Stanford Anti-War Alumni, Students Call for Condi War Crimes Probe

During the Vietnam War, Stanford students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq War.

Veterans of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement had gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion during the weekend. The gathering featured panels on foreign policy, the economy, political and social movements, science and technology, media, energy and the environment, and strategies for aging activists.

On Sunday, surrounded by alumni and students, Lenny Siegel and I nailed a petition to the University President’s office door. The petition, circulated by Stanford Says No to War, reads:

“We the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (included ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities.”

I stated, “By nailing this petition to the door of the President’s office, we are telling Stanford that the university should not have war criminals on its faculty. There is prima facie evidence that Rice approved torture and misled the country into the Iraq War. Stanford has an obligation to investigate those charges.”

After the petition nailing, I cited the law and evidence of Condoleezza Rice’s responsibility for war crimes - including torture - and for selling the illegal Iraq War:



As National Security Advisor, Rice authorized waterboarding in July 2002, according to a newly released report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Less than two months later, she hyped the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Her ominous warning was part of the Bush administration’s campaign to sell the Iraq war, in spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s assurances that Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons.

A week before the nailing of the petition, Rice made some Nixonian admissions in response to questions from Stanford students during a campus dinner designed to burnish Rice’s image on campus.

In October 1968, Stanford anti-war activists had nailed a document to the door of the trustees’ office which demanded that Stanford “halt all military and economic projects concerned with Southeast Asia.”

If you have had any affiliation with Stanford, please sign the petition at http://www.stanford.edu/group/antiwar/crpetition.html.

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Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memos asserted that “enhanced techniques” on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.

Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify Bush’s illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to a newly released report of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That link was never established.

The Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that Condoleezza Rice approved waterboarding on July 17, 2002 “subject to a determination of legality by the OLC.” She got it two weeks later from Jay Bybee and John Yoo. Rice, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet reassured the CIA in spring 2003 that the abusive methods were legal.

Team Bush claimed - and still claims - that it had to use harsh techniques to protect us from the terrorists. They really sought to create evidence to rationalize an illegal, unnecessary, and tragic war.

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Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed: Bush Negotiates Permanent Presence in Iraq

The revelation that Bush will sign an agreement for a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq before his term is up confirms the real reason he invaded Iraq and changed its regime.

It was never about weapons of mass destruction. It was never about ties between Saddam and al Qaeda. And it was never about bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. These claims were lies to cover up the real motive for Operation Iraqi Freedom: to create a permanent American presence in Iraq. With Bush's November 26, 2007 announcement that the United States and Iraq were negotiating a permanent "security relationship," his lies have been exposed.

Bush declared, Iraqi leaders "understand that their success will require U.S. political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my presidency." His outline for the permanent U.S.-Iraqi "Economic" relationship is "to encourage the flow of foreign investments to Iraq." Two senior Iraqi officials told the Associated Press that Bush is negotiating preferential treatment for U.S. investments.

This isn't the first time Bush has tried to turn Iraq into an investment haven for U.S. oil companies. He used to tout the "Iraqi oil law," which would transfer control of three-quarters of Iraq's oil to foreign companies, as the benchmark for Iraqi progress. But in the face of opposition by the Iraqi oil unions, the parliament has refused to pass that law.

All along, Bush has been building mega-bases In Iraq. Camp Anaconda, which sits on 15 square miles of Iraqi soil, has a pool, gym, theater, beauty salon, school and six apartment buildings. Our $600 million American embassy in the Green Zone just opened. The largest embassy in the world, it is a self-contained city with no need for Iraqi electricity, food or water.

Although Bush has negotiated terms to keep U.S. troops in Iraq in perpetuity, the majority of American people oppose a permanent American occupation of Iraq.

So do many Iraqis. University of Michigan Juan Cole's blog, "Informed Comment," cited an Al-Hayat report in Arabic that the Sadr Movement and the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front rejected the "memorandum of understanding" between the United States and Iraq that Bush and Nuri al-Maliki signed. According to the Iraqi Constitution, the agreement would be illegal unless ratified by the legislature, and Iraqi lawmakers complain about the absence of any timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

No wonder Iraqis oppose the U.S. occupation. The organization Just Foreign Policy has estimated that 1,118,846 Iraqis have been killed since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. Australian born journalist John Pilger wrote, "The scale of death caused by the British and U.S. governments may well have surpassed that of the Rwanda genocide, making it the biggest single act of mass murder of the late 20th century and the 21st century."

Yet Congress refuses to reign in the President. When Bush announced that violence is down in Baghdad so he can withdraw 5,000 troops, the Democratic candidates cheered, diverting their criticism to the lack of political progress in Iraq. But with so many Iraqis dead, there are fewer to kill.

We the people have to keep the pressure on. As we demand the United States withdraw completely from Iraq, we must also forbid Bush to attack Iran. Our voices must be heard - by Congress, by the media, and throughout the world.

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From Hanging Chads to Hanging Saddam: The Banana Election

By Marjorie Cohn

The announcement of Saddam Hussein's death sentence two days before our midterm elections brings to mind the opening scene of Woody Allen's film Bananas. Howard Cosell is covering the impending assassination of a dictator in an unnamed Banana Republic. On one side of the street, Cosell thrusts a microphone under the dictator's nose and asks how it feels when one is about to be assassinated. After the dictator responds, the assassin takes aim, shoots, and the dictator falls down dead. Cosell then crosses the street to interview the successor, Woody Allen. Everything goes according to script.

Sunday, as Saddam's verdict hearing convened, a pert blonde reporter from Fox News took her place in the second row of the courtroom. Although she often had trouble getting a seat during the trial, the U.S.-Iraqi-powers-that-be made sure she was prominently seated for the show. After the verdict, the reporter told millions of Fox viewers how frightened she was to be so close to Saddam. The network juxtaposed the verdict report with a discourse on the perils of radical Islam. Ironically, tyrant that he was, Saddam ran a secular government in which radical Islam was not permitted to flourish.

Saddam's verdict was choreographed in much the same way as the fall of his huge statue in the Baghdad square after Bush shocked-and-awed him out of power. Scenes of celebrating Iraqis filled American television screens with only brief forays into Tikrit or the Sunni area of Baghdad where angry Iraqis took to the streets notwithstanding the curfew policed by U.S. soldiers on Sunday.

In spite of the carefully produced event, many Iraqis found little solace in bringing Saddam to justice. Operation Iraqi Freedom has brought death and destruction to their country. More than 650,000 civilians have died, kidnappings and torture are rampant, and women who leave their Baghdad homes without a veil can be beheaded.

Saddam's trial, which took place in a country under U.S. occupation, was illegitimate. The courtroom where he was tried, convicted and sentenced is anything but a hall of justice. Established with $75 million of American money, the "Iraqi" tribunal was approved by the Pentagon and the State Department. The Bush administration has been calling the shots throughout the trial. Three defense attorneys have been killed and the chief judge resigned in protest against government involvement in the trial. Saddam should have been tried in an international tribunal that was not controlled by the United States.

A few hours after Sunday's verdict, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, announced he is still looking for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Of course Bush long ago abandoned that rationale for invading Iraq. He now points to Saddam's death sentence to justify his war. But will the American public buy this Banana Republic extravaganza?

Things are falling apart in Iraq, with the monthly death toll for U.S. soldiers higher now than when Saddam was captured in 2003. With no end in sight, Americans will render their verdict on Tuesday.

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War Crimes: Goose and Gander

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his jail cell at The Hague Saturday. Since 2001, he had been on trial for genocide in Bosnia, and war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Although many have already adjudged him guilty, we will never hear the official verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

We will also never see a trial in the ICTY for Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright or Wesley Clark for the 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Nor will George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld be prosecuted by an international tribunal for their war crimes in Iraq.

NATO's invasion of Yugoslavia was a war of aggression that violated the United Nations Charter. It was not undertaken in self-defense nor did it carry the approval of the Security Council. Between 1500 and 2000 civilians were killed and many thousands injured. When I visited Belgrade a year after the NATO bombing, I saw schools, hospitals, bridges, libraries and homes reduced to rubble. The ICTY statute prohibits the targeting of civilians. And even though it also forbids the use of poisonous weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering, NATO used depleted uranium and cluster bombs, whose devastating character is widely known. NATO also targeted a petrochemical complex, releasing carcinogens into the air that reached 10,600 times the acceptable safety level.

The American Association of Jurists and a group of Canadian lawyers and law professors filed a war crimes complaint against NATO leaders in the ICTY. Yet that tribunal conducted only a perfunctory investigation of the serious charges. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticized the ICTY for failing to thoroughly investigate.

By denouncing the International Criminal Court, Team Bush has ensured that US leaders will never be held to account for war crimes. Although virtually every Western democracy has ratified the statute under which the Court operates, the United States has thumbed its nose at this monumental international justice system.

Bush has reason to fear prosecution. He has used cluster bombs, depleted uranium, white phosphorous and napalm. And the torture of prisoners in US custody also constitutes a war crime. His war on Iraq is a war of aggression.

After the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing ... to initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunal, labeled the crime of aggression "the greatest menace of our times."

For the first time, at Nuremberg, individuals were held criminally accountable for war crimes and waging a war of aggression. Japanese leaders were also tried for atrocities committed during World War II, in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.

Yet US leaders who were responsible for some of the most heinous war crimes ever committed - the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire bombings of Dresden, Tokyo and 66 other Japanese cities - were never brought to justice.

Only the vanquished Germans and Japanese were put on trial. Justice Radhabinod Pal of India, dissenting at the Tokyo Tribunal, called this "victor's justice."

Indeed, Robert McNamara, who participated in the bombing of Japan during World War II, admitted in the film Fog of War that he and General Curtis LeMay would have been tried for war crimes if the US had lost the war. He said, "LeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He ... and I'd say I ... were behaving as war criminals."

It is no accident that the Iraqi Special Tribunal where Saddam Hussein is currently on trial only has jurisdiction over Iraqi citizens for acts committed prior to May 1, 2003, the day the US-UK occupation of Iraq began. The United States opposed sending Hussein to an international tribunal, and manipulated the Iraqi tribunal to prevent any US leaders from being tried for their war crimes in Iraq.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. But the leaders of the world's most powerful country continue to enjoy "victor's justice."

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Bush on Trial for Crimes against Humanity

The International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration convened last weekend in New York City's Riverside Church. Martin Luther King Jr.'s portrait hangs in the foyer. Dr. King delivered his historic 1967 speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Place to Break the Silence," opposing the war and calling for the removal of all foreign troops from Vietnam, in that same church.

Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner, who delivered a keynote address to the commission of inquiry, invoked Dr. King's words from 1967: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." The following year, the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal put the US government on trial for "crimes without precedent" it was committing in Vietnam. In the tradition of the Russell tribunal, the panel of judges at the commission of inquiry heard evidence of George W. Bush's war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere.

Ratner said that Bush openly and notoriously "laid the plan for coup d'état in America" with a small paragraph in his "signing statement" attached to the McCain anti-torture amendment. Bush wrote that his commander in chief power allows him to do anything he thinks is necessary, including torture, notwithstanding the amendment passed by Congress. Ratner called that a "historic, unprecedented grab for power" that spells the end of checks and balances in our government. Bush, according to Ratner, has declared that George Bush is the law.

Harry Belafonte gave the other keynote address. "When a government fails to protect justice," Belafonte declared, "it is the responsibility of the people to rise up and change the guard, change the regime." In a hoarse voice, the legendary singer charged, "Those who fail to answer that call should be charged with patriotic treason."

T r u t h o u t writer Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1961 to 1990, took the testimony of Scott Ritter, a senior United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. The allegation that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was the only justification on which George W. Bush's war in Iraq was based, McGovern said. He cited statements by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice before September 11, 2001, that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs and was unable to pose even a conventional threat to his neighbors. After September 11, however, Donald Rumsfeld expressed "no doubt" that Hussein had WMDs. "A trained ape knows that," Rumsfeld said.

Ritter noted that Rumsfeld knew Iraq had disarmed and had no ongoing weapons program. By 1998, the weapons inspectors had accounted for 95 to 98 percent of Iraq's WMDs, Ritter said. "No nation had hard factual data that Iraq retained or was reconstituting WMDs," Ritter added. "No nation had those facts."

The Bush administration willfully misled the American people about Iraq's weapons programs, Ritter charged. When Dick Cheney said that Iraq was constituting its nuclear program, he "was lying," Ritter said.

From 1991 to 2003, the United States policy in Iraq was regime change, according to Ritter. The US and the United Kingdom sought to maintain the public perception that Iraq was not complying with its obligations to disarm, in order to justify regime change. The US never intended to disarm Iraq; it would have had to lift the sanctions, which were aimed at undermining Iraq's welfare, weakening the government, and facilitating regime change.

"Intelligence" in the George W. Bush administration "was being fixed around the policy of regime change," Ritter maintained. "What passes for intelligence is nothing more than politically motivated propaganda." He said, "There was no intelligence failure because the policy wasn't disarmament; it was regime change."

Another witness, David Swanson, from www.afterdowningstreet.org, detailed the Downing Street Minutes, which were prepared in March 2002 and July 2002, but were leaked to the public last spring. They disclosed that Bush was determined to go to war and was building a case to accomplish that goal. "Intelligence was being fixed around the policy," the minutes reveal. "Going to the UN was an attempt to legalize a war that had already been decided upon," Swanson testified.

Dahr Jamal, who spent 8 months in occupied Iraq as an independent journalist, also testified at the commission. He charged that the US military carried out collective punishment in Fallujah in violation of international law. Snipers engaged in targeted killings, and troops prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and prevented the wounded from receiving medical attention, violations of the Geneva Conventions.

The United States decided that the entire city of Fallujah, with more than 350,000 civilians, was "a free-fire-zone," Jamal said. In the attack on Fallujah in November 2004, between 4,000 and 6,000 civilians were killed. The US military employed illegal weapons, including cluster bombs, depleted uranium, and white phosphorous.

Jamal accused the media, including CNN, Fox, Judith Miller, Thomas Friedman, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh, of aiding and abetting the Bush administration's war crimes and crimes against humanity in their coverage of the US assault on Fallujah.

Another eyewitness to the occupation, journalist Jeremy Scahill, testified about the targeted killing of independent journalists by the US military. He cited the killing of an Al Jazeera reporter and the bombing of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, both on April 8, 2004. More than 100 unembedded journalists were in that hotel, and the US knew it, Scahill contended. The attack killed two cameramen.

Scahill said the Pentagon warned unembedded journalists, "Baghdad is not a safe place. You should not be there."

The Bush administration has consistently attempted to link Iraq with the September 11 attacks. Scahill observed, "There is a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. It's called Washington," he said.

Challenging the Democrats to end the war, Scahill alleged: "We can't be vegetarians between meals. A loyal opposition is not going to end this war."

Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, testified before the commission. Murray charged that Uzbekistan practices torture on an industrial scale. He cited a UN investigation that concluded torture was widespread and systemic in that country. Thousands of people are tortured every year, Murray said. This includes rape with objects like broken bottles, smashing of limbs, pulling out of fingernails, and immersing people into boiling liquid.

Uzbekistan, Murray said, is a US ally in the war on terror, a member of the coalition of the willing. Murray displayed a letter on the big screen. It was from Ken Lay, former chairman of Enron, to then Texas Governor George W. Bush in April 1997. It began, "Dear George" ["Look who's boss," Murray noted], and continued, "You will be meeting with" the Uzbek ambassador to the United States to discuss Enron's $2 billion oil and gas contract.

The real reason underlying the war in Iraq, Murray testified, was oil and gas. So "they needed false intelligence from torture chambers," he said, in order to justify the war on terror. Sir Michael Wood informed Murray that the official position was that it's not illegal to get information from torture provided they do not themselves torture or direct that a specific individual be tortured.

"You can't build security on evil," Murray said. "I don't believe torture works," he concluded. "But even it if did work, I'd rather die than have anyone tortured to save my life."

I presented the testimony of Janis Karpinski, a brigadier general who was assigned to Iraq in July 2003 to oversee 17 prison facilities, including Abu Ghraib. Karpinski described how General Geoffrey Miller transferred the interrogation techniques he had instituted at the US prison at Guantánamo Bay to Abu Ghraib.

Miller was specially selected by Rumsfeld and sent to Iraq to run the interrogations operation, to work with the military intelligence personnel and teach them new and improved interrogation techniques to obtain more actionable intelligence from their interrogations.

When Miller arrived at Abu Ghraib, he said, "It's my opinion that you're treating the prisoners too well. At Guantánamo, the prisoners know that we are in charge, and they know that from the very beginning." He said, "You have to treat the prisoners like dogs, and if you think or feel differently, you've lost control."

Miller declared, "We're going to Gitmo-ize the operation" (referring to the techniques they used at Guantánamo Bay).

Karpinski thought Miller came with the authority of Rumsfeld because General Ricardo Sanchez, who was a 3-star, deferred to Miller, although he was only a 2-star. Even though Miller told Congress he was sent to Abu Ghraib merely in an assisting capacity, Colonel Thomas Pappas furnished Miller with a daily report detailing the results of interrogations at Abu Ghraib.

Sanchez himself signed an 8-page memorandum with a laundry list of harsher interrogation techniques, including the specific use of unmuzzled dogs, Karpinski said.

Control of cellblocks 1-A and 1-B, "the hard sites," was transferred to military intelligence. Karpinski didn't learn of the torture and abuse until January 12, 2004. In fact, she never attended any of the meetings in which the progress of interrogations was discussed. Sanchez said, "We scheduled them specifically when she would not be available to attend."

When Karpinski was told about the photographs and the abuse, she prepared to hold a press conference and tell the Iraqis in Arabic that there would be a full investigation. But Sanchez warned her off. "He looked me dead in the eye and said, 'absolutely not. You are not to discuss this with anyone. And that's an order.'"

Karpinski discovered that all personnel and documents relating to the scandal had been removed from Abu Ghraib. The only thing that remained was a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld. It was called, "Approval of Harsher Interrogation Techniques," and listed sleep deprivation, stress positions, playing loud music, insulting religious beliefs. In the margin, there was a note in Rumsfeld's handwriting. It said, "Make sure this happens."

Sanchez would not have implemented the techniques without the approval of Rumsfeld, and Rumsfeld would not have authorized them without the approval of the vice president, Karpinski testified. "And so it filtered down, and it never filtered down to me because I wasn't even responsible for interrogations."

Ultimately, however, Karpinski and 7 low-ranking soldiers were made the scapegoats. Karpinski was demoted to colonel. "I believe the Pentagon wanted to put this into a nice little package, 7 so-called bad apples, out of control on the night shift, and a female officer. They wanted to put that in a package, tie it up in a bow, and sink it forever, to make people believe we got it under control, we solved the problem."

Karpinski also testified that American female soldiers in Iraq were assaulted or raped by male soldiers in the women's latrines, and an alarming number committed suicide. "Because the women were in fear of getting up in the darkness [to go to the latrine], they were not drinking liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon," Karpinski said. "In the 100 degree heat, they were dying of dehydration in their sleep. Rather than making everyone aware - it was shocking - they told the surgeon not to brief on the details, and don't say specifically that they were women." Karpinski identified the commander who ordered that the cause of death of the women not be listed on the death certificates. It was General Sanchez, she said.

The commission heard testimony about the Bush administration's criminal responsibility for indefinite detention, rendition for torture, destruction of the global environment, attacks on global public health and reproductive rights, and actions and inactions leading up to and following Hurricane Katrina. The panel of judges will consider the testimony and release its findings.

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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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Bush & Bolton: The Bully Twins

George Bush and John Bolton have a symbiotic relationship. They need each other to nail shut the coffin of the United Nations, to make the world safe for US domination.

Bolton's record of cooking intelligence to whip up US aggression against other countries fits nicely with Bush's modus operandi. In 2002, while Bush told Tony Blair they would invade Iraq together, Bolton orchestrated the ouster of Jose Bustani, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, to prevent him from inspecting and revealing that Saddam Hussein had no chemical weapons. Had Bustani sent chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad, that might have defused the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined the US rationale for war. All the while, Bush lied to the American people, "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope that the use of force will not become necessary."

Bush's choice for US ambassador to the UN is also famous for hyping threats posed by Cuba and Syria, and taking a dangerously combative stance toward North Korea.

It is noteworthy that the US State Department has made positive diplomatic steps since Bolton stepped down from his post as undersecretary of state. US negotiators have finally secured a breakthrough with Russia to eliminate enough plutonium to fuel 8,000 nuclear bombs. The administration abandoned its campaign to remove the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency. And, for the moment, Team Bush is talking to our European allies to achieve a peaceful solution to the problem of Iran's nuclear program. But rest assured that Bolton is ready to do what he does best - wreak havoc - if he is confirmed as US ambassador to the UN.

If former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter is right about US designs on Iran - the way he called George W. Bush's Iraq charade early on - Bolton as UN ambassador can be expected to pave the way for a US attack on Iran.

In his op-ed on Al Jazeera on Sunday, Ritter claimed that the US war with Iran has already begun. He cited American flights over Iran with pilotless drones, CIA-backed actions by an Iranian opposition group, and US military preparations for a base of operations in Azerbaijan to support a massive military presence from which the US could launch a land-based campaign to capture Tehran.

If Bolton becomes US ambassador to the UN, he will escalate the rhetoric and the pressure on other Security Council members against Iran, the third member of Bush's "axis of evil."

Despite the tenacity of Democratic senators in insisting the administration come clean about Bolton's hit list, Bush is likely taking Cheney's advice to hold tight and force an "up-or-down" senatorial vote on Bolton.

Bush could take the easy way out with a recess appointment come Independence Day. But that wouldn't fly quite like Bush's last two end-runs around the Senate, when he installed Charles Pickering and Bill Pryor, two right-wing judges, on the federal bench. (See Bush's Judges: Right-Wing Ideologues.)

The United Nations is slated to consider Kofi Annan's proposed UN reforms in September, and Bush is eager to have his bully on the job to push the Bush agenda of taking over the UN. If Bolton is unilaterally appointed by Bush, he would enter the job hobbled with a lack of support and a term that will end with the 2006 Congress.

Bush opposed the House of Representatives' decision last week to cut US dues unless the UN goosesteps to the right-wing Republican program. Bush wants to maximize his chances for remaking the UN in his own image, and the dues ultimatum wouldn't play well with his fellow permanent Security Council members. For example, Annan's proposal to interpret "preventive war" as consistent with the UN Charter will be championed by Bush, but opposed by most other countries.

If Bush really wanted to woo his colleagues at the UN, he would attend the 60th anniversary celebration of the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco later this month. But like Cheney during the Vietnam War, Bush has other priorities, and won't be traveling to San Francisco to honor the world's premier peace-building organization.

As United States ambassador to the UN, John Bolton would walk in lockstep with his twin bully, George Bush. And the promise of the United Nations in 1945, to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," will be rendered even more hollow.

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Bush Plays Politics with Guantánamo "Gulag"

"Absurd!" George Bush exclaimed. "Reprehensible!" Donald Rumsfeld charged. "Ridiculous!" stated Scott McClellan. "I'm offended!" declared Dick Cheney. What are they all so upset about? Is it the stripping and shackling of Guantanámo prisoners low to the ground, the forcible squeezing of their genitals, the smearing of menstrual blood on Muslim detainees, the shooting of rubber bullets at inmates, the forcing of prisoners to stand cruciform in the sun until they collapse, the desecration of the Koran, or the psychological torture documented at Gitmo by Physicians for Human Rights? Are they concerned about the treatment of Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was force-fed liquids through an IV and then forbidden from urinating, and who evidenced "behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma," according to Time Magazine?

No, it's Team Bush engaging in damage control after Amnesty International labeled the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our time."

Strong language indeed from one of the premier human rights organizations. This is the same Amnesty International whose accusations about Saddam Hussein's atrocities were eagerly gobbled up and regurgitated by the Bush administration when they dovetailed nicely with Bush's predetermined plan to oust Hussein to make Iraq safe for 14 permanent US military bases.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a rare public rebuke, observed a "worrying deterioration in the psychological health of a large number" of the Gitmo inmates in late 2003. Until the Supreme Court instructed Bush to give the prisoners access to US courts, the Red Cross called Guantánamo "a legal black hole."

Bush & Co., which characteristically goes after anyone or any organization that challenges its policies, is now gunning for the venerable Red Cross. A new report being circulated among Republican congressional staff this week charges that the Red Cross, which receives major funding from the United States, has lost its impartiality. Why? Because it is advocating positions at odds with American policy.

But the Red Cross's website says the organization, founded in 1863, has a "permanent mandate founded in international law, a worldwide mission to help victims of conflicts and internal violence, whoever they are."

Nearly two years ago, the National Lawyers Guild and the American Association of Jurists called for the closure of the US prison at Guantánamo. Amnesty International and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers have recently followed suit. Since Amnesty International's scathing accusation, former President Jimmy Carter, Senators Chuck Hagel and Joe Biden, and Rep. Mel Martinez have come out for the closure of Gitmo. Prominent liberal neo-con Thomas Friedman and the New York Times have also jumped on board.

The Senate held a hearing on Guantánamo yesterday, but the Republican majority specified that no questions could be asked about torture or mistreatment. Nevertheless, Sen. Patrick Leahy said the prison was "an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals and remains a festering threat to our security." Sen. Edward M. Kennedy felt the treatment of the Guantánamo prisoners has stained our reputation on human rights, inflamed the Muslim world and has become "a powerful recruiting tool for terrorists."

Some Republicans, like Rep. Duncan Hunter, strive to keep Guantánamo open for business. "They've never eaten better. They've never been treated better," according to Hunter. "We don't beat them. We don't touch them. We've been treating people well."

But although many in the administration are in denial about the torture and abuse at Guantánamo, the high officials are stumbling over themselves as they react to the mounting furor.

Evidently before checking with Karl Rove, Bush allowed in a television interview with Fox that "we're exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America." Many took this to mean Bush was leaving open the possibility of closing the Guantánamo prison. Within hours of Bush's interview, Rumsfeld categorically ruled out the prospect of shutting down the detention center. "I know of no one in the US government, in the executive branch, that is considering closing Guantánamo," he said.

Scott McClellan, still trying to tamp down talk of closing Guantánamo this week, underscored that Rumsfeld was "talking for the administration" with his comments. The same day, Rumsfeld proclaimed that the Guantánamo operations had been more transparent than those in any military detention center. This claim is disingenuous in light of the US government's refusal to allow UN human rights monitors, including the special rapporteur on torture, to visit the Guantánamo prisoners.

Four days after Bush's Fox interview, Cheney reminded us, "The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantánamo are bad people." A curious characterization for individuals who have been charged with no crime.

Although Team Bush tries to portray a united front on Guantánamo, yesterday's New York Times reported a "widening internal debate" within the Pentagon and the State Department about whether to close the prison. Indeed, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales confirmed yesterday that Guantánamo's fate is under active study.

Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, predicts it is just a matter of time before the Guantánamo prison is shut down.

But Rumsfeld says, "If you closed it, where would you go?" The reason the administration located that prison in Cuba in the first place was to avoid judicial review. And, although the Supreme Court ruled a year ago that Bush must give prisoners there access to US courts, none has yet had his day in court. Prisoners undergo annual reviews, which, according to attorney Joseph Margulies, "are a sham. They mock this nation's commitment to due process, and it is past time for this mockery to end." The Bush administration maintains the inmates can be jailed at Guantánamo "in perpetuity."

No high-level officials have been investigated for their roles in setting the policies that lead to torture at Guantánamo and other US prisons. Congress must establish a truly independent commission to do a thorough investigation, no matter whom it may implicate. And, as the head of Amnesty International USA said, if the US continues to shirk its responsibility, other countries should prosecute senior US officials for violation of the Torture Convention, under the Pinochet principle.

Sen. Chuck Hagel told CNN's Late Edition that Guantánamo is "identifiable with, for right or wrong, a part of America that people in the world believe is a power, an empire that pushes people around, we do it our way, we don't live up to our commitments to multilateral institutions."

Although it would be a good first step, shutting down Guantánamo prison will not stop the accusations that the US engages in human rights hypocrisy. It is our policies that must change.

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Guarding the Guardians of Peace

In 1945, the United Nations Conference in San Francisco gave birth to the United Nations Organization. In the wake of two world wars that claimed 55 million lives, the U.N. Charter pledged to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war."

The Charter allows a member state to use armed force in only two instances: 1) in self-defense, or 2) when the Security Council determines force is necessary to meet "any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression."

President Harry Truman said, "No one nation, no regional group, can, or should expect, any special privilege which harms any other nation." Referring to World War II, Truman observed, "Out of this conflict have come powerful military nations, now fully trained and equipped for war. But," he proclaimed, "they have no right to dominate the world."

Although heralded as a product of consensus of the nations of the world, the Charter was conceived and drafted by the United States, and ultimately, reflected the agenda of the victorious military powers after World War II.

Most significantly, they insisted on the veto power for themselves, the five permanent members of the Security Council - Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, France and the United States, notwithstanding opposition from the smaller nations. Without that veto power, they would not likely have signed on to the U.N. Charter.

The veto power reserved for Security Council members has hobbled the U.N. for decades. At the behest of the veto-bearing United States, the U.N. sat on the sidelines during the genocide in Rwanda, when 800,000 people were slaughtered.

Also at the urging of the U.S., the Security Council put its imprimatur on the imposition of economic sanctions on Iraq, which were responsible for the deaths of one million Iraqis, mostly children, during the 1990s. The Council didn't condemn the "no-fly-zones" over Iraq, which it never sanctioned, and which were used by the U.S. and U.K. to bombard Iraq on nearly a daily basis in the years leading up to "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

The Security Council never condoned the recent U.S.-U.K. wars on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. But, because of pressure and the threatened veto by the United States, the Council never condemned them either. The attack on Yugoslavia was justified as "humanitarian intervention," in spite of "ethnic cleansing" by both sides in that conflict. And, the Bush administration rationalized the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as self-defense, even though neither country ever posed an imminent threat to the United States.

In 1995, in a moment of candor, then Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright declared, "the U.N. is a tool of American foreign policy." Indeed, before its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration frequently threatened the United Nations with becoming "irrelevant" if it did not give its blessing to the war.

But even in the face of threats, the Security Council refused to approve Bush's war on Iraq. Bush then cobbled together prior Council resolutions, none of which, individually or collectively, authorized the use of force in Iraq. Although he claimed to be enforcing Security Council resolutions, the Charter empowers only the Council to enforce its resolutions.

After the invasion, however, the Security Council capitulated to pressure from the United States, and authorized the U.S.-U.K. as the occupying authority in Iraq, giving the occupiers an international mandate to maintain troops in Iraq while a new government is established.

Recently, the United Nations has found its backbone and challenged U.S. policy. In September, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, somewhat belatedly, called the war on Iraq "illegal." And he sent Bush a letter counseling against the recent attack on Fallujah.

This prompted some Republican members of the House of Representatives to call for Annan's resignation. The ostensible reason: corruption in the administration of Iraq's Oil for Food Programme from 1996 to 2003. "It's payback time for the U.N.," a Bush administration official told the Los Angeles Times, on condition of anonymity. "The bills are coming due for the U.N.'s noncooperation on Iraq, and the oil-for-food scandal is red meat for the U.N.'s critics."

But the oil-for-food excuse was a red herring. The Oil for Food Programme was created by a vote of the Security Council. Through it, Iraq sold about $65 billion worth of oil to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people, to soften the harsh impact of the sanctions imposed to keep Saddam Hussein from rearming after the 1991 Gulf War.

The programme was micromanaged by the Council, particularly the United States. The U.S. scrutinized every purchase, holding up contracts for months, or even years. However, when overland oil was illegally smuggled to Jordan and Turkey, two favored U.S. allies, the United States quietly closed its eyes, according to the report of Charles Duelfer, the top U.S. investigator in Iraq.

ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil have been subpoenaed by the Securities and Exchange Commission to determine whether they paid kickbacks or bribes to unlawfully profit from Iraq's oil under the programme.

Moreover, earlier this week, an audit board set up by the Security Council to monitor oil sales in Iraq during the U.S.-led occupation found widespread mismanagement, faulty metering of how much oil was being pumped, and noncompetitive bidding procedures that awarded more than $10 billion in contracts to Halliburton's subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root.

When Republicans began gunning for Annan's neck, former South African president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu called the campaign against Annan "reprehensible and unjust," saying it reflected American arrogance. They wrote, in an open letter: "Those who call for his resignation betray the objectivity his position as secretary general demands and regard the United Nations as a mouthpiece to extol and exonerate the policies of the United States of America, right or wrong."

The same day, the Bush administration, mindful that it needs Kofi Annan's cooperation to pull off the Iraqi elections slated for the end of January, called off its dogs. "We are expressing confidence in the secretary general and in his continuing in office," said U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Danforth.

One week earlier, a blue ribbon panel of international experts Annan appointed a year ago to study the structure of the U.N. in the wake of the war on Iraq, issued a 99-page report. The panel determined there is no reason to amend the U.N. Charter's self-defense provision. Any arguments for the use of force must be addressed to the Security Council, as required by the Charter, the report says. In a rebuff to Bush's doctrine of preemptive war, the panel wrote: "For those impatient with such a response, the answer must be that, in a world full of perceived potential threats, the risk to the global order and the norm of nonintervention on which it continues to be based is simply too great for the legality of unilateral preventive action, as distinct from collectively endorsed action, to be accepted. Allowing one to so act is to allow all."

The report also notably identified poverty, despair, humiliation, political oppression, foreign occupation, extremism, and human rights abuse as the breeding ground for terrorism. It advocated nuclear disarmament by all countries, not simply the developing nations. And the report argued that all U.N. member states should ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Nevertheless, last week, Bush signed into law the Nethercutt Amendment, which mandates withholding aid from countries that refuse to grant immunity for U.S. citizens before the International Criminal Court. "As revelations of abuses continue," said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice program of Human Rights Watch, "U.S. insistence on immunity strikes a particularly raw nerve." Dicker maintained, "The United States is bullying smaller, weaker countries because of an ideological obsession with an illusory threat. It's putting its ill-conceived campaign ahead of other interests the U.S. government claims are its highest priorities."

George W. Bush has consistently challenged the legitimacy of the United Nations, manipulating the Security Council when it suits his purpose, attacking it when it doesn't. It remains to be seen how well the only organization charged with the maintenance of international peace and security, and the protection of human rights, will fare during Bush's second term.

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Crimes of Fallujah and the Continuation of Aggressive War

US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In his report to the State Department, Justice Jackson wrote: "No political or economic situation can justify" the crime of aggression. He also said: "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.”

Between 10,000 and 15,000 U.S. troops with warplanes and artillery have invaded Fallujah. To “soften up” the rebels, American forces dropped five 500-pound bombs on “insurgent targets.” The Americans destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the center of town. They stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, handcuffing doctors and patients, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Before Bush attacked Fallujah, Haji Mahmood Allawi, a former colonel in the Iraqi army said, “We are just a helpless and feeble town; a town like an old man! Still, the U.S. is accumulating its armies and troops against Fallouja … as if Fallouja is a superpower that stands in the face of America … If you look at what is arrayed against Fallouja, you would think World War III was going to take place.”

The battle of Fallujah is more shocking and aweful than the bombardment of Baghdad that kicked off Operation “Iraqi Freedom” in April 2003. A senior Marine Corps surgeon warned that casualties will surpass any level seen since the Vietnam War.

A reporter working for the London Times reported that on his first night in Fallujah, the U.S. Air Force attacked in waves from just after midnight to just after 5 a.m. “I began to count out loud,” he wrote, “as the bombs tumbled to the ground with increasingly monotonous regularity. There were 38 in the first half-hour alone.” The perimeter of the town is “already largely in ruins. The crumbling remains of houses and shell-pocked walls reminded me of my home town Beirut in the 1980s at the height of Lebanon’s civil war.”

There have already been 100,000 “excess” Iraqi deaths since Bush launched his first strike on Iraq 18 months ago – that is, above and beyond those killed by Saddam Hussein, sanctions, U.S. bombings, and disease, all put together, in the 15 months prior to the invasion.

A study published by the British medical journal The Lancet found that the risk of death by violence for Iraqi civilians is now 58 times higher than before Bush began to liberate them in April 2003.

“We had to stop some operations until the [U.S.] elections were over,” said a senior Iraqi Defense Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The Iraqi government requested support from the American side in the past, but the Americans were reluctant to launch military operations because they were worried about American public opinion. Now, their hands are free.”

The Iraqi people, known in the media as "the insurgents," are engaged in lawful resistance to the illegal invasion, regime change, and occupation of their country by U.S. and U.K. forces. Bush’s war in Iraq is a war of aggression. "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,” according to General Assembly Resolution 3314, passed in the wake of Vietnam.

The only two situations where the UN Charter permits the use of armed force against another state is in self-defense, or when authorized by the Security Council. Iraq had not invaded the U.S., or any other country, Iraq did not constitute an imminent threat to any country, and the Security Council never sanctioned Bush’s war. Bush and the officials in his administration are committing the crime of aggression.

Virtually every Western democracy has ratified the treaty of the International Criminal Court, except the United States. Bush knows that the Court will eventually prosecute leaders for the crime of aggression. Mindful that he and his officials could become defendants, Bush renounced the Court, and extracted bilateral immunity agreements from more than 80 countries.

This year, however, Bush unsuccessfully sought to ram through the Security Council an immunity resolution that would exempt U.S. personnel from the Court’s jurisdiction. But shortly after the photographs of U.S. torture of Iraqi prisoners emerged, the Council refused to put its imprimatur on preferential treatment for the United States.

Bush knows that the Court will also punish war crimes. Pursuant to policies promulgated by Bush and Rumsfeld, U.S. forces have engaged in widespread torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Bush admitted in his 2003 State of the Union address that he had sanctioned summary executions of suspected terrorists.

Torture, inhuman treatment, and willful killing are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, treaties ratified by the United States. Grave breaches of Geneva are considered war crimes under our federal War Crimes Act of 1996. American nationals who commit war crimes abroad can receive life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, a commander can be held liable if he knew or should have known his inferiors were committing war crimes and he failed to prevent or stop them.

The first U.S. attack on Fallujah, last April, killed 900-1000 people, mostly noncombatants. It was conducted in retaliation for the killing and mutilation of the bodies of four Blackwater Security Consulting mercenaries. Collective punishment against an occupied population for offenses committed by others also violates the Geneva Conventions.

Bush’s forces occupied the hospital because it was from there that the civilian death tallies emerged last April. That led to outrage throughout Iraq, outrage Bush wanted to avoid this time around.

Bush has sought to cover his crimes by putting an Iraqi face on his brutal war. Before the November invasion of Falluja, the New York Times reported: “Thousands of Iraqi troops have moved into position with their American counterparts and are expected to take part … American soldiers are to do most of the fighting on the way in, clearing the way for the Iraqi security forces to take control once the insurgents are defeated. With this method, Iraqi and American leaders hope for the best of both worlds: American muscle and an Iraqi face.”

If Bush were a student of history, he would realize that Iraqization, like Vietnamization, will fail to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

Working hand-in-glove with the U.S. government, interim puppet prime minister Iyad Allawi helped to soften up the rebels by declaring martial law throughout most of Iraq. His authority came from legislation the human rights minister characterized as “very similar to the Patriot Act of the United States.” It enables Allawi to conduct extensive surveillance, impose cordons and curfews, limit freedom of movement and association, and freeze bank accounts and seize assets.

“Iraqi confidence in the interim government has plummeted in recent months as the insurgency in Falluja and elsewhere has gained in strength and lethality,” according to The New York Times.

And although foreign Islamic extremists have joined the fight, most resisting the American occupation are Iraqi. “Didn’t the Americans bring with them the British and the Italians?”, asked Suhail al Abdali. “Well, we have multinational forces, too,” he said wryly. Then al Abdali added, “They will pay the price with the blood of American sons who came to occupy Iraq. They won’t take Fallujah unless they fight street to street, house to house.”

Twenty-six prominent Saudi scholars and preachers wrote in an open letter to the Iraqi people: “The U.S. forces are still destroying towns on the heads of their people and killing women and children. What’s going on in Iraq is a result of the big crime of America’s occupation of Iraq.” They stressed that armed attacks by militant Iraqi groups on U.S. troops and their allies in Iraq represent “legitimate resistance.”

“The attack on Fallujah is an illegal and illegitimate action against civilians and innocent people,” said the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni clerics group. “We denounce this operation which will have a grave consequence on the situation in Iraq,” declared spokesman Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi.

Baghdad University political science professor Salman al-Jumaili warns, “What happens in Fallujah will spread out across other Sunni cities, including Baghdad.” Al-Jumaili expects the Fallujah offensive will spin out of control, with fighting hop-scotching from one town to the next.

A senior U.S. diplomat agrees. “I would never tell you that violence in Sunni areas won’t get worse when you open up a battle,” he told the Los Angeles Times, on condition of anonymity.

Following the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing . . . to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Bush’s aggressive war against the people of Iraq promises to kill many more American soldiers and untold numbers of Iraqis. Nuremberg prosecutor Justice Jackson labeled the crime of aggression "the greatest menace of our times." More than 50 years later, his words still ring true.

Read on >>

Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime

Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In his report to the State Department, Justice Jackson wrote: "No political or economic situation can justify" the crime of aggression. He also said: "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."

Between 10,000 and 15,000 U.S. troops with warplanes and artillery have begun to invade the Iraqi city of Fallujah. To "soften up" the rebels, American forces dropped five 500-pound bombs on "insurgent targets." The Americans destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the center of town. They stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions.

The battle of Fallujah promises to be far more shocking and aweful than the bombardment of Baghdad that kicked off Operation "Iraqi Freedom" in April 2003. A senior Marine Corps surgeon warned that casualties will surpass any level seen since the Vietnam War.

There have already been 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths since Bush launched his first strike on Iraq 18 months ago - that is, above and beyond those killed by Saddam Hussein, sanctions, U.S. bombings, and disease, all put together, in the 15 months prior to the invasion.

A study published by the Lancet found that the risk of death by violence for Iraqi civilians is now 58 times higher than before Bush began to liberate them in April 2003.

Bush's war on Iraq is a war of aggression. "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," according to General Assembly Resolution 3314, passed in the wake of Vietnam.

The only two situations where the UN Charter permits the use of armed force against another state is in self-defense, or when authorized by the Security Council. Iraq had not invaded the U.S., or any other country, Iraq did not constitute an imminent threat to any country, and the Security Council never sanctioned Bush's war. Bush and the officials in his administration are committing the crime of aggression.

Virtually every Western democracy has ratified the treaty of the International Criminal Court, except the United States. Bush knows that the Court will eventually prosecute leaders for the crime of aggression. Mindful that he and his officials could become defendants, Bush renounced the Court, and extracted bilateral immunity agreements from more than 80 countries.

This year, however, Bush unsuccessfully sought to ram through the Security Council an immunity resolution that would exempt U.S. personnel from the Court's jurisdiction. But shortly after the photographs of U.S. torture of Iraqi prisoners emerged, the Council refused to put its imprimatur on preferential treatment for the United States.

Bush knows that the Court will also punish war crimes. Pursuant to policies promulgated by Bush and Rumsfeld, U.S. forces have engaged in widespread torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Bush admitted in his 2003 State of the Union address that he had sanctioned summary executions of suspected terrorists.

Torture, inhuman treatment, and willful killing are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, treaties ratified by the United States. Grave breaches of Geneva are considered war crimes under our federal War Crimes Act of 1996. American nationals who commit war crimes abroad can receive life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, a commander can be held liable if he knew or should have known his inferiors were committing war crimes and he failed to prevent or stop them.

The first U.S. attack on Fallujah, last April, killed 900-1000 people, mostly noncombatants. It was conducted in retaliation for the killing and mutilation of the bodies of four Blackwater Security Consulting mercenaries. Collective punishment against an occupied population for offenses committed by others also violates the Geneva Conventions.

Bush has sought to cover his crimes by putting an Iraqi face on his brutal war. The New York Times reported: "Thousands of Iraqi troops have moved into position with their American counterparts and are expected to take part ... American soldiers are to do most of the fighting on the way in, clearing the way for the Iraqi security forces to take control once the insurgents are defeated. With this method, Iraqi and American leaders hope for the best of both worlds: American muscle and an Iraqi face."

If Bush were a student of history, he would realize that Iraqization, like Vietnamization, will fail to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

Working hand-in-glove with the U.S. government, interim puppet prime minister Iyad Allawi helped to soften up the rebels by declaring martial law throughout most of Iraq. His authority came from legislation the human rights minister characterized as "very similar to the Patriot Act of the United States." It enables Allawi to conduct extensive surveillance, impose cordons and curfews, limit freedom of movement and association, and freeze bank accounts and seize assets.

"Iraqi confidence in the interim government has plummeted in recent months as the insurgency in Falluja and elsewhere has gained in strength and lethality," according to The New York Times.

And although foreign Islamic extremists have joined the fight, most resisting the American occupation are Iraqi. "Didn't the Americans bring with them the British and the Italians?" asked Suhail al Abdali. "Well, we have multinational forces, too," he said wryly. Then al Abdali added, "They will pay the price with the blood of American sons who came to occupy Iraq. They won't take Fallujah unless they fight street to street, house to house."

Twenty-six prominent Saudi scholars and preachers wrote in an open letter to the Iraqi people: "The U.S. forces are still destroying towns on the heads of their people and killing women and children. What's going on in Iraq is a result of the big crime of America's occupation of Iraq." They stressed that armed attacks by militant Iraqi groups on U.S. troops and their allies in Iraq represent "legitimate resistance."

"The attack on Fallujah is an illegal and illegitimate action against civilians and innocent people," said the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni clerics group. "We denounce this operation which will have a grave consequence on the situation in Iraq," declared spokesman Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi.

Baghdad University political science professor Salman al-Jumaili warns, "What happens in Fallujah will spread out across other Sunni cities, including Baghdad." Al-Jumaili expects the Fallujah offensive will spin out of control, with fighting hop-scotching from one town to the next.

A senior U.S. diplomat agrees. "I would never tell you that violence in Sunni areas won't get worse when you open up a battle," he told the Los Angeles Times, on condition of anonymity.

Following the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing . . . to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Bush's aggressive war against the people of Iraq promises to kill many more American soldiers and untold numbers of Iraqis. Nuremberg prosecutor Justice Jackson labeled the crime of aggression "the greatest menace of our times." More than 50 years later, his words still ring true.

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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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The Preemptive President

Under the guise of preempting - or preventing - threats to the American people, George W. Bush has acted aggressively to "jump the gun" throughout his presidency. By the use of extreme rhetoric and scare tactics, Team Bush convinced Congress - and nearly half the electorate - that the guns he was jumping were real. The guns, however, proved illusory, and indeed, backfired, making us less safe.

"The pool of people who really hate us is so much greater than it was on 9/11 because of this needless and counterproductive war in Iraq," Bush's former counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, told a crowd of nearly 2,000 in Berkeley earlier this week.

Moreover, following our role model, Russia has just announced that it, too, will engage in preemptive strikes against terrorist bases in "any region of the world." This announcement comes as the United States is issuing statements favoring a political settlement with Chechen separatists. The chickens have, in the prescient words of Malcolm X, come home to roost.

Preempting Saddam's Continuing Presidency

Since the day Bush took office, his administration planned assiduously for the execution of regime change in Iraq. The September 11 attacks played right into Bush's hands. From that day on, his masterful spinners spun - and continue to spin - a massive web of lies and deception to link Saddam Hussein with those attacks.

Declaring over and over again that we have to get the terrorists in Iraq so they don't get us here, Bush secured Congressional authority to invade Iraq.

Never mind that there were no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam having been neutered by the Gulf War and 12 years of punishing sanctions.

Never mind that, vicious as Saddam was to his own people, al Qaeda never operated in Iraq until "Iraqi Freedom" became the Operation-du-jour.

Never mind that Bush sent our boys and girls to kill and be killed in a war that had no business ever happening. Never mind that the number of dead Americans has now topped 1,000, and the number of Iraqi dead is estimated at 20,000, with no end in sight.

And never mind that Bush's theory of preemptive war violates the United Nations Charter.

The only thing Bush's war on Iraq has preempted is the continuation of Saddam's control of a country over which the neoconservatives itched to establish hegemony.

Preempting Dissent Against Bush Policies

Bush has sought to preempt the dissent that's inimical to the democracy he claims to defend by systematically suppressing criticism of his dangerous policies.

Whenever the Bush administration has faced collective action challenging its policies, it has used law enforcement to preempt First Amendment activity. (See my editorial, Bush's War on Democracy).

The police have employed collective preemptive punishment to keep dissenters off the streets and out of the media, most recently, in New York during the Republican Convention.

For months, the FBI preemptively identified and interrogated potential demonstrators, in an attempt to chill constitutionally-protected free speech. Agents surfed the Web, checking websites used by protest organizers.

The media was utilized to scare would-be protestors away from demonstrations. For example, two companion articles in the May 17, 2004 issue of New York Magazine hyped the upcoming protests. One headline read: "The Circus is Coming to Town: A Bush-hating nation of freaks, flash-mobbers, and civil-disobedients is gathering to spoil the GOP's party." The other headline taunted, "Cops to Protestors: Bring It On."

Trying to paint protestors as potential weapons-of-mass destruction, the latter article depicts them as violent "wannabe revolutionaries and anarchists." It describes the artillery the police would have in its arsenal: "vehicle checkpoints around the perimeter of the [Madison Square] Garden manned with heavy weapons, dogs, and portable Delta barriers, which are enormous metal contraptions that lie almost flat in the road and can be raised very quickly with the flip of a switch. They are substantial enough to stop a large truck."

Police arrived at protest sites in advance of demonstrators, and preempted marches and rallies before they occurred.

The cops established "free speech" zones and used orange netting to unconstitutionally enmesh protestors and cart them off to jail. They conducted pretextual and "preventive" mass false arrests and detentions. A record number of arrests - nearly 2,000 - were made during the four-day GOP convention. This tops even those effectuated during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

New York State Judge John Cataldo angrily ordered the City of New York to release more than 550 arrestees, who were illegally detained without being brought before a judge. When the city dragged its feet, Judge Cataldo held the city in contempt and ordered a fine of $1,000 for each person still held.

The National Lawyers Guild circulated an Internal Police Department memo suggesting that protestors be held as long as possible, presumably to keep them off the streets for the duration of the convention.

Nevertheless, tens of thousands of people protested Bush's convention, swelling to half a million on the Sunday before it began.

Preempting Regime Change in America

The tactics of Team Bush in its drive to preempt a Kerry victory in November are setting a record for the dirtiest tricks in an election campaign.

In an attempt to shift the focus from Bush's going AWOL in the National Guard, Karl Rove's Brigade has smeared the battlefield credentials of a real war hero, John Kerry.

And in order to draw attention away from the fact that the September 11 attacks occurred on Bush's watch, Dick Cheney blurted out that Americans face another terrorist attack if they elect Kerry: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

To get a clear reading on how well George W. Bush will protect us against a terrorist attack, one need only examine the just-released records from his service in the Texas Air National Guard. They show his unit joined a "24 hour active alert mission to safeguard against surprise attack" in the southern United States beginning October 6, 1972. That was a time when his pay records show that Bush failed to report for duty.

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The Reincarnation of Saddam Hussein

"I am Saddam Hussein, president of the Republic of Iraq." So began the surreal public appearance of Saddam Hussein, his first since being dragged out of a spider hole by the "coalition forces" six months ago.

The proud, defiant Saddam who ruled Iraq with an iron hand for nearly 25 years was back with a vengeance.

Describing himself as always in the third person, he said Saddam "respected the will of the people that decided to choose Saddam Hussein as the leader of the revolution. Therefore, when I say president of the Republic of Iraq, it’s not a formality or a holding fast to a position, but rather to reiterate to the Iraqi people that I respect its will."

Reminiscent of the staged assassination followed by an immediate swearing in of Woody Allen as the new president of a mythical Latin American country in "Bananas," we were missing only Howard Cosell to narrate the charade.

According to the Los Angeles Times, "U.S. and Iraqi authorities took pains to make the court proceedings appear to be solely an Iraqi undertaking."

In spite of the Statute of the Iraqi Special Tribunal’s mandate of public hearings, no one save the two dozen or so people present in the courtroom were supposed to hear Saddam’s words. But an audiotape of the proceedings was smuggled out to the media and listeners throughout the world.

A team of U.S. military officers censored the media coverage of the proceeding. They destroyed the videotapes of Saddam in chains and deleted the legal record of the statements of the 11 senior members of Saddam’s regime who appeared at the same hearing.

One journalist present in the courtroom revealed: "We learned later that the judge didn't order us to turn off our sound. The Americans lied - it was they who wanted no sound. The judge wanted sound and pictures."

The 26-minute colloquy gave us a roadmap of how Saddam will defend himself. Showing utter contempt for the judge whom he identified as a tool of the occupiers, Saddam sneered: "So you are an Iraqi representing the coalition forces?" Indeed, the judge was appointed by Saddam’s successor, L. Paul Bremer.

Saddam added: "You know that this is all a theater by Bush the criminal, to help him win his election."

He was adamant that he had the right to invade Kuwait. Saddam declared that he "defended Iraq’s honor and revived its historical rights over those dogs," whom, he claimed, "said it will reduce Iraqi women to 10-dinar prostitutes."

The sight of Saddam standing up to his accusers played well throughout Iraq. Even many who had endured atrocities under Saddam’s regime saw him as the embodiment of their Arab land, shattered by bombs and occupied by Western infidels.

Yes, they suffered under Saddam. But Operation "Iraqi Freedom" has brought mostly misery to the people of Iraq. Tens of thousands of them have died in this illegal war. Almost 20 million of Iraq’s 26 million people have less available electricity than before the war began, according to the General Accounting Office. The Iraqi security forces are suffering from mass desertion. And the judicial system is more clogged than before the war; assassination attempts against judges are rampant.

The timing of Thursday’s court appearance corroborates Saddam’s assertion that the whole thing was theater. The ink was hardly dry on the "sovereignty" transfer papers when Saddam was rushed into a televised court appearance to create the illusion that Iraqis are running the show.

Truthfully, however, American fingerprints are all over these proceedings. Bremer was responsible for drafting The Statute of the Iraqi Special Tribunal before which Saddam appeared. This "neutral" tribunal is financed by the United States. The FBI is leading the investigation. Also on the team are the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Department of Justice. And although Iraqis have been given legal custody of Saddam, he remains in the physical custody of the Americans.

Emmanuel Ludot, one of 22 lawyers designated by Saddam’s wife to defend him, told the French newspaper Liberation: "All our effort will consist of paralyzing the operation of the Iraqi special tribunal, the legality of which we contest. This tribunal has no basis in law, since Iraq has no National Assembly today to create a special jurisdiction." He called the trial preparations "a masquerade of justice."

Ludot said: "The tribunal being put in place by the Americans is a disguised execution squad ... These judges are still under the shock of emotion and pain." Saddam, he warned, "will either be judged in fear or in vengeance."

"The first thing Saddam will say is that he is and remains the Iraqi President," according to Ludot. "Two countries, the United States and Great Britain, have invaded Iraq without a mandate and in violation of international law. Legally, that’s an aggression and everything that has happened since this invasion is tinged with irregularity."

Asked where Saddam should be tried if this court is not competent, Ludot answered: "Since the United States did not want the International Criminal Court, there is a complete legal vacuum."

But not one of Saddam’s 22 lawyers was with him in court Thursday. The tribunal’s statute provides for the right to counsel. The judge told Saddam: "I’m investigating, interrogating you." Saddam asked for his lawyer before he signed the document the judge instructed him to sign. But when Saddam refused, the judge signed it for him.

Ludot said: "Clearly, we are not welcome in Iraq. The new authorities would prefer Iraqi lawyers easy to intimidate and a quick trial." British attorney Tim Hughes said he and his colleagues were "kept in the dark" about the proceedings.

Another member of the legal defense team received threats from someone claiming to be from the Iraqi Justice Ministry. Anyone who tried to defend Saddam, the caller said, would be "chopped to pieces."

Many Iraqis sympathize with Saddam. "It’s a humiliation, not just for Iraqis but for all Arab peoples," Aamer Eliisa, a Shiite, told the Los Angeles Times. Eliisa said Saddam has become "a symbol for all Iraqis."

Saddam’s harsh words about Kuwait hit a chord with Iraqis. Akram Adil said: "He’s right. Kuwait is a part of Iraq. He was defending our national rights ... Kuwait was stealing oil from Iraq and trying to destroy our national economy."

Kuwaitis have earned a reputation for "arrogant, drunken, lecherous and vulgar behavior," according to the Los Angeles Times. And they have been implicated in the looting of the Iraqi National Museum that followed the march of the foreign forces into Baghdad last April.

Former president of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic has defended himself against the same heinous charges Saddam will face. Like Milosevic, who was removed from his presidency by U.S.-led forces engaged in illegal regime change, Saddam will put America on trial.

This will be interesting in light of the support the United States furnished to Saddam in the 1980s, including the provision of chemical weapons. That support is embodied in the photograph of Donald Rumsfeld’s warm handshake with Saddam even with the knowledge that Saddam was gassing the Kurds.

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The Torturer-in-Chief

The teflon that has enveloped George W. Bush is chipping off. Arriving in office with the promise of a "humble" foreign policy, Bush was sitting pretty at the beginning of his term. But George’s honeymoon has turned sour.

From the first day of his presidency, the neocons in Bush’s cabal determined to "stabilize" Iraq for U.S. corporate investment. Bush had his own motives to "git" Saddam for his would-be hit on George I. The tragedy of September 11 gave them just the opportunity they’d been waiting for.

Cloaking themselves in the "War on Terror," Bush and his minions methodically wove an intricate web of deception to convince the American people that Saddam was about to launch the "mushroom cloud," ending civilization as we know it.

It was our mission, Bush preached, to save the Iraqis from Saddam-the-torturer. But a telling phrase in Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union Address should have prepared us for the emergence of Bush-the-torturer.

"All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries, and many others have met a different fate," Bush said. "Let's put it this way," he clarified, "they are no longer a problem for the United States and our friends and allies."

This was an implicit admission by Bush that he had sanctioned the summary execution of the "many others."

Gradually, it became clear there were no weapons of mass destruction. This week, the 911 Commission reported there is no credible evidence Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda cooperated in the 911 attacks. Yet, this same week, Dick Cheney intoned that Saddam "had long-established ties with al Qaeda." More disinformation.

Americans soon began to tire of Operation "Iraqi Freedom." Most feel there was no good reason to suffer the deaths of nearly 1000 American soldiers and thousands of Iraqis, no need to spend billions of precious taxpayer dollars on the Iraqi quagmire.

In the face of waning support for the war and the impending U.S. election, the Bushies devised a strategy to hand-over "sovereignty" to the Iraqi people on June 30. Notwithstanding the titular end of the occupation, 138,000 American troops will remain on the ground in Iraq. Although the violence in Iraq has intensified, with Iraqis fighting both the occupiers and other Iraqis, the June 30 date stands firm.

Meanwhile, the photographs began to emerge. The world was treated to images of pyramids of naked Iraqis, forced masturbation, unmuzzled dogs snarling at prisoners a few inches away, bleeding and dead Iraqis.

Major General Antonio Taguba’s report was released. It documented sodomy with a chemical light and electric wires attached to the penis of a nude hooded prisoner.

As fingers began to point up the chain-of-command, prisoners were released and commanders reassigned. The cover-up got underway.

Donald Rumsfeld called it "abuse," not "technically" torture. A few bad apples. Nothing too serious.

Seven low-ranking soldiers were quickly charged with crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice - the fall guys and gals.

And then "the leaks" began. The photographs and testimonials of torture had empowered those on the inside to contact the media with the bombshells. We learned that Bush’s hired guns had secretly penned two tomes, one for the Defense Department and the other for the Justice Department. Both documents purport to justify the use of torture under the President’s war-making power, notwithstanding the Constitution’s clear mandate that only Congress can make the laws.

The Congressional powers enumerated in the Constitution: "Congress shall have the power - to define and punish - offenses against the law of nations; to declare war - and make rules concerning captures on land and water; - [and] to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces."

As commander-in-chief, however, the President has a "constitutionally superior position" to Congress, according to the memo written for the Defense Department. It seems the president’s men have now taken on the tripartite Separation of Powers doctrine enshrined in the Constitution.

Their constitutional apostasy flies in the face of the landmark ruling in the Korean War case, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, where the Supreme Court held, "In the framework of our Constitution, the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker." For, as the Court noted, "The Founders of this Nation entrusted the law making power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times."

Try as they might, the lawyers commissioned by Donald Rumsfeld and presidential counsel Alberto R. Gonzales were unable to find a loophole in the Torture Convention’s absolute proscription on torture. "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture," according to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The Torture Convention, ratified by the United States, is part of the supreme law of the land under the Constitution. Congress implemented our obligations under this treaty by enacting the Torture Statute, which provides 20 years, life in prison, or even the death penalty if death results from torture committed by a U.S. citizen abroad. The USA PATRIOT Act added the crime of conspiracy to commit torture to the Torture Statute.

Bush’s lawyers used tortured reasoning to opine that the Torture Statute cannot be utilized to prosecute Americans in Guantanamo because it lies within the "territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and accordingly is within the United States."

The Bush administration has hypocritically taken the opposite position in denying the Guantanamo prisoners access to U.S. courts to challenge their indefinite detention.

The Torture Convention prohibits the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering on a person to (a) obtain a confession, (b) punish him, or (c) intimidate or coerce him based on discrimination of any kind. To violate this treaty, the pain or suffering must be inflicted "by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."

Ashcroft’s legal eagles redefined torture, narrowing it to require the infliction of physical pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." For mental pain or suffering, they would require "significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years."

The Istanbul Protocol of 9 August 1999 is the Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It sets forth international guidelines for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Included in the Protocol’s list of torture methods are rape, blunt trauma, forced positioning, asphyxiation, crush injuries, humiliations, death threats, forced engagement in practices violative of religion, and threat of attacks by dogs. The photographs and reports from prisoners in Abu Ghraib include all of these techniques.

Moreover, the Defense Department analysis maintained that a torturer could get off if he acted in "good faith," not thinking his actions would result in severe mental harm. If the torturer based his conduct on the advice in these memos, he would, according to this argument, have acted in good faith.

Who authored the "whorific" rationalizations for the Justice and Defense Departments? A Washington Post editorial called it "a shocking and immoral set of justifications for torture." William J. Haynes II, Bush’s nominee for a lifetime seat on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal, oversaw the preparation of the report for the Department of Defense. And another Bush nominee for a federal judgeship, former Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, now a permanent judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, drafted the document for the Department of Justice. How cozy.

Not only has Bush received legal [sic] advice on how to get around our obligations under the Torture Convention and the Torture Statute. His lawyer Alberto Gonzales, opining on whether to apply the Geneva Conventions to Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners, told Bush the "new paradigm" of the war on terror "renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

Evidently the Bush administration thinks prohibitions on torture, and Congress’ lawmaking authority in our own Constitution, are quaint.

Gonzales, who is often mentioned as a prospective Bush nominee for the Supreme Court, went on to assure his boss that "your determination [to bypass the Geneva Conventions] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 [the War Crimes Statute] does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution." So Bush’s own decision to bypass Geneva gives him a defense to violating Geneva.

One year ago, Bush repudiated torture in a statement on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture: "Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere," he assured us disingenuously.

Trying to calm the mushrooming public relations disaster occasioned by the leaking of the legal opinions, Bush said flippantly, "The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you." But last week, when Bush was asked whether he had seen the Justice Department memo, he answered, "I don’t remember."

Rumsfeld, who, according to a Defense Department spokesman, approved 24 of 35 interrogation techniques in a classified directive, refuses to state publicly what he sanctioned. Ashcroft defied Congressional requests to release the legal policy memo prepared at his instigation.

"There are some extremely damaging documents around, which link senior figures to the abuses," according to former New York Bar Association chairman Scott Horton, who is advising dissenters at the Pentagon. He maintains, "The biggest bombs in this case have yet to be dropped."

If Bush knew or should have known about the torture, and failed to stop or prevent it, he could be liable for "command responsibility" if prosecuted under the War Crimes Act or the Torture Statute. A federal court in Miami in July 2002 held two retired Salvadoran generals liable for torture, even though neither had perpetrated or ordered it.

On January 21, 2004, a prisoner gave a sworn statement to the Washington Post about his experience in Abu Ghraib. He reported being beaten on his kidneys and ear until he lost consciousness, being tied to the window with his hands behind his back until he lost consciousness, and being sodomized with a stick about 2 centimeters into his anus.

Sgt. Greg Ford, a California National Guardsman, said he repeatedly revived prisoners who had passed out after being choked in an Iraqi police station. Ford saw a soldier stand on the back of a handcuffed detainee’s neck and pull his arms until they popped out of their sockets. "Twice I had to pull burning cigarettes out of detainee’s ears," according to Ford.

Another former National Guardsman was choked and beaten to the point of brain damage, while acting as a detainee being beaten by fellow military policeman during training at Guantanamo.

These accounts do not describe conduct befitting a civilized country.

George W. Bush came into the White House - albeit through the back door - pledging to restore honor to the White House. Instead, he has dishonored America by leading us into an illegal war under false pretenses.

In light of the Defense and Justice Department documents, there is probable cause to believe that the commander-in-chief condoned the methodology of torture to secure information from prisoners.

The Constitution mandates the impeachment of a President for high crimes and misdemeanors. There is no higher crime than a war crime. Willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, which are considered war crimes under The War Crimes Act of 1996. Even if Bush’s lawyers could successfully parse the meaning of torture, they cannot deny that the atrocities we’ve seen constitute inhuman treatment.

Bush impliedly admitted sanctioning willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment in his 2003 State of the Union Address. He would be liable under the doctrine of command responsibility for war crimes committed in Iraq as well. The captain goes down with his ship. It is time to call for the Impeachment of George W. Bush.

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