Gonzo Answers Three Questions at Press Conference
Then Runs
DENNIS KUCINICH FOR PRESIDENT
Of course, he will not even be nominated, but he is the only really sane one in the bunch so far.
Illustration 1: The Absurd Times editorial staff has decided to endorse Dennis Kucinich for President, thus ending all speculation.
Illustration 2: Contest: The Artistic Staff has suggested a contest: Who will be the next to go? Gonzo? Rove? Rice? Cheney? Winner gets a free illustration of Olmert. In fact, everyone gets one right now, voting or not. We want to be fair, after all. It seems Bush has stopped supporting him.
Some of what happened this week defies comment. Years ago, Max Horkheimer wrote The Eclipse of Reason. I believe we have seen its hospitalization.
Gonzales was asked if he would resign, and he said “no”.
When asked why he would stay, he said “for the children.” I kid you not. And he did it with a straight face! Gonzo’s Assistant testified this week, someone named Monica (always a Monica), but she took the fifth. After all, this is the justice department.
The Senate wanted testimony from Gonzales, Rove, and Meyers about the firing of the prosecutors. Bush offered a compromise: He will pick who gets to ask questions, what questions, no oath, a secret room, no tape, no transcript, no notes. The Senate then issued subpoenas. The Decider called it partisan.
A bill passed to fund the war, but it also said to end it. The Decider called it partisan and says he will veto it. The Democrats who voted against it didn’t want any funding at all. If he vetos it, he is denying the money our troops need (he says).
The European Union recognized the democratically elected government of Palestine. Israel and the U.S. will not, the wall is still being built, and members of the Palestinian Parliament are still locked up in Israeli prisons. Contrary to what is on our media, Israel will not accept the proposal from Saudia Arabia offering full recognition by 22 Arab states and full guarantees if only Israel obeys U.N. Resolution 242, withdrawal from occupied territories.
Iran captured 15 British warriors. Iran will continue its violation of a nuclear free Middle East. Israel has between 200 and 300 nuclear bombs.
The Senate joined the House in putting a deadline for the end of the war on the war-money bill.
Meanwhile, Iran said they would return the female prisoner, but the British said it had proof it was in Iraqi waters and speculation is that they will invade or try to liberate them by force. That would be insane, but that is not sufficient, let alone necessary, reason to stop Blair.
Meanwhile, the US has 10 warships and 100 jets in the “Persian Gulf,” buzzing around and making all sorts of maneuvers. Speculation is that our administration is trying to “send a message.” What is it with these “messages”? Can they not find a more cost-effective way of sending messages? E-mail, perhaps? A phone call?
The British offerred “proof” that they were in Iraqi waters, a photo of co-ordinates and a boat taken from a plane. I found it aboust as convincing as Colin Powell’s proof offerred at the U.N. that was used to start this who thing.
Oh yes, Pat Tillman’s mother stated that the Arizona Cardinals Cornerback was against the move to Iraq when we killed him and kept it quiet. This did not make the major news – she was interviewed on ESPN Radio on the Dan Patrick show.
An interview with Kucinich (#1, below) explains why he voted against the bill and what is really meant by universal health care, among other things.
1) An Interview with Dennis Kucinich. In case you miss it, his site is http://www.Kucinich.us
“This Isn’t American Idol, We’re Choosing the President of the United States” - Kucinich on Corporate Media Campaign Coverage
2) A Release by an activist group on Health Care.
Many good things are happening
by Marilyn Clement; Portside; March 24, 2007
3) A very detailed summary of human right and how valued they are.
| ZNet | Human Rights |
| Richard Holbrooke, Samantha Power, and the “Worthy-Genocide” Establishment
(Kafka Era Studies Number 5) |
| by Edward S. Herman; March 24, 2007 |
1) “This Isn’t American Idol, We’re Choosing the President of the United States” - Kucinich on Corporate Media Campaign Coverage
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/28/1335231
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D - OH) was one of eight Congressmembers to vote against the House war-spending bill last week that set a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. We go to Capitol Hill to speak with Kucinich about the bill, why he thinks impeachment “should be on the table,” the corporate media’s coverage of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and more. [rush transcript included]
On Capitol Hill the Democratic-led Senate has moved closer to passing a war-spending bill that will give President Bush $100 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and also require U.S. combat troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq.
On Tuesday Republican lawmakers attempted to pass an amendment removing the troop withdrawal plan from the bill. But the amendment was defeated by a 50 to 48 vote after Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska voted with the Democrats on the measure.
President Bush has vowed to veto the legislation if it includes a timetable for withdrawal. Meanwhile, anti-war activists continue to pressure lawmakers to reject the bill as well because it allows for the war to continue for another year.
In Burlington Vermont, police arrested eight protesters yesterday after they refused to leave the offices of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders has been a long-time opponent of the war but supports the spending bill.
Sanders said it would be counterproductive to vote against the spending bill. He said, “That would mean voting with the Bush Administration and congressional Republicans and handing a victory to those who want to continue and perhaps expand the war into neighboring countries.”
Last week eight anti-war Democrats voted against the supplemental spending bill when it came before the House. One of those lawmakers, Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, joins us from Capitol Hill. Congressman Kucinich is also running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
· Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D - OH)
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: Last week, eight anti-war Democrats voted against the supplemental spending bill when it came before the house. One of those lawmakers, Congress member Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, joins us from Capitol Hill. Congress member Kucinich is also running for the Democratic Presidential nomination. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Congressman Kucinich.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Good morning Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Good to have you with us. First of all, as you stand overlooking the capitol, talk about your vote against the war funding bill.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, we were given false choices. We were told that we either buy into president Bush’s plan, which is keep the war going indefinitely, or accept the Democratic version of the war in Iraq, which would keep the war going for another year or two. I say those choices weren’t sufficient.
The Democrats could have refused to send a bill forward. We didn’t have to fund this war. We’re not under any obligation to keep the war going. And yet our leaders took another path. Furthermore, Amy, you may be interested to know that the 2008 budget, which is before Congress today and will be voted on tomorrow, contains another $145 billion for the war, and on top of that, they’re putting another $50 billion for the war in fiscal year 2009.
So this talk about ending the war by March or by September belies the fact that the budget has money in it to keep the war going into 2009. And I think that’s wrong. I think the American people will reject that type of thinking, and I’m standing strong to say get out now. I put forth a plan embodied in HR 1234. To accomplish just that.
AMY GOODMAN: But what do you say to those make the argument that if president Bush has on his desk a bill that gives money, gives a fortune in continuing the war, and he has to veto it because he doesn’t like the timetable, that this puts him in a very difficult position?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Our decisions have to be way above politics. We have the lives of our troops at stake here. There’s no military victory in Iraq. We’re there illegally. The occupation is fueling the insurgency. Democrats can still, after president Bush vetoes the bill, which he will, Democrats can still take the right position, which is refuse to fund the war, use money in the pipeline to bring the troops home.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the pressure from the leadership, the Democratic Party, from the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, all of the stories going around of Congress members voting for the funding so that they could help out the spinach farmers, etc.?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: On matters of war and peace, I think people have to vote their conscience. I can say I wasn’t pressured.
AMY GOODMAN: But what about those that were, and what about the spending bill going way beyond funding wars?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: It’s a legitimate concern. I mean, if you’re for peace, you vote for peace. If you’re for peace, you don’t vote for war because somebody’s giving you a plum in a bill that’s designed to keep a war going. I think the American people want new leadership which understands that if you’re for peace, you vote for peace, you don’t fund wars.
And so I’m moving forward with a plan, it’s embodied in HR 1234 that would stop the funding and the occupation, close the bases, bring the troops home, and set in motion a parallel process that would stabilize Iraq with the help of the international community, which will only help, by the way, unless, you know, if the United States takes a new course and ends the occupation.
So my plan envisions that America will take a new direction. What’s happening right now, Amy, is we’re looking in this budget, and people, and Democrats that look at this budget today are going to be surprised to find out that our leaders are proposing keeping the war going into 2009.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me play a clip of you, of House Speaker—for you, of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushing for the passage of the supplemental spending bill. This was her comment after the bill passed.
HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: Proudly this new Congress voted to bring an end to the war in Iraq. It took one great, giant step in that direction. We voted “NO” to giving a blank check to an open-ended commitment, a war without end, to the President of the United States, and “Yes” to begin the end of the war and the redeployment of our troops.
AMY GOODMAN: I then want to play for you a clip of President Bush. President Bush’s comment after the House passed the spending bill last week.
PRESIDENT BUSH: This bill has too much pork, too many conditions, and an artificial timetable for withdrawal. As I made clear for weeks, I will veto if it comes to my desk. And because the vote in the House was so close, it is clear that my veto would be sustained. Today’s action in the House does only one thing, it delays the delivery of vital resources for our troops.
AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Dennis Kucinich, your response.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, the Democrats’ position should have been and can still be, that we refuse to fund the war, that we don’t give this president a dime to keep the war going, that we use money in the pipeline to bring the troops home and set in motion a parallel process that would secure Iraq. We’re under no obligation to keep this war going.
But I would say, Amy, that if you look at the budget, which is facing Congress tomorrow, it provides not only $145 billion for fiscal year ‘08 for the war, for all of it, but another $50 billion for fiscal year 2009. I wonder how that squares with Democratic leaders’ position that they want to bring the troops home in March or in September of next year. There’s something that’s contradictory here.
So I’m going to try to see if I can reconcile that today in Congress by talking to leadership and alerting my fellow members that money is in the budget to keep this war going past President Bush’s term. President Bush has been very clear. He’s going to keep this war going through the end of his term. I say that American should get out now, that it’s not a choice between President Bush or keeping the war going another year, year and a half. We need to get out now, and we need to let the troops know we truly support them, by bringing them home.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Kucinich, what would getting out now look like? I mean, do you mean, for example, today, you begin the process, and when would the soldiers be home if—well, if you were president, Dennis Kucinich?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I crafted my plan with the help of the people at the UN, and I will tell you that they say that it would take about two months, three months to mobilize a sufficient force that would replace US Troops leaving. So I say two to three months we could have troops home and have an international force that would help stabilize Iraq. But the international community will not become involved as long as the United States intends to occupy Iraq and keep bases open. So we need to take a new direction.
My plan would be as follows: to put in place the provisions of HR 1234, which ends the occupation, closes the bases, sets in motion a plan to bring the troops home, bring in international peacekeepers, and stop the privatization of Iraq oil. One of the things in the bill that passed the House was a demand that the Iraq government pass a hydrocarbon act which sets the stage for broad privatization of trillions of dollars of Iraqi oil interests.
Now, think about it. If Democrats had told the American people last October that if you vote democrat in November, we’ll not only give you enough money to keep the war going through the end of President Bush’s term, but we’ll also privatize the oil of Iraq and then help the US oil companies win the prize that I think the war was all about from the very beginning. I don’t think the people would have voted Democrat. So Democrats have to keep faith with the American people.
My plan would do that, by returning full control of the Iraqi oil assets to the Iraqi people. Put in motion a plan for reconciliation between Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, which cannot happen as long as the United States occupies. Provide for honest reconstruction, you know, none of these contractors from the US can be there. They’ve stolen money from the Iraqi people and also from the US taxpayers.
We have to give the Iraqi people jobs with Iraqi contractors doing the work. We have to provide for reparations so that we can pay money to the Iraqi people who have lost their homes or lost the lives of loved ones. We have to stabilize energy and food prices. And when Iraq goes to the international community, make sure that Iraq doesn’t suffer from the structural readjustment provisions of the IMF or the World Bank.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Congress member Kucinich to Halliburton saying they’re moving to Dubai?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I think the honest thing would be to have a good Attorney General call Halliburton in and start the questioning of them about their conduct, and I think that they should not be immune from prosecution simply because they’re moving to Dubai.
AMY GOODMAN: We continue with Dennis Kucinich from Ohio, Democratic Presidential hopeful. He is standing right outside the Capitol right now. You mentioned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. What do you think should happen to him?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: It’s very clear that the Justice Department has become so politicized that it cannot function in the interests of the American people. The honorable thing would be for Mr. Gonzales to resign.
AMY GOODMAN: And if he doesn’t resign, should he be fired? Should the President fire him?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think he’s doing what the President has asked him to do. The question here is what’s his sense of honor about his responsibility to the law and to the American people. That’s going to be his decision.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of the President, what do you think should happen to President Bush? Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, said that impeachment is off the table. What are your thoughts?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I don’t think that it’s wise for the House and the Congress, for co-equal branches of government, to essentially give the President carte blanche in his decision making by saying no matter what you do, impeachment is off the table. I think that impeachment has to be on the table, and I also think that it’s time to have a national conversation in cities, in towns all over America about the appropriate conduct for a President and a Vice President, about whether it’s right for a President and Vice President to lie to the American people and take us into war. About the erosion of civil rights in America and how that’s come about as a result of this administration’s conduct of the war.
I think that it’s time to have that kind of a discussion, and I’ve urged that from my website at kucinich.us, and I’m asking to hear from people about what they think, and I think that we need to make sure that this President understands that he can’t do whatever he wants, that he is bound by the constitution, that he is bound by national and international law.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Kucinich, you’ve mentioned the word treason. What do you mean?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I don’t think I mentioned the word treason.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you talked about President Bush and treason?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: No, I’ve never—I never mentioned the word treason. I do think that accountability is a key word here. And I think the President and the Vice President must be held accountable. That’s why I think it’s a mistake for anyone to say impeachment is off the table. At the same time, we have to take a responsibility as members of Congress to uphold the constitution of the United States. That’s our obligation as a co-equal branch of government.
So I’m waiting to hear from the American people. I would ask people who are listening or watching to go to my website at: www.kucinich.us. I’d like to hear from you. What do you think? Should the House move forward with a resolution of impeachment and what do you think the dimensions of it should be? I want to hear from the American people on this.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the Center for Constitutional Rights going to Germany to file a complaint against former Congress member—or rather, former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld? It’s not only against him, it’s against Alberto Gonzales, it’s against General Sanchez and Miller for torture, over the issue of torture.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I think that all members of this administration, including the President, the Vice President, and all the other officials you mentioned, should be held accountable under international law, and that that accountability does not expire with the expiration of the term of this President. America at some point is going to have to restore its moral equilibrium, which has been lost, because this administration took us into a war based on lies. They all have to be held accountable. They must be held accountable, not only under national, but international law.
AMY GOODMAN: When you came to the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, you talked about holding hearings around the FCC, heading up a committee that is responsible for the FCC, I think it’s the Domestic Policy Subcommittee the House Oversight on Government Reform Committee. What do you plan to do?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, our committee just started its work last week. The Domestic Policy Subcommittee has jurisdiction over the Federal Communications Commission. It’s been 20 years since we’ve had and hearings at all on the Fairness Doctrine. It’s been a long time since Congress has held hearings on the concentration in the electronic media.
And so I want to proceed with hearings sometime in the next few months that would review the—those animating principles of the FCC embodied in the Federal Communications Act of 1934, and that is that the electronic media shall serve in the public interest, convenience, and necessity. I want to hold that up and see if today’s conditions corresponds to what it was that gave the public the inclination to cause electronic media to be licensed and if the licensees have kept faith with the American people.
AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Kucinich, you also just returned from New York, where you held a news conference on universal healthcare. How does your plan differ from, for example, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York Senator, also Democratic hopeful – Presidential hopeful, also said she supports universal healthcare.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, it differs in every way. Everyone in this campaign is for universal healthcare. But what Senator Clinton, Senator Edwards, and others are talking about is having the insurance companies still in charge of healthcare, of having the government subsidize the insurance companies or forcing people to buy insurance or have the government subsidize the purchase of insurance.
Look, the President of the United States shouldn’t be an insurance salesman. The President should stand for a position where everyone is covered, that’s what my bill does. The Conyers-Kucinich Bill, HR 676, Medicare for all, it ends for-profit medicine, it is a single-payer system which recognizes we’re spending $2.2 trillion a year on healthcare, but 31% of that, or $660 billion, goes for the activities of the for-profit system.
Take that money, put it into healthcare, and you have enough money to cover every medical need, including dental care, vision care, mental health, prescription drug, and long-term care. Healthcare is a right, it’s not a privilege. Senator Clinton’s plan helps the insurance companies, it keeps the for-profit system going, and my plan ends the for-profit system and uses the savings to provide healthcare for everyone.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the media coverage of the Democratic Presidential race right now? A lot of attention on both Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Obama and Clinton. Of course, last time you also ran for president, and there was a major issue the day after you took Ted Koppel to task at ABC for asking questions about polls and money as opposed to issues on your positions. The next day, the so-called embedded reporter in your campaign was pulled, the ABC reporter. What about the coverage now?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: My concern wasn’t so much whether reporters were embedded in my campaign, as much as it was the fact that mainstream media reports were embedded with the war. But as far as my own campaign, look, I’m bringing issues forth to the American people. We’re organizing in places like New Hampshire, where the Democratic Party just came out in favor of single-payer healthcare, not for profit. My campaign is about organizing door-to-door and grass roots fundraising, and people who want to get involved can go to kucinich.us and help us.
I’m not going to be on my knees begging for attention from the mainstream media. They have to realize that they have a responsibility as broadcast licensees to provide coverage to all the candidates. After all, this isn’t “American idol”, we’re choosing a President of the United States. The American people have a right to a substantive discussion about those issues that affect their lives, such as war and peace, such as poverty and prosperity, healthcare for all, or keep the insurance companies in business in healthcare.
We need a new discussion, and I appreciate the chance to be on Democracy Now!, because I know your audience is an audience of people with principle, of activism, and I’m confident that when they hear what I stand for, they’ll be interested in joining this campaign.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, President Kucin—finally, Congress member Kucinich, the men and women who have gone AWOL, there have been thousands of them, some are being court-martialed, like Lieutenant Aaron Witada will be court-martialed again. It was a mistrial in his first trial, first Officer to say no to war, to deployment to Iraq. What do you think should happen to these men? Augustine Aguayo, an Army medic who applied for CO status, didn’t get it, and is now in prison in Germany. Do you support their saying “no”? Do you support their refusing to go to Iraq or redeploy to Iraq?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I support the troops who serve and also those who don’t feel it’s right to serve. I think we have to ask our troops to be able to reserve the right of their conscience, and if they feel it’s the right thing to go forward, then we support that. If they feel it’s not the right thing, we should support that, too. I think we’re in a point in the history of this country where many people have looked at the war and realized that it’s wrong. Some of those people are soldiers. Soldiers are put in an impossible situation, not only those who are committed to serving in Iraq, but also those who know that the war is wrong and who question the war. I think we have to love our troops, whatever situation they find themselves in. And the way to support them is to bring them home.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think they should be court-martialed?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: You know, I don’t think that anyone who’s taken a principles and conscientious position should be subject to a court-martial. They should be permitted to leave the service if they so desire, but not be forced through that kind of a process. I think, you know, there has to be an underlying truth here, and the underlying truth is the war was wrong, period. The war is based on lies. We should support our troops by bringing them home, and we should support those who have challenged the war by giving them a chance to leave honorably.
AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Kucinich, I want to thank you for joining us from the Capitol. Ohio Congress member and Democratic Presidential hopeful.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Thank you Amy.
www.democracynow.org
2)
ZNet | Social Policy
Many good things are happening
by Marilyn Clement; Portside; March 24, 2007
Many good things are happening across the nation as the single payer movement continues to develop. People ask the question, ‘How could this have happened? How is it that there is only one healthcare plan in the nation that has a huge constituency of support? And we know the answer. It is because of your work. Here are some of the exciting developments in the single payer movement:
1. We now have 62 co-sponsors of H.R. 676 in just two months following its reintroduction in this new Congress—as a result of your efforts.
2. The AFL-CIO has joined us as an endorser of single payer.
How did this happen? It happened because of the movement of
local unions from the bottom up who studied the bill, endorsed
it, and urged the AFL-CIO to join us over the past eighteen
months. One volunteer, Kay Tillow, has worked tirelessly to make
this happen.
3. Act-Up has joined us - one ofthe most militant organizations in the U.S. -the group that challenged Congress and the healthcare agencies to do the research and help to stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic in the 80’s and 90’s. Now they have made single payer, national healthcare their #1 issue.
4. The National Organization for Women has formally endorsed.
5. Newspapers all over the country are studying the issue, and many are endorsing. City councils are signing on. Two state democratic parties, New Hampshire and Washington State have endorsed single payer and will be pushing the national Democrats to move forward toward single payer in the coming election.
6. We met with the New York Times this week in a very good exchange on the issue.
7. And Congressman Conyers is planning a briefing for Congress members and the public on April 24th in Washington, D.C. YOU ARE INVITED. Be in touch with joel.segal@mail.house.gov for more details.
One of the friends of single payer in the U.S. Congress is
Maurice Hinchey. In addition to being a strong endorser of H.R.
676, he has introduced legislation that has forced the FDA to
create new rules to protect us from the drug profiteers. When we
achieve a national single payer system in the United States, we
will have a system where the single payer (probably Medicare)
will negotiate the cost of all drugs for all of us and have a
strong mechanism for protecting our people.
We will have several elements of good business practices as a
part of our national healthcare program including ‘negotiating
prices,’ ‘eliminating the unnecessary middle man (the insurance
companies)’ and ‘purchasing in bulk’both durable medical
equipment and prescription drugs since there will be 300 million
of us in one large purchasing pool. This will be another of the
great savings that will provide us with a quality healthcare
system for all without spending any additional money.
Businesses, employees and employers will all save money. No more co-pays or deductibles and no more denials and out-of- pocket expenses for necessary medical care.
Hinchey’s legislation and the FDA’s response are described in
today’s story. F.D.A. Rule Limits Role of Advisers Tied to
Industry. The new rules would bar government advisers who
receive money from a drug or device maker from voting on that
company’s products.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/washington/22fda.html?th&emc=th
As the story notes, this is not the ultimate solution to the problem of FDA complicity with the drug profiteers,but it is a start.
H.R. 676, Conyers’ United States National Health Insurance Act,
is the only bill in Congress that pushes for a non-profit
national healthcare system that will serve us all. It is the
only bill among the many that have been introduced recently and
among the state bills that are being considered that eliminates
the role of the insurance companies, both in government-funded
programs such as Medicare and SCHIP (the child healthcare
program) and in the healthcare fund that will provide excellent
healthcare to all of us.
As a result of the elimination of the insurance companies’ role
in healthcare, we will be able to cover one-third more
healthcare. In other words, we could cover one-third more
children if we didn’t have insurance companies in the middle of
the SCHIP program. We can cover one-third more people in the
United States and provide 100% better benefits for all of us
with H.R. 676.
Under single payer, H.R. 676, we will eliminate the waiting
lines that keep about 50 million of our people suffering and
dying, and we will be able to provide much better benefits,
doctors who don’t have to spend their time satisfying hundreds
of insurance companies, hospitals that don’t have to spend
billions of dollars on exacting payment for hundreds of
insurance, government and individual payers, mental healthcare,
drug and alcohol treatment for all who need it; payment for
prescription drugs; long-term care (how many of us have no
long-term care insurance now?) and more. Everybody in; nobody out!’
Here are some of the things that you can do immediately to push
forward real single payer legislation, H.R. 676. See more ideas
at our website www.healthcare-now.org
1. Visit the editorial board of your newspaper;
2. Send letters to the editors and to columnists and writers of newspapers nationwide including the New York Times editorial board;
3. Get on the list for newspaper articles on a daily basis (write joykal1@aol.com)
4. HOLD AN EVENT or HEARING this coming month (APRIL) or soon in your neighborhood or state (See guidelines for organizing on our website.
http://www.healthcare-now.org/action/how_to.htm.
INVITE YOUR CONGRESS MEMBER. But don’t wait on Congress. It is
the people’s movement rising up from the bottom that will get us
a national single payer healthcare system. No Congress or
Presidential candidate is going to provide us with the
healthcare system weneed without our massive efforts;
5. Call us for organizing suggestions. 1-800-453-1305 ; info@healthcare-now.org;
6. Make a contributionto Healthcare-NOW- now! Get a free book.
We really need your support NOW.
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2264;
7. Order beautiful Martin Luther King, Jr National Healthcare
Month posters and our ‘Improved Medicare for All’ booklet in
Spanish or English. Bulk copies from our printers.
priority press@optonline.org;
8. Plan to VISIT YOUR MEMBER of CONGRESS in his/her local office during the first two weeks of April. Thank your members if they have signed onto H.R. 676. Insist that they do so if they have not;
9. Call or Fax Congressman Pete Stark’s office to be sure that
H.R. 676 is a part of the agenda for his healthcare hearings in
May. Phone: (202) 225-5065; Fax: (202) 226-3805;
10. Get your City Council, State Legislature, Democratic or
Republican State Committee, Union, Faith Community, Club,
Community Organization or Local Business to endorse H.R. 676.
See the growing list of endorsers at
http://www.healthcare-now.org/endorse676.php:
11. Get a copy of John Conyers’ inspirational 6 minute dvd
‘Giant Steps’from Healthcare-NOW. See it on You Tube.
12. See our homepage to read about or use the power point about the problems with all of the other proposals being offered www.Healthcare-now.org.
Remember ‘We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.’
Marilyn Clement, NationalCoordinator
Healthcare-NOW
www.healthcare-now.org
1-800-453-1305
info@healthcare-now.org
* * *
3.
| ZNet | Human Rights |
| Richard Holbrooke, Samantha Power, and the “Worthy-Genocide” Establishment
(Kafka Era Studies Number 5) |
| by Edward S. Herman; March 24, 2007 |
It may seem odd to speak of a worthy-genocide establishment, with Richard Holbrooke and Samantha Power as notable members, but we are living in the Kafka era, when major genocidists and their friends and allies can get very passionate and even win Pulitzer Prizes for their denunciation of some genocides and “problems from hell” while actually facilitating, ignoring and apologizing for others. [1] Worthy genocides are those mass killings carried out by bad people, notably U.S. enemies and targets, and they receive great attention and elicit much passion; the unworthy ones are carried out by the United States or one of its client states, and they receive little attention or indignation and are not labelled genocides, even where the scale of killings greatly exceeds those so designated, obviously based on political utility. As the United States is an aggressive superpower that has been “projecting power” and opposing popular and revolutionary movements on a global scale since World War II, a very good case can be made that the unworthy genocides that it has carried out or supported have been predominant over the past half century—that it has been the source of more “problems from hell” than any other state.
It follows that a man like Richard Holbrooke, who has been a part of the U.S. foreign policy establishment for over 40 years, is likely to have been a participant in the genocides that have taken place during that period. Thus, while Holbrooke regularly speaks and gets a warm welcome from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard and from Human Rights Watch, [2] we should recall that he was an official of the U.S. government during the Vietnam war era, from 1962 through 1969; he was the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in charge of Indonesian relations during the Carter administration, and during the worst and most genocidal phase of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor in 1977-1978. He was also an official of the Clinton administration, and eventually the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in the years when the United States was enforcing the “sanctions of mass destruction” on Iraq.
If we measure “genocide” by the numbers deliberately and intentionally killed and the threat these actions pose to the survival of the target population, all three of these episodes in which Holbrooke was involved qualify for inclusion. In the case of Vietnam, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, given the lack of U.S. establishment interest in Vietnamese casualties the actual number killed is uncertain within the range of millions, but serious estimates run up to three million or more dead, unknown millions more injured or traumatized, a land devastated and widely ruined by bombs and chemicals, and as late as 1997 an estimated 500,000 children mentally or physically deformed as a result of ruthless chemical warfare. [3] Indonesia’s invasion-occupation resulted in the death of an estimated 200,000 East Timorese out of a total population of approximately 800,000, or a quarter of the total. The sanctions of mass destruction imposed on Iraq by the UN under U.S. influence and pressure resulted in the deaths of probably a million or more people, only some 6 percent of the total, but an absolutely very large number—ten times the total killed in Bosnia in the years 1992-1995. The two most famous quotes regarding these Iraq sanctions are those of Holbrooke’s boss Madeleine Albright, telling Leslie Stahl on CBS in 1996 that the price of the sanctions, 500,000 dead children, was “worth it;” the other quote, by John and Karl Mueller, in Foreign Affairs in June 1999, was that the sanctions of mass destruction “may well have been a necessary cause of the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history.”
Holbrooke was only a lesser official during the Vietnam war era, but on the basis of principles laid down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) whereby participants in a “joint criminal enterprise” (JCE) will be found guilty if they pursued a military-political end in common with other criminals, [4] Holbrooke would easily qualify. His role as a genocidist is far clearer in the East Timor case where he was the highest State Department official dealing with Indonesia and its East Timor occupation, visiting with Suharto and other Indonesian leaders while the fields were being strewn with dead bodies, and helping implement a policy that aided the genocide. During his tenure Indonesian terror and killings reached their peaks, in the years 1977 and 1978, and during that time the United States continued its support of Indonesia and did nothing to curb the violence. In testimony before Congress on December 4, 1979, Holbrooke lied about the origins of the war and Indonesian responsibility for the deaths, telling Congress that the “welfare of the Timorese people is the major objective of our policy toward East Timor”—a blatant falsehood—and he gave congress a highly favorable portrayal of the genocidal state. [5] U.N. Security Council resolutions condemned Jakarta’s invasion and occupation, but the Carter-Holbrooke team provided Jakarta with advanced counter-insurgency aircraft, which the Indonesian military employed to bomb and napalm the East Timorese, as well as diplomatic protection and steady apologetics for a genocidal pacification progam. No UN Security Council resolution was adopted regarding East Timor after April 22, 1976, through the rest of the Carter administration, despite the escalated killings in the years after 1976. An Australian parliamentary report later described the period as one of “indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World War II history.” [6]
Holbrooke’s role in the initiation and management of the further burst of U.S. organized and supported genocide with the sanctions of mass destruction in Iraq is less clear than in the East Timor case, but he was a high official in the Clinton administration from 1993 onward, and from 1999-2001 was the U.S. Ambassador to the UN. At the least he would qualify as a member of a JCE helping inflict a genocide on Iraq.
It is of course revealing that Richard Holbrooke is a favorite at the Carr Center (see the photo below, with Samantha Power, a former Carr official, and Sarah Sewell, its current Executive Director, casting admiring glances at this notable genocidist) as well as with Human Right Watch. After all, there is the record just noted, and Holbrooke being a former official with continuing political aspirations, may not tell the truth, so that he is someone a human rights group should keep at arms length in order to maintain its independence and integrity. But in the United States, self-righeousness is so great that such principles are unrecognized in the mainstream. Back in the 1980s when the alleged (but false) Bulgarian-KGB link to the shooting of Pope John Paul II was a big issue, Paul Henze, a 30-year CIA veteran and former CIA station chief in Turkey was a major “expert” tapped by the media, who never once suggested any doubts about Henze’s possible bias and compromised credentials as a source. We are so good and right that our high officials and spooks can be trusted to speak unbiased truth, at least for the mainstream media and the Carr Center and HRW.
But in reality, what the warm and collegial Holbrooke link suggests is that the Carr Center and HRW are members of the establishment and will surely speak only partial truths at best. As its name suggests the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy is policy oriented. But it is certainly not oriented to policy assistance for groups and countries under U.S. attack. A dead giveaway is the fact that its current Executive Director, Sarah Sewall, has been a consultant to the Pentagon and is a specialist in counter-insurgency warfare (see her “Modernizing U.S. Counterinsurgency Practice,” Military Review, Sept./Oct., 2006). As a Pentagon consultant, and with other Carr linkages to the government and military establishment, there is no way that Sewall and her associates are going to look objectively at U.S. human rights violations and criticize them in no uncertain terms. They premise the U.S. right to intervene across the globe, their function being to bring it into line with humanitarian principles! (As regards one of its major program areas a Carr description states that: “Ultimately, the project aims to affect the way nations intervene militarily, making the use of military power more consistent with humanitarian principles.”) By the nature of their linkages and rule Carr is going to gloss over U.S. violations of the UN Charter and human rights abuses. It cannot bring in Richard Holbrooke as an honored guest, Samantha Power cannot hold a joint seminar with him at Carr, and Carr cannot attract guest speakers like Central Command General Abizaid, while maintaining any kind of less-than-collegial relationship with government.
In fact, the Carr Center has a relationship with the government very similar to that of various institutes that have dealt with “terrorism.” In a study of the “terrorism industry” in which I engaged some years back, some of the clearest findings were the extent to which that industry’s definitions of terrorism and policy focus coincided with those of the government, and the regularity with which its members served the state and private parties in need of “security” protection from retail terrorists—who were often under siege by state (wholesale) terrorists. [7] It was very clear that Guatemalan peasants being murdered by the genocidal Guatemalan state or members of the African National Congress (ANC) or Angolans under attack by the South African apartheid government were never going to be advised by members of the industry. But the governments attacking them were advised, and those governments were also being serviced at the same time by the U.S. government. The peasants under attack were the “terrorists” and the governments engaging in very serious state terror were, in the Western establishment lexicon, engaging in “counter-terror.” [8] The South African “Terrorism Research Centre” had collegial relations with U.S. and British terrorism research groups and with the CIA, Mossad, and M-16, and the latter three were also closely aligned. The Pentagon defined the ANC as one of “the more notorious terrorism groups,” and terrorism analysts such as Clair Sterling, Paul Wilkinson, Robert Kupperman, Brian Crozier, and Walter Laqueur all worked with the same system of definitions and toward the same ends. Sewall, Power, Holbrooke and General Abizaid are also using similar definitions and working toward the same ends.
One test of the integrity of a human rights group is how it treats aggression by its own government. Given that the U.S. government has carried out major attacks against three countries in the past decade in violation of the UN Charter—the “supreme international crime” according to the Nuremberg Tribunal—the Carr Center and its leaders, like the ICTY and Human Rights Watch, have failed this test by simply ignoring the matter. Similarly, with their government openly engaged in systematic torture at multiple sites across the globe, and using “extraordinary rendition” as a means of supplementary torture, this awkward circumstance has also been dealt with by virtual silence. Carr’s former Director Michael Ignatieff was notorious for positively supporting all three supreme crimes, the first with great enthusiasm, and he was also fairly understanding on the demand for torture in the face of the terrorist threat. [9] Writing on Iraq, and as discussed further below, Carr Center head Sewall and Samantha Power never mention that the United States is an aggressor and that its invasion-occupation of Iraq was a “supreme international crime” in violation of the UN Charter. As with Ignatieff, for Sewall and Power this country has aggression rights.
Another key test of institutional integrity is whether an institution’s leaders are able to maintain some objectivity on official goals or simply premise good intentions. Ignatieff wrote the classic here, asserting that the United States was in Iraq simply to bring democracy and liberate its people, without offering any evidence but the fact that Bush made this claim. [10] Any materialistic or political objective he ruled out in an act of faith. Sara Sewall also simply postulates without any evidence that the Iraq aggression is the “grandest of democratic experiments,” a “liberation from dictatorship by a foreign intervention” that “looks astonishingly humane” in the light of the “hundreds of thousands in Vietnam and Korea,” etc. [11] As with Ignatieff, Sewall never hints at any possible non-benevolent objective in the invasion, never suggests that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company, constructing huge bases in Iraq and with early plans for opening up Iraq’s oil resources to private investors, might have been planning for a less-than-fully-democratic successor regime in Iraq.
Sewall as well as Power also fails the test of integrity in her use of numbers. There were far more than “hundreds of thousands” killed in the U.S. wars in Vietnam and Korea, and they were hardly attempts to liberate those countries from dictatorship—in fact the regime in southern Vietnam was a brutal U.S.-imposed dictatorship that matched that of Saddam Hussein for savagery. Her claim that only 30,000 Iraqi deaths would make the invasion-occupation “astonishingly humane” rests in part on her assumption that the Iraq venture is truly liberating Iraqis, an unconscionable and untenable apologetic premise; it also rests on the assumptions that removal of a distant dictatorship by violence in violation of the UN Charter is not only acceptable but is the only way in which such political change could be brought about. Sewall also criticizes both the Lancet study that found 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths by December 2004 and the Iraq Body Count estimates, stressing the alleged methodological inadequacy of the former and the finding by IBC that the United States may have been responsible for fewer than 40 percent of the deaths; so that “maybe the number isn’t so overwhelming after all.” For Sewall, “the numbers suggest a different character” [than Americans as “trigger-happy cowboys”]. Sewall hasn’t commented as yet on the later findings of perhaps 650,000 to a million civilian deaths in Iraq, [12] and she steers clear of the multi-leveled evidence that her leaders have brought a catastrophe to that country, [13] but I have no doubt she will find the larger numbers and evidence of a major disaster, if not showing astonishing humanity, surely not any basis for harsh criticism of a noble effort.
Samantha Power’s A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, is notable for its intense focus and great indignation at the killings by Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo, where she came in touch with Holbrooke who, Power tells us, “was transformed by firsthand exposure to a crime scene,” in Bosnia [14]--but oddly enough not in East Timor, where no doubt coincidentally the killers were being protected by U.S. leaders, including Holbrooke himself. Power gives the figure of 200,000 dead in Bosnia, 1992-1995, and she uses the word “genocide” for those killings. She doesn’t break down the Bosnian deaths between the various ethnic groups and soldiers versus civilians, and the later finding by two establishment research groups that total deaths on all sides, civilian and military, was about 100,000, suggests further questions about her preoccupation with this area. Sewall of course could find 30,000 Iraqi deaths and 300,000 U.S. deaths under analogous circumstances a triumph of humanity, given the nobility of the aims of the responsible party (in the Iraq case, her government); well under 100,000 can be a “problem from hell” for Power, given her (extremely biased and lightweight) analysis that finds the villain to be her government’s target.
As regards numbers in Kosovo, Samantha Power tells us that:
As high as the death toll turned out [in Kosovo in 1999], it was far lower than if NATO had not acted at all. After years of avoiding confrontation, the United States and its allies likely saved hundreds of thousands of lives. In addition, although prospective and retrospective critics of U.S. intervention have long cited the negative side effects likely to result, the NATO campaign ushered in some very positive unintended consequences. Indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for Serbia’s atrocities in Operation Horseshoe and defeated in battle, Slobodan Milosevic became even more vulnerable at home. [15]
There isn’t an honest or undeceptive sentence in this paragraph. The death toll from the war in Kosovo was not high—it was under 8,000 on all sides, and Power fails to mention that during the war NATO officials claimed a Kosovo Albanian death toll of up to 500,000. Her statement that it would have been higher if NATO hadn’t acted has no basis in any evidence, as the death toll in the year before the war was an estimated 2,000, and Operation Horseshoe has been proven to be an intelligence agency fraud that Power swallowed. She also fails to mention that George Robertson, the NATO Secretary -General, admitted that the KLA was responsible for more deaths in Kosovo in the year before the bombing war than the Yugoslav army (that is, more than half of the estimated 2,000); [16] nor does she mention that the CIA was training and advising the KLA in that prewar period and giving it reason to believe that its provocations of the Serbs might help bring about a NATO attack. On unintended consequences, Power fails to mention that while Clinton claimed that the war objective was to create a ”tolerant and multi-ethnic Kosovo,” it had the opposite effect—it stimulated intolerance, resulted in the “largest ethnic cleansing [in proportionate terms] in the Balkan wars,” and left a fear-ridden, mafia-dominated Kosovo that is the drug and women-trade capital of Europe.
In short, Samantha Power can identify with Holbrooke because they both follow the U.S. party line on worthy and unworthy genocides. As the United States was directly involved in the great Vietnam genocide, as its leaders were part of the “joint criminal enterprise” with Indonesia in East Timor, and as they were mainly responsible for the “sanctions of mass destruction” and those 500,000 dead children whose deaths were “worth it” for Albright, Samantha Power evades these cases. Thus the Vietnam war, in which millions were directly killed by U.S. forces, does not show up in Power’s index or text. Guatemala, where there was a mass killing of as many as 100,000 Mayan Indians between 1978 and 1985, in what Amnesty International called “A Government Program of Political Murder,” but by a government installed and supported by the United States, also does not show up in Power’s index. Cambodia is of course included, but only for the second phase of the genocide—the first phase, from 1969-1975, in which the United States dropped some 500,000 tons of bombs on the Cambodian countryside and killed vast numbers, she fails to mention. On the Khmer Rouge genocide, Power says they killed 2 million, a figure widely cited after Jean Lacouture gave that number; his subsequent admission that this number was invented had no affect on its use, and it suits Power’s purpose.
A major U.S.-encouraged and supported genocide occurred in Indonesia in 1965-66 in which over 700,000 people were murdered. This genocide is not mentioned by Samantha Power and the names Indonesia and Suharto do not appear in her book’s index. She also fails to mention West Papua, where Indonesia’s 40 years of murderous occupation would constitute genocide under her criteria, if carried out under different auspices. Power does refer to East Timor, with extreme brevity, saying that “In 1975, when its ally, the oil-producing, anti-Communist Indonesia, invaded East Timor, killing between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians, the United States looked away.” [17] That exhausts her treatment of the subject, although the killings in East Timor involved a larger fraction of the population than in Cambodia, and the numbers killed were far larger than the grand total for Bosnia and Kosovo, to which she devotes almost a third of her book
She also misrepresents the U.S. role in East Timor—it did not “look away,” it gave its approval, protected the aggression from any effective UN response (in his autobiography, then U.S. Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan bragged about his effectiveness in protecting Indonesia from any UN action), [18] and greatly increased its arms aid to Indonesia, thereby facilitating the genocide. And her pal Richard Holbrooke was also on the front line in servicing this genocide.
Power engages in a similar suppression and failure to recognize the U.S. role in her treatment of genocide in Iraq. She attends carefully and at length to Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical warfare and killing of Kurds at Halabja and elsewhere, and she does discuss the U.S. failure to oppose and take any action against Saddam Hussein at this juncture. But she does not mention the diplomatic rapproachement with Saddam in the midst of his war with Iran in 1983, the active U.S. logistical support of Saddam during that war, and the U.S. approval of sales and transfers of chemical and biological weapons during the period in which he was using chemical weapons against the Kurds. She also doesn’t mention the active efforts by the United States and Britain to block UN actions that might have obstructed Saddam’s killings.
The killing of over a million Iraqis via the “sanctions of mass destruction” is unmentioned by Samantha Power. Again, the correlation between exclusion, U.S. responsibility, and the view that such killings were “worth it” from the standpoint of U.S. interests, is clear. There is a similar political basis for Power’s failure to include Israel’s low-intensity genocide of the Palestinians and South Africa’s “destructive engagement” with the frontline states in the 1980s, the latter with a death toll greatly exceeding all the deaths in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. [19] Neither Israel nor South Africa, both “constructively engaged” by the United States, show up in Power’s index.
Power is concerned about genocide in Iraq today and wrote recently on how to bring it to a halt (“How to stop genocide in Iraq,” Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2007). But nowhere does she mention that the mass killing that has taken place in Iraq traces back to the U.S. invasion in violation of the UN Charter; nowhere does she mention that the killing has grown in parallel with the occupation and occupation policies; nowhere does she mention Fallujah and other cases of mass killing for which her leaders are responsible; and nowhere does she hint at the possibility that the United States has stimulated ethnic conflict as part of a divide and rule strategy. When Bush claims to be “surging” in the interest of stability and to reduce conflict, Power never contests this or suggests some alternative explanation. Somebody better informed on Iraq like the exile Sami Ramadani writes that “It is hard not to presume that what he [Bush] means by an exit strategy is to install a client regime in Baghdad, backed by US bases. The Iraqi people will not accept this, and the west should be alerted to the fact that US policy objectives will only lead to wider regional conflicts, rather than to full withdrawal.” [20] Samantha Power cannot formulate or admit such a critical analysis.
When Power talks about “atrocities” it is always indigenous forces that engage in them, not the U.S. occupation. She has always been gung-ho on bringing people responsible for atrocities to justice, and here in Iraq too she says that if the United States is serious about ending sectarian horrors, it “must send a clear signal to the militias and political leaders who carry out or order atrocities that they will be brought to justice for their crimes” In a 2003 article Power even asserts that although the rationale for the invasion had proven to be in error, it might still be justified because it would ensure that bad men would be brought to “justice” (“How to Try Saddam Hussein,” New Republic, Dec. 29, 2003). But she didn’t mean the U.S. officials who had colluded with and supported Saddam Hussein when he carried out his worst crimes in the 1980s; nor the U.S. officials who invaded Iraq in the “supreme international crime,” who destroyed Falluja and have surely killed many more civilians than her favorite Serb targets did in Kosovo and Bosnia taken together. Again, her country has aggression rights, and she tells us that what is happening in Iraq is taking place “on our watch.” Milosevic in Kosovo was operating in his own country, but he didn’t have “his own watch” there—but Power’s country has its “own watch” anywhere it chooses to invade and kill.
Samantha Power’s conclusion is that the U.S. policy toward genocide has been very imperfect and needs reorientation, less opportunism, and greater vigor. For Power, the United States is the solution, not the problem. These conclusions and policy recommendations rest heavily on her spectacular bias in case selection: She simply bypasses those that are ideologically inconvenient, where the United States has arguably committed genocide (Vietnam, Cambodia 1969-75, Iraq 1991-2003), or has given genocidal processes positive support (Indonesia, West Papua, East Timor, Guatemala, Israel, Angola, Mozambique, and South Africa). Looking at these cases, and at the “problem from hell” produced by the United States in Iraq right now, one would quickly conclude that the United States is the problem, not the solution, that it has been the leading source of hellishness, and that the real challenge for the world is to contain the United States and terminate its genocidal actions and support.
What is astounding is that Power’s book could win a Pulitzer Prize and that a thinker of this caliber and with these biases would become an icon in great demand, even welcomed in The Nation and Le Monde Diplomatique. But then we must recall that Thomas Friedman and George Will have won Pulitzers; Claire Sterling and Paul Henze were media stars commenting on terrorism; Joan Peters’ fraudulent From Time Immemorial received raves in the mainstream and Alan Dershowitz, literally plagiarizing the Peters fraud in his The Case for Israel, is still treated with respect; and Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton and Richard Holbrooke are celebrated speakers, with Holbrooke honored by both the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Human Rights Watch.
End Notes:
1. Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002). This book won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 2003.
2. On Holbrooke’s treatment at HRW, see Edward S. Herman, David Peterson, and George Szamuely, Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party, Including A Review of “Weighing the Evidence: Lessons from the Slobodan Milosevic Trial” (Human Rights Watch, December, 2006), ZNet, February 25, 2007.
3. Peter Waldman, “Body Count: In Vietnam, the Agony of Birth Defects Calls an Old War to Mind,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 12, 1997.
4. “Joint criminal enterprise” is described in John Laughland’s chapter 6, “Just Convict Everyone,” in Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice (London: Pluto, 2007).
5. See Noam Chomsky, Toward A New Cold War (Pantheon, 1982), p. 350 and p. 471.
6. See Joseph Nevins, “First the Butchery, Then the Flowers: Clinton and Holbrooke in East Timor,” CounterPunch, May 16 - 31, 2002 (as posted to the ETAN website).
7. See Edward S. Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan, The “Terrorism” Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 1989).
8. Even the murderous government of El Salvador received funds from the United States in 1983 under an “Anti-Terrorism Assistance Act.” See ibid., p. xiii.
9. E.g., “Sticking too firmly to the rule of law simply allows terrorists too much leeway to exploit our freedoms. Abandoning the rule of law altogether betrays our most valued institutions. To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.” Michael Ignatieff, “Lesser Evils,” New York Times, May 2, 2004.
10. See his New York Times Magazine article of June 26, 2005 (“Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?”).
11. Sarah Sewall, “What’s the Story Behind 30,000 Iraqi Deaths?,” Washington Post, Dec. 18, 2005.
12. The 655,000 is the most recent Lancet study estimate. More recently, Gideon Polya has given a larger estimate in “Four Years: One Million Iraqi Deaths,” CounterCurrents.org, March 22, 2007.
13. See for example Anthony Arnove’s “Four Years Later..and Counting: Billboarding the Iraqi Disaster,” TomDispatch.com, March 18, 2007.
14. A Problem from Hell, pp. 514-5.
15. Ibid., p. 472.
16. Cited in Laughland, Travesty, p. 22.
17. A Problem from Hell, pp. 146-7.
18. “The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook [to deal with the Indonesian invasion of East Timor]. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.” Quoted in Noam Chomsky, Towards A New Cold War, (New York: Pantheon, 1982, p. 339).
19. P. Johnson and D. Martin, eds., Destructive Engagement: South Africa at War (Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1986).
20. Sami Ramadami, “In Iraq, public anger is at last translating into unity,” The Guardian, March 20, 2007.
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