Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
July
29, 2003
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Stop the Wall!
July
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses...Again
Robert
Fisk
The Ugly Story of Camp Cropper: The
US Torture Camp in Iraq
David
Lindorff
Dumb and Dumber in Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Ashcroft Demands Death Penalty in
Puerto Rico
David
Vest
Dylan in Bend
Tom Turnipseed
Killing Saddam & His Family Won't Stop Killing of US Troops
Douglas
Valentine
A Nation of Assassins
Stew Albert
Contract Killing
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Report on Palestinian Child Prisoners
July
23, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Caesar's Favor
David
Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft
Rebuked
Mano
Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists
Steve
Perry
Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies
John Stanton
Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope?
Patrick
Bond
Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission
Harry Browne
A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman
Paul
Beaulieu
When the WTO Comes to Montreal
Robert
Fisk
The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance
Will Grow
William
Witherup
Georgie Porgie
Website
of the Day
Lieberman & Falwell:
True Love at Last
July
22, 2003
Diane
Christian
Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces;
Peace Frees
Jeremy
Brecher
Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran
Steve
Kretzmann
and Jim Vallette
Plugging Iraq into Globalization
Sam
Smith
Greening the Golden Triangle
James
Plummer
Smile, You're on Federal Camera
Lucretia
Stewart
This Day Shall Not Define My Life:
January 18, 2003
Website
of the Day
Iraq Coalition Casualties
July
21, 2003
Edward
Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping
of Arabs
Ron
Jacobs
Shut Up and Shoot
Allan J.
Lichtman
Why is George Bush President?
Elaine
Cassel
How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment
Camps
Bruce
Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica
Website
of the Day
John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim
by Claim
July
19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
July
18, 2003
David
Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo
Rahul
Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep
John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World
Harold
A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave
Alvaro
Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists
David
Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island
Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal
Website
of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
July
29, 2003
Dead
Reckoning
Bush
Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
By CHRIS FLOYD
The armchair warriors who directed the American-led
conquest of Iraq would like us to believe that the estimated
10,000 innocent civilians who died in the invasion were simply
unfortunate, inadvertant, unavoidable, accidental victims of
a just and noble action. No one wanted these innocent
people to die. Surely no American leader ever knowingly
ordered a mission with the certain knowledge that innocent people
were going to be killed by it. These deaths just happened;
no one is to blame for them.
That's what the armchair warriors tell
the world -- and themselves too, no doubt, when they look into
the mirror every morning. But like almost every other statement
issued by the Bush Regime on the subject of Iraq, this comforting
fairytale is a cynical, blood-soaked lie. To take just one example:
American military commanders revealed last week that up to 1,500
civilian deaths were personally approved by Pentagon chief Donald
Rumsfeld.
In a debriefing for American and "Coalition"
brass, U.S. Lieutenant General Michael Mosley confirmed that
all air war commanders were required to get Rumsfeld's direct
approval for any airstrike that would likely kill more than 30
innocent people, the New York Times reports. That certainly sounds
like admirably strict oversight for such a momentous battlefield
decision. In practice, however, Rumsfeld's management of the
process was based on the same philosophy that his boss George
W. Bush applied to death-penalty cases when he was governor of
Texas: "What the hell, let 'em fry!"
More than 50 times, Rumsfeld was approached
with mission plans likely to leave at least 30 innocent people
vaporized and mutilated by unstoppable high-tech weaponry crashing
down on them without warning, without the slightest chance of
escape. More than 50 times, Rumsfeld signed his name to these
multiple death-warrants: every such mission was approved, said
Mosley.
Of course, an accurate count of the civilians
killed at Rumsfeld's direct order is impossible to obtain. In
the fiery chaos of the invasion, hundreds, perhaps thousands
of dead civilians were buried in makeshift graves, unmarked graves,
even mass graves, often by strangers. These corpses may never
be fully accounted for. So we must make do with estimates. We
could lowball it--an average of, say, "only" six civilian
deaths per mission instead of the likely 30--and come up with
a figure of 300 innocent men, women and children eviscerated
at Rumsfeld's personal command. A more contentious high-balling--an
average of 50 civilian deaths per mission--would give us at least
2,500 innocent men, women and children burned to death and blown
to bits on Rumsfeld's order: a number approaching the death toll
of the September 11 attacks.
Bushist minions would doubtless say that
this "collateral damage" is the unintentional by-product
of actions designed to achieve strictly military objectives.
What's more, American forces placed unprecedented restraints
on their rules of engagement precisely to avoid civilian casulties.
True enough. But when the overall military
action itself is unjust--based on the calculated perversion of
public trust by lies invoking an "imminent threat"
which was patently non-existent, and on the constantly insinuated
blood libel that Iraq was somehow complicit in the September
11 massacres; when, furthermore, the military action is illegal--an
act of unilateral aggression unsanctioned by international law,
the UN Charter or the Constitution of the United States (which
does not give Congress the authority to delegate its warmarking
powers to the personal whim of the president)--then the innocent
deaths that result from such an action cannot be "justified"
as the result of "normal" wartime operations.
In this context of illegality, the Bushists
are left with nothing but the logic of gangsterism--an "Al
Capone" Defense: "I tried real hard not to kill too
many innocent bystanders when I robbed that bank." No court
would accept such "restraint" as mitigation for murders
committed in the course of criminal activity.
It's clear that the civilian deaths caused
by the invasion of Iraq cannot be ascribed to some bloodless
abstraction--"the fortunes of war," etc.,--but are
instead the direct personal responsibility of all those in the
national leadership of America and Britain who concocted and
promulgated this illicit enterprise. And the greatest share of
guilt must go to those who wield the greatest authority. The
blood of hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent people is thus
smeared across the snarling visage of Donald Rumsfeld.
But the ultimate responsibility must
be laid at the ultimate authority, the man who indeed insists
that it was his imperial will alone that launched the invasion:
George W. Bush. True, it's painfully obvious that he is the witless
mouthpiece of ideological extremists like Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney--those
Bolsheviki of the boardroom. In fact, Bush is apparently
ignorant of the actual events that led up to the war: in one
of his very rare unscripted remarks, he panicked and told reporters
last week that he invaded Iraq only after Saddam Hussein "wouldn't
allow UN inspectors into the country"--a breathtaking display
of disassociation from reality.
Nonetheless, this fatuous delusionary
willingly placed himself at the head of the extremist junta that
is now bankrupting his own country and killing thousands of innocent
people as it runs roughshod over the world. His carefully-cultivated
ignorance doesn't excuse his guilt. He may hope, as his accomplice
Tony Blair pathetically declared last week, that "history
will forgive us" for waging war under false pretenses; but
in their unmarked graves, the murdered dead will forever call
him to account
Chris Floyd
is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor
to CounterPunch. My CounterPunch piece on Rumsfeld's
plan to provoke terrorist attacks came in at Number 4
on Project Censored's final tally of the Most Censored
stories of 2002. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|