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Miscreants,
Murderers, and Malefactors: Imperial Conquest, Torture, and a
Little Matter of Genocide
By Jason
Miller
02/28/06 "ICH"
-- -- Acting with impunity and wielding the moral authority of
pedophiles, Bush and his fellow Neocons have decimated what was
left of America's good name while severely crippling our
nation’s capacity for advancing and protecting human rights.
Setting a sanguineous course in their reckless pursuit of wealth
and power, they have afflicted humankind with their perverse
agenda. With alarming consistency, these sociopaths have
demonstrated their utter disregard for humanity and the
well-being of our planet.
While the US has a history of imperialism, deep cruelty, and
mass murder, including slaughtering one million civilians in the
conquest of the Philippines, legalizing the institution of
slavery, and committing the Native American genocide, by World
War II America had arguably begun to demonstrate a reasonable
level of commitment to humanitarian ideals. While it was a long,
painful process, Abolitionists, Women Suffragists, Populists,
Labor Activists, Civil Rights Protestors, and the like forced
the United States to strive for truly noble causes. From the end
of World War II up until the 1960's, one could reasonably
conclude that the nation primarily responsible for the defeat of
militaristic fascism in both Europe and Asia had earned a degree
of moral authority, in spite of its remaining flaws.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter
here…
Vietnam marked the beginning of
America's descent into a fetid moral sewer, high-lighted (or
more appropriately low-lighted) by the deaths of 3,000,000
Vietnamese civilians and the devastating after effects of Agent
Orange (compliments of Monsanto). America's light as a beacon of
hope for humanity was rapidly extinguished. Ignoring
Eisenhower's prescient warning, his successors chose the sword
over the plowshare repeatedly. Funneling outrageous percentages
of our precious resources into the coffers of the bloated and
malevolent military industrial complex, they carried out
murderous agendas through direct military intervention, covert
CIA operations, and proxies like the Shah of Iran. Sadly, under
the last 7-8 presidencies, Democrat and Republican alike, the
United States government has evolved into the most powerful
terrorist organization on the planet.
Bush and his criminal cohorts have assured US victory in its
race to the bottom. Dropping the cloak of altruism, they have
come out of the closet and revealed their wicked proclivities.
In openly murdering innocent civilians and torturing suspected
terrorists under the pretenses of "pre-emptive" military action
and the nebulous “War on Terror”, Israel’s Neocon operatives
have secured America's place in the pantheon of egregious
violators of human rights. Despite having stolen the last two
elections, these depraved war criminals continue to act in the
name of the American people as they repeatedly urinate and
defecate on virtually everything that was truly virtuous in our
nation.
Perhaps torture and murder are the
values of this “Christian nation”…
Human Rights First recently
released a particularly damning and extremely well-researched
report entitled
Command's Responsibility.
I spent several hours perusing this disturbing analysis of
homicides committed by our own government (to further the cause
of “spreading freedom and democracy”). A shocking number of
alleged enemy combatants have been murdered by the US military
and the CIA. Apparently justice vanishes without a trace if one
is of Middle Eastern descent and suspected of terrorism.
According to the report, 100 such individuals have died since
August of 2002. By the US military’s own admission, 34 of those
cases were "suspected or confirmed homicides". Human Rights
First determined that the "facts suggest death as a result of
physical abuse or harsh conditions of detention" in 11
additional cases. The report also reveals that 8 US detainees
"were tortured to death".
How is the "bastion of human rights" policing itself? "Only 12
detainee deaths have resulted in punishment of any kind for a US
official." Human Rights First also uncovered the facts that
"while the CIA has been implicated in several deaths, not one
CIA agent has faced a criminal charge". The harshest sentence
issued for those responsible for torture-related deaths? An
unbelievable slap on the wrist: five months in jail for
homicide! Meanwhile, America's "justice system" eagerly metes
out the death penalty for murder, mostly to our poor
and/or black citizens. Just ask California’s “Terminator”.
Israeli peace of mind and oil are
worth the annihilation of millions of human beings, aren’t they?
Still high enough on hubris to believe the Bush Regime is
righteous in passing judgment and proclaiming that Iraq, Iran,
and North Korea form an "Axis of Evil"? While you are grabbing
stones to cast at this trio for their deplorable records on
human rights, consider the acts of barbarism, terrorism, and
deceit the United States has committed against the first member
of the so-called "Axis" over the last two decades. Since Reagan
swaggered into office, America has been committing
genocide
against the Iraqi people in multiple ways. Bear in mind that
these "evil" Iraqis never attacked the United States or its
citizens. Their crime? Ostensibly it was that their tyrannical
leader, Saddam Hussein, needed to be deposed, they possessed
weapons of mass destruction, they were a threat to the United
States, and eventually were complicit in 9/11. But for those who
live in reality, the Iraqis’ true "sins" were possessing vast
quantities of oil, daring to sell their oil for Euros instead of
the almighty Dollar, and posing a "threat" to poor little
Israel, a nation bristling with military firepower and enjoying
the unflinching support of the most powerful military in the
history of humanity.
As an aside, if the “infinitely benevolent” United States bore
the responsibility of removing Hussein to “liberate the Iraqis”,
a question naturally arises. Which nation will liberate the
world from Bush and his team of despicable Neocons?
A Little Duplicity, a little
hypocrisy…whatever it takes, right?
In 1982, the Reagan Regime removed Iraq from the State
Department's list of nations sponsoring terrorism. This enabled
US corporations, including members of the military industrial
complex, to capitalize on the abundant profits to be had in the
Iraqi marketplace. In 1983, Ronald Reagan sent special envoy
Donald Rumsfeld to meet with US ally
Saddam Hussein to "normalize relations" which had been
terminated during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Despite full
knowledge that Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran and on
the Kurds of his own nation, the United States continued its
cozy relationship with Saddam. The United States and its allies
in Western Europe provided Hussein with military helicopters and
the precursor agents necessary to manufacture the very weapons
of mass destruction which later became one of the pretexts for
the Neocon invasion of Iraq.
Former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Noel Koch said this
about American support of Hussein:
"No one had any doubts about the Iraqis' continued
involvement in terrorism....The real reason was to help them
succeed in the war against Iran."
Confirming the initial US acts of genocide against the Iraqi
people through its support of Hussein are some quick facts
provided by the
US State Department.
Bear in mind that Hussein was an American ally when these
atrocities occurred:
-- Documented chemical attacks by the regime, from 1983 to
1988, resulted in some 30,000 Iraqi and Iranian deaths.
-- Human Rights Watch estimates that Saddam's 1987-1988
campaign of terror against the Kurds killed at least 50,000 and
possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds.
-- The Iraqi regime used chemical agents to include mustard
gas and nerve agents in attacks against at least 40 Kurdish
villages between 1987-1988. The largest was the attack on
Halabja which resulted in approximately 5,000 deaths.
-- 2,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed during the campaign
of terror.
Leave it to American ingenuity to find a better way…
Ongoing US support of Hussein became virtually impossible when
he invaded Kuwait, a US ally which had slant-drilled $14 billion
worth of oil from Iraq (using equipment supplied by a United
States corporation). Despite United States Ambassador April
Glaspie's assurances to Hussein that the US "takes no position"
in the conflict (just days before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait),
Bush the elder unleashed the US military beast on Hussein. The
US war machine defeated Iraq by burying thousands of Iraqi
troops alive, employing
depleted uranium, and
murdering thousands of retreating Iraqis during the Basra Road
Massacre.
Research by Beth Osborne Daponte,
who ran afoul of "straight shooter" and then Secretary of
Defense Dick Cheney for "inflating" body counts related to the
Gulf War, and who has since been exonerated, published by two
scholarly journals, and awarded a teaching position at Carnegie
Mellon University, demonstrates that
205,500 Iraqis
died as a result of the Gulf War. Perhaps the rulers of the
American Empire tired of committing genocide through their
proxy, Hussein. Recasting him as an enemy certainly increased
their capacity to eliminate the Iraqi people.
Keeping our hands clean while “killing them softly”
Shortly after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (on August 6, 1990),
the United Nations, under intense pressure from the US, imposed
severe economic sanctions on Iraq. A year later, with Iraq
defeated, the sanctions continued. From the initial
implementation of these draconian measures, the United States
utilized its powerful influence within the UN to ensure that the
sanctions remained in place. The alleged targets of the
sanctions were Saddam Hussein and his government. However, the
people of Iraq were the ones brutally victimized by this twelve
year campaign of economic terror.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, by late
1995, over a million Iraqis (including 567,000 children) had
died as a direct result of the economic sanctions. Based on
UNICEF's research, 4,500 children were dying each month and
825,000 Iraqi children were at risk of suffering acute
malnutrition.
Demonstrating the Clinton Regime’s complicity in the Iraqi
genocide, Secretary of State Madeline Albright appeared on 60
Minutes in May of 1996. When asked about reports of the deaths
of 500,000 Iraqi children due to the sanctions, she stated:
"We think the price is worth it."
Even the Oil for Food Program implemented in 1996 (to enable
Iraq to exchange its oil on the world market for food and
humanitarian supplies) failed to stem the tide of suffering and
death. Supporters of the American Empire claim that corruption,
inefficiency and abuse caused the failure of this "noble rescue
effort". However, despite the fact that the program did not end
the misery for Iraqi civilians (regardless of the reasons), the
US saw to it that the sanctions remained in place until Bush II
launched his illegal invasion. To protest the ongoing sanctions,
United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator
Dennis Halliday
ended his 34 year career with the UN in 1998.
Noam Chomsky has postulated that the ultimate goal of US foreign
policy in Iraq is to reduce it to a sparsely populated nation,
providing the American Empire with a readily attainable,
strategically located piece of real estate sitting atop one of
the largest oil reserves in the world.
Evidence does exist to support Chomsky's speculations.
Slow Motion Holocaust
by Stephanie Reich and
The Secret Behind the Sanctions
by Thomas Nagy both reference DIA documents which expose US
intent with respect to the economic sanctions:
Reich: A series of recently revealed
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reports show that the US
attack on Iraq's civilian population was deliberate and
calculated. A
DIA report of January 1991
stated that sanctions would prevent the import of
chemicals and equipment required for the provision of safe
drinking water, resulting in epidemics.
A second DIA report listed as
likely causes of epidemics in urban
areas the fact that US bombing had destroyed water, electrical
and waste disposal systems, and had largely ended distribution
of preventive medicines. The report itemized the predicted
disease outbreaks, highlighting those that strike children. A
third DIA report dated March 1991 explicitly connected outbreaks
of gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases to the war, stated
that children in particular were affected, and noted that
potable water had been reduced to 5% of prewar supplies.
Nagy: Over the last two years, I've
discovered documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency proving
beyond a doubt that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S.
government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade
the country's water supply after the Gulf War. The United States
knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay,
and it went ahead anyway.
Patience is not a Neocon
virtue
Once the Bush Regime seized power, the "slow motion holocaust"
was no longer satisfactory. In enabling or causing 9/11, they
had the Pearl Harbor they needed to launch ”full speed
genocide". Spinning incredibly absurd yarns linking Saddam
Hussein to Osama bin Laden while "proving" that Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction (and the means to unleash them), the
nefarious ones whipped the American public into a "patriotic"
fervor. Driven by fear of the "terrorists" and the lies of the
mainstream media, the American public zealously supported the
"Shock and Awe" campaign.
Conveniently, the Neocons and their media handmaidens neglected
to inform the American public that as a former ally, the US had
a degree of complicity in Saddam's crimes against humanity. They
also failed to mention that our government had committed similar
offenses during the Gulf War and had engaged in
the passive mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis by
strong-arming the UN into maintaining the economic sanctions for
12 years. Or perhaps by Neocon moral reckoning, two wrongs do
make a right and they decided it would be frivolous to rehash
America's "heroic efforts" to end Hussein's tyranny.
In December 2005, George Bush himself publicly admitted that his
Regime
bears responsibility for at least
30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths since the start
of the illegal Occupation in 2003. The
Lancet Journal released a study
in October 2004 which concluded that the number was close to
100,000 at that time. A more recent study referenced in an
article in
The Canadian
places the
number at 250,000. The Neocons certainly have accelerated the
pace of the Iraqi genocide.
“Collateral Damage” in the Homeland
Iraqis are not the only victims of the Empire's most recent
efforts to exterminate them. Americans are reaping the wages of
Bush's sins against the Iraqi people. Over 2300 Americans have
died carrying out the twisted bidding of Rumsfeld and company.
Hundreds of billions of wasted US taxpayer dollars, virtually
certain federal bankruptcy, and the steady asphyxiation of
domestic programs which benefit the poor, the sick, the elderly,
the working people, and most importantly, our children, closely
parallel the passive mass murder perpetrated through the
US-driven UN economic sanctions against Iraq. Want evidence?
Look to New Orleans.
In light of the
Downing Street Memo,
which clearly demonstrates that Bush
constructed a false case
to justify the invasion of a country that posed no real
threat to the United States, based on the accompanying needless
deaths of American soldiers, and considering the resulting
economic sanctions placed upon the American people, Congress has
a sacred obligation to truly represent the interests of its
constituents and remove Bush and his fellow criminals from
office. It is time to impeach Bush and Cheney.
Once removed from office, these two and the rest of the cabal
need to face trial at the International Criminal Court for war
crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
We the People and the Iraqis deserve better
Click the link below to take
action:
"Congressman John Conyers has
introduced three new pieces of legislation aimed at censuring
President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and at creating a
fact-finding committee that could be a first step toward
impeachment."
Americans are not an evil lot, but we are culpable for having
allowed a string of truly despicable human beings to perpetrate
the Iraqi genocide that has been taking place since the Reagan
Regime. The monstrous psychopaths now infesting the White House
have taken malevolence to a whole new level. Let us remind
ourselves that The White House belongs to us and
that Bush serves us.
Bush and his rotten associates are guests in our
home and ultimately, mere public servants. One simple step that
you can take toward evicting and firing them is to click on the
linked paragraph above to email your Congress Member with a
demand that they support Conyers’ courageous initiatives.
Remember, removal from the White House will put these scoundrels
one step closer to the Big House and to suffering the
consequences they so richly deserve.
Jason Miller is a 39 year old activist writer with a degree
in liberal arts. When he is not spending time with his wife and
three sons, researching, or writing, he is working as a loan
counselor. He is a member of Amnesty International and an avid
supporter of Oxfam International and Human Rights Watch. He
welcomes responses at
willpowerful@hotmail.com
or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at
http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
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