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Editorial of The Marxist-Leninist Daily, 28 December 2006
TML denounces the ruling of the so-called Iraqi High Tribunal Appeals Court to uphold the November 5 death sentence by hanging for former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and various co-defendants. The entire trial of Saddam Hussein by a kangaroo court under U.S. occupation is a new exercise in the politics of assassination perfected by the United States since the Second World War as an instrument of criminalizing politics. Besides the CIA instigated coups d'etat in Iran, Greece and Guatemala in 1953-54, U.S. imperialism was also the driving force behind the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, the financing of the Contras in Nicaragua, the invasion of Grenada and Panama, the financing of cut-throats in El Salvador and more than 600 assassination attempts against President Fidel Castro. All these criminal activities were means perfected by the United States to make sure the peoples of the world and their governments could not solve a single problem in a peaceful manner on the basis of rule of law. During the 1980's and 90's, the politics of assassination engineered by the secret agencies of the reactionary Indian state became their preferred instrument to destabilize the people's political movement in Punjab and other parts of India. Since then, the use of assassination to instigate civil wars and wreck any political movements of the peoples has become the norm of the Israeli Zionists in the Palestinian territories and it has been introduced in Lebanon and on a widescale in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. Bush's so-called war on terror is state terrorism with a licence to kill. The staged trial of Saddam Hussein and death sentences can only be considered in this light. There is no clearer indictment of the U.S. imperialist economic and political system in deep crisis which, to save itself, turns against the peaceful solution of problems. No amount of justification about fighting terrorism can justify state terrorism, aggression and occupations. Besides anything else, the trial and sentence against Saddam Hussein points to the desperation of the U.S., British and other supporters of the occupation of Iraq to find an exit strategy to the quagmire they have created for themselves. Far from sorting anything out and achieving the so-called reconciliation they talk about, the imposition of a kangaroo court and assassinations after a deeply flawed trial and bogus legal process will never cover up the death and destruction they themselves have rained on Iraq and their own crimes against humanity. TML calls on all democratic and justice-loving forces to condemn the fraudulent rule of law imposed in Iraq and continue to dissociate themselves from state terrorism, all individual acts of terrorism and violence and the criminalization of politics using assassination as a preferred weapon. All those responsible for these criminal acts must be held to account. Source: http://www.cpcml.ca/Tmld2006/D36204.htm#1 * * * By TONY SEED
Shunpiking Online By Shunpiking Online & Agencies
Choosing to take the high road, Americans demonstrated throughout the US in numerous cities denouncing the execution of Hussein as a "political assassination" in the style of the infamous Ku Klux Klan "lynch law" - a longtime legal practice in the USA. Humanity has long since rejected "lynch law" and the impunity of the state to summarily execute people as well as using kangaroo courts to hide the injustice of the lynching taking place, the newspaper Voice of Revolution affirmed in an edtorial statement. "Its social relations and standards have advanced beyond the Dark Ages and refuses to go back to this level, it said. "The broad demonstrations and denunciation of the lynching by millions worldwide and the continued resistance in Iraq, in the U.S. and worldwide show that the Americans will not submit to this terrorism and degradation of humanity, will not permit the U.S. to drag the world down with it." Bush's statement was issued from his hacienda in Crawford, Texas just about one hour after Hussein was hanged in Baghdad, Iraq. Like a military commander having issued the battle order, Bush was reportedly asleep when the execution was carried out. "Today Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial - the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime. Saddam Hussein's execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops. Bringing [him] to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror. Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead. Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress." In a message of assurance to the people of Iraq, Bush boasted that the execution was a reminder of how far the Iraqi people have come since the end of Hussein's government. "The progress they have made would not have been possible without the continued service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform," he ssaid proudly. The US-based human rights group Human Rights Watch condemned the hanging, saying history would judge Mr Hussein's trial and execution "harshly". The propagandists; plausible denialibility Faced with fierce international condemnation, the US establishment desperately began to back peddle, even going so far as insinuate it is the Iraqi people who have sunk to the level of lynch law. By 1 January, just three days after the execution, the New York Times' John Burns, the sole reporter invited to view the first appearance of Mr Hussein in the kangaroo court on 29 June 2004, began the first of three articles to distance the United States from both the trial and the execution two days before, asserting that the US had nothing to do with Mr Hussein's execution. The propagandist said that the US was keen on "respecting the sovereignty" of Iraq - and even of the dead. By Tuesday evening, US media reports were citing several US generals who were releasing statements that they would have carried out the execution differently. One report indicated that the US Forces had accorded Mr Hussein, who was also commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces and hence a combatant under the Geneva Convention, full military honours from his US escort, something forcibly denied him since his capture on 12 December 2003 near his home town of Tikrit. On 6 January, Burns wrote in the NY Times, "Upset by events in the execution chamber, and concerned at attracting any fresh anger from Iraqi Sunnis, the Americans ordered their troops not to touch Mr. Hussein's body after the execution, even as it was loaded and unloaded from their helicopters." ("In Days Before Hanging, a Push for Revenge and a Push Back From the U.S") As part of its sectarian and racist reporting, the NY Times on 6 January also featured a photograph of a pro-Saddam demonstration in Beirut on its front page, giving it more coverage than it has of the more than a million anti-government demonstrators in Beirut, one quarter of the population of Lebanon, who don't get any coverage in the American media. They have been demonstrating, among other issues, against the government's collaboration with the United States and Israel and for its composition to be democratized. As part of this line, Bush at a White House press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on 4 January said Mr Hussein could have been hanged in a "more dignified way" while at the same momen one of his closest Arab allies, Egyptian president Mubarek, was saying that a video of Shia officials taunting him on the gallows was "barbaric". And Bush made it sound as if the Iraqi puppet government decides for itself. On Wednesday, as if on cue, Iraqi officials said they had arrested a guard, while the Associated Press cited one source blaming Iraqi security advisor Mowaffaq Al Robaie for capturing the video. In Bush's comments on Mr Hussein's unruly and barbaric televised hanging, which seemed to be aimed at enflaming sectarian violence in Iraq ahead of his announcement of a new Iraq strategy, he said he expected the Iraqi government to conduct a full investigation but maintained the ousted leader was given justice. "I wish, obviously, that the proceedings had ... gone in a more dignified way. But nevertheless, he was given justice," said Bush. "We expect there to be a full investigation of what took place," Bush told reporters in the White House disingeniously on Thursday. Earlier in the day in Crawford, White House Deputy Press Secretary Scott Stanzel told reporters that the execution of Mr Hussein was a matter for the "sovereign Iraqi government". Hours before the execution of Saddam Hussein, U.S. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said that U.S. forces in Iraq were ready for any escalation of violence threatened by supporters of Mr Hussein. "U.S. forces in Iraq are obviously at a high state of alert anytime because of the environment that they operate in and because of the current security situation," Whitman said. Bush signed 152 death warrants as governor of Texas, and that included people under 18 at the time of the offence. According to Consortiumnews.com, it included women and retarded people, included aliens in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. "Never a commutation, never a pardon, just a belief in killing: stamp out sin by death." Saddam Hussein was hanged on 30 December after he was handed over to the Iraqi authorities by U.S. Forces for execution. Reports in the US media warned that although Iraqi judges handed down the death sentence against Saddam Hussein, the Muslim and Arab world will see the execution as a US decision. However protests have swept the globe. The reports noted that the US government spent more than $128 million building the courthouse, exhuming mass graves, gathering evidence and training Iraqi judges. The Iraq government only spent $9 million on the whole process. Peter Baker, in a rare article of its kind in the Washington Post, attributes the legalized assassination to a family vendetta by the Bush clan. He argues that perhaps the revulsion that the senior Bush and his son, the current US president, had for Mr Hussein helps understand the context of his ultimate execution. "I hate Saddam Hussein, and I do not hate a lot of people... I have nothing but hatred in my heart for him," Bush elder once told CNN. Soon afterwards President Bush divulged his feelings about Saddam Hussein at a Texas fund raiser: "There is no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us....after all, this is the guy that tried to kill my dad at one time." While bringing out various unsavoury facts on a personal and individual plane, this subjective approach exonerates the american state which even maintains the School of the Americas in Georgia, knicknamed "School of Assassins", to teach such techniques to allied militaries. President Bush met his national security team at his Texas ranch on 28 December, one day before officials in Washington starting telling various US newspapers that Mr Hussein will be hanged on Saturday. The new US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who returned from his first visit to Iraq on 21 December, is believed to have discussed the arrangement for the execution with senior Iraqi officials in Baghdad. After returning from Iraq, Mr Gates went straight to the Camp David presidential resort and briefed President Bush. He also attended the security meeting in Texas on 28 December. Day of the Jackals In trying to impose its dictate and create an atmosphere of terror and powerlessness among the people, the U.S. is seeking to draw Americans in as spectators to the lynching - to create the notion that somehow they are to benefit from such crimes. Tony Harris of CNN echoed a theme when he openly declared that "the Iraqi people are not able to take care of themselves", i.e, that American occupation and Bush's "troop surge" are a humanitarian initiative. Numerous intellectuals attacked the disinformation of the US monopoly media. Defence lawyer Curtis Doebbler wrote that CNN's Larry King, for example, refused to allow defence lawyers on the show to speak about the illegality and unfairness of the ongoing trial, but instead conditioned an invitation to appear on the Larry King show on the President having been executed. Prof John Collins of St. Lawrence University New York called the coverage by CNN and New York Times a denial of history through carefully manipulated image distortion. "The execution provided an opportunity for viewers to think about the long story of the Iraqi leader's brutal reign. Yet when it came to informing the audience about one key aspect of that history - the role of the United States in helping to create and maintain the so-called 'butcher of Baghdad' - CNN offered only amnesia. Viewers were treated to a highly selective loop of stock images of the condemned: Saddam brandishing a tribal sword -- Saddam firing a gun, Saddam laughing his cartoonish dictator laugh, Saddam defiantly reading a statement at the start of the U.S. invasion in 2003, Saddam smoking a cigar, Saddam being checked for lice by U.S. military doctors, Saddam wildly gesturing during his recent trial." What the US wants to hide
The New York Times also fictionalized Hussein's obituary and "rather than offering readers a responsible assessment of their own government's role in the life and crimes of the Iraqi leader, author Neil MacFarquhar elected to repeat the kind of sensational details Americans have come to expect when the country's designated enemies are profiled: Saddam as megalomaniac (he believed "he was destined by God to rule Iraq forever" and possessed "boundless egotism and self-delusion"), Saddam as Mafioso (the "Corleone-like feuds" of his family "became the stuff of gory public soap operas"), Saddam as traumatized child ("persistent stories suggest that Mr. Hussein's stepfather delighted in humiliating the boy ..."), Saddam as sadistic murderer (while reading the names of Baath party officials allegedly involved in a supposed coup plot, ... Saddam as narcissist ("He dyed his hair black and refused to wear his reading glasses in public "), Saddam as paranoid ("Delicacies like imported lobster were first dispatched to nuclear scientists to be tested for radiation and poison"), and on and on." Prof Collins concludes: "In this light, it seems that the initial coverage of Saddam's execution has served as a collective ritual hand washing designed to reassure Americans that they really are the blameless leaders of a cosmic struggle against 'evil.' And so the answer to the existential question comes into view. Today's mainstream journalism, even 'live' TV, is a far cry from the first draft of history. Instead, it functions largely as a transmission of selective history that has been drafted - and airbrushed, and sanitized, and rearranged, and distorted - long before it ever reaches our eyes and ears." The puppeteers "It was American by default," Pierre-Richard Prosper, former US assistant secretary of state for war crimes who played a key role in setting up the tribunal, told reporters. "It would look like we were the puppeteers instead of a noble effort to help the Iraqis administer justice." Analysts and pollsters talking to various US media outlets warned that Mr Hussein's execution will do little or nothing to bolster President Bush's weak public approval ratings or to improve a devolving security situation in Iraq. Commenting on President Bush's description of the hanging as "an important milestone," Ray Tanter, a national security professor at Georgetown University and a National Security Council member under President Reagan, said: "Anytime the White House uses the term`milestone' it's a stone around the president's neck." He said the situation in Iraq cannot be changed "by capturing Saddam, convicting Saddam and executing Saddam. Nothing changes the insurgency except a political deal. The president may get a little bump from this, but it will quickly go down because the situation on the ground hasn't changed." A poll this week showed 82 per cent of Americans supported the execution, the highest support of six Euro nations surveyed. The Harris Interactive online poll, conducted Nov. 30 to Dec. 9, found 69 per cent support for the execution in Britain, 58 per cent in France and 53 per cent in Germany. Some commentators, reflecting the deepening divide within US ruling circles over Washington's exit strategy from Iraq and Israel, told US media outlets that Mr Hussein's execution could even do Mr Bush political harm if it sparks more sectarian violence at a time when the president is preparing to embark on a new militarist offensive to try to secure the lost kingdom. "Things could get a little crazier in Iraq short term, and that's no help as the president tries to find a way forward in Iraq," said Frederick Barton, a member of the Iraq Study Group, a so-called bipartisan panel that authored a report on how to proceed in Iraq. "I can only see this as a source of agitation. It will cause celebration in some parts of the country and be seen as a symbol of oppression in other parts." One of Washington's major pollsters, John Zogby, doubted that President Bush's approval rates will go up at all unless there's a drastic turnaround in Iraq on the ground. "Executing Saddam Hussein is not sufficient. It's all about the war in Iraq," he said. The US Congress, which returns next week under the control of Democrats, piously emphasized on the need for reconciliation among Iraqis. "Now it is time for the people of Iraq to work to reconcile their differences and to heal the wounds of the past. Only that process will end the violence that has prevented Iraq from moving forward," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, the liberal choir boy who had hailed the original capture of Mr Hussein as part of the "gotcha!" chorus. Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a potential 2008 presidential candidate, said the execution had closed "one of the darkest chapters" in Iraq's history. American TV, with their specialized man-on-the-street plain folks propaganda techniques, focused on Michigan, exaggerating Iraqi-Americans allegedly cheering outside a Detroit-area mosque as drivers honked horns in jubilation. The north-western state, especially the city of Dearborn, has the largest Arab population in the United States and has been under intense pressure from the US state and media, but the numbers demonstrating were less than hundred in comparison to the more than 10,000 who marched in august against the US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Hanging termed part of plan to escalate war Groups of Americans opposed to the Iraq war and the death penalty decried Saddam Hussein's execution, and the centre headed by one of the former president's lawyers said the hanging was part of a plan by President George W. Bush to escalate the war. Rallies in New York's Times Square and in Boston, led by a group affiliated with former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, were among several condemnations of Mr Hussein's hanging. Clark, who leads the New York-based International Action Centre and was one of Mr Hussein's defence lawyers, predicted during the Iraqi leader's trial that a bloodbath would follow if he was executed. In a statement faxed to the Associated Press, the IAC declared that "This punishment has nothing to do with the alleged crimes of the Iraqi leader nor is it part of an historical judgment of his role. It is the act of a conquering power against a nation that is occupied against the will of the vast majority of its people." "The execution of Saddam Hussein is a clear sign that the Bush administration is looking not to negotiate a way for the US to leave Iraq, but is instead sending a signal that it will continue the war and escalate it despite the impending disaster," the International Action Centre said in a written statement. At least 80 people died and more than 130 were wounded in two bombings in Iraq following the execution, which took place early on Saturday, just before the start of one of the holiest Islamic holidays, Eid al-Azha. At the Times Square rally, which occurred near a military recruiting station, protester Sara Flounders held up a sign that read "Execution = Escalation." "We didn't need this execution. Saddam should have been jailed," said the Rev. Joel Jang, a Presbyterian minister who was among a few dozen activists gathered at the site. In Boston, protesters stood in light snow outside of the Marine Corps recruiting building and passed out printed statements to the few people that walked by. Protesters referred to the execution of Saddam Hussein as US-sponsored murder. They also called for an immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Making no claims about Mr Hussein's guilt or innocence, Steve Kirschbaum, a member of the IaC, said the execution was a "serious violation of international law ... a legal lynching." In Detroit, anti-war demonstrators stood in front of an FBI building to call on Congress to end the war in Iraq and denounce Mr Hussein's execution. The city is also home to thousands of other Arabs -- Sunni, Shia and Christian -- many of whom had opposed the US invasion of Iraq. In Saddam's death, they foresaw increased bloodshed in the war-ravaged country. Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News and chairman of several local Arab-American groups, said Saddam's death sentence is one more casualty in a war that has killed thousands, and it will not solve the power struggle among Iraqi religious groups. "The execution might bring some amusement and accomplishment to the Bush administration, but it will not help the Iraqi people," Siblani said. * * * Peoples reject lynching & demand end to occupation of Iraq
Editorial Statement
(5 January 2007) - Voice of Revolution joins the peoples of the world in denouncing this U.S.-organized lynching, with its fake trial of Saddam Hussein and other co-defendants. The U.S. lynching of Saddam Hussein is a stark example of the failure of the U.S. state. In its refusal to go forward to a modern democracy, that empowers the people, the world is witnessing the U.S. state going back to the dark days of the complete impunity of "lynch law," with its state-organized public lynching. Like then, the lynching of Saddam Hussein - done on the dawn of Islam's holy feast of Eid al-Adha, with video given to the media to broadcast in graphic detail worldwide - was designed to terrorize and humiliate Muslims, the Arab world, and all who reject U.S.-style democracy. Like the U.S.-organized trial, the lynching was also a show of force by the U.S. against the peoples, that U.S. impunity and brutality knows no bounds. And any who have seen the photographs of African Americans castrated, lynched and burned at the stake knows this well. Humanity has long since rejected "lynch law" and the impunity of the state to summarily execute people as well as using kangaroo courts to hide the injustice of the lynching taking place. Its social relations and standards have advanced beyond the Dark Ages and refuses to go back to this level. The broad demonstrations and denunciation of the lynching by millions worldwide and the continued resistance in Iraq, in the U.S. and worldwide show that the peoples will not submit to this terrorism and degradation of humanity, will not permit the U.S. to drag the world down with it. We stand on the shoulders of the broad resistance waged against the racism and lynchings of the government, present and past, and call on all to reject the failed U.S. state. The demand of the people is to go forward to a democracy that guarantees the rights of all and empowers them to govern and decide. The lynching of Saddam Hussein in many ways makes clear that it is racism, brutality and impunity that have always been at the heart of U.S.-style democracy. The thousands of lynchings carried out against African Americans, alongside many hundreds against Mexicans, were commonly organized by the government's paramilitary forces like the Ku Klux Klan. Sheriff's and police agents were usually a direct part of the gang of lynchers, or turned prisoners over to the lynchers. The federal government guaranteed the lynching occurred and would continue - not only by having its agents backing and being part of the KKK and arming and protecting them, but also through its refusal to intervene, including refusing to pass a law making lynching a federal crime.
It is this state-organized, KKK-style terrorism and lynching that the U.S. is exporting to Iraq, directing it against the peoples and against governments. It is open terrorism and highly provocative, striving to drag the peoples down to these backward levels at a time when humanity is striving to push society forward. In trying to impose its dictate and create an atmosphere of terror and powerlessness among the people, the U.S. is seeking to draw Americans in as spectators to the lynching - to create the notion that somehow we are to benefit from such crimes. The people say no! Today like then, the American working class and people are represented by all those standing to oppose U.S. impunity, to reject the chauvinism of the U.S. state and stand with the peoples of the world in fighting for a new world that guarantees the rights of all - not some, not a chosen few, but all. Politics of assassination Lynching and the elimination of rule of law that characterize "lynch law" go side by side with the U.S. politics of assassination. The entire trial of Saddam Hussein by a kangaroo court under U.S. occupation was an exercise in the politics of assassination. The politics of assassination is an instrument of criminalizing politics, perfected by the United States since the Second World War. Besides the CIA instigated coup d'etat in Iran, Greece and Guatemala in 1953-54, U.S. imperialism was also the driving force behind the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, the financing of the Contras in Nicaragua, the invasion of Grenada and Panama, the financing of cut-throats in El Salvador and more than 600 assassination attempts against President Fidel Castro. All these criminal activities were means perfected by the United States to make sure the peoples of the world and their governments could not solve a single problem in a peaceful manner on the basis of rule of law. During the 1980s and 90s, the politics of assassination engineered by the secret agencies of the reactionary Indian state became their preferred instrument to destabilize the people's political movement in Punjab and other parts of India. Since then, the use of assassination to instigate civil wars and wreck any political movements of the peoples has become the norm of the Israeli Zionists in the Palestinian territories and it has been introduced in Lebanon and on a widescale in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. Bush's so-called war on terror is state terrorism with a license to kill. The staged trial of Saddam Hussein and death sentences can only be considered in this light. There is no clearer indictment of the U.S. imperialist economic and political system in deep crisis which, to save itself, turns against the peaceful solution of problems. No amount of justification about fighting terrorism can justify state terrorism, aggression and occupations. The trial and lynching of Saddam Hussein points to the desperation of the U.S., British and other supporters of the occupation of Iraq to find an exit strategy to the quagmire they have created for themselves. Far from sorting anything out and achieving the so-called reconciliation they talk about, the imposition of a kangaroo court and assassinations after a deeply flawed trial and bogus legal process will never cover up the death and destruction the imperialists have rained on Iraq and all the U.S. crimes against humanity. Voice of Revolution calls on all democratic and justice-loving forces to condemn the fraudulent "lynch law" imposed in Iraq and continue to dissociate themselves from state terrorism, all individual acts of terrorism and violence and the criminalization of politics using assassination as a preferred weapon. We join the world's people in demanding that President George W. Bush and all the top officials, civilian and military, responsible for these criminal acts must be held to account. No to "Lynch Law" and Politics of -Assassination! End War and Occupation! *Voice of Revolution is the newspaper of the U.S. Marxist-Leninist Orgnation, www.usmlo.org * * * CARACAS (3 January 2007) AP - THE Venezuelan government demanded Wednesday that officials from the Bush administration also face justice, like Saddam Hussein did, for alleged crimes in Iraq. In its first official response to the hanging of the deposed Iraqi leader, Venezuela condemned Mr Hussein's execution as a miscarriage of justice and a "political crime (that is) the product of an illegitimate foreign occupation." The Foreign Ministry statement said that while Saddam was condemned to hang for his responsibility in the deaths of some 150 people, the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq ordered by U.S. President George W. Bush has caused the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers. "Some day those responsible will face international justice for these thousands of killings and these grave violations of human rights," it said. Venezuela claimed that Mr Hussein's execution was the result of a "fake trial carried out by courts imposed by invading troops and headed by the military of the United States." It alleged the trial was riddled with irregularities, such as threats and abuses against his defense lawyers. President Hugo Chavez is one of Washington's most ferocious critics, and when Mr Hussein was sentenced last November, he said that Bush should first be condemned for genocide. Mr Chavez infuriated the U.S. government in 2000 by becoming the first head of state to visit Iraq following the first Gulf War in 1991. The Iraqi president gave Mr Chavez an extraordinary welcome as international TV networks broadcast images of the two leaders driving through the streets of Baghdad. * * *
HAVANA (2 January 2007) ACN - IN A STATEMENT issued on Monday, the Cuban Foreign Ministry condemned the hanging of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein: "The world has received with astonishment the news of the execution of Saddam Hussein the same day the Muslim community holds as sacred for practicing clemency. "It is political foolishness, an illegal act in a country that has been driven to an internal conflict in which millions of citizens have been exiled or lost their lives. "It is an act that for diverse reasons has been almost unanimously condemned by the Arab world and by rich and poor nations alike. Cuba, where the death penalty has not yet been abolished due to Washington's brutal war against the island, has a moral duty to give its viewpoint on the assassination committed by an occupying power. "It is also time that hundreds of thousands of young US citizens stop dying or suffering the sequels of war." * * * SADDAM HUSSEIN now won't be around to give troublesome testimony about how he obtained the chemical and biological agents that his scientists used to produce the unconventional weapons. He can't give his perspective on who got the money and who facilitated the deals, notes Robert Parry
By ROBERT PARRY*
First published 2006-12-31, Last Updated 2006-12-31 13:45:03 LIKE a blue-blood version of a Mob family with global reach, the Bushes have eliminated one more key witness to the important historical events that led the U.S. military into a bloody stalemate in Iraq and pushed the Middle East to the brink of calamity. The hanging of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be - as the New York Times observed - the "triumphal bookend" to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. If all had gone as planned, Bush might have staged another celebration as he did after the end of "major combat," posing under the "Mission Accomplished" banner on May 1, 2003. But now with nearly 3,000 American soldiers killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush may be forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately. Still, Bush has done his family's legacy a great service while also protecting secrets that could have embarrassed other senior U.S. government officials. He has silenced a unique witness to crucial chapters of the secret history that stretched from Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979 to the alleged American-Saudi "green light" for Hussein to attack Iran in 1980, through the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War during which high-ranking U.S. intermediaries, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, allegedly helped broker supplies of war materiel for Hussein. Hussein now won't be around to give troublesome testimony about how he obtained the chemical and biological agents that his scientists used to produce the unconventional weapons that were deployed against Iranian forces and Iraqi civilians. He can't give his perspective on who got the money and who facilitated the deals. Nor will Hussein be available to give his account of the mixed messages delivered by George H.W. Bush's ambassador April Glaspie before Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Was there another American "green light" or did Hussein just hear what he wanted to hear? Like the climactic scene from the Mafia movie "Casino" in which nervous Mob bosses eliminate everyone who knows too much, George W. Bush has now guaranteed that there will be no public tribunal where Hussein gives testimony on these potentially devastating historical scandals, which could threaten the Bush Family legacy. That could have happened if Hussein had been turned over to an international tribunal at the Hague as was done with other tyrants, such as Yugoslavia's late dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Instead Bush insisted that Hussein be tried in Iraq despite the obvious fact that the Iraqi dictator would receive nothing close to a fair trial before being put to death. Hussein's hanging followed his trial for executing 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail in 1982 after a foiled assassination attempt on Hussein and his entourage. Hussein's death effectively moots other cases that were supposed to deal with his alleged use of chemical weapons to kill Iraqi civilians and other crimes that might have exposed the U.S. role. [For details on what Hussein might have revealed, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & privilege or Consortiumnews.com's "Missing U.S.-Iraq History" or "The Secret World of Robert Gates."] Thrill of the kill Some observers think that Bush simply wanted the personal satisfaction of seeing Hussein hanged, which would not have happened if he had been sent to the Hague. As Texas governor, Bush sometimes took what appeared to be perverse pleasure at his power to execute prisoners. In a 1999 interview with conservative writer Tucker Carlson for Talk magazine, Bush ridiculed convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker and her unsuccessful plea to Bush to spare her life. Asked about Karla Faye Tucker's clemency appeal, Bush mimicked what he claimed was the condemned woman's message to him. "With pursed lips in mock desperation, [Bush said]: 'please don't kill me.'" But a more powerful motive was always Hussein's potential threat to the Bush Family legacy if he ever had a forum where he could offer detailed testimony about the historic events of the past several decades. Since stepping into the White House on Jan. 20, 2001, George W. Bush has made it a top priority to conceal the history of his father's 12 years as Vice president and president and to wrap his own presidency in a thick cloak of secrecy. One of Bush's first acts as president was to sign an executive order that blocked the scheduled release of historic records from his father's years. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush expanded his secrecy mandate to grant his family the power to withhold those documents from the American public in perpetuity, passing down the authority to keep the secrets to future Bush generations. So, even after George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush are dead, those noted historians Jenna and Barbara Bush will control key government documents covering a 20-year swath of U.S. history. Already, every document at the George H.W. Bush presidential library must not only be cleared for release by specialists at the National Archives and - if classified - by the affected agencies, but also by the personal representatives of both the senior and junior George Bush. With their backgrounds in secret societies like Skull and Bones - and with George H.W. Bush's work at the CIA - the Bushes are keenly aware of the power that comes from controlling information. By keeping crucial facts from the American people, the Bushes feel they can turn the voters into easily manipulated children. When there is a potential rupture of valuable information, the Bushes intervene, turning to influential friends to discredit some witness or relying on the U.S. military to make the threat go away. The Bushes have been helped immeasurably, too, by the credulity and cowardice of the modern U.S. news media and the Democratic party. What can be done Still, even with Hussein's execution, there are actions that the American people can take to finally recover the lost history of the 1980s. The U.S. military is now sitting on a treasure trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration exploited these documents to discredit the United Nations over the "oil for food" scandal of the 1990s, ironically when Hussein wasn't building weapons of mass destruction. But the Bush administration has withheld the records from the 1980s when Hussein was producing chemical and biological weapons. In 2004, for instance the CIA released the so-called Duelfer report, which acknowledged that the administration's pre-invasion assertions about Hussein hiding WMD stockpiles were "almost all wrong." But a curious feature of the report was that it included a long section about Hussein's abuse of the U.N.'s "oil for food" program, although the report acknowledged that the diverted funds had not gone to build illegal weapons. Meanwhile, the report noted the existence of a robust WMD program in the 1980s but offered no documentary perspective on how that operation had occurred and who was responsible for the delivery of crucial equipment and precursor chemicals. In other words, the CIA's WMD report didn't identify the non-Iraqis who made Iraq's WMD arsenal possible. One source who has seen the evidence told me that it contains information about the role of Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen, who has been identified as a key link between the CIA and Iraq for the procurement of dangerous weapons in the 1980s. But that evidence has remained locked away. With the Democrats taking control of Congress on Jan. 4, 2007, there could finally be an opportunity to force out more of the full story, assuming the Democrats don't opt for their usual course of putting "bipartisanship" ahead of oversight and truth. The American people also could demand that the surviving members of Hussein's regime be fully debriefed on their historical knowledge before their voices also fall silent either from natural causes or additional executions. But the singular figure who could have put the era in its fullest perspective - and provided the most damning evidence about the Bush Family's role - has been silenced for good, dropped through a trap door of a gallows and made to twitch at the end of a noose fashioned from hemp. The White House announced that George W. Bush didn't wait up for the happy news of Hussein's hanging. After the U.S. military turned Hussein over to his Iraqi executioners, Bush went to bed at his Crawford, Texas, ranch and slept through the night. *Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com., as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the press & 'project Truth.' ConsortiumNews * * * BRASILIA (30 December 2006) AFP - BRAZIL'S President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Saturday voiced mixed feelings over the execution of Iraqi former president Saddam Hussein, saying: "I don't know if it was justice or revenge." "In any event, it will not end Iraq's problems. I think the violence will continue," Lula added after the United States and arch foe Iran both hailed Saddam's execution for crimes against humanity. European powers also criticised the use of capital punishment. Brazil's president warned US-led allied forces that: "Those who are occupying Iraq must be aware that that country will only be at peace when they allow the Iraqi people to resolve their own domestic differences. "Iraq will only solve its problems when Iraqis make their own decisions, whether they are right or wrong, and have destiny in their own hands," he added TORONTO ( January 2007) - CAF rejects US plan to foment sectarian strife with the execution of Saddam The execution of President Saddam Hussein is another crime that should be added to the growing list of crimes committed by the United States since it invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003. The spectacle of President Saddam Hussein's execution, shown in pornographic detail to the whole world, was deeply shocking to those of us who respect propriety and human dignity. Saddam Hussein may have been "handed over to the Iraqi authorities" before his death, but his execution will go down - correctly - as a US crime. Saddam was held in US custody right up to the end and only handed over to the Iraqis for the distasteful deed, his body whisked away immediately afterwards by a US helicopter for a hasty burial. Yet this was billed as an independent decision of a "sovereign state", as if any such thing were possible under occupation. One does not have to be any kind of Saddam sympathizer to be horrified that he should have been executed - and, so obscenely, - on the dawn of Islam's holy feast of Eid al-Adha, which flagrantly defies religious practice and was an affront to the Islamic world. By executing Saddam the US is sending a clear message that it gives itself the right to fabricate lies about Iraq's possession of "weapons of mass destruction" to justify invading a sovereign Arab state and removing its leader because he no longer obeys orders from Washington. The US also found it essential to stop Saddam revealing secrets about its past enthusiasm in arming him and supporting him in his war against Iran. "It may be true that Saddam was a brutal dictator, but the kangaroo court that tried him lacked any serious legal credibility. Yet no western leader was prepared to say so and Canada, which does not support the death penalty, did not strive hard to prevent it. Was it because there is one rule for western "civilized" people and another rule for "other" people?" Stated Khaled Mouammar, CAF's National President. The US plan for a "New Middle East" aims to stir up sectarianism and ignite civil wars so as to weaken the states in the region thus enabling the Americans to maintain their control and exploitation of the oil fields in the region. CAF appeals to all Arab and Muslim Canadians to maintain their unity and dignity at these difficult times and to reject the US plans to foment Muslim-Christian animosities and stir up Sunni-Shia hostilities. For more information, please contact: Khaled Mouammar CAF National President 416-879-6766 benwalid@rogers.com Mohamed Boudjenane CAF Executive Director 416-493-8635 ext. 23 ed@caf.ca www.caf.ca | |||
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