if he had been sent to the Hague. As Texas governor, Bush sometimes took what appeared to be perverse pleasure at his power to execute prisoners.
In a 1999 interview with conservative writer Tucker Carlson for Talk magazine, Bush ridiculed convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker and her unsuccessful plea to Bush to spare her life.
Asked about Karla Faye Tucker’s clemency appeal, Bush mimicked what he claimed was the condemned woman’s message to him. “With pursed lips in mock desperation, [Bush said]: ‘Please don’t kill me.’”
But a more powerful motive was always Hussein’s potential threat to the Bush Family legacy if he ever had a forum where he could offer detailed testimony about the historic events of the past several decades.
Since stepping into the White House on Jan. 20, 2001, George W. Bush has made it a top priority to conceal the history of his father’s 12 years as Vice President and President and to wrap his own presidency in a thick cloak of secrecy.
One of Bush’s first acts as President was to sign an executive order that blocked the scheduled release of historic records from his father’s years. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush expanded his secrecy mandate to grant his family the power to withhold those documents from the American public in perpetuity, passing down the authority to keep the secrets to future Bush generations.'

Lees verder: http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2006/123006.html

De Bush Bende 34

'In Search of a Criminal: Donald Rumsfeld's Name Tops the List of Accused of War Crimes.
By Alexia Garamfalvi
Legal Times

No one thinks that Donald Rumsfeld will end his days in a German prison. Or that there is any real chance he will have to face trial in Germany over allegations that he authorized policies leading to the torture of prisoners at U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
But that doesn't mean that a complaint filed in Germany last month won't have some ripple effects. The complaint asks a federal prosecutor there to begin an investigation, and ultimately a criminal prosecution, of the former secretary of defense and other U.S. officials for their roles in the abuses.
"Rumsfeld is no longer untouchable," says Wolfgang Kaleck, the German lawyer who filed the complaint along with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the International Federation for Human Rights. "He is now deeply connected with claims of abuses and torture. We have taken the first step to begin the legal discussion on his accountability."
The complaint against Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet, and other senior civilian and military officials, was filed in mid-November on behalf of 11 Iraqis who had been detained at Abu Ghraib prison and Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi detained at Guantánamo. It alleges that the defendants ordered, aided, and abetted war crimes and failed to prevent the commission of war crimes by their subordinates. In international law, war crimes are defined as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including torture and inhuman treatment.
Rumsfeld has said the abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib was the work of a few low-level soldiers and the prisoners affected were mostly not the subject of interrogations, but just "common criminals" who were also detained. "It's pretty clear that on the midnight shift, for a period of some weeks, there were people there who were behaving in a way that was fundamentally inconsistent with the president's instructions to treat people humanely [and] my instructions that they were to treat people humanely," Rumsfeld said in a Dec. 15 television interview.
But the plaintiffs claim that the torture that occurred at detention centers in Iraq and Guantánamo were not isolated incidents or the product of a few soldiers gone bad, but rather was widespread and systemic, having been ordered from the top levels of the military and the Defense Department. "The interrogational torture applied by the United States was not an accident, not a mistake, not a secret action," the complaint states. (Pentagon and Department of Justice spokesmen declined to comment for this article.)
Stymied in their call for high-level accountability in the United States, the groups thought their best shot was to bring a case in a country, like Germany, that has a strong universal-jurisdiction law, says Michael Ratner, the CCR's president.
The CCR has been involved in much of the litigation challenging the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 policies on the treatment of detainees in the context of the war on terror, including the landmark case Rasul v. Bush, which challenged the indefinite detention of foreign nationals at Guantánamo.
German law recognizes the principle of universal jurisdiction, whereby some crimes, such as torture, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, are considered so heinous they can be prosecuted anywhere, regardless of where they took place or the residence or nationality of the victims or perpetrators.
But legal experts predict that the Bush administration is sure to vigorously oppose the case and that Germany will be reluctant to take it. Under Germany's universal-jurisdiction statute, the prosecutor has the discretion to decline to take a case.
"It's quite risky for Germany to do this," says Eric Posner, an international law professor at the University of Chicago. "The danger of backlash is quite real. Congress, even a Democratic Congress, could very well retaliate if a serious prosecution went forward."
Moreover, the filing could also strengthen the position of those in the government who oppose the International Criminal Court, says Lee Feinstein, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Defense Department and State Department official during the Clinton administration.
But human rights lawyers contend that even if the case doesn't result in the prosecution of a specific defendant, it could reopen a debate in the United States about Rumsfeld's responsibility. They also say filing cases abroad under universal-jurisdiction laws may catalyze domestic efforts to open investigations and push for accountability.'

Lees verder:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207M.shtml Of:
http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1166522799501

The Empire 115

'A Healthy New Year.
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Monday 01 January 2007

The U.S. health care system is a scandal and a disgrace. But maybe, just maybe, 2007 will be the year we start the move toward universal coverage.
In 2005, almost 47 million Americans - including more than 8 million children - were uninsured, and many more had inadequate insurance.
Apologists for our system try to minimize the significance of these numbers. Many of the uninsured, asserted the 2004 Economic Report of the President, "remain uninsured as a matter of choice."
And then you wake up. A scathing article in yesterday's Los Angeles Times described how insurers refuse to cover anyone with even the slightest hint of a pre-existing condition. People have been denied insurance for reasons that range from childhood asthma to a "past bout of jock itch."
Some say that we can't afford universal health care, even though every year lack of insurance plunges millions of Americans into severe financial distress and sends thousands to an early grave. But every other advanced country somehow manages to provide all its citizens with essential care. The only reason universal coverage seems hard to achieve here is the spectacular inefficiency of the U.S. health care system.
Americans spend more on health care per person than anyone else - almost twice as much as the French, whose medical care is among the best in the world. Yet we have the highest infant mortality and close to the lowest life expectancy of any wealthy nation. How do we do it?
Part of the answer is that our fragmented system has much higher administrative costs than the straightforward government insurance systems prevalent in the rest of the advanced world. As Anna Bernasek pointed out in yesterday's New York Times, besides the overhead of private insurance companies, "there's an enormous amount of paperwork required of American doctors and hospitals that simply doesn't exist in countries like Canada or Britain."
In addition, insurers often refuse to pay for preventive care, even though such care saves a lot of money in the long run, because those long-run savings won't necessarily redound to their benefit. And the fragmentation of the American system explains why we lag far behind other nations in the use of electronic medical records, which both reduce costs and save lives by preventing many medical errors.
The truth is that we can afford to cover the uninsured. What we can't afford is to keep going without a universal health care system.'


Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207L.shtml

The Empire 114

'Heather Wokusch: Bush and the F-word in 2006: Police State or Progressivism in 2007?

'"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." - attributed to Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." - Hermann Goering, Hitler's propaganda chief
It's not overstating the case to say that 2007 could be make or break for US democracy.
The Bush administration's cutbacks and rollbacks in 2006 were so frequent and so egregious that many Americans stopped paying attention, gave up hope or else failed to see the onslaught as part of a larger pattern.
Which brings up the f-word.In 2003, Laurence W. Britt wrote a seminal article comparing fascist regimes, such as Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy, to life under Bush. While the term fascism has been widely overused (in August, Rumsfeld even accused war critics of "a new type of fascism") Britt's analysis eerily resonated back then and is worth a second look today.
This two-part series recaps Bush's record in 2006 under the framework of Britt's "fourteen common threads" of fascism and makes predictions for 2007.
***The examples below are more indicative than exhaustive; Project for an Old American Century has a comprehensive links page spanning Bush's presidency.
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.
In July, Bush signed the Freedom to Display the American Flag Act so Americans could "express their patriotism here at home without burdensome restrictions."
What burdensome restrictions?
With similar fanfare, he issued a "proclamation" in October noting that patriotism "can help our children develop strength and character."
Less than two weeks later, he authorized the building of 700 miles of double-layered fencing along the US-Mexican border.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.'

Lees verder: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/669

Wijsheid 13

'Nothing the Great Mystery placed in the land of the Indian pleased the white man, and nothing escaped his transforming hand. Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four footed life - that to him is an "unbroken wilderness." But, because for the Lakota there was no wilderness, because nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly, Lakota philosophy was healthy - free from fear and dogmatism. And here I find the great distinction between the faith of the Indian and the white man. Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surrounding. In sharing, in loving all and everything, one people naturally found a due portion of the thing they sought, while, in fearing, the other found need of conquenst. For one man the world was full of beauty; for the other it was a place of sin and ugliness to be endured until he went to another world, there to become a creature of wings, half-man and half-bird. Forever one man directed his Mystery to change the world He had made; forever this man pleaded with Him to chastise his wicked ones; and forever he implored his God to send His light to earth. Small wonder this man could not understand the other. But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature's softening influence.'

Chief Luther Standing Bear. Oglala Sioux.