American imperialism and the illegality of Bush's war

[Logan]

Do you really feel safer, now?


http://www.counterthink.org/018716.html

[charlesa6]

I ask myself the same question time again and again,but you no what no answer. I tell you one thing today, hell no.

[fulltitle]

WITHOUT PREJUDICE
According to an intelligence analyst even back as far a 1996 the entire purpose for the bombing of Libya to the attack on Iraq is the outrage as many people as possible so as to incite a horrific attack on the American republics (i.e. Borrow your enemies gun, commit a crime, leave his fingerprints as a means to destroy him) because they figure few people will know the distinction or bother to comprehend the "internal geography".

[BOBT12]

The US must end the Iraq war - Now!

We must bring the troops home - Now!

We must clean house - Now!

This nation is already paying a high price for this war of lies. How much more will it take for the nation to turn from this wrong path, which we seem locked on.

[BOBT12]

Another retired general calls for Rumsfeld to resign

Raw Story | April 13 2006

Another retired general is calling for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign, according to a front page story set for Thursday's Washington Post, RAW STORY has found.

Excerpts from the article written by Thomas E. Ricks:

#
The retired commander of key forces in Iraq called Wednesday for Donald Rumsfeld to step down, joining several other former top military commanders who have harshly criticized the secretary of defense's authoritarian style for making the military's job more difficult.

"I think we need a fresh start" at the top of the Pentagon, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-05, said in an interview. "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork."

Batiste noted that many of his peers feel the same way. "It speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense," he said in another interview earlier Wednesday on CNN. Batiste's comments resonate especially within the Army because it is widely known there that he was offered a promotion to three-star rank to return to Iraq and be the No. 2 U.S. military officer there, but declined because he no longer wished to serve under Rumsfeld. Also, before going to Iraq, he worked at the highest level of the Pentagon, serving as the senior military assistant to Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense.

Batiste said that he believes the administration's handling of the Iraq war has violated fundamental military principles, such as unity of command and unity of effort. In other interviews, Batiste has said that he thinks that the violation of another military principle of ensuring there is an adequate number of forces helped create the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal by putting too much responsibility on incompetent officers and undertrained troops.

Emphasis added.

The generals have has enough of this fiasco in Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...201114_pf.html

[BOBT12]

Anti-war protesters at university block doors to building

Four military recruiters hastily fled a job fair Tuesday morning at UC Santa Cruz after a raucous crowd of student protesters blocked an entrance to the building where the Army and National Guard had set up information tables.

Members of Students Against War, who organized the counter-recruiting protest, loudly chanted “Don’t come back. Don’t come back” as the recruiters left the hilltop campus, escorted by several university police officers.

Emphasis added.

http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/8545/Mil...p us_job_fair

Here is a protest that seems to work.

[rottweiler]

Here is a interesting video:
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ira...eyes_iraqi.htm

[BOBT12]

As you see the abuse in Iraq has been going on almost from the begining of the war.

Multiply Haditha By Thousands

Violence against innocent Iraqi civilians is widespread, and it has been for years

The Iraqi government has decided to launch its own investigation into the killing of 24 people by U.S. Marines in the western town Haditha last November.

The raid came to light after a local Iraqi videotaped the killings. The tape told a story dramatically different from the bland assertion by the U.S. military in November last year that some people died in a roadside bomb blast.

Reports of the massacre were carried recently by Time magazine. The killing has since then snowballed into a major controversy.

“The crime and misery of Haditha is a terrible crime where women and children were eliminated,” Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told reporters. Maliki also said his government would set up a joint task force with the U.S. military to examine how foreign armies in Iraq carry out raids.

Violence against civilians is “common among many of the multinational forces,” the new Iraqi Prime Minister said. Many troops had “no respect for citizens, smashing civilian cars and killing on a suspicion or a hunch.”

That the occupation forces do this is well known. “We describe this kind of incident as ‘normal’ because it has happened over and over, not because it is normal or because the Iraqi people accept it,” Iraqi lawyer Nezar al-Samarai told IPS.

“It’s happened a lot and there has been no reaction from the U.S. government to stop it. So people will say it’s normal.”

[...]During that raid, U.S. soldiers also attacked a neighbouring home for the disabled. “The military killed three and injured another two,” he said. “That was not because they did anything, of course. They were disabled. The other two are still in hospital, and we do not know what will happen to them.”

Emphasis added.

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2326/Mult...a_By_Thousands

Media Crimes Sanitize War Crimes in Iraq

“Can you believe it?” Yes, I can believe it. Haditha is coming to light because conscientious marines spoke out and then ex-marine Congressman John Murtha spoke out and then TIME picked it up.

Our fearless TV journalists did not break the story.

CNN had it, but, according to Damon, didn’t realize it.

Journalists like Dahr Jamail have been calling attention to many massacres that have gone mostly unreported—even when US journalist were there like at Fallujah which was played up for its drama and gun battles, but never fully contextualized or focused on the vast civilian casualties.

When atrocities occur, they are invariably described as “mistakes,” rarely crimes. What this means is that many media organizations are acting as accessories. War crimes often lead to media crimes and vice versa.

[...]The Administration fears that the reaction to the gore of the Haditha massacre will mark a turning point, not just a tipping point, in support for the war. Let’s hope they are right.

Emphasis added.

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2324/Medi...Crimes_in_Iraq

Iraqi Doctor: 'U.S. Military Hides Many More Hadithas'

“The test will be whether the leadership in the Department of Defense and the administration does not try to confine these incidents in small compartments but looks to see if this is part of a large systemic problem,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island said on Fox News Sunday.

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2338/Iraq..._More_Hadithas

[Logan]

Bush's Assault on Freedom: What's To Stop Him?

By Paul Craig Roberts

07/03/06 "Lew Rockwell" -- -- On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-3 decision ruled that President Bush's effort to railroad tortured Guantanamo Bay detainees in kangaroo courts "violates both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions."

Better late than never, but it sure took a long time for the checks and balances to call a halt to the illegal and unconstitutional behavior of the executive.

The Legal Times quotes David Remes, a partner in the law firm of Covington & Burling: "At the broadest level, the Court has rejected the basic legal theory of the Bush administration since 9/11 – that the president has the inherent power to do whatever he wants in the name of fighting terrorism without accountability to Congress or the courts."

Perhaps the Court's ruling has more far-reaching implications. In finding Bush in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the ruling may have created a prima facie case for charges to be filed against Bush as a war criminal.

Many readers have concluded that Bush assumed the war criminal's mantle when he illegally invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The U.S. itself established the Nuremberg standard that it is a war crime to launch a war of aggression. This was the charge that the chief U.S. prosecutor brought against German leaders at the Nuremberg trials.

The importance of the Supreme Court's decision, however, is that a legal decision by America's highest court has ruled Bush to be in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

There are many reasons to impeach Bush. His flagrant disregard for international law, U.S. civil liberties, the separation of powers, public opinion, and human rights associate Bush with the worst tyrants of the 20th century. It is true that Bush has not yet been able to subvert all the institutions that constrain his executive power, but he and his band of Federalist Society lawyers have been working around the clock to eliminate the constraints that the U.S. Constitution and international law place on executive power.

Republicans are "outraged" that "liberal judges" have prevented Bush from "protecting us from terrorists." In the U.S. Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist said that Republicans will propose legislation to enable Bush to get around the Supreme Court's decision. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) already had a bill ready. What sense does it make to talk about "liberal opposition" when liberal Republicans like Specter are falling all over themselves to kowtow to Bush?

Americans are going to have to decide which is the greater threat: terrorists, or the Republican Party's determination to shred American civil liberties and the separation of powers in the name of executive power and the "war on terror."

The rest of the world has already reached a decision. A Harris Poll recently conducted for the Financial Times found that the populations of our European allies – Britain, France, Italy, and Spain – view the United States as the greatest threat to global stability.

A Pew Foundation survey released the same week found that 60 percent of the British believe that Bush has made the world less safe and that 79 percent of the Spanish oppose Bush's war on terror.

Republicans and conservatives equate civil liberties with homosexual marriage, abortion, racial quotas, flag burning, banning of school prayer, and crime resulting from a lax punishment of criminals. This is partly the fault of the ACLU and left-wingers, who go to extremes to make a point. But it is also the fault of conservatives, who believe that their government is incapable of evil deeds.

In their dangerous and ill-founded belief, conservatives are in total opposition to the Founding Fathers, who went to the trouble of writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in order to protect us from our government. Most conservatives believe that they do not need constitutional protections, because they "are not doing anything wrong." Conservatives have come to this absurd conclusion despite the Republicans' decision to sell out the Bill of Rights for the sake of temporary power.

A number of important books have recently been published decrying America's decaying virtue. In Lawless World, the distinguished British jurist, Philippe Sands, documents the destruction by George Bush and Tony Blair of the system of international law put in place by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. In The Peace of Illusions, Christopher Layne documents the American drive for global hegemony that threatens the world with war and destruction. Americans are enjoying a sense of power with little appreciation of where it is leading them.

Congress has collapsed in the face of Bush's refusal to abide by statutory law and his "signing statements," by which Bush asserts his independence of U.S. law. Bush has done what he can to turn the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp of his unaccountable power by placing John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the bench. Though much diminished by these appointments, the Court found the strength to rise up in opposition to Bush's budding tyranny.

Amazingly, on the very same day in England, where our individual rights originated, the High Court struck down Tony Blair's "anti-terrorism" laws as illegal breaches of the human rights of suspects. As with the Bush regime, the Blair regime tried to justify its illegality on the grounds of "protecting the public," but a far larger percentage of the British population than the American understands that the erosion of civil liberty is a greater threat to their safety than terrorists.

Thus, in the two lands most associated with civil liberties, courts have struck down the tyrannical acts of the corrupt executive. Perhaps the fact that courts have reaffirmed the rule of law will give hope and renewed strength to the friends of liberty to withstand the assaults on freedom that are the hallmarks of the Bush and Blair regimes. On the other hand, the two tyrants might ignore the courts as they have statutory law.

What's to stop them?
Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

[mrg]

How to end "terrorism:"

Get out of their countries and stay out.