reed writes

WAR CRIMES TRIALS LURK IN THE BACKGROUND

The principal charge that was laid at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, following World War Two was that of "planning and waging an aggressive war".

Those who were found guilty, were hung.

There is no more serious step that any leader can take than to make the decision to send young men and women off to war. In the case of the American invasion of Iraq, there are eerie similarities  to that long-ago battle against Nazi Germany, right down to the question of criminal behaviour.

The problem is that in our own time, everything is backwards…there are no good guys…only aggressors and victims. In Iraq, the most serious crimes have been committed by both sides in an aggressive war that ought never to have been waged and would never have been undertaken by a rational leader.

Many of us believed at the time that planning and waging an aggressive war against a nation that had not attacked us was the wrong thing to do. That’s in part, at least, why Canada stayed out of it. (I believe the other part is that Canada did not wish to go to war with a moron).

The decision to invade Iraq was wrong.  Increasingly it looks criminal.

I remember vividly, the first day of the American Blitzkrieg against Baghdad.

It was about 3:00 a.m. in Toronto and I was driving to work. As usual, I was listening to CBC radio, thinking about my own early morning newscast.

As I drove down Yonge street an announcer broke into regular programming and began to report on the invasion and the first wave of bombings. I was shocked, because I was still hoping (in vain as it turned out), that Mr. Bush and his people would do the right thing and listen to what reasonable people were saying.

I was also deeply saddened by the news; I actually felt a lump in my throat. No war can happen without terrible civilian casualties. No matter how good the U.S. military is…a bombing campaign always kills the innocent.

For soldiers, war is hell; but for civilians, especially the children…war is a searing trauma that will last a lifetime.

On the other hand, I wasn’t surprised by the invasion. Given America’s long history of baseless interference in other peoples’ business, it seemed like just more of the same-old.

Still listening to the radio, I pulled over to pick up a morning coffee.  As I got out of my car a solitary woman in Arabic dress, wearing a head scarf was crossing the almost-deserted street. I still had that lump of sadness in my throat, as I watched her walking; I thought about the latest tragic news and I resisted the urge to run after her. I wanted to apologise for what our American friends were doing. I wanted to explain that I knew how bad it would all be…not just for people in the Muslim world but for all of  us. I was ashamed that I did not have the courage to speak to her. I say this now out of sorrow and sympathy for all Muslims and out of shame for those like me who stood by and did nothing.

It was crystal clear to me in that moment, that this was going to be a lot more than just a fight against Iraq in order to change the government there. Knowingly or not, George Bush was going to complete the demonization process against Muslims and the Islamic world. I knew that the invasion would be seen by many as justified.

After Septemer 11th, 2001, there was an appetite in America to punish anyone who even looked like a Muslim, even though the attacks were carried out by a tiny group of insane extremists. This invasion would, I knew, fan the flames of bigotry and raise the level of hatred in our society.

It wasn’t just the foolish and criminal behaviour…illegal in the eyes of the world…of George W. Bush and his government, that bothered me that morning. This action would also- I believed- raise the security stakes in the dangerous game of "us-against-terror". This invasion would be the beginning of a brand new wave of terror.  It would herald the beginning of a fight that would create many many more terrorists.

I was prompted to write this post today, after reading this morning’s news. How pathetic it is that so manyservants of the state in America informed their leadership that the invasion would be a mistake- but kept their mouths shut in public. Their silence left the American people at the mercy of a mendacious president and his underlings , who were hell-bent on going to war and to hell with everyone else.

The fact that Americans were kept in the dark about the truth, makes them victims too. They suffer another kind of pain that surely equals the pain felt by innocent Iraqis.

Americans must live with the shame of this criminal act by their leader. They must live with the fact that it was all so unnecessary…so avoidable. And they must live with the most horrible shame of all…that tens of thousands of people, including their own lost soldiers…died for nothing.

The more we learn about Bush and Cheney and the others, the more apparent it is that War Crimes Trials will have to be held.

Here’s the story that jumped out at me this morning.

and here’s a postscript

-The Bush administration formally renounced support of the International Criminal Court yesterday, declaring that the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal would be an unchecked power, able to prosecute U.S. soldiers and their superiors-

OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD

Osama bin Laden oversaw and orchestrated the attack against the United States, carried out in 2001. It was a well-planned and carefully executed action; and its development was being tracked by American authorities during the months and years leading up to 9/11/2001.

A CIA memo was sent to President Bush (as part of what is called the ‘PDB’ or Presidential Daily Briefing)about a month before the attack itself. The memo was headed: "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inisde the United States".

The memo stated that the FBI had already detected "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings". (Remember, this was well before the actual attacks).).

Nevertheless, despite this fateful warning from the CIA, no actions were taken to warn the public , to enhance airline and airport security or follow up on the memo.

The Bush administration was pre-occupied with a programme known as "ballistic missile defence". The head of U.S. national security at the time- Condilezza Rice- an expert on Russia- was more interested in what the Russians were doing than in what some shadowy group of terrorists was doing.

Bin Laden and his associates were well aware of this, as was most of the American political establishment- including the American national media. No alarm bells rang, however and consequently, bin Laden’s group pushed ahead with its clandestine plan. He knew that American intelligence authorities were watching his people but he seemed confident the Bush administration would not take any action.

Bin Laden knew the American President and his administration very well. In fact he had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation of that country.

Hundreds of other Islamic extremists like bin Laden were imported into Afghanistan from a variety of Muslim countries. They were supplied with money and arms; they were trained and advised by American agents.

It wasn’t the Taliban who created al Quaeda; al Quaeda was nudged into existence by the financial and strategic military assistance provided to a number extremists by the United States itself. The purpose of that assistance was to undermine the Soviet/Russian occupation of Afghanistan, by funding an insurgency against the Soviet military occupiers. It was widely feared by U.S. petroleum interests- and therefore the oil-conscious U.S. government- that Russia would team up with Pakistan to control the piping of natural gas from the Caucasus- across Afghanistan and thence to world markets.

***(It should be noted that Condi Rice was a director of Chevron Corporation, which had invested billions in the oilfields of the former Soviet state, Khazakhstan and stood to profit from an Afghan pipeline).***

The development of al Quaeda was helped along by the policies of a series of U.S. residents, including Carter, Reagan, the first President Bush and yes- Bill Clinton. But none of those leaders, and certainly not the younger Bush ever took the warnings about al Quaeda seriously. None of them ever dreamed that their diabolical terror baby would mature to the point where parental America itself would be attacked by it.

That arrogant, prideful attitude accounts for why the CIA memo of August 2001, which warned about an al Quaeda attack, was never taken too too seriously by any of the giant brains in Washington D.C.

But the outrageous ignorance and inaction goes back much further than August of that year.

Back in 1999, under the Clinton presidency, The Federal Research Division provided Clinton officials with information in a report that was also available to Bush and Rice. Former CIA Deputy Director John Gannon, who was chairman of the National Intelligence Council when that report was written, said "officials long have known a suicide hijacking was a real threat". They knew that bin Laden’s people were training as pilots in the United States.

The Report pointed to suicide hijacking as one possible method of attack, yet no action was taken to warn the public or safeguard U.S. airlines against that possibility.

The significance of this lack action by U.S. authorities, in the face of information, which had been gathered by the CIA and FBI, was not lost on bin Laden.

In fact, it enabled him to proceed with his plans and in the end to actually carry out his intricately orchestrated attacks against the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

In one instant, on September 11th, 2001, bin Laden became a legendary hero to every Middle East extremist who loathed and detested the indefensible American policies in the region and the pre-occupation with supporting Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.

Bin Laden was way ahead of the curve.

He anticipated the American attack against Afghanistan and knew that the Taliban would take the heat for al Quaeda’s actions. He had prepared his next step even before 9/11.

In order to perpetuate his legend, he knew that he must never be captured.

President Bush played into his hands by launching the invasion of Iraq, which distracted attention away from himself and his group.

So shortly after the "successful" attacks in New York and Washington, bin Laden did something that would give him permanent martyr status.

• LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: In a solemn and drawn-out ceremony in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, bin Laden underwent a self-directed, "tactical suicide". His body was buried deep in the mountainous region and of course he has never been seen since.

The above "fact" may be a figment of my over-heated imagination on this subject, but I’m willing to give odds that it’s actually true.

The full text of Carter’s pre-war essay can be read here.

THE FASCINATION OF AMERICAN POLITICAL LIFE

I tried my best to get through the day without thinking about anything political but I just couldn’t do it.

U.S. politics is fascinating.

It’s probably the one country in the world in which there is a genuine debate by men and women of great courage, about all of the great issues facing modern society.

America got off-track in the immediate wake of the attacks in New York in 2001. The general public was genuinely terrified by the scale and daring of the assault on The Twin Towers. People were afraid, confused and wanted direction.  (It wasn’t the first time the U.S. train got derailed, but it was probably the worst).

The powers which lurked in the small shadow of George W. Bush seized this golden opportunity to carry out an agenda, which has turned out to be deeply flawed. In their confusion and fear, the public supported every decision the Washington D.C. cabal made, because out of great anxiety and genuine ignorance, very few people knew what else to do.

Only a few brave people spoke out; one who did was former U.S. president Jimmy Carter,  a man of integrity and high ethical values. Carter’s views on the Iraq war are well-known. Prior to the invasion, in early March of 2003, he wrote an excellent essay on the concept of what is or is not a "just" war. He concluded that Bush’s pre-emptive strike against Iraq could not be justified on any ground. Carter wrote: "…..war can be waged only as a last resort, with all nonviolent options exhausted".

Yesterday the former president launched a full-scale verbal onslaught against George W. Bush. Carter said that the Bush policies of pre-emptive war and the mixing of religion with politics runs counter to basic American values. He said bluntly that George W. Bush is "the worst president the country has ever had".

The interesting aspect of Carter’s "Bush_whack" is this- it is very likely endorsed by a majority of the American people- now that they are beginning to see through the veil of false patriotism with which Bush has covered himself.

Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, criticized Bush for having "zero peace talks" in Israel. Carter also said the administration "abandoned or directly refuted every negotiated nuclear arms agreement".

He offered a blistering assessment for the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helped religious charities receive US$2.15 billion in federal grants in fiscal year 2005 alone.

"The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion," Carter said. "As a traditional Baptist, I’ve always believed in separation of church and state and honoured that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one."

He also lashed out at British prime minister Tony Blair. Asked how he would judge Blair’s support of Bush, the former president said: "Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient."

As for Carter himself…my view is that he was one of the best Presidents ever…along with Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.