Arrest Bush, Arrest Them All

The United States Army general who investigated the Abu Ghraib torture scandal has accused the Bush regime of war crimes and challenged American prosecutors to act.

Retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who claims he was forced into early retirement for his outspoken findings, says Bush and his minions have disgraced the honour of the United States and its military:

“This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.

The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted – both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.

In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

The former detainees in this report – each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life – require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government.

But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.

And so do the American people.”

Read the summary of the Taguba report here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/

Look, people, here’s another challenge. These draft-dodging despots, beginning with Cheney and working on down through the ranks of the neo-con vultures, are war criminals, plain and simple. Why, then, are we still treating them as legitimate members, nay leaders, of the community of nations of the free world? Bush/Cheney have caused the slaughter of far more people than Mugabe ever did, more than Ghadaffi, more than Arafat, more than al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, more than just about anyone save for Nixon, Stalin and Hitler.

These people, and the right-wingers in other nations who serve as their enablers, are vermin and if our world is to heal the wounds they’ve torn into us, the leadership must be denounced and condemned, charged and tried. The hundreds of thousands of dead and millions displaced deserve nothing less.

Before you dismiss this call as histrionic or hyperbole, at least read this:

http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/

Then, those of you interested in seeing the complete mosaic of how the American people and the rest of us were neo-conned into the War Without End on Terror, throw 75-bucks at PBS and get a copy of their 4.5-hour DVD “Bush’s War.” If you still have some hold on your senses and integrity, it’ll make your blood boil.

 

America’s Prison Galleys

The Brits used them, so did the French. They were all the rage in the 18th century – prison galleys, ships (usually mere hulks) used for the long-term confinement and transportation of convicts.

Now it seems the Bush regime may have revived this quaint tradition. According to The Guardian, the United States is rumoured to be operating floating prisons to hold captives from the War (without end) on Terror.

According to the human rights group, Reprieve, the US has used a fleet of naval vessels as floating prisons since 2001:

“Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as “floating prisons” since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.”

What’s next, Devil’s Island? Oh, sorry, I forgot, they renamed that Guantanimo.

 

It Really Is "War Without End"

Congressional groups eager to have America wrap up its military presence in Iraq and get out are being told that Congress lost any say in the matter when it voted, in 2002, to authorize the Bush regime to invade Iraq.

Astonishing.

From the Washington Post:

“The 2002 measure, along with the congressional resolution passed one week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks authorizing military action “to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States,” permits indefinite combat operations in Iraq, according to a statement by the State Department’s Bureau of Legislative Affairs.”

Uppity lawmakers with fanciful ideas of checks and balances and government of the people, had been demanding, “…that the administration submit to Congress for approval any agreement with Iraq. U.S. officials are traveling to Baghdad this week with drafts of two documents – a status-of-forces agreement and a separate “strategic framework” – that they expect to sign with the Iraqi government by the end of July.”

The monarch, it seems, disagrees. Jeez I think there’s still time to impeach the clown.

 

Mama Get the Chequebook, Daddy Bought a War

What’s the tab going to be for George w. Bush’s eternal “War on Terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, writing in The Times of London, figure it’ll come to at least $3-trillion. That’s three thousand billion dollars or, if you like, three thousand thousand million dollars. Figure that out at roughly $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America, $32,000 for a family of four, and it’s all borrowed money so there’ll be plenty to be paid in interest before that’s ever squared away.

So, you’re probably asking yourself, who are Joe Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes? He was chief economist at the World Bank and won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001. She is a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

The right-wing nutjobs (like our own SHarper) constantly rave about “socialist plots to transfer wealth.” Here’s a transfer of wealth on a previously unimagineable scale – except its from the taxpaying working and middle classes to the already enormously wealthy, taxation exempt, investment classes, America’s rentiers, the guys who own big hunks of Halliburton or Blackwater or Lockheed Martin.

Remember when Rumsfeld boasted that the Iraq war would cost the US $50-billion, $60-billion tops? Remember when Larry Lindsey, President Bush’s economic adviser and head of the National Economic Council, suggested that they might reach $200 billion and got ridiculed and sacked for it?

At the moment, the operating costs for the US war in Iraq is running at $12.5-billion per month and the bill for Afghanistan is actually higher – $16-billion per month. But it still seems a long reach from $29-billion a month to $3-trillion. That, according to Stiglitz and Blimes, is in what’s not included in the operating expenses.

To put this in perspective, $3-trillion is way more than the US bill for Korea or even its war in Vietnam. It’s more than US costs for WWI. Only WWII, which cost a grand total of $5-trillion USD was more expensive.

“From the unhealthy brew of emergency funding, multiple sets of books, and chronic underestimates of the resources required to prosecute the war, we have attempted to identify how much we have been spending — and how much we will, in the end, likely have to spend. The figure we arrive at is more than $3 trillion. Our calculations are based on conservative assumptions. They are conceptually simple, even if occasionally technically complicated. A $3 trillion figure for the total cost strikes us as judicious, and probably errs on the low side. Needless to say, this number represents the cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq.”

By the time the America people are finally asked to begin paying off this colossal debt, the profits will be long gone, fltered out to Bush’s “base” in bloated dividend cheques and squirreled away in offshore tax havens.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/77663/?page=entire

 

Is Pakistan Walking Out on the War on Terror?

First Musharraf tells a Singapore paper that American troops had better stay out of Pakistan – or else – now Asia Times Online reports that Pakistan’s powers that be are thinking about turning neutral on the War on Terror:

“Following a meeting of the Pakistan corps commanders headed by the new chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Kiani, a press release said there would be a review of the situation in the tribal areas and, instead of citing any plans for military operations there against militants, the release said the military’s decisions would be based on “the wishes of the nation”.

Islamabad’s rethink has been prompted by the violence and political crisis resulting from the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi last month. In turn, this has fueled intense speculation in the Western media of the possibility of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of militants.

Most recently, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations’ atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, voiced concerns over the this possibility. “I fear chaos … an extremist regime could take root in that country, which has 30 to 40 warheads,” ElBaradei told the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.

Such comments are viewed in Pakistan’s strategic quarters as deliberate mischief on the part of the West. On the one hand it insists that Islamabad come down hard on militancy, but when this is done, the militants react against the government. The West then points to the problem of rising extremism and projects the danger posed to Pakistan’s arsenal. “

Going neutral would mean giving up the military effort to confront the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the tribal lands adjacent to Afghanistan. That, in turn, would greatly complicate NATO’s efforts to curb the insurgency in southern Afghanistan.

 

Isn’t It a Bit Late for That?

The author of George w. Bush’s great Baghdad Surge, retired general Jack Keane, says the US has a moral duty to save Iraq. How and from what and for how long, Jack really can’t say.

But, when all else fails, try trolling some faux morality, play the guilt card. From CanWest:

“We have obligations to the Iraqi people to not let the thugs and the killers have their way with them. We changed the Iraqi regime and we bear responsibility. It seems to me if we let our adversaries push these people off the cliff — and tens of thousands would be killed — it would show a lack of character.”

The general, who retired in 2003 as the army’s vice-chief of staff, believes the Iraq war is no longer just about winning or losing. It is now a gauge of America’s moral fortitude.

What kind of country, Gen. Keane asks, invades a sovereign nation, topples its dictator, helps install a weak new government, then walks away leaving chaos in its wake?

General Jack is full of it. America does have obligations to the Iraqi people and they fell due the day they ran Hussein out of Baghdad. As occupier, America was duty bound to provide security and restore services for the Iraqi people. Four years later, electricity is sporadic and it’s still hard to get a tank of gas in a country awash in oil while scores of bodies are dumped in gutters overnight. America reneged on that “obligation” four years ago, back when they could have made a difference. It is sheer sophistry to now speak reverently of America’s obligations, it’s grand moral duty.

And there’s a neat trick. If you’re losing a war, try saying it’s no longer just about winning or losing. No, Jack. Of course it’s about losing. If you weren’t losing you wouldn’t be spewing out this crap. It’s all about losing.

 

Gaming Iraq

When it comes to Iraq, getting anything sensible and honest out of George w. Bush is a real long-shot. He’s always after one more chance, just one more. Who can blame him? He’s become accustomed to getting his way with congress since long before he launched his ill-conceived and incompetently executed invasion and occupation.

George w. Bush does not have the decency to end his failure. He intends to keep it going and force someone else to clean up his mess and then blame them for that. It’s the height of intellectual dishonesty but who could expect more from the Frat Boy president?

This time, however, even Republicans may treat Bush as the “boy who cried ‘wolf'” once too often. Bush is gaming Iraq for the benefit of his personal legacy. For Republican senators and representatives, Bush’s personal agenda imperils their prospects of getting re-elected.

The scene is set for a showdown of Republican versus Republican, with the Democrats egging both sides on. Has Bush got one more fight in him? Stay tuned. This could turn out to be a very hot summer in Washington.

 

Time to Cut’N Run – Straight Out of Iraq?

For the Pentagon it seems this is it. Either the current “surge” works or it’s time to head for the door and get out of Iraq.

As hard as that may be to believe, the LA Times quotes Pentagon sources as saying it may be time to start gradually withdrawing US troops and concentrate mainly on training Iraqi troops rather than fighting the insurgency.

“‘This part of the world has an allergy against foreign presence,’ said a senior Pentagon official, adding that chances of success with a large U.S. force may be diminishing. ‘You have a window of opportunity that is relatively short. Your ability to influence this with a large U.S. force eventually gets to the point that it is self-defeating.’

“The new round of planning is taking place in an atmosphere of extraordinary tension within the Pentagon, which is grappling with a war about to enter its fifth year and going poorly on the ground while straining U.S. forces worldwide.

“At the same time, the war has created divisions within the Pentagon. Some support the new commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who advocates using more American forces to protect Baghdad neighborhoods, whereas others back the position of Gen. John P. Abizaid, the retiring commander for the Mideast, who favored handing responsibility more quickly to Iraqis.”

There are some, notably in the White House, who believe that even talking about withdrawal will make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.