Bush Still Spinning Nukes in Iran

The unanimous conclusion of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, that Iran ceased pursuing a program of nuclear weapons in 2003, has dealt a severe blow to the Bush-Cheney agenda of forcible regime change in Iran. For several months, the rhetoric emerging from the White House escalated to the point that many observers predicted Bush would attack Iran before he leaves office.

But although the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) makes it more difficult to carry out his agenda in Iran, Bush is trying to publicly undermine its conclusions. "I have said Iran is dangerous," he declared, "and the NIE estimate doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world - quite the contrary." Will Bush provoke an incident with Iran and then respond in “self-defense”?

Bush "rewarded" Iran for its help in consolidating U.S. power in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks by inaugurating Iran into his “axis of evil” in January 2002. The following year, Iran offered the U.S. government a comprehensive plan for negotiations and cooperation, which addressed all of Bush's claimed pet peeves about Iran. In Iran's 2003 memorandum, sent to the U.S. government via Swiss diplomats, Iran proposed a "dialogue in mutual respect." It sought negotiations with the United States on the concerns Bush has repeatedly expressed.

Iran proposed “full transparency” to show “there are no Iranian endeavors to develop or possess WMD.” It also sought to guarantee “decisive action against any terrorists (above all Al Qaida) on Iranian territory, full cooperation and exchange of all relevant information.” In Iraq, Iran proposed "coordination of Iranian influence for activity supporting political stabilization and the establishment of democratic institutions and a non-religious government." Iran agreed to discuss the “stop of any material support to Palestinian opposition groups (Hamas, Jihad etc.) from Iranian territory" and "pressure on these organizations to stop violent action against civilians within borders of 1967." And Iran listed its "acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration (Saudi initiative, two-states-approach)." This meant Iran would recognize the state of Israel.

The Iranian memorandum also offered to negotiate the following with the United States: "Halt in US hostile behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the U.S.: (interference in internal or external relations, 'axis of evil', terrorism list)"; "Abolishment of all sanctions: commercial sanctions, frozen assets, judgments (FSIA), impediments in international trade and financial institutions"; "Iraq: democratic and fully representative government in Iraq, support of Iranian claims for Iraqi reparations, respect for Iranian national interests in Iraq and religious links to Najaf/Karbal"; "Full access to peaceful nuclear technology, biotechnology and chemical technology"; "Recognition of Iran's legitimate security interests in the region with according defense capacity"; and "Terrorism: pursuit of anti-Iranian terrorists, above all MKO."

This 2003 offer by Iran to negotiate these pressing issues with the United States was an incredible opportunity, which Bush, who claims to pursue diplomacy, should have seized. Yet the White House thumbed its nose at the Iranian offer and then tried to cover up the story.

Why did Bush reject Iran's 2003 offer and now seek to discredit the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate? Because even if all his stated gripes with Iran were resolved, Bush's hidden agenda would not be addressed. That agenda comes into focus on the website of the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank that claims Paul Wolfowitz, Lynne Cheney, Richard Perle and John Bolton as members. Under the AEI's list of "Research Projects" is "Global Investment in Iran."

Just as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was about corporate control over Iraq's oil, Bush's strategy on Iran is about making Iran safe for global investment. And just as Bush lied about the danger posed by Saddam Hussein, he is now lying about the perils Iran poses.

U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed ElBaradei has consistently said there is “no evidence” Iran has ever maintained a program of developing nuclear weapons. Yet even though Bush learned about the NIE report in August or September, according to National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, he invoked World War III in the same breath with Iran in October. On December 4, Bush lied about when he learned Iran had no weapons program, saying, "I was made aware of the NIE last week."

Hadley's report on the timing of Bush's knowledge of the NIE is corroborated by a shift in the rhetoric emerging from the White House. During the last two months, Bush stopped talking about Iran possessing nukes, and began referring to Iran having "knowledge" of nuclear weapons, which he linked with World War III.

In spite of the unanimous conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate and ElBaradei's informed judgment, we cannot trust Bush-Cheney to abandon their imperial designs on Iran. Bush will probably provoke a military confrontation with Iran, then invoke the language in the 2002 Congressional authorization for the use of military force in Iraq that says, "The President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States."

Congress must support Rep. Neil Abercrombie's resolution stating that Bush has been given no authority to go to war with Iran.

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Bush's Twin Masters

George W. Bush's two masters - the neoconservatives and the right-wing Christians - were the guiding force behind his decision to invade Iraq, change its regime, and control it permanently.

The neocons' blueprint for Bush's war can be found in a 1992 draft of the Pentagon Defense Planning Guidance on Post-Cold War Strategy, prepared by Paul Wolfowitz. It said, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in [the Middle East and Southwest Asia to] preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."

The US had played a pivotal role in the Middle East for 50 years. One year before the Shah was toppled, I visited Iran as an international observer on behalf of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Tehran sported a US corporation on nearly every corner, but the people were mired in poverty. In 1953, the CIA had overthrown the democratically-elected secular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, whose government had nationalized the British oil company. The US installed the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, ushering in a 25-year reign of terror.

Iran became the largest customer for United States arms. US-based oil companies replaced the British. When Iranians began to rise up against the Shah, the US told the Shah it supported him "without reservation" and encouraged him to use force to maintain his power, even trying to engineer a military coup to save him. In 1979, a broad-based united front consisting of nationalists as well as militant Muslims coalesced around the Ayatollah Khomeini, overthrew the Shah, and inaugurated a theocracy of religious fascism.{mosgoogle right}

Because of Washington's longstanding support for the Shah, Khomeini's government became a model for fundamentalist anti-US Islamic regimes. The United States was eager to counter the now anti-American Iranian government and prevent it from controlling the Persian Gulf, the largest oil source in the world.

To keep both Iran and Iraq from controlling the Gulf, the US quietly encouraged Iraq to invade Iran in 1980, with the promise of financing from Saudi Arabia. The US removed Iraq from its list of terrorist nations, and allowed the transfer of arms to Iraq, while simultaneously permitting Israel to arm Iran.

The United States supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical and biological weapons. Even after Iraq used its chemical weapons in the early 1980s, the US restored diplomatic relations with Iraq. Still playing both ends against the middle, the US itself supplied arms covertly to Iran in 1985.

Thinking the United States was still his ally, Saddam let April Glaspie, the career Foreign Service officer who headed the US mission in Iraq, know that he was about to invade Kuwait in 1991. Glaspie responded with a green light, and Saddam invaded. But the US, not wanting Iraq to dominate the western shore of the Persian Gulf, reacted by re-invading Kuwait. The United States didn't really wish to destroy Iraq; it still wanted Iraq as a counterweight to Iran. But the US underestimated Saddam's ability to maintain his position of control over the Kurds and the Shiites - both politically and through the use of terror. The survival of Saddam represented a severe limitation on American political power.

Employing the same strategy it later used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the United States attacked the infrastructure of Iraq in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm, which led to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths from disease caused by unclean water. During Operation Desert Fox in 1998, the US bombed Iraq after Saddam refused to let UN inspectors into Iraq, on the grounds they were spying for the CIA. It turns out they were indeed CIA spies, according to the Washington Post.

By mid-2000, the United States had dropped 88,000 tons of bombs over Iraq, killing many civilians. Between 4,000 and 5,000 children per month died in Iraq as a result of prior US bombing and sanctions.

After the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration mounted a concerted campaign to prepare the American people for war on Iraq. Although unable to find any weapons of mass destruction or evidence linking Iraq to 9/11, Bush never wavered in his march toward war.

Bush's Iraq war is consistent with his new military strategy of "pre-emptive" war set forth in The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002, and the Project for the New American Century's September 2000 document.

But there was no danger to pre-empt in Iraq, which had not invaded any country for 12 years. Iraq's military, severely weakened by the Gulf War, years of sanctions and intrusive inspections, never posed a threat to the US or other countries in the region.

A quarter of a million US and UK troops launched numerous 2,000-pound bombs on Baghdad in rapid succession. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed and tens of thousands have been wounded. Nearly 2,000 American soldiers have died and thousands more have been wounded.

No weapons of mass destruction have been found and the Iraq/al-Qaeda link has been discredited. Indeed, Wolfowitz admitted in Vanity Fair that the weapons of mass destruction rationale was a "bureaucratic" excuse for war, upon which "everyone" could agree. In light of the failure to find any WMDs, Wolfowitz revealed a new rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom: using Iraq to redraw the Middle East in order to reduce the terrorist threat to the United States.

Two years before Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Bush administration's plan to take military control of the Gulf region regardless of whether Saddam was in power was detailed in the Report of The Project for the New American Century. It says: "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

Indeed, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has confirmed that toppling Saddam was on George W. Bush's agenda long before 9/11.

According to O'Neill, in January 2001, Rumsfeld articulated the desire to "dissuade" other countries from "asymmetrical challenges" to United States power, a characterization strikingly similar to that in Wolfowitz's 1992 Pentagon paper. Rumsfeld's advocacy of a pre-emptive attack "matched with plans for how the world's second largest oil reserve might be divided among the world's contractors made for an irresistible combination," O'Neill later said.

Five months later, Vice President Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, in a May 2001 report, called on the White House to make "energy security a priority of US trade and foreign policy" and to encourage Persian Gulf countries to welcome foreign investment in their energy sectors.

When US-UK forces took control of Iraq, their first order of business was to secure the oil fields instead of the hospitals. Meanwhile, Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root was awarded a controversial $7 billion no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq's oil fields.

In July 2003, the public interest group Judicial Watch finally secured some of the documents from Cheney's energy task force meetings. They contain the smoking gun: "a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects" and "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." The documents are dated March 2001, two years before Bush invaded Iraq.

Bush's twin masters are the neocons and the right-wing Christians.

The United States' uncritical support for Israel, and the installation of a US- and Israel-friendly regime in Iraq, is not motivated by love for the Jewish people. Rather, this support is critical to the right-wing Christian agenda. In order to fulfill the Scripture's promise, the right-wing Christians want to transfer the temple mount in Jerusalem from Muslim to Jewish hands, to facilitate the rebuilding of the temple so Jesus can return.

US assistance to Israel maintains that country as an America-friendly presence in the midst of countries that are exploited by and resent the policies of both the United States and Israel. Instead of fighting terror - as Bush likes to proclaim - his war on Iraq has drawn foreign terrorists into Iraq to fight against the Western infidels.

Its success in removing Saddam's regime made way for the United States to construct 14 US military bases in Iraq. All of these bases are instrumental to Washington's strategy to maintain hegemony in the Middle East. Kellogg Brown & Root, which built the infamous tiger cages in Vietnam and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, got the no-bid contract for reconstruction in Iraq, and in New Orleans as well.

Our government's atrocious neglect of the poor and marginalized people of the Gulf Coast before and after Hurricane Katrina has come into full focus. And Bush's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol - which would require US corporations to sacrifice some of their profits to combat global warming - has come home to roost in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Nearly half the National Guard and many high-water vehicles were in Iraq when they should've been in New Orleans.

The Bush administration has spent more than $200 billion on an illegal and unjustified war of conquest in Iraq and continues to send $3 billion of aid per year to Israel to fund its brutal military occupation of the Palestinian people. It is time for the US to get out of the business of funding killing and occupation, and into the business of funding healthcare, jobs, education and housing.

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Getting Away with Murder

As we walked out of Hotel Rwanda, my teenage son asked me, "So why did we go into Iraq, but not Rwanda?" This youngster was horrified that the United States not only sat on the sidelines during the genocide that killed 800,000 Rwandans in 1994, but then prevented the United Nations from acting to stop it.

What was a little genocide, after all, when the U.S. powers-that-be had no strategic interest in intervening to stop the Hutu from massacring the Tutsi in Rwanda? Bill Clinton, still smarting from the public relations disaster that followed the deaths of 18 American soldiers in Somalia, didn't want to get involved in Rwanda.

Clinton did, however, engineer NATO's war in Kosovo five years after the Rwandan genocide. He called it a "humanitarian intervention," to prevent ethnic cleansing of the Albanians by the Serbs.

Four years later, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, George W. Bush started a war in Afghanistan, justified as "self defense" against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

After Bush ousted the Taliban and installed former Unocal consultant Hamid Karzai to protect U.S. interests in Afghanistan, he went after Iraq, two years ago yesterday.

Billed as necessary to save us from "weapons of mass destruction," Bush replaced Saddam Hussein with a U.S.-friendly regime, one that would welcome the 14 permanent military bases we are constructing in Iraq. When the dreaded weapons didn't materialize, Bush's rationale morphed into "bringing democracy to the Iraqi people."

All three wars - Clinton/NATO's war in Yugoslavia, and Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to Canadian law professor Michael Mandel - were unlawful. None was undertaken in self-defense, or approved by the Security Council, the only two instances in which the United Nations Charter permits the use of armed force.

In his new book, How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes against Humanity, Canadian law professor Michael Mandel argues that NATO's Kosovo war set the precedent for the United States' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "It broke a fundamental legal and psychological barrier. When Pentagon guru Richard Perle 'thanked God' for the death of the UN," writes Mandel, "the first precedent he could cite in justification of overthrowing the Security Council's legal supremacy in matters of war and peace was Kosovo."

The 1999 war in Kosovo and other parts of Yugoslavia was not a "humanitarian intervention," but rather a crime against humanity, in the judgment of Mandel. He notes that "of the 385 murders in the original ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia] indictment of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, 340 were alleged to have occurred after the bombing started."

In support of his claim that NATO's bombing constituted a crime against humanity, Mandel cites its use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and the targeting of civilians. Between 500 and 1800 civilians of all nationalities were killed during the 78-day bombing campaign, which used "about 25,000 of the world's most devastating non-nuclear bombs and missiles," according to Mandel.

A year after the bombing, I visited Belgrade as a participant in an international conference on humanitarian intervention. Between meetings, we toured the surrounding area and saw the bombed out rubble of what were once apartments, schools, bridges, and a television and radio station. As I walked through the rubble, I was cautioned, much to my dismay, that the soil could contain depleted uranium.

Joining together with other Canadian law professors and lawyers and the American Association of Jurists, Mandel filed a complaint against NATO leaders with the ICTY. Although Amnesty International concurred that NATO had committed war crimes, the tribunal dismissed the complaint without serious investigation.

Mandel documents why this tribunal was created and functions in the service of United States interests. "For the first time in history," writes Mandel, we had "an international criminal tribunal established prior to the war whose criminals it was putting on trial, and therefore capable of playing a role in that war."

"The point is not that Milosevic was charged with atrocities in Kosovo, it's that Clinton wasn't too," writes Mandel.

NATO intervened militarily in Yugoslavia to assist the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in its struggle against Milosevic. A year before, the United States government had listed the KLA, which had received assistance from Osama bin Laden, as a terrorist organization. After Milosevic's forces were defeated by NATO, the KLA moved into Kosovo and began a reign of terror against non-Albanians, which Mandel calls "reverse ethnic cleansing." When I was in Belgrade, I saw documentation of the destruction of 25 of Kosovo's medieval Serbian Christian Orthodox monasteries.

Mandel points to the Security Council Resolutions passed before the NATO bombing, which "were even-handed in their condemnation of 'the use of excessive force by Serbian police forces against civilians and peaceful demonstrators in Kosovo,' and 'all acts of terrorism by the Kosovo Liberation Army.'"

The "Racak massacre," widely viewed as the event that precipitated NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, is the subject of considerable controversy. According to the Serb version, all 45 of the dead ethnic Albanians "were either KLA fighters or civilians caught in the crossfire. There was no massacre of civilians, but the KLA had plenty of time to dress their dead fighters in civilian clothes." A team of Finnish forensic investigators sent by the European Union to perform autopsies on the Racak bodies "confirmed the Serb version in most respects, though the change-of-clothes hypothesis was discounted," writes Mandel. In his opinion, Racak was a pretext to begin the bombing.

On the day before the bombing began, Clinton declared, "If we're going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be a key. That's what this Kosovo thing is all about." Supreme NATO Commander Wesley Clark admitted one month into the bombing campaign that it "was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing."

I wrote in a 2002 article that the NATO bombing was about economic hegemony, access to Caspian Sea oil, and the promotion of a global free market economy, not ethnic cleansing. Milosevic's socialist government, which had tried to stop the market reforms imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, was in America's sights early in the 1990s.

Mandel describes "the history of the West's complicity in the 'Balkan tragedy,' which," he writes, "is a story of the rich countries of Europe and America taking advantage of the sad state of the post-Soviet economies to impose solutions (sometimes known as 'Shock Therapy') through powerful credit institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. Part of the goal was to encourage the fragmentation of the old Soviet bloc to create in its place 'hub and spoke' arrangements dependent on the West." This resulted in "the West's economic strangulation of Yugoslavia."

Against this backdrop, Milosevic was elected President in 1989. The Albanians employed a campaign of non-violent opposition to Serb rule, boycotting Serb institutions and setting up parallel ones. "The turn to violence came only in 1997, and appears to have had nothing to do with Serb repression," writes Mandel, but rather with the rise of the KLA.

In the year before NATO's bombing campaign, "violence dramatically increased in Kosovo, though the 2,000 dead on both sides combined were no more numerous than in many contemporary conflicts where the U.S. chose not to intervene," in Mandel's opinion. Rwanda is a prime example.

The key to the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia can be found in a 1992 draft of the Pentagon Defense Planning Guidance on post-Cold War Strategy, prepared under the direction of Paul Wolfowitz. It advocated discouraging other advanced industrialized nations "from challenging our leadership" or "aspiring to a larger regional or global role." The document declares, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in [the Middle East and Southwest Asia] to preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."

Bush's wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are consistent with this strategy, as are his appointments of Wolfowitz, architect of the Iraq war and "preemptive war" doctrine, as head of the World Bank, and John Bolton, avowed U.N.-hater, as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

After NATO conquered Yugoslavia, Halliburton's Brown and Root constructed Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, the largest foreign U.S. military base built since the Vietnam War. Besides the Great Wall of China, the only other earthly thing visible from outer space is Camp Bondsteel. Brown and Root is also building the 14 permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.

Mandel's indictment of the United States' policies in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Rwanda does not ignore the complicity of the other dark forces in those conflicts. He writes, "The fact that the Americans and their allies have been the supreme criminals in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq does not mean their enemies are innocent. The fact that the Americans and the Europeans were directly and indirectly complicit in the atrocities of Rwanda, and the fact that their Tutsi clients in the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] committed them too, does not mean that the Hutu government and militias did not."

The Nuremberg Tribunal found the greatest sin to be the waging of aggressive war, or war as an instrument of national policy. Mandel characterizes the U.S. wars on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq as wars of aggression. "Humanitarian intervention," he notes, (which violates the U.N. Charter anyway) "is forever doomed to be an 'asymmetrical right, the right of the powerful to intervene in the affairs of the weak and not vice versa.'" United States support for Croat soldiers in their 1995 ethnic cleansing of 200,000 Serbs from Krajina belies America's humanitarian motives four years later in Kosovo.

Michael Mandel's book is finally an indictment of international criminal law, of "victor's justice," in which only the vanquished are put on trial. "Exactly like the other elements of 'globalization,' the globalization ('universalization') of human rights is just a euphemism for the strong calling the shots."

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Kerry Hits Nail on Head

We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire.
- George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, Jan. 20, 2004

The [President] doth protest too much, methinks.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (III, ii, 239)

John Kerry cut to the heart of the matter when he said during Thursday’s debate with George W. Bush that, "a critical component of success in Iraq is being able to convince the Iraqis and the Arab world that the United States doesn’t have long-term designs on it." Kerry cited the U.S. construction of 14 military bases in Iraq that are said to have "a rather permanent concept to them."

Building these bases belies Bush’s protestations that he has "no ambitions of empire."

In fact, the neoconservative cabal that drives Bush's foreign policy has long advocated a strategy premised on worldwide U.S. military dominance. Their blueprint for aggressive war first appeared twelve years before George W. Bush tried to reassure the American people that his war on Iraq was not an imperialist endeavor.

Under the direction of Paul Wolfowitz, a 1992 draft of the Pentagon Defense Planning Guidance on post-Cold War Strategy explained, "We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." The draft went on, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in [the Middle East and Southwest Asia] to preserve U.S. and Western access to the region’s oil." The neocons reiterated this policy in the September 2000 document of the Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.

Bush and his minions began plotting how to remove Saddam Hussein from power as soon as Bush removed his hand from the Bible after Chief William Rehnquist swore him in as President, according to both former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and former Anti-Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke. This was 8 months before the September 11 attacks - the date the "war on terror" officially began.

After the U.S. attacked Iraq, Wolfowitz admitted to Vanity Fair in 2003 that weapons-of-mass-destruction was the agreed-upon "bureaucratic excuse" for seizing that country. He also said it would allow the U.S. to pull its troops out of Saudi Arabia and base them in Iraq.

It is not surprising that Iraqis and people throughout the Arab and Muslim world see the United States as an imperialist invader and occupier.

On the day of the Bush-Kerry foreign policy debate, 41 Iraqis were killed in car bombings, 34 of them children taking candy from U.S. troops. According to Farnaz Fassihi, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, based in Baghdad, insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day. She describes the situation as "a raging barbaric guerilla war" where the numbers of dead are "so shocking" that the ministry of health has stopped disclosing them. "The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can’t be put back into a bottle," Fassihi wrote in an email to friends.

Yes, as Kerry said, Bush made "a colossal error of judgment" when he invaded Iraq.

"I will make a flat statement," Kerry declared during the debate. "The United States of America has no long-term designs on staying in Iraq." With that promise, John Kerry turned the policy of Team Bush on its head.

Kerry was also right on when, responding to Bush’s debate mantra that Kerry sends mixed messages, the Senator said: "You talk about mixed messages. We’re telling other people, ‘You can’t have nuclear weapons,’ but we’re pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using."

Indeed, the Bush administration’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review expands options for the preemptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states. It identifies Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya as potential targets for U.S. nuclear weapons. Is it any wonder that countries like Iran and North Korea are trying to obtain nuclear weapons?

Also in 2002, Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had been concluded between the United States and Russia in 1972. This was the first formal unilateral withdrawal of a major power from a nuclear arms control treaty after it had been put into effect.

Kerry pledged that as President, "I’m going to shut that program [to pursue a new tactical nuclear weapon] down, and we’re going to make it clear to the world we’re serious about containing nuclear proliferation."

The debate transformed the dynamic of the campaign. John Kerry continues to have his work cut out for him. But one thing is certain. Four more years of Bush presidency will produce increasing danger to the United States and the entire globe.

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Bush & Co. Fear Prosecution in the International Criminal Court

Overcoming Impunity with the International Criminal Court

Non-governmental organizations and individuals from sixty-six different countries have filed 499 "communications" – or complaints – with the International Criminal Court (ICC), between July 2002 and July 2003. Many of them urge the ICC to investigate the United States conduct in the war on Iraq. The primary charge is that the U.S. committed an act of aggression against Iraq. The ICC has jurisdiction to punish the crime of aggression. However, this crime remains undefined in the ICC’s statute due to disputes among the states parties about how to define it.

The United States is not a party to the ICC treaty. The Bush administration has vigorously opposed it, for fear that U.S. military officials and personnel could be subject to "politically-motivated" prosecutions for war crimes.

In an unprecedented move last year, George W. Bush removed Bill Clinton’s signature from the treaty. A few months later, Bush signed into law the American Serviceman’s Protection Act, which restricts U.S. cooperation with the ICC and prohibits military assistance to states parties to the treaty unless they sign bilateral immunity agreements with the U.S. States which sign these "Article 98" agreements – referring to the section of the ICC statute that addresses treaties between countries – pledge not to hand over U.S. nationals to the ICC. The United States has reportedly extracted these agreements from 60 countries – primarily small nations, or fragile democracies with weak economies. And the U.S. has withdrawn military aid from 35 nations that refused to be coerced into signing Article 98 agreements.

The U.S. has also demanded express immunity from ICC prosecution for American nationals. This demand delayed the passage of several peacekeeping resolutions in the Security Council. But in 2002, the Security Council capitulated when it unanimously passed Resolution 1422, which called for one year of immunity for peacekeepers from countries not party to the ICC statute, and provided that immunity could be renewed in subsequent years. The resolution was renewed in June. But this time, the U.S. was unable to achieve unanimity. France, Germany and Syria abstained from the vote.

Ninety-one countries have signed on as parties to the ICC treaty. So why has the Bush administration resisted it so vehemently? Bush’s handlers were likely prescient about how the world would react to the United States’ illegal invasion of Iraq, which was not executed with Security Council approval or in lawful self-defense. They evidently knew they and their boss might be vulnerable to prosecutions for the unlawful killing of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the destruction of the civilian infrastructure, and the use of weapons of mass destruction – cluster bombs and depleted uranium – by "coalition forces."

A Preemptive War is a War of Aggression

The United States has sought to ensure the ICC’s legal processes do not jeopardize its role as global superpower by subjecting U.S. leaders to prosecution. It has consistently resisted definitions and jurisdictional provisions that may challenge U.S. impunity for wars of aggression.

Many ICC parties favor a definition of aggression set out in 1974 in General Assembly Resolution 3314, passed in the wake of Vietnam: "Aggression is the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations, as set out in this definition."

Bush’s new doctrine of "preemptive war" is a license to prosecute wars of aggression. It runs directly counter to the United Nations Charter’s prohibition on the use of armed force except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. A preemptive war is a war of aggression. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" falls squarely into this category.

More than 50 years ago, Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunal, wrote: "No political or economic situation can justify" the crime of aggression. He added: "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us." An impartial international criminal tribunal is necessary to prevent "victor’s justice," where only the vanquished are subject to prosecution.

Universal Jurisdiction for International Crimes

Under the treaty, the ICC can take jurisdiction over a national of even a non-party state if he or she commits a crime in a state party’s territory. The U.S. vehemently objects to this. But it’s nothing new. Under well-established principles of international law, the core crimes prosecuted in the ICC – genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression – are crimes of universal jurisdiction.

That means that an alleged perpetrator can – and always could – be arrested anywhere. Indeed, the United States itself has asserted jurisdiction over foreign nationals in anti-terrorism, anti-narcotic trafficking, torture and war crimes cases. Even Resolution 1422 notes that states not party to the ICC statute "will continue to fulfill their responsibilities in their national jurisdiction in relation to international crimes."

However, the U.S. has not fulfilled its responsibilities to seek justice for international crimes. It has refused to extradite four terrorists – right-wing Cuban exiles trained by the CIA – who were convicted more than 20 years ago in Venezuela for blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976. The U.S. similarly refuses to extradite John Hull, an American CIA operative indicted in Costa Rica for the 1984 bombing of a press conference which killed five journalists in a Nicaraguan border town. It has also refused to extradite former military officer Emmanuel Constant for trial in Haiti. Constant, who worked closely with the CIA, is believed to be responsible for the murder of more than 5000 people under the Haitian dictatorship in the early 1990s.

The ICC statute adds a special safeguard to the venerable principle of universal jurisdiction. It promises the ICC will only prosecute when the alleged perpetrator’s native country cannot, or will not, prosecute one of its nationals. The U.S. should not then fear ICC prosecution, especially in light of the Article 98 agreements it coerced – and continues to coerce – from a multitude of countries. Unfortunately, however, these agreements contain no guarantee that an American national accused of an international crime would be tried if handed over to the U.S.

In June, Belgium indicted Bush, Tony Blair, Paul Wolfowitz, John Ashcroft, and Condoleezza Rice for war crimes during the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan, which predated the effective date of the ICC. The indictment was issued under Belgium’s universal jurisdiction law, which gave Belgian courts the right to judge anyone accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, regardless of where the crimes were committed. Four Rwandans have been convicted in 2001 under Belgium’s law for their participation in the 1994 genocide which left more than one million dead.

The government of Belgium, fearing a backlash, decided to refer the cases against Blair, Bush and the others to London and Washington, making trials unlikely. Even so, Donald Rumsfeld threatened to move NATO out of Brussels unless Belgium changed its universal jurisdiction law. Belgium capitulated, and its Court of Cassation has asked for the dismissal of the war crimes indictments.

Belgium isn’t alone in indicting Bush and Blair for war crimes. In July, Greece’s Athens Bar Association filed a complaint in the ICC against the two for crimes against humanity and war crimes, this time in connection with their war on Iraq. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" began after July 2002, the effective date of the ICC.

The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks occurred before the ICC went into effect. Two years later, a Spanish judge charged Osama bin Laden and nine alleged Al Qaeda members with terrorism and murder under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

U.S. Undermines War Against Terrorism

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Argentine Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, has decided to begin the work of the Court by investigating possible genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity for the recruitment and use of children as soldiers and sex slaves in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Moreno-Ocampo’s selection of the Congo for his maiden investigation was made partly with an eye to the credibility of the ICC because, he says, "the Congo was a clear case."

But, John Shattuck, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, wrote in the Washington Post in September that the United States has "so far played a passive and sometimes negative role in the region." Just two days after the Security Council adopted a resolution on July 28 which imposed an embargo on "the direct or indirect supply" of arms or assistance to "armed groups and militias operating in the territory," the U.S. lifted its own embargo on weapons sales to Rwanda, which has armed its clients in eastern Congo.

Moreno-Ocampo, who has described the genocide in Congo as the "most important case since the Second World War," plans to investigate businesses in 29 countries, including the United States, suspected of financing ethnic violence in Congo.

Ironically the Chief Prosecutor, an attorney with extensive experience investigating atrocities and prosecuting officials in Argentina, says that the United States’ refusal to work with the ICC will undermine the International Criminal Court’s role in the U.S. efforts to fight terrorism.

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Assassination and Display in Iraq: The Killings of Uday and Qusai Hussein in International Law

Last week the US military assassinated Uday and Qusai Hussein in a villa in Mosul, Iraq. Hundreds of troops armed with automatic weapons, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, and tow missiles, and dozens of vehicles and aircraft, attacked four people armed with AK-47 automatic rifles. Mustapha, the 14-year old son of Qusai, was also killed in the operation, along with another individual who was apparently a bodyguard.

The subsequent firestorm of media coverage momentarily diverted public attention from the Bush administation's failing Iraq war - its vain attempts to find any weapons of mass destruction or link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, the White House's admission that the President used false information in his State of the Union address, and the continuing deaths of American soldiers in an occupation with no end in sight.

The assassinations prompted chest-thumping and back-slapping all around. Even Senator Ted Kennedy joined British Prime Minister Tony Blair, The New York Times and the Washington Post, in congratulating Bush on the good news. Then, after reportedly reflecting on the pros and cons, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave the go-ahead to display the grisly photographs of the Hussein brothers' reconstructed bullet-riddled faces. The Pentagon didn’t want to appear to be “gloating,” but Rumsfeld thought the photos would convince skeptical Iraqis that Uday and Qusai were indeed dead, which would reduce the attacks on U.S. troops and encourage informants to come forward without fear of retaliation by the old regime.

Both the targeted assassinations and the photographic display violated well-established principles of international law. Targeted, or political, assassinations are extrajudicial executions. They are unlawful and deliberate killings carried out by order of, or with the acquiescence of, a government, outside any judicial framework. Extrajudicial executions are unlawful, even in armed conflict. In a 1998 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions noted that “extrajudicial executions can never be justified under any circumstances, not even in time of war.”

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty ratified by the United States, prohibits the arbitrary denial of the right to life, a right so fundamental, there can be no derogation from it even in “time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation." The U.N. General Assembly and Human Rights Commission, as well as Amnesty International, have all condemned extrajudicial executions.

After the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed in 1975 that the CIA had been involved in several murders or attempted murders of foreign leaders, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. Although every succeeding president has renewed that order, the Clinton administration targeted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, but narrowly missed him.

In July 2001, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel denounced Israel’s policy of targeted killings, or “preemptive operations.” He said “the United States government is very clearly on the record as against targeted assassinations. They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that.”

Yet after September 11, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer invited the killing of Saddam Hussein: “The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less” than the cost of war. Shortly thereafter, George W. Bush issued a secret directive, which authorized the CIA to target suspected terrorists for assassination when it would be impractical to capture them and when large-scale civilian casualties could be avoided. In November 2002, Bush reportedly authorized the CIA to assassinate a suspected Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. He and five traveling companions were killed in the hit, which Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described as a “very successful tactical operation.”

Nearly sixty years ago, the U.S. government opposed the extrajudicial executions of Nazi officials who had committed genocide against millions of people. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, told President Harry Truman: “We could execute or otherwise punish [the Nazi leaders] without a hearing. But undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would … not set easily on the American conscience or be remembered by children with pride.”

Americans should not feel pride in the public display of the gruesome photos of the assassinated Hussein brothers. The First Geneva Convention requires combatants to ensure that the dead are not despoiled. Reconstruction of their faces violates this treaty, which also provides that the dead be honorably interred; Islamic law requires immediate burial. When Iraqis displayed images of captured U.S. troops, Bush demanded that the POWs be treated humanely, and he warned that anyone who mistreated them would be tried for war crimes. But Bush didn’t complain when American media outlets featured Iraqi prisoners down on their knees, blindfolded and handcuffed. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Uday and Qusai Hussein should have been arrested and tried in Iraqi courts or an international tribunal for their alleged crimes. George W. Bush cannot serve as judge, jury and executioner. This assassination creates a dangerous precedent, which could be used to justify the targeted killings of U.S. leaders. The display of the photographs may backfire and turn the brothers into martyrs who stood against the foreign invaders. It could also result in even more violence against U.S. troops.

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Bush, Lies, and Impeachment: The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Revelations that the Bush administration sold us a bill of goods about Iraq's weapons program are growing faster than the imaginary mushroom cloud George W. Bush used to whip up support for his invasion of Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction provided the excuse to distract Americans from the real reasons Bush and his men were itching to get into Iraq.

Two days before he invaded Iraq, Bush declared there was "no doubt" the Iraqi regime possessed and concealed "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." That claim has proved specious. If he had those horrible weapons, Hussein surely would have used them in self-defense, which he did not. Systematic searches by hundreds of weapons inspectors have failed to turn up any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Indeed, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in Vanity Fair, described the weapons of mass destruction rationale as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war, upon which everyone could agree.

Before the war began, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee asked the C.I.A. to make intelligence available to Congress; but only findings supportive of the Bush administration's position on Iraq were declassified, according to Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.). The Defense Intelligence Agency's classified assessment of Iraq's chemical weapons program concluded "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has--or will--establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities." Nevertheless, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld unequivocally told the House Armed Services Committee shortly thereafter, "We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons."

Another reason we were given for going to war with Iraq was that Hussein would share weapons with Al Qaeda. The Iraq-Al Qaeda link has also been thoroughly discredited. A United Nations panel found no such connection. The F.B.I. determined that Mohammed Atta, the lead September 11 hijacker, was in the United States when he was reputed to have met with an Iraqi official in Prague. And the senior Al Qaeda leader whom Secretary of State Colin Powell accused of operating out of Baghdad turned out to be in Kurdish, not Hussein-controlled, territory.

Now the lies are being revealed and Bush is busy shifting the blame and trying to change the subject. When confronted with the false uranium report in his State of the Union address, Bush blamed the C.I.A. and repeated his mantra that the world is a safer place without Saddam.

The problem is, Saddam posed no imminent threat to the United States prior to the war. He was weakened by Gulf War I, years of punishing sanctions, nearly daily bombings in the no-fly zones, and intrusive inspections. American soldiers are still dying in what Senator Ted Kennedy characterized as a "shooting gallery," with no end in sight. General Tommy Franks predicted that our troops would be in Iraq for years, to the tune of $3.9 billion a month of taxpayers' money.

So why did we go into Iraq?

Was it the oil and the desire to clinch U.S. control of the Middle East?

Did Bush think he would be vindicated by weapons found after he took control of Iraq?

His new doctrine of "preemptive war" is really a faith-based foreign policy. Bush's breach of our trust will make it impossible to believe the boy-who-cried-wolf when he claims another country is threatening our national security.

Americans are demanding answers to many questions about why our soldiers were, and continue to be, placed in harm's way. Why are the Republicans resisting a full and public investigation into "intelligence" about Iraq? Why did C.I.A. Director George Tenet take the fall for Bush's misstatement about the African uranium? If Tenet is responsible for such a colossal failure, why does Bush express "absolute" confidence in him? Why wasn't Tenet fired forthwith?

What else has Bush lied about?

An independent commission headed by a special prosecutor should be convened immediately to get to the bottom of this. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about sex. If it is determined that Bush misled American soldiers into war, the House of Representatives should initiate impeachment proceedings against him. There is no higher crime or misdemeanor.

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Oil: Weapon of Mass Destruction

When Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil services company, he told the Cato Institute: “The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States.” He admitted: “Occasionally, we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go...we go where the business is.” After Cheney became vice president, he made hegemony over the world’s oil supply a priority for U.S. foreign policy. The blueprint for this strategy was developed in the 1992 draft Pentagon Defense Planning Guidance on post-Cold War Strategy, at the direction of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, when he was Undersecretary of Defense under Cheney in George H.W. Bush’s cabinet.

This 1992 draft, which was strategically leaked to The New York Times, advocated continued U.S. leadership in NATO by discouraging the advanced industrialized nations “from challenging our leadership.” It said: “We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” The overall objective in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, according to the draft, “is to remain the predominant outside power in the region to preserve U.S. and Western access to the region’s oil.” The bombing of Afghanistan, and the impending Iraq war, both serve that goal.

The incessant drumbeat from Washington is that Americans must be protected from Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Notwithstanding CIA Director George Tenet’s unambiguous declaration that Hussein does not pose an imminent threat to the United States, media commentators postulate unremittingly how many and what types of weapons Hussein must have. George W. Bush has manipulated and cajoled Congress and the Security Council into jumping on his WMD bandwagon. Yet, Bush’s war on Iraq is merely the next step in a concerted strategy to secure control over valuable oil deposits in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Bush’s agenda to reincarnate NATO, inspired by the Wolfowitz document, is key to this oil strategy. NATO was created as a defensive alliance during the Cold War to protect Western Europe from a perceived threat from the Soviet Union. After World War II, the countries of Western Europe were unable to defend themselves. Now they have the resources to provide for their own security, yet NATO has expanded eastward, added several former Soviet bloc countries to its ranks, and redefined its strategic purpose. Bush’s abandonment of containment in favor of preemption is a brazen manifestation of the Wolfowitz theology embodied in the 1992 draft. Indeed, Wolfowitz has been systematically bribing NATO countries to assist with Bush’s impending invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. bombing of Afghanistan, justified as a response to the September 11 attacks, was part of the U.S. oil strategy. Afghanistan never attacked the U.S. and most of the hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia, a strategic U.S. oil partner. Yet, U.S. and U.K. warplanes ousted the Taliban and secured Afghanistan for the construction of an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan, south through Afghanistan, to the Arabian Sea. The Bush administration had been uncritical of the Taliban’s human rights record when Unocal oil company was negotiating for the pipeline rights before September 11. After assuming control of Afghanistan, Bush conveniently installed Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal official, as interim president of Afghanistan.

Bush likewise seeks to install a U.S.-friendly replacement for Hussein after conquering Iraq. Although couched as a battle against weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. allied with Iraq when it used chemical weapons on the Kurds; indeed, the U.S. furnished Iraq with its WMD technology, according to an Associated Press report. The U.S. played Iraq off against Iran for years, to ensure access to Middle East oil. Bush’s war with Iraq, and ultimate occupation of that country, will clinch that control. With the lives of thousands of Americans and Iraqis at stake, oil may prove to be the most terrible weapon of mass destruction.

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Don’t Rush to Judgment on John Walker

Don't label John Walker a traitor yet.

Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York didn't hesitate to call John Walker a traitor when she was interviewed on Meet the Press. The American was recently found with the Taliban in Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, and was taken into U.S. custody.

The crime of treason requires a prosecutor to prove both an intent to betray the United States and an act of levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Our Constitution mandates that the act be proved by the testimony of two witnesses or a confession in open court.

That Walker, 20, was found in the company of the Taliban, without more evidence, is not sufficient, as circumstantial evidence cannot serve as the basis for proving a treasonous act.

Further, the Supreme Court has defined "enemy" as the subject of a foreign power in a state of open hostilities with the United States. Since it is the Northern Alliance, not the Taliban, which has a seat at the United Nations and is recognized as the lawful government of Afghanistan, Walker's activities might not fit within the legal definition of treason.

When Mr. Walker went to Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban were still on friendly terms.

In a new book published in Paris, Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth, former French intelligence officer Jean-Charles Brisard and journalist Guillaume Dasquie document an amicable relationship between George W. Bush, and the Taliban. The book quotes John O'Neill, former director of anti-terrorism for the FBI, who thought the State Department, acting on behalf of U.S. and Saudi oil interests, interfered with FBI efforts to track down Osama bin Laden before Sept. 11.

The State Department and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency financed, armed and trained the Taliban in its civil war against the Northern Alliance to make the region safe for U.S.-based corporate oil interests, according to Ahmed Rashid's best-selling book, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia. California-based UNOCAL was negotiating for an oil pipeline to run through Afghanistan and Pakistan, but it pulled out of the deal because of feminist opposition to the Taliban's treatment of women after President Bill Clinton bombed al-Qaida training camps in retaliation for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said earlier this week that Mr. Walker was lucky he was a U.S. citizen and was captured by the United States. The implication was that if the Northern Alliance had captured him or if he were a non-U.S. citizen prisoner of the United States, he wouldn't have been so humanely treated.

The United States has signed, ratified and implemented the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It prohibits securing information by torture, even in wartime. Mr. Walker is reportedly cooperating with U.S. military authorities; it is hoped he is being treated humanely as required by the torture convention and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Mr. Walker does not come under the jurisdiction of a military court under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, as he is not in the U.S. military. He cannot be tried in one of the Bush administration's new secret military tribunals, as they apply only to noncitizens. Mr. Walker has not renounced his U.S. citizenship.

We don't know whether Mr. Walker was simply an idealistic kid who joined the Taliban when it was still friendly to the United States in order to help build a pure Islamic state. We don't know whether he acted voluntarily, or what his mental state was when he was captured.

The U.S. government may decline to file charges against Mr. Walker if he provides sufficient information to help the anti-terrorism effort. But if charges are levied against him, we should wait until the evidence comes out before judging him.

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