Bush's newest deceptions and the tragedy of Iraq
A message from Ramsey Clark, recently returned from Baghdad
"If fear is the ultimate enemy of freedom, Iraq is the least
free society on earth."
SOURCE:
The Bush Administration’s presentation of its purpose and
continuing role in Iraq is one of elaborate and shifting
deception just as were its original explanations of why it
waged its war of aggression against Iraq. First one thing,
then another: weapons of mass destruction, ties to Al Qaeda,
to rid the country of a tyrant, to establish democracy and
freedom in the Middle East, to destroy international
terrorism at center stage.
All were fabricated and known to be false by the President
and the principal “civil officers of the United States”
whose purpose led us down this garden path to genocide and
the enmity of friend and foe alike.
Today, as the Congressional mid-term elections approach, the
Bush Administration is desperate to lay blame elsewhere for
its failure to stabilize the country, curtail the rising
U.S. casualties while still ignoring Iraqi casualties, and
offer any hope for peace and the withdrawal of U.S. and all
foreign forces from Iraq. It charges its own puppet
government responsible for the violent chaos its policies
have caused and it has failed to prevent.
A time table, heretofore verboten as playing into enemy
hands, is to be presented to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki
within which he must disarm sectarian militias and reach
other political, economic and military benchmarks toward
social stability, which the U.S. with all its fire power and
billions misspent has failed to approach.
The U.S. knows Maliki cannot achieve such goals. Just
staying alive is a challenge he cannot meet without U.S.
help and even then perhaps not for long, if the U.S. remains
in Iraq.
Ramsey Clark interviewed on CNN from Iraq
Every time I go to Iraq, the government of Iraq is harder to
find. It used to appear to run the airport. Last week armed
U.S. contractors rushed me and other lawyers, Iraqi and
different Arab nationalities, from the plane through customs
and immigration, to waiting U.S. military vehicles, both
coming and going. On the drive into Baghdad the protection
was entirely U.S. military in the SUV with us, but with U.S.
Army tanks, engines running, a crew member scanning the area
with binoculars from tank turrets and fortified positions
stationed near the roadway.
The government of Iraq, almost as badly fragmented as the
society, is hidden away in the international zone secured by
the U.S., plotting to gain advantage over other segments of
the government and control of the oil producing areas within
the country. Outside this comparatively safe haven the
various factions work with regional and local leaders of
their sects and government forces and militia’s more loyal
to them.
If fear is the ultimate enemy of freedom, Iraq is the least
free society on earth. Fear is pervasive, at home, work if
any, school if accessible, mosque, market, the street where
you live.
Conditions are heart breaking, even more so than during
sanctions which killed over 1.5 million Iraqis, half under 5
years of age, between 1990 and 2003. Then the people were
united in sharing food and medicine to protect the poor, the
weak and the sick, as best as possible. Fear, except for the
specters of malnutrition and sickness, was minimal.
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Today fear is omnipresent. The death rate exceeds that of
the genocidal sanctions with more than 500,000 dead after 3
and a half years of foreign aggression and occupation. Most
Iraqis I talk to insist a million have died, but we do not
know. And those killed are your mother, child, brother,
father, friend, neighbor. Death is indiscriminate and
capricious. Those who died were strong and able this very
morning. And all assaults are shrouded in unbridled hatred.
The government of the United States brought this misery to
the people of Iraq.
No one is more aware of the impotence and abject dependence
of what George Bush calls the sovereign democracy he has
brought to Iraq than the President himself. He knew before
we read it on page 1 of the New York Times for October 18,
2006, that “Senior American officials including Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice... issued stark warnings to the
Maliki government of growing American impatience, especially
at the governments failure to stop the scourge of death
squads operating with the knowledge, or support of the
Interior Ministry...”
“For Maliki, these concerns have taken on a keen personal
edge, exposed Monday when the White House revealed that Mr.
Maliki asked President Bush in a telephone call whether
there was any truth to rumors that the Americans had plans
to replace him ‘if certain things don’t happen within two
months,’ in the words of Mr. Bush’s press secretary, Tony
Snow.”
A more pitiful plea of subservience by the head of the
government of a purported democracy of sovereign equality is
hard to find in history. How long will the American people
tolerate these deceptions?
As for U.S. intentions in Iraq, for the first time during my
visits, this October the new U.S. Embassy had risen above
the high concrete barrier sealing it from view. It is a huge
complex with at least 14 cranes still lifting construction
materials for its completion, still on schedule. They say
for next summer.
It is the “Mother of all U.S. Embassies.” Its initial was
cost set at $570 million. We will learn of the cost overruns
later. No Iraqis work on construction of the Embassy, for
the same reason the architects of the Pyramids were
murdered. No outsider must know its secrets. It will have
its own assured water system and generators for electricity.
More significantly, it is located in the heart of Baghdad,
presently in the International Zone immediately across from
the Iraqi Special Tribunal where Saddam Hussein and other
officials of the government the U.S. overthrew are on trial.
The U.S. Embassy in Iran was located in the heart of Tehran.
It could not be protected from angry crowds that captured
and held the residual staff and Marine Guards hostage. After
that the U.S. has built secure Embassies removed from easy
access by potentially hostile mobs. But none nearly so
large, or expensive as the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
The ultimate deception is that the Bush Administration
intends to remain in Iraq with sufficient military force to
assure the security of this huge Embassy situated in the
center of a metropolitan area of six million people, a
fourth of the nation.
These deceptions, too, are impeachable offenses intended to
conceal the most grievous of all high crimes and
misdemeanors.
The people of the United States cannot begin to rehabilitate
their government in the opinion of the peoples of the world,
or in the hearts of their own patriots until we impeach
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others
complicit in their crimes against peace and humanity and
continuing war crimes.
We will place a new ad in the New York Times in the coming
weeks and we will continue our mobilization efforts to get
Congress to introduce articles of impeachment. We have been
able to make great strides so far with the support of all
those who believe in the impeachment movement. We need to
raise $100,000 in the next few weeks to place the new
newspaper ads. Please take a moment to make your generous
donation by clicking here.
Ramsey Clark
October 25, 2006
http://www.impeachbush.org/site/PageServer