Topic awaiting preservation: Demonize to Colonize

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Demonize to Colonize

by Ramsey Clark

?In the determination of any criminal charge ... everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law.?

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ? Article 14(1)

The complete demonization of Saddam Hussein threatens to determine every decision and action affecting not only his future but that of Iraq as well. With U.S. mass media and U.S. government propaganda stripping Saddam Hussein of every redeeming human quality, any act against him or Iraq is ipso facto justified.

This successful demonization made the U.S. unilateral war of aggression against Iraq politically possible. It now makes a fair trial for Saddam Hussein impossible.

The debate about intelligence failures is itself a cover-up of the obvious. Saddam Hussein was demonized to justify regime change in Iraq. It rendered him an evil madman threatening the civilized world. He possessed weapons of mass destruction. He supported 9/11. He aided al-Qaeda. WMDs could be launched within minutes of his order. That Saddam Hussein would use them was clear. He used them ?against his own people.? Ignored were the facts that under devastating attacks by the U.S. in 1991 and 2003, Iraq did not use any illegal weapons. In 1991, Iraq was the victim of 88,500 tons of explosives (almost seven Hiroshimas) delivered by the Pentagon in 42 days that destroyed its infrastructure: water systems, power, transportation, communications, manufacturing, commercial properties, housing, mosques, churches, synagogues. Food production, processing, storage, distribution, fertilizer and insecticide production, were targeted for destruction. Nearly 150,000 defenseless people were killed outright in Iraq. The U.S. claimed its casualties to be 156 ? 1/3 from friendly fire, the remainder accidents.

Sanctions against Iraq from August 6, 1990, into 2003 took over 1,500,000 lives, the majority children under age five. By October 1986, 567,000 children under five were dead from sanctions according to a U.N. FAO report that month. One-fourth of the infants born alive in Iraq in 2002 weighed less than four pounds, a dangerously low and crippling birth weight ? symbolic of the condition of the entire country.

During the high-tech terrorism of ?Shock and Awe? in March and April 2003, Iraq never used any WMDs or other illegal weapon as some 25,000 of its defenseless people were killed.

At least 35 nations have WMDs in their military stockpiles, the U.S. more than all others combined. The U.S. is planning a new generation of nuclear weapons, tactical weapons that would have been used against Iraq if the U.S. had possessed them in 2003. The U.S. used 4,000 tons, or more, of depleted uranium, super bombs in attempts to assassinate Saddam Hussein and cluster bombs to savage anyone within a large area, usually urban, where they were dropped.

Saddam Hussein was demonized because he refused to surrender the sovereignty and independence of Iraq and its people to demands and plans for U.S. domination and exploitation under its New World Order.

At the very time the Bush administration claims Saddam Hussein committed his most serious atrocities, ?gassing his own people,? Kurds at Halabja, in March 1988, near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, U.S. support for the government of Saddam Hussein was at its height. Donald Rumsfeld was a principal player. Stephen C. Pelletiere, the CIA?s senior political analyst of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000 and head of a 1991 U.S. Army investigation into how Iraq would fight a war against the U.S., has repeatedly and publicly absolved Iraq from targeting Kurds at Halabja. See, e.g., New York Times, Jan. 31, 2003, p. A29.

A Defense Intelligence Agency investigation and report made immediately after the Halabja incident absolved Iraq. The U.S. continued its support of Iraq with full knowledge of the facts.

The ?rogue states? condemned by President Bush are ?rogue? because they do not submit to U.S. authority. They include, among others, Cuba, Aristide?s Haiti, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Lebanon, Syria, until recently Liberia and Libya, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela more recently. Some members of the European Union, most notably France and Germany, timorously, have offered some opposition to the U.S., on the question of Iraq. While they are not called rogues, they have paid a price for this impudence. For those who believe both peace and economic justice require ?sovereign equality? among nations, a principle on which the U.N. Charter is based, the ?rogue states? deserve our gratitude for resisting, often at a terrible cost, U.S. demands for submission. Nearly all the more than 80 U.S. military interventions in the Western Hemisphere in the past century are evidence that the U.S. intervenes in countries that defy its will and resist its exploitation.

?Our SOBs? ? the Somozas of the world ? who govern for the benefit of the U.S. and their own selfish interests, have caused many more wars, far greater violations of human rights and most deadly, deeper impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people than all the rogue states which most often are struggling for liberation or self-preservation.

If the U.S. can successfully use the demonization of Saddam Hussein to justify his illegal detention and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and consolidate its control over Iraq through the corruption of law and government, the consequences will be more violence against the U.S., more aggression by the U.S. and more misery for the world.

The brazen humiliation of Saddam Hussein after his capture, the former Iraqi President disoriented, disheveled, mouth probed wide open, a helpless prisoner, was shown repeatedly on TV internationally and viewed by more than one billion people. American Indians understood immediately and were angered again: That is the way they treated our captured Chiefs: Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo and many others. Filipinos still wince as they remembered the treatment accorded their President Aquinaldo, captured by U.S. treachery in his hideout in northern Luzon a century ago. The Bush administration appears to prefer a fate for Saddam Hussein more like that of the slave rebellion leader Nat Turner nearly two centuries ago ? his head on a post.

Later photos showed Saddam Hussein, humiliated before a rich U.S. Iraqi puppet leader and avowed enemy, who was sitting free and comfortable above Saddam Hussein in his cell, a large picture of President George W. Bush hung on the wall. This conduct advertises to the whole world that the U.S. has no respect for the Geneva Conventions, or mere simple decency.

It must be observed that all the rogue states, the victims of the many U.S. interventions and the U.S. captives mutilated, or humiliated as Saddam Hussein has been, are members of the great majority of the world?s population that has beautiful darker skin. They are the poor of the planet, being made poorer, dominated and exploited by the foreign policies of the U.S. and its rich allies designed for domination, exploitation and triage.

The devastating destruction of life and life-supporting infrastructure by the massive aerial assaults of 1991 and 2003, the regular bee-sting bombing of Iraq in between, the vicious armed raids against Iraqis, averaging 25 per day now and constant since May 1, 2003, when Bush claimed the war was over and, above all, the genocidal sanctions strangling the whole society for more than twelve years with virtually no protest in the U.S. mass media, government and political leadership required race-based saturation and demonization to be accepted. Attention must be paid.

Can we remember President Bush?s outrage when Iraqi TV. in March 2003 showed several captured U.S. soldiers being escorted by Iraqis in poor light and at a distance that made identification impossible? We might wonder how U.S. soldiers captured in the future, or other U.S. hostages, will be treated.

The most chilling conduct of the U.S. is the total isolation, complete silence about his location and treatment, and denial of all visitation for Saddam Hussein. The spectre created by Guantanamo says anything goes. But the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides that:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.

Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.

Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release. Article 9(1-3).

It further requires: All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.

Tariq Aziz, Iraq?s former Deputy Prime Minister, a major figure in international diplomacy for twenty years, has been held in secret without reports on his health, or treatment for eight months now. Unnamed prisoners at Guantanamo have been held for two years with only glimpses of unconscious prisoners being carried on stretchers, and semi-conscious prisoners stumbling with leg chains supported by U.S. soldiers as they leave interrogation.

The U.S. cannot use its criminal war of aggression, or its belated designation of Saddam Hussein as a prisoner of war to escape the international standards of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The very detention of Saddam Hussein is illegal. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression, an offense called ?the supreme international crime? in the Nuremberg Judgment. Prisoners held by the U.S. as a result of this war of aggression

must be released, or turned over to the United Nations, or the International Criminal Court, and not a jurisdiction of its choice.

The U.N. and the ICC are legal, independent, impartial, competent and have jurisdiction to act, all conditions required by international law. The U.N., or the ICC, can make a preliminary determination as to whether there is sufficient evidence of criminal conduct to support criminal charges, the necessity and nature of further detention and whether a legal, independent, impartial and competent court exists with jurisdiction to try the charges.

There is no court in Iraq and no existing domestic law. The U.S. war of aggression and occupation have destroyed both. The present U.S. puppet council in Iraq has no legitimacy and is comprised of sworn enemies of Saddam Hussein, the first qualification for the job. It cannot be foreseen when a new sovereign government capable of creating a legal, independent, impartial and competent court might be formed, but any new criminal code it might enact would be ex post facto for any act committed prior to its enactment.

The Security Council does not have power under the U.N. Charter to create a criminal court and its creation of courts for Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and participation in a court for Cambodia, all under coercion from the U.S. in pursuit of its enemies, cannot create power to do that which its Charter denies it.

Nor are the Security Council?s hands clean concerning Iraq. It authorized sanctions, albeit under U.S. coercion, against Iraq that were genocidal, inflicting infinitely greater injury on the people of Iraq than the worst demonization of Saddam Hussein proclaims he did.

The International Criminal Court is legal and presumptively independent, impartial and competent. Its jurisdiction reaches major international crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity, but only for acts alleged to have been committed after June 30, 2002.

Most important of all, any court that might consider charges against Saddam Hussein must also weigh charges against the United States, its officials and others acting in concert with them. If equal justice under law is to have any meaning, and equality is the mother of justice, power cannot confer impunity for commission of wars of aggression, the supreme international crime, or the plethora of other offenses the U.S. has committed against the people of Iraq.

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QUOTATION: "The trouble with a rat race is that even when you win, you're still a rat.''

Long post, too many words didn't bother to read!

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And another thing, shouldn't this be in silliness?

Ramasax

(Edited by Ramasax on 09-07-2004 05:37)

The only problem with this post is that it would have been better to link to the article than to cut and paste it; primarily because readers (at least responsible ones) want to know the source.

It would also be nice to hear the poster's opinion on the article.


 

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Slime said:

The only problem with this post is that it would have been better to link to the
article than to cut and paste it; primarily because readers (at least
responsible ones) want to know the source.

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There is no need to know the source, these are just facts. I think RESPONSIBLE PEOPLE, most of all americans, should read this (at least), and be aware of what is going on in their country. US should should stop messing with other people´s countries. The world is getting really tired of this. Maybe you think this article is stupid and boring, but the world is not just your livingroom. Most of the world only want peace and a government of their own whether is bad or good. We can solve our own problems, in fact we MUST solve our own problems, like in life.
And i think violence, crime and murder should be considered the same in Hussein and Bush.

Kropula, welcome.

Responsible people always want to know the source, so that they know that if they recommend to someone else ot read this, then their covering their responsiblity of making sure it's at least half-way legit.

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There is no need to know the source, these are just facts. I think RESPONSIBLE PEOPLE, most of all americans, should read this (at least), and be aware of what is going on in their country.

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As I see it, there are two possibilities:

1. 100% of the article is facts which can be known, as you say, by responsible people who pay attention to the news.

2. There are some number of opinions or facts which have not been made obvious to the public in the article.

If case #1 is true (and this is doubtful, but for the sake of argument), then either:

(a) Everyone has already learned these facts, and it was pointless to post the article in the first place.
(b) Some people have not aquired all of these facts, and since some of the facts are new to them, being responsible, they want to know the source of those facts.

If case #2 is true, then the opinions or facts which are not known by everyone to be true could be false. To determine the liklihood of the facts being true or the opinions being well informed, the reader needs to know the source.

So either the source of the article should be provided or there is no point posting the article.

Notice that none of what I said is based on what the article was about. Regardless of the topic, a responsible reader will check the source. I didn't even read very far through the article; I have not stated whether I agree or disagree with it.


 

Gotta know what spin was put on the article, after all. Good call, Slime.

http://www.covertactionquarterly.org/demonize.html

I think this is the article...

... and off the subject- I don´t really find much interest in this stuff without the Inmate´s opinion on the subject... I mean, I know most of these facts- thru my military experience or CNN- what´s new here? Why should I care? Do you agree with these thoughts or not? Why?

Btw... this stuff is usually posted at Philosilly for reasons before your time..

... and for long stuff like this, it´d be cool to just post the link...

edit: ....and you forgot to include the last line of the article

(Edited by Petskull on 09-08-2004 03:10)

I agree, quoting an entire article as a post in a discussion forum seems quite pointless. It wastes Doc's server space and bandwidth, and you provided no opinion, which provides no grounds for discussion apart from the reason you quoted the article in the first place (which is what's happening now).

Some as simple as:

?What do you guys/girls think about this: [link to article] ??

Would have generated a much better means for discussion.

Ok - etiquette aside, we now have the source (or one of them) and the article itself, of course... and the last line is:

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For there to be peace, the days of victors? justice must end.

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So what do you all think of the issues raised? Some of it's a rehash, likely the majority of it is contrived and/or opinionated, but do you agree or disagree with the author? Why?

Haven't larger societies been conquering, annexing and colonizing smaller societies ever since civilization began? Why would it be so surprising to discover that the practice still exists? History is written by those who've won the wars - whether they were in the right or not. We only know what our leaders want us to know - anything beyond that is entirely conjecture.

Nationalism is a strange thing. It caused the Germans to embrace the Third Reich and to condone what has become known worldwide as "The Holocaust". Why are we surprised when the same feeling causes our own people to abuse and mistreat prisoners of this "war of aggression"? The conquering army has always humiliated and villified the conquered peoples. Of course it doesn't make it right - it's just what happens. Humans aren't too far from animals themselves, regardless of our vast technology... The behavior is so instinctive, we'll probably never find a way to curb it.

As for what's to happen to Mr. Hussein, well, he hasn't exactly been the model leader over the last decade and a half... I don't think he's innately evil, but he did contribute to the international political climate and he should be required to finish it out. I'm certain he knew the risks when he started his program, I have no sympathy for him now.

I'm not a Bush supporter, I do feel that many decisions were made in haste, and perhaps the repercussions were not clearly thought out. I also think that Bush allowed himself to be guided by his Cabinet, and not by the institutions set up internationally to deal with international issues of this sort. I do not think that Iraq was a necessary successor to Afghanistan as far as the 9/11 attacks are concerned. But here we are. The real question is not what has happened, but where do we go from here?

(my time is limited, and I'd like to participate in this discussion, but I may only be able to visit infrequently... Perhaps my remarks have sparked a response in you? Talk amongst yourselves, I'll be back when I can to see where this goes from here... )

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There is no need to know the source, these are just facts. I think RESPONSIBLE PEOPLE, most of all americans, should read this (at least), and be aware of what is going on in their country.

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Kropula - I'd have bet, reading that line, that you are a devoutly religious man...

Slime expressed the rest perfectly.

(Edited by White Hawk on 09-08-2004 23:37)

Whitehawk - I am not a religious man, so you lost that bet. Or maybe i dont understand what you mean. You should have been more explicit.

SLime - If anyone wants to participate in this discussion i am assuming that they are informed about the theme, and give their opinions about it. I dont think the post was created for you to believe. Its just an article, put for comment. Not for asking its source.
Now you have your source on Petskull post. But i haven´t seen a word from you.
Also The spin put on the article is something you can extract by reading it.

Anyway it was interesting your "disecation" of what i said. Perhaps you should start now with the article.

The trouble is that there's nothing new here. This is exactly how the Americas were colonized over the past 500 years. Even used WMDs to do it. Biological warfare--smallpox--was the WMD of choice. There are documented cases where its use wiped out 90% of the population. And that was before modern firearms and trains helped finish the job in the 19th century.

In those days it was beaver pelts, then land and minerals that drove the push. Oil is just another mineral--at least as far as mineral rights in the western US states are concerned--so nothing's really changed, except the direction. Once stretched from sea to shining sea, the only place left is back across the sea.

Where we once dehumanized and demoralized the indigenous populations of the Americas so we could colonize, we now do the same with the indigenous populations living atop oil.

Human nature does not change easily. It's not a big mental leap at all for a continent settled by people who pushed others out, to just keep pushing. It's been the point of US foreign policy since the Spanish-American war. Nothing's changed since then. Methods maybe, but not goals.

The only people who are surprised by any of this are those who slept through history class in high school. No, that's not fair. High school history classes go out of their way make it seem the natural, respectable thing to have done. We conquered the "wilderness". What millions of existing inhabitants? When those who have been taught that way come to power (think cowboys and Indians), it's no shocker whatsoever that things like Iraq happen.

Stay tuned. It'll keep happening. Do you know how much oil there is around the Caspian Sea?

Sorry, this could be better organized and stated, but I'm all but dozing off now.

*Looks down at wet shoes, then looks back, examining the path that he took, noticing the puddle of water, and the rather obvious route that goes around it, to avoid getting wet. With a sad smile, knowing one cannot go back, WebShaman goes forwards, water squishing out of his shoes with each step, reminding him that sometimes the other route is indeed better*

WebShaman | Asylum D & D | D & D Min Page

And to expand slightly on Brucew's post - the actions taking place in Iraq right now are simply a continuation of what Britain and France began at the end of the 19th century. Russia and the US joined in a few decades later, and none of the four nations have stopped screwing with the region since.

Okay Kropula - so if someone were to tell you that the Bible is incontrovertible fact..?

Fact or not, some people believe it is. Some people withhold judgement whilst thinking critically. Still others dsibelieve it entirely, whether or not they have read it.

The advantage with this particular choice of article is that its readers should be capable of looking into it, finding out the supporting facts and data and studying the source. I could have typed something very similar (but with contradicting 'facts') and passed it off in exactly the same way; therefore my assertion that 'these are facts' could have be taken as 'complete bull'.

I hope that is explicit enough.

(Edited by White Hawk on 09-11-2004 22:21)

quote:

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DL-44 said:

And to expand slightly on Brucew's post - the actions taking
place in Iraq right now are simply a continuation of what Britain and
France began at the end of the 19th century. Russia and the US joined
in a few decades later, and none of the four nations have stopped
screwing with the region since.

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Exactly. Britain and France were still building empires in the 19th century while the US busied itself with continental expansion through genocide, or the current term, ethnic cleansing. The collapse of the French and British empires in the early to mid 20th century left a gap which the Soviets and the US filled with empire building of their own.

With the collapse of the Soviet empire, that left just one, the American empire, with absolutely no controls, checks or balances on its imperial or empirical aims. (And occassionally we use proxies, France and Britain, to achieve our aims. It's fairly easy to dupe them into it, given their own empire-building histories. Just tweak their egos and they're off on the scent.)

Couple this with the arrogance of US leadership--government, military and corporate--and I'm amazed at how many Americans are so completely clueless about why so many in the world hate us.

History teaches us that empires come and empires go. This no doubt has as much to do with the human condtion as it does with Nature trying to maintain a balance. (Too many owls, the lemming population collapes. Too many lemmings, the owl population booms.)

We live in interesting times. It will be interesting, (and no doubt very painful for Joe Six-pack) when the American empire begins to crumble from it's own overgrown bulk, the hatred of others towards it, and Nature's attempts to restore balance to a madly out of balance situation.

I certainly enjoy the benefits of the American empire and I, quite selfishly, don't want to see it end and give up those benefits. I fear that it will end, and well within my lifetime. And don't forget, I'm among the oldest inmates here.

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I fear that it will end, and well within my lifetime.

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Frightening indeed, for us.

Even more interesting to me, it may be far more frightening for the rest of the world than most would actually like to think.

For, as much evil as the US may contribute to the world, it also contributes a great deal of good (though for the most part this is through entirely self-preserving means....).

The vaccum left after the collapse of the only real empire left is definately frightening to ponder...

^Amen.

WebShaman | Asylum D & D | D & D Min Page

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Even more interesting to me, it may be far more frightening for the rest of the world than most would actually like to think.

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Indeed.

Sorry. It was my own selfishness showing when I neglected to include others' pain when speculating on the collapse of the American empire.

The sort of thing that's been going on for the last half-century or so in Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia, are all the direct result of the withdrawal of empire years ago. Which is not to say recent (say the last 100-150 years or so) empires have been beneficial to those areas. They have not. However the power vacuum created with the withdrawal of empire, has made bad situations worse.