Friday Questions for Diane, June 20, 2008

08.0620 - Yesterday, on NPR’s Fresh Air, Philippe Sands, international lawyer, Director of the Centre of International Courts and Tribunals, and author of Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, told Dave Davies that the interrogation techniques that the Bush Cheney administration has used, which have by now been well documented to have been torture, fall within a universal jurisdiction of international crimes against humanity which any country has an OBLIGATION TO PROSECUTE if a person who was complicit in authorizing or ordering the crime to be committed shows up in that country – OR to EXTRADITE for such prosecution – even decades later –

And that any immunity or pardoning that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and their lawyers, try to claim will have no affect in the rest of the world.

So even if Nancy Pelosi ignores the evidence and continues to say that impeachment is off the table, the rest of the world is obligated to hold these people accountable, with no time limit.

They Don't Want to Tell You

Neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times has reported on the Government Accountability Office's report, released last week, on the decision in 2003 by the Department of Defense to stop efforts to notify the tens of thousands of military and civilian personnel who were subjected unknowingly to chemical and biological testing in the 1960's and 70's.

Essentially, the GAO found that the Bush/Rumsfeld Defense Department wasn't interested in following up on this task, which would have eventually included providing medical benefits, etc.

So much for "supporting the troops."

It is no wonder, then, that the issue of the medical effects of the vaporized depleted uranium that we are exploding throughout the Middle East is avoided at all costs.

But why is the media so compliant with this obfuscation?

Know Bush Facts #23 A and #23B

Based on the belief that the truth shall set you free:

Know Bush Fact #23 A

Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld received a letter from Amnesty International dated JANUARY 10, 2002 (with copies also sent to Secretary of State Colin Powell, FBI Director Robert Mueller, CIA Director George Tenet, and Commander in Chief General Tommy Franks), expressing concern over photographs showing Al-Qaeda suspects hooded while under guard by US troops, and pointing out that the United Nations Committee against Torture had condemned the hooding of suspects, and that such treatment is also covered by the Geneva Convention.

To research/verify, Google "Rumsfeld +hooding."

And #23 B

On September 11, 2001, Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was not in Washington D.C. He was out of the country with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, and William Luti, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Plans and Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, and four other like-minded advisors. They were "busy on unrelated missions in Europe and the Middle East."

Upon their return, Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a team, headed by that same Douglas Feith and William Luti, to scan and sort already-analyzed documents from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies to consider possible interpretations and angles of analysis that these agencies may have missed. Much of the information scanned had already been deemed "not credible" by the experienced intelligence agencies.

Eventually Rumsfeld’s team came to be named The Office of Special Plans.

Staffed by a tight group of like-minded neo-conservatives who advocated regime change in Iraq, the Office of Special Plans displaced the CIA and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency as Bush’s main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al-Qaeda.

It was "the stovepipe" - a means of funneling upward directly to the White House and National Security Advisor selectively chosen intelligence to serve the ideological ends of the "neo-cons" in the Bush administration.

"They’d take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don’t belong together,"

wrote retired Pentagon Middle East specialist, Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the office of Undersecretary for Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.

She found the work of the Office of Special Plans to be "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-option through deceit of a large segment of the Congress."
Which resulted in Congress giving Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq.

To research/verify, Google "Rumsfeld +Office of Special Plans".

- May 9, 2004

Know Bush Fact #17

Based on the belief that the truth shall set you free:

Despite Bush’s pushing for invasion of Iraq specifically because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was actively developing a nuclear weapons program, Bush and the Pentagon failed to make a serious, high-priority attempt to locate and secure the WMDS or the catalogued nuclear research sites.

Two days after U.S. forces gained control of Iraq on April 9, a good three weeks after invading, Rumsfield said, "When there happens to be a weapon of mass destruction suspect site in an area that we occupy and if people have time, they’ll look at it."

One of the greatest dangers was that the nuclear materials known to exist could get in the hands of terrorists.

In mid April, the International Atomic Energy Agency found the U.S. forces had done nothing to secure Iraq’s major nuclear sites, and requested they move quickly to do so, specifically emphasizing concern for the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research facility.

By April 25, The Washington Post reported that Defense officials couldn’t say if the vast nuclear repository’s deadly contents had been stolen, because they hadn’t dispatched investigators to the site yet. The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command was aware at that time that Tuwaitha, only 11 miles from Baghdad, lay unguarded for days and that looters had been inside.

Five other nuclear facilities were looted as well. Files and containers were missing, barrels containing radioactive material were dumped and for three weeks locals drank and bathed in water containing radioactive material.

Finally, in June, the U.S. and IAEA secured Tuwaitha. While much of the missing material was eventually found and purchased back, there is no way of knowing in whose hands the remaining radioactive materials landed.

High-ranking U.S. officials had to acknowledge that the war that was supposed to make us safer, may prove to have aggravated the proliferation threat Bush said he fought to forestall.

To verify/research, Google: IAEA +Tuwaitha.

- March 30, 2004

Know Bush Fact #5

This morning on “Meet the Press”, as well as many other times, we heard Bush defend his attacking Iraq, by pointing out that Saddam Hussein had to be removed. After all, he “used weapons against his own people.”

But Bush never elaborates on that any further. There’s a reason.

He never includes the fact that the attack he’s speaking of occurred in August 1988, when Saddam used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds at Halabja on the Iranian border. Nor does he state that the chemical weapons were dispensed using the helicopters Reagan’s administration supplied in 1983.

On December 20, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld (a civilian then, now our Secretary of Defense) personally delivered a hand-written note from Ronald Reagan to Saddam Hussein to assure him of U.S. friendship and materials support and to restore diplomatic relations.

Beginning October 1, 1984 and ending either on November 28, 1989 or October 13, 1993 (both long past the attack on the Kurds), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with the approval of Ronald Reagan and later George H.W. Bush, provided anthrax, bubonic plague and botulinum toxin to Iraq.

According to the House Committee on Government Operations Report "Strengthening the Export License System," up until the day Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Bush administration [the father] approved of $4.8 million in advanced technology product sales to Iraq, the end-user being Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization, identified in 1988 to be the facility for Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

So, the next time you hear Bush say that Saddam had to be removed because he "used weapons against his own people," remember that he's leaving out that Reagan, with Rumsfeld's help, supplied the helicopters and gas, and that even after that slaughter, Bush's father continued to supply Saddam with weapons and technology.

If you have trouble believing this, go to Google and type in "Kurds +1988 +chemical weapons +Reagan" and see what's there.

- February 9, 2004