[News] Can We Call It Genocide Now?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10122006.html

October 12, 2006


"You're Either With Us or You're Dead"


Can We Call It Genocide Now?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

When does "collateral damage" so dwarf combatant deaths that war 
becomes genocide?

Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq has cost 655,000 Iraqis their lives. 
That is the conclusion of a study financed by the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies and 
conducted by physicians under the direction of Johns Hopkins 
University epidemiologists. These are deaths over and above the 
pre-invasion mortality rate. Bush's illegal invasion raised Iraq's 
mortality rate from 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 13.3 
deaths per 1,000 people per year. The study is published by the 
distinguished British medical journal, The Lancet, and is available 
on the 
<http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf>journal's 
online site (October 11).

The study uses a scientific method known as "cluster sampling." In 
87% of the deaths, the researchers requested death certificates, and 
more than 90% of the surveyed households produced the death 
certificates. Violence accounted for 601,000 deaths and disease and 
destruction of civilian infrastructure accounted for 54,000 deaths. 
The violent deaths are attributed to gunshot wounds, coalition air 
strikes, and car bombs.

Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist Gilbert Burnham says, "We're 
very confident with the results." Columbia University epidemiologist 
Ronald Waldman says the survey method used is "tried and true" and 
that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

When asked about the report, President Bush stated: "I don't consider 
it a credible report." Bush, of course, is not reality-based, and he 
knows that any unfavorable news is "enemy propaganda." That's what 
the neocons who pull his strings tell him, and that is what he believes.

What percentage of these 655,000 deaths were insurgents or 
"terrorists"? Probably 1% and no more than 2%. Bush's "war on terror" 
is, in fact, a war on Iraqi civilians.

Bush's invasion has also spawned sectarian conflict or civil war, 
although the Bush regime denies it. Even Bush is smart enough to know 
that "bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq" is not compatible with 
setting off a civil war in Iraq. Since Bush, the faith-based, 
believes that he is bringing "freedom and democracy to Iraq," he 
cannot accept the fact that he has started a civil war.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are not the only innocent 
victims of Bush's illegal aggression. The New York Times (October 11) 
reports that Department of Veterans Affairs documents show that about 
one in five US soldiers who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan have 
suffered at least partial disability.

To date more than 100,000 US troops who are veterans of these wars 
have been granted disability compensation. Although the US cannot put 
on the ground in Iraq more than 150,000 troops at one time, 1.5 
million troops have served so far and 567,000 have been discharged of 
which 100,000 are receiving disability payments.

Paul Sullivan, director of programs for Veterans for America, says 
that the current rate of injuries will produce 400,000 American 
veterans suffering 30% to 100% disability. Apparently, one of the 
severe forms of disability is post-traumatic stress, which does not 
count as a physical wound.

What is America's reward for Bush's illegal wars that have killed 
655,000 Iraqis, an uncounted number of Afghanis, and disabled as many 
as 400,000 US troops?

According to the US National Intelligence Estimate and to practically 
every Middle East expert, Bush's invasions have radicalized the 
Muslim Middle East, created legions of recruits for extremists, 
undermined America's puppet rulers, imperiled Israel, and destroyed 
America's reputation.

We are talking about over one million casualties that have no other 
cause than blatant lies by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the 
bloodthirsty neoconservative cabal that occupies Bush's subcabinet, 
and their corporate media propagandists, especially The Weekly 
Standard, Fox News, National Review, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal 
editorial page. The Bush regime deceived America and the world with 
its lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that 
would be turned against the West by terrorists. By giving speeches 
that continually mentioned Iraq in the same context as 9/11, the Bush 
regime created the widespread impression, still prevalent among 
Americans, that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.

What kind of government would destroy the lives through death or 
disability of over one million people for no valid reason?

The same kind of government that fires its own lawyers for doing 
their constitutional duty. Navy lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was 
assigned the task of bringing Salim Hamdan to a guilty plea before 
the unconstitutional military tribunal that President Bush created 
for Guantanamo detainees. Instead, Cmdr. Swift did his duty and 
defended his client, winning in the US Supreme Court. The Bush 
administration retaliated by blocking Cmdr. Swift's promotion, which 
killed his military career and sent the chilling message to all US 
military and government attorneys that constitutional scruples are 
career-enders in the Bush regime. Anyone who stands for the US 
Constitution is against Bush and his neocon regime.

The Bush regime is proceeding exactly as the Nazi regime proceeded.
First, eliminate every person of conscience and integrity from the 
government. Second, redefine duty as service to the leader: "You are 
with us or against us"--a formulation that leaves no place for duty 
to the US Constitution. Patriotism is redefined from loyalty to 
country and Constitution to loyalty to the government's leader.

Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave 
danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American 
liberty and to world stability. The neoconservative drive to achieve 
hegemony over the American people and the entire world is similar to 
Hitler's drive for hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to 
justify Germany's right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the 
right of the Nazi elite to rule over the German people.
Neoconservatives use "American exceptionalism" and "the war on 
terror." There is no practical difference. Hitler cared no more about 
the peoples he mowed down in his drive for supremacy than the 
neoconservatives care about 655,000 dead Iraqis, 100,000 disabled 
American soldiers and 2,747 dead ones.

When Bush, the Decider, claims unconstitutional powers and uses 
"signing statements" to negate US law whenever he feels the rule of 
law is in the way of his leadership, he is remarkably similar to 
Hitler, the Fuhrer, who told the Reichstag on February 20, 1938: "A 
man who feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership of 
his people is not responsible to the laws of parliamentary usage or 
to a particular democratic conception, but solely to the mission 
placed upon him. And anyone who interferes with this mission is an 
enemy of the people."

"You are with us or against us."


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20061012/3cccb49b/attachment.htm>