by Laurence M. Vance
In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government had three slogans emblazoned on The Ministry of Truth building: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. True, the dystopian society depicted by Orwell existed only in his mind. Yet, the doublespeak that existed in that made-up society has increasingly been adopted by governments – our government.
It is a tragic thing that the U.S. government employs doublespeak to deceive the American people; it is even more tragic that most Americans accept government doublespeak as the gospel truth.
There is no greater instance of government doublespeak than when it comes to the military. Here are some examples:
* Serving in the military: getting money for college from the taxpayers.
* Deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan: occupying a sovereign country.
* The global war on terrorism: a cash machine for privileged government contractors.
* Conscription: slavery.
* Stop-loss policy: backdoor draft.
* Dress blues: government-issued costume.
* Troop surge: escalation of a war we are losing.
* Flying sorties: bombing civilians and their property.
* Stationed overseas: helping to maintain the U.S. global empire of troops and bases.
* Enhanced interrogation techniques: torture by the United States.
* Extraordinary rendition: U.S. sanctioned torture by other countries.
* Fighting terrorism: making terrorists.
* Fighting our enemies: making more enemies.
* Defending our freedoms: destroying our freedoms.
* Insurgents: foreigners who resent having their country invaded or occupied.
* Sanctions: killing children without bombs and bullets.
* Military chaplain: trying to serve two masters.
* Military appreciation service: idolatry.
* Praying "God bless our troops": blasphemy.
* Supporting the troops: supporting foreign invasions and occupations.
* Precision bombing: civilian killer.
* Cluster bomb: child civilian killer.
* Land mine: American IED.
* Terrorist: someone who plants a bomb that doesn’t wear an Air Force uniform.
* Enemies of the United States: countries that oppose U.S. hegemony.
* Enemy combatant: someone turned over to U.S. troops in Afghanistan by someone eager to collect a bounty.
* Axis of evil: countries with oppressive governments that our oppressive government doesn’t like.
* Allies: countries with oppressive governments that our oppressive government likes.
* Anti-Semite: someone who opposes U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.
* Military recruiter: pimp for duped young men who want to sell their services to the government.
* Bomber pilot: long-distance killer.
* Persistent conflict: perpetual warfare.
* U.S. interests: an excuse to police the world.
* U.S. foreign policy: imperialism.
* National security: national police state.
* Collateral damage: the slaughter of unarmed civilians by American bullets and bombs.
* Die for our freedoms: die for a lie.
* War hawk: warmonger.
* Regime change: meddling in the affairs of other countries.
* Congressional supporters of large military budgets: pimps to hook up government and defense contractors.
* Military spokesman: military propagandist.
* Commander in chief: the chief war criminal.
I’m sure there are other words and terms that have been or will be devised or brought to bear to justify the actions of the U.S. military. Reject them, and denounce them for what they are: military doublespeak.
November 19, 2009
Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from Pensacola, FL. He is the author of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State and The Revolution that Wasn't. His newest book is Rethinking the Good War. Visit his website.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance188.html
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
The U.S. Global Empire
There
is a new empire in town, and its global presence is increasing every
day.
is a new empire in town, and its global presence is increasing every
day.
The
kingdom of Alexander the Great reached all the way to the borders
of India. The Roman Empire controlled the Celtic regions of Northern
Europe and all of the Hellenized states that bordered the Mediterranean.
The Mongol Empire, which was the largest contiguous empire in history,
stretched from Southeast Asia to Europe. The Byzantine Empire spanned
the years 395 to 1453. In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire
stretched from the Persian Gulf in the east to Hungary in the northwest;
and from Egypt in the south to the Caucasus in the north. At the
height of its dominion, the British Empire included almost a quarter
of the world’s population.
Nothing,
however, compares to the U.S. global empire. What makes U.S. hegemony
unique is that it consists, not of control over great land masses
or population centers, but of a global presence unlike that of any
other country in history.
The
extent of the U.S. global empire is almost incalculable. The latest
"Base
Structure Report" of the Department of Defense states that
the Department’s physical assets consist of "more than 600,000
individual buildings and structures, at more than 6,000 locations,
on more than 30 million acres." The exact number of locations
is then given as 6,702 – divided into large installations (115),
medium installations (115), and small installations/locations (6,472).
This classification can be deceiving, however, because installations
are only classified as small if they have a Plant Replacement Value
(PRV) of less than $800 million.
Although
most of these locations are in the continental United States, 96
of them are in U.S. territories around the globe, and 702 of them
are in foreign countries. But as Chalmers
Johnson has documented,
the figure of 702 foreign military installations is too low, for
it does not include installations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel,
Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. Johnson estimates
that an honest count would be closer to 1,000.
The
number of countries that the United States has a presence in is
staggering. According the U.S. Department of State’s list of "Independent
States in the World," there are 192 countries in the world,
all of which, except Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, have diplomatic
relations with the United States. All of these countries except
one (Vatican City) are members of the United
Nations. According to the Department of Defense publication,
"Active
Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,"
the United States has troops in 135 countries. Here is the list:
| Afghanistan
Albania Algeria Antigua Argentina Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belgium Belize Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burma Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chad Chile China Colombia Congo Costa Rica Cote D’lvoire Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji |
Finland
|
Niger
Nigeria North Korea Norway Oman Pakistan Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia and Montenegro Sierra Leone Singapore Slovenia Spain South Africa South Korea Sri Lanka Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Tanzania Thailand Togo Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe |
This
means that the United States has troops in 70 percent of the world’s
countries. The average American could probably not locate half of
these 135 countries on a map.
To
this list could be added regions like the Indian Ocean territory
of Diego Garcia, Gibraltar, and the Atlantic Ocean island of St.
Helena, all still controlled by Great Britain, but not considered
sovereign countries. Greenland is also home to U.S. troops, but
is technically part of Denmark. Troops in two other regions, Kosovo
and Hong Kong, might also be included here, but the DOD’s "Personnel
Strengths" document includes U.S. troops in Kosovo under Serbia
and U.S. troops in Hong Kong under China.
Possessions
of the United States like Guam, Johnston Atoll, Puerto Rico, the
Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and the Virgin Islands are
likewise home to U.S. troops. Guam has over 3,200.
Regular
troop strength ranges from a low of 1 in Malawi to a high of 74,796
in Germany. At the time the most recent "Personnel Strengths"
was released by the government (September 30, 2003), there were
183,002 troops deployed to Iraq, an unspecified number of which
came from U.S. forces in Germany and Italy. The total number of
troops deployed abroad as of that date was 252,764, not including
U.S. troops in Iraq from the United States. Total military personnel
on September 30, 2003, was 1,434,377. This means that 17.6 percent
of U.S. military forces were deployed on foreign soil, and certainly
over 25 percent if U.S. troops in Iraq from the United States were
included. But regardless of how many troops we have in each country,
having troops in 135 countries is 135 countries too many.
The
U. S. global empire – an empire that Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus,
Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magnificent, Justinian, and King George
V would be proud of.
March
16, 2004
Laurence
M. Vance [send him mail]
is a freelance writer and an adjunct instructor in accounting and
economics at Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, FL. Visit his
website.
Obama Quietly Backs Renewing Patriot Act Surveillance Provisions
By Willam Fisher, IPS News
Posted on November 24, 2009, Printed on December 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144170/
NEW YORK, 23 Nov (IPS) - With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.
And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.
When a panicky Congress passed the act 45 days after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, three contentious parts of the law were scheduled to expire at the end of next month, and opponents of these sections have been pushing Congress to substitute new provisions with substantially strengthened civil liberties protections.
But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans -- and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois -- the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.
Those provisions would leave unaltered the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail in the course of counterterrorism investigations.
The parts of the act due to expire on Dec. 31 deal with:
National Security Letters (NSLs)
The FBI uses NSLs to compel Internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people.
The 'Material Support' Statute
This provision criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since Sep. 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations.
FISA Amendments Act of 2008
This past summer, Congress passed a law that permits the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents' international telephone calls and e-mails.
Asked by IPS why committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and other Democrats chose to make only minor changes, Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, referred to "the secret and hypocritical lobbying by the Obama administration against reforms -- while publicly stating receptiveness to them." White House pressure, he speculated, "was undoubtedly a huge if lamentable factor".
He added that some committee members were cautious because of the recent arrests of Najibullah Zazi and others.
Zazi , a citizen of Afghanistan and a legal U.S. resident, was arrested in September as part of a group accused of planning to carry out acts of terrorism against the U.S. Zazi is said by the FBI to have attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan.
Leahy acknowledged that, in light of these incidents, "This is no time to weaken or undermine the tools that law enforcement relies on to protect America."
Pitts told IPS, "Short-term and political considerations driven by dramatic events once again dramatically affected the need for a more sensible long-term, reasoned, rule-of-law approach."
"In the eight years since passage of the original Patriot Act, it's become clear that the escalating political competition to appear tough on terror -- and avoid being accused of being "soft on terror" -- brings perceived electoral benefits with few costs, with vital but fragile civil liberties being easily sacrificed," he added.
In contrast to the Senate, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee approved a version of the legislation containing several significant reforms. In a 16-10 party-line vote, the committee's version curbs some of the government's controversial surveillance powers.
The Patriot Act, passed by a landslide after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to provide law enforcement and intelligence agencies additional powers to thwart terrorist activities, was reauthorized in 2005.
The legislation has been criticized by many from across the ideological spectrum as a threat to civil liberties, privacy and democratic traditions. Sections of the original act have been ruled unconstitutional, with certain provisions violating protected rights.
Judiciary Chair John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said the goal of the new legislation was to "craft a law that preserves both our national security and our national values".
The proposed new legislation would permit the so-called "lone wolf" provision to sunset. This authority removed the requirement that an individual needed to be an agent of a foreign power to be placed under surveillance by intelligence officials and permitted surveillance of individuals with a much lower evidentiary threshold than allowed under criminal surveillance procedures.
It was intended to allow the surveillance of individuals believed to be doing the bidding of foreign governments or terrorist organizations, even when the evidence of that connection was lacking.
The Justice Department maintains that the "lone wolf" authority is necessary, even though there is no evidence that it has been used. Its opponents believe that existing authorities are sufficient to achieve the goals of the lone wolf provision while more effectively protecting the rights of innocent citizens.
The proposed new House legislation would also restrict the use of national security letters. According to a Congressional Research Service report, "National security letters (NSL) are roughly comparable to administrative subpoenas. Intelligence agencies issue them for intelligence gathering purposes to telephone companies, Internet service providers, consumer credit reporting agencies, banks, and other financial institutions, directing the recipients to turn over certain customer records and similar information."
Under current law, intelligence agencies have few restrictions on the use of NSLs, and in numerous cases, have abused the authority. An FBI inspector general report in 2007 "found that the FBI used NSLs in violation of applicable NSL statutes, Attorney General Guidelines, and internal FBI policies". The reform provisions seek to create greater judicial scrutiny of NSL use.
The bill approved in the Senate contains much more modest reforms. It would retain the lone wolf provision, and is, in general, much more in line with the wishes of the administration. Should both bills pass and go into conference to be reconciled, it is unclear which approach would prevail.
House and Senate versions still need to be voted on by each body separately and then reconciled into a single bill to send to the president for signature.
Pitts told IPS, "President Obama's flip-flop on Patriot Act issues does as much damage as did his flip-flop on the FISA Amendments Act and telecom immunity last year. But it's imperative that we fight, while we still can, to comprehensively reinsert requirements for fact-based, individualized suspicion, checks and balances, and meaningful judicial review prior to government intrusions."
In a report on the Patriot Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said, "More than seven years after its implementation there is little evidence that the Patriot Act has been effective in making America more secure from terrorists. However, there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violate the rights of innocent people and squander precious security resources."
William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
© 2009 IPS News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/144170/
Posted on November 24, 2009, Printed on December 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144170/
NEW YORK, 23 Nov (IPS) - With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.
And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.
When a panicky Congress passed the act 45 days after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, three contentious parts of the law were scheduled to expire at the end of next month, and opponents of these sections have been pushing Congress to substitute new provisions with substantially strengthened civil liberties protections.
But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans -- and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois -- the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.
Those provisions would leave unaltered the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail in the course of counterterrorism investigations.
The parts of the act due to expire on Dec. 31 deal with:
National Security Letters (NSLs)
The FBI uses NSLs to compel Internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people.
The 'Material Support' Statute
This provision criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since Sep. 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations.
FISA Amendments Act of 2008
This past summer, Congress passed a law that permits the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents' international telephone calls and e-mails.
Asked by IPS why committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and other Democrats chose to make only minor changes, Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, referred to "the secret and hypocritical lobbying by the Obama administration against reforms -- while publicly stating receptiveness to them." White House pressure, he speculated, "was undoubtedly a huge if lamentable factor".
He added that some committee members were cautious because of the recent arrests of Najibullah Zazi and others.
Zazi , a citizen of Afghanistan and a legal U.S. resident, was arrested in September as part of a group accused of planning to carry out acts of terrorism against the U.S. Zazi is said by the FBI to have attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan.
Leahy acknowledged that, in light of these incidents, "This is no time to weaken or undermine the tools that law enforcement relies on to protect America."
Pitts told IPS, "Short-term and political considerations driven by dramatic events once again dramatically affected the need for a more sensible long-term, reasoned, rule-of-law approach."
"In the eight years since passage of the original Patriot Act, it's become clear that the escalating political competition to appear tough on terror -- and avoid being accused of being "soft on terror" -- brings perceived electoral benefits with few costs, with vital but fragile civil liberties being easily sacrificed," he added.
In contrast to the Senate, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee approved a version of the legislation containing several significant reforms. In a 16-10 party-line vote, the committee's version curbs some of the government's controversial surveillance powers.
The Patriot Act, passed by a landslide after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to provide law enforcement and intelligence agencies additional powers to thwart terrorist activities, was reauthorized in 2005.
The legislation has been criticized by many from across the ideological spectrum as a threat to civil liberties, privacy and democratic traditions. Sections of the original act have been ruled unconstitutional, with certain provisions violating protected rights.
Judiciary Chair John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said the goal of the new legislation was to "craft a law that preserves both our national security and our national values".
The proposed new legislation would permit the so-called "lone wolf" provision to sunset. This authority removed the requirement that an individual needed to be an agent of a foreign power to be placed under surveillance by intelligence officials and permitted surveillance of individuals with a much lower evidentiary threshold than allowed under criminal surveillance procedures.
It was intended to allow the surveillance of individuals believed to be doing the bidding of foreign governments or terrorist organizations, even when the evidence of that connection was lacking.
The Justice Department maintains that the "lone wolf" authority is necessary, even though there is no evidence that it has been used. Its opponents believe that existing authorities are sufficient to achieve the goals of the lone wolf provision while more effectively protecting the rights of innocent citizens.
The proposed new House legislation would also restrict the use of national security letters. According to a Congressional Research Service report, "National security letters (NSL) are roughly comparable to administrative subpoenas. Intelligence agencies issue them for intelligence gathering purposes to telephone companies, Internet service providers, consumer credit reporting agencies, banks, and other financial institutions, directing the recipients to turn over certain customer records and similar information."
Under current law, intelligence agencies have few restrictions on the use of NSLs, and in numerous cases, have abused the authority. An FBI inspector general report in 2007 "found that the FBI used NSLs in violation of applicable NSL statutes, Attorney General Guidelines, and internal FBI policies". The reform provisions seek to create greater judicial scrutiny of NSL use.
The bill approved in the Senate contains much more modest reforms. It would retain the lone wolf provision, and is, in general, much more in line with the wishes of the administration. Should both bills pass and go into conference to be reconciled, it is unclear which approach would prevail.
House and Senate versions still need to be voted on by each body separately and then reconciled into a single bill to send to the president for signature.
Pitts told IPS, "President Obama's flip-flop on Patriot Act issues does as much damage as did his flip-flop on the FISA Amendments Act and telecom immunity last year. But it's imperative that we fight, while we still can, to comprehensively reinsert requirements for fact-based, individualized suspicion, checks and balances, and meaningful judicial review prior to government intrusions."
In a report on the Patriot Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said, "More than seven years after its implementation there is little evidence that the Patriot Act has been effective in making America more secure from terrorists. However, there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violate the rights of innocent people and squander precious security resources."
William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
© 2009 IPS News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/144170/
US imperialism, 9/11 and the Iraq war
28 November 2009
While the American corporate media has given little attention to it, an official British inquiry into the war with Iraq has brought to light damning testimony about the Bush administration’s deliberate launching of an invasion to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein and subjugate Iraq to American domination.
Former British diplomats and security officials from the 2001-2003 period began testifying this week under oath before a panel headed by Sir John Chilcot, charged with examining the entire course of the war, from its origins to the final British pullout in June 2009.
More than enough evidence has already been produced to indict top Bush administration leaders, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, on the same charge for which Nazi leaders were convicted at the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal—deliberately waging an aggressive war.
Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, described the Bush administration as “hell bent” for a war with Iraq for more than a year before the actual invasion in March 2003. He described the US and British diplomacy to obtain a UN resolution that could be used as a pretext for war, and the impatience of US officials with the delays imposed by maneuvering at the UN Security Council.
The feedback from Washington “included noises about ‘this is a waste of time, what we need is regime change, why are we bothering with this, we must sweep this aside and do what’s going to have to be done anyway—and deal with this with the use of force,’” Greenstock testified.
The sole effect of British diplomacy was to delay the invasion by two weeks, he said. “The momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter,” he said in a written statement to the inquiry.
Greenstock claimed that the US-led invasion was legal under international law, but admitted that it was of “questionable legitimacy” and did not have “democratically observable backing” either among the member states of the UN, or from the population of Great Britain. Some two million people marched in protest of the war in London in February 2003, the largest demonstration in at least a generation, and perhaps in British history.
Both Greenstock and Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the United States, told the inquiry that a meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas was the key decision point for war. This took place in April 2002, nearly a year before the invasion and well before the discussions at the United Nations Security Council in the fall of 2002.
Their testimony confirms the notorious “Downing Street Memo,” leaked to the press in 2005, which pinpointed the April 2002 meeting and declared that all subsequent US and British diplomacy was merely posturing to delude public opinion.
Even more important is the testimony from senior British security officials that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was being openly discussed in British-US talks two years before the invasion, even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Sir Peter Ricketts, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said that while regime change was discussed as desirable, an invasion for that purpose “was something that we thought there could be no legal basis for.” He said that US and British officials were concerned that the sanctions regime against Iraq was collapsing and that more direct action would be required to oust Saddam Hussein.
Ricketts added that he was “conscious that there were other voices in Washington, some of whom were talking about regime change,” citing in particular an academic article written in 2000 by President Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, which warned that “nothing will change” in Iraq until Saddam was removed from power.
Sir William Patey, a former Foreign Office official, said that he had commissioned the drafting of a paper on regime change as one of a variety of options in dealing with Iraq. He said the references to regime change were removed as the paper was moved up to the Cabinet level, because this option “was dismissed at the time as having no basis in law.”
He added that the main change brought about by the 9/11 attacks was that responsibility for US policy towards Iraq was shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon, headed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a hardline supporter of war with Iraq.
Former ambassador Meyer described a conversation with then US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, on September 11, 2001, in which she first suggested that Saddam Hussein might be connected to the terrorist attacks—one of the principal lies used by the Bush administration to justify the US invasion.
The other major lie was that Iraq possessed vast stockpiles of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD). But Sir William Ehrman, director of international security for the Foreign Office from 2000 to 2002 and director-general of defense and intelligence from 2002 to 2004, told the inquiry that British intelligence was aware, before the US-British invasion, that Saddam Hussein’s regime had dismantled its chemical and biological weapons and hence had no WMD capability.
Meyer added that US officials also cited the anthrax-contaminated letters, which killed five people in the eastern United States in the months after 9/11, as further reason for targeting Saddam Hussein. Bush “just wanted to get over there and kick Saddam out,” he said. “The US military timetable was already in place before the weapons inspectors went in.”
In other words, the Bush administration came into office with a preconceived foreign policy agenda, which included an aggressive push for regime change in Iraq, to “finish the job” begun in the first Gulf War. The 9/11 attacks—carried out by a group formed out of the CIA-organized Islamic fundamentalist guerillas in Afghanistan—was seized on as a useful pretext for justifying an open-ended program of military aggression.
None of this will come as a shock to long-time readers of the World Socialist Web Site. From the inception of the Bush administration propaganda campaign for war with Iraq, the WSWS exposed and denounced the lies about an Iraqi role in the 9/11 attacks, Saddam’s alleged ties to Al Qaeda, and the “danger” of Iraqi WMD—this coming from the country with by far the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction on the planet.
But this record is worth pondering as Bush’s successor prepares to make his propaganda case for another unprovoked imperialist war of aggression—the US war against Afghanistan. Barack Obama goes on national television next Tuesday to claim that—more than eight years after September 11, 2001—tens of thousands more American troops must be sent to Afghanistan to fight those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. At the same time, the occupation of Iraq continues and none of those responsible for launching this war crime have been held accountable.
Millions voted for Obama in the illusion that he would put an end to the militaristic foreign policy of the Bush administration. Instead, more American troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan than at the height of the Bush “surge” in Iraq. The “commander-in-chief” is different, the lies have been somewhat refined, but the axis of imperialist foreign policy remains: the defense of the strategic and economic interests of the financial aristocracy that rules America, served by Obama no less than by Bush.
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the WSWS warned: “The war itself represents a devastating failure of American democracy. A small cabal of political conspirators—working with a hidden agenda and having come to power on the basis of fraud—has taken the American people into a war that they neither understand nor want. But there exists absolutely no established political mechanism through which the opposition to the policies of the Bush administration—to the war, the attack on democratic rights, the destruction of social services, the relentless assault on the living standards of the working class—can find expression. The Democratic Party—the stinking corpse of bourgeois liberalism—is deeply discredited. Masses of working people find themselves utterly disenfranchised.” (“The crisis of American capitalism and the war against Iraq,” March 21, 2003)
Six and a half years later, this perspective has been fully vindicated. The struggle against imperialist war cannot be conducted through the election of Democrats or through putting pressure on the twin parties of big business. Putting an end to war is the task of the working class, in the United States and internationally, which must carry out an independent political struggle on the basis of a socialist program.
Patrick Martin
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pers-n28.shtml
While the American corporate media has given little attention to it, an official British inquiry into the war with Iraq has brought to light damning testimony about the Bush administration’s deliberate launching of an invasion to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein and subjugate Iraq to American domination.
Former British diplomats and security officials from the 2001-2003 period began testifying this week under oath before a panel headed by Sir John Chilcot, charged with examining the entire course of the war, from its origins to the final British pullout in June 2009.
More than enough evidence has already been produced to indict top Bush administration leaders, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, on the same charge for which Nazi leaders were convicted at the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal—deliberately waging an aggressive war.
Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, described the Bush administration as “hell bent” for a war with Iraq for more than a year before the actual invasion in March 2003. He described the US and British diplomacy to obtain a UN resolution that could be used as a pretext for war, and the impatience of US officials with the delays imposed by maneuvering at the UN Security Council.
The feedback from Washington “included noises about ‘this is a waste of time, what we need is regime change, why are we bothering with this, we must sweep this aside and do what’s going to have to be done anyway—and deal with this with the use of force,’” Greenstock testified.
The sole effect of British diplomacy was to delay the invasion by two weeks, he said. “The momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter,” he said in a written statement to the inquiry.
Greenstock claimed that the US-led invasion was legal under international law, but admitted that it was of “questionable legitimacy” and did not have “democratically observable backing” either among the member states of the UN, or from the population of Great Britain. Some two million people marched in protest of the war in London in February 2003, the largest demonstration in at least a generation, and perhaps in British history.
Both Greenstock and Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the United States, told the inquiry that a meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas was the key decision point for war. This took place in April 2002, nearly a year before the invasion and well before the discussions at the United Nations Security Council in the fall of 2002.
Their testimony confirms the notorious “Downing Street Memo,” leaked to the press in 2005, which pinpointed the April 2002 meeting and declared that all subsequent US and British diplomacy was merely posturing to delude public opinion.
Even more important is the testimony from senior British security officials that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was being openly discussed in British-US talks two years before the invasion, even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Sir Peter Ricketts, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said that while regime change was discussed as desirable, an invasion for that purpose “was something that we thought there could be no legal basis for.” He said that US and British officials were concerned that the sanctions regime against Iraq was collapsing and that more direct action would be required to oust Saddam Hussein.
Ricketts added that he was “conscious that there were other voices in Washington, some of whom were talking about regime change,” citing in particular an academic article written in 2000 by President Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, which warned that “nothing will change” in Iraq until Saddam was removed from power.
Sir William Patey, a former Foreign Office official, said that he had commissioned the drafting of a paper on regime change as one of a variety of options in dealing with Iraq. He said the references to regime change were removed as the paper was moved up to the Cabinet level, because this option “was dismissed at the time as having no basis in law.”
He added that the main change brought about by the 9/11 attacks was that responsibility for US policy towards Iraq was shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon, headed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a hardline supporter of war with Iraq.
Former ambassador Meyer described a conversation with then US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, on September 11, 2001, in which she first suggested that Saddam Hussein might be connected to the terrorist attacks—one of the principal lies used by the Bush administration to justify the US invasion.
The other major lie was that Iraq possessed vast stockpiles of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD). But Sir William Ehrman, director of international security for the Foreign Office from 2000 to 2002 and director-general of defense and intelligence from 2002 to 2004, told the inquiry that British intelligence was aware, before the US-British invasion, that Saddam Hussein’s regime had dismantled its chemical and biological weapons and hence had no WMD capability.
Meyer added that US officials also cited the anthrax-contaminated letters, which killed five people in the eastern United States in the months after 9/11, as further reason for targeting Saddam Hussein. Bush “just wanted to get over there and kick Saddam out,” he said. “The US military timetable was already in place before the weapons inspectors went in.”
In other words, the Bush administration came into office with a preconceived foreign policy agenda, which included an aggressive push for regime change in Iraq, to “finish the job” begun in the first Gulf War. The 9/11 attacks—carried out by a group formed out of the CIA-organized Islamic fundamentalist guerillas in Afghanistan—was seized on as a useful pretext for justifying an open-ended program of military aggression.
None of this will come as a shock to long-time readers of the World Socialist Web Site. From the inception of the Bush administration propaganda campaign for war with Iraq, the WSWS exposed and denounced the lies about an Iraqi role in the 9/11 attacks, Saddam’s alleged ties to Al Qaeda, and the “danger” of Iraqi WMD—this coming from the country with by far the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction on the planet.
But this record is worth pondering as Bush’s successor prepares to make his propaganda case for another unprovoked imperialist war of aggression—the US war against Afghanistan. Barack Obama goes on national television next Tuesday to claim that—more than eight years after September 11, 2001—tens of thousands more American troops must be sent to Afghanistan to fight those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. At the same time, the occupation of Iraq continues and none of those responsible for launching this war crime have been held accountable.
Millions voted for Obama in the illusion that he would put an end to the militaristic foreign policy of the Bush administration. Instead, more American troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan than at the height of the Bush “surge” in Iraq. The “commander-in-chief” is different, the lies have been somewhat refined, but the axis of imperialist foreign policy remains: the defense of the strategic and economic interests of the financial aristocracy that rules America, served by Obama no less than by Bush.
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the WSWS warned: “The war itself represents a devastating failure of American democracy. A small cabal of political conspirators—working with a hidden agenda and having come to power on the basis of fraud—has taken the American people into a war that they neither understand nor want. But there exists absolutely no established political mechanism through which the opposition to the policies of the Bush administration—to the war, the attack on democratic rights, the destruction of social services, the relentless assault on the living standards of the working class—can find expression. The Democratic Party—the stinking corpse of bourgeois liberalism—is deeply discredited. Masses of working people find themselves utterly disenfranchised.” (“The crisis of American capitalism and the war against Iraq,” March 21, 2003)
Six and a half years later, this perspective has been fully vindicated. The struggle against imperialist war cannot be conducted through the election of Democrats or through putting pressure on the twin parties of big business. Putting an end to war is the task of the working class, in the United States and internationally, which must carry out an independent political struggle on the basis of a socialist program.
Patrick Martin
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pers-n28.shtml
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