[News] The Anti-Empire Report - William Blum

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The Anti-Empire Report

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16855

March 14, 2008 By William Blum
How could they have known? It wasn't on Oprah or Fox News.

Hillary Clinton and many other members of 
Congress claim that their support of the invasion 
of Iraq was based on faulty intelligence reports. 
How could they dispute the research and analysis 
of all those experts, so well trained and experienced in their fields?

Well, apart from the fact that American 
intelligence agencies and their reports were by 
no means of one opinion (one well-publicized CIA 
paper, for example, predicted all manner of 
devastating consequences which could result from 
an invasion and occupation) ... [1]

Apart from the fact that there were several 
public statements, including some on American TV, 
from Saddam Hussein's deputy prime minister, and 
other statements made by Iraqi scientists to 
American media and to American intelligence that 
Iraq no longer had any weapons of mass destruction ... [2]

Apart from the fact that UN nuclear inspectors 
had determined before the war that Iraq did not 
have a nuclear weapons program ... [3]

Apart from the fact that Colin Powell, speaking 
in February 2001 of US sanctions on Iraq, said: 
"And frankly they have worked. He [Saddam 
Hussein] has not developed any significant 
capability with respect to weapons of mass 
destruction. He is unable to project conventional 
power against his neighbors."[4]

Apart from all that, this question must be asked: 
What did the millions of Americans who marched 
against the war before it began know that all 
those members of Congress didn't know? At a 
minimum, they knew that nothing the Bush 
administration had told them came anywhere close 
to justifying dropping bombs on the innocent 
people of Iraq. They also knew that nothing the 
Bush administration had told them could be 
trusted. All it took to reach this advanced stage 
of awareness was not being born yesterday.

As I've written before, the same phenomenon 
attended the Vietnam War. The anti-Vietnam War 
movement burst out of the starting gate back in 
August 1964, with hundreds of people 
demonstrating in New York. Many of these early 
dissenters took apart and critically examined the 
administration's statements about the war's 
origin, its current situation, and its rosy 
picture of the future. They found continuous 
omission, contradiction, and duplicity, became 
quickly and wholly cynical, and called for 
immediate and unconditional withdrawal. This was 
a state of intellect and principle it took 
members of Congress and the media -- and then 
only a small minority -- until the 1970s to 
reach. And even then -- even today -- our 
political and media elite viewed Vietnam only as 
a "mistake"; i.e., it was "the wrong way" to 
fight communism, not that the United States 
should not be traveling all over the globe to 
spew violence against anything labeled 
"communism" in the first place. Essentially, the 
only thing these "best and brightest" have 
learned from Vietnam is that we should not have 
fought in Vietnam. And I'm afraid that the 
present generation of "leaders" will learn very 
little more than that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq.

A Mecca of hypocrisy, a Vatican of double standards

On February 21, following a demonstration against 
the United States role in Kosovo's declaration of 
independence, rioters in the Serbian capital of 
Belgrade broke into the US Embassy and set fire 
to an office. The attack was called "intolerable" 
by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,[5] and 
the American Ambassador to the United Nations, 
Zalmay Khalilzad, said he would ask the UN 
Security Council to issue a unanimous statement 
"expressing the council's outrage, condemning the 
attack, and also reminding the Serb government of 
its responsibility to protect diplomatic facilities."[6]

This is of course standard language for such 
situations. But what the media and American 
officials don't remind us is that in May 1999, 
during the US/NATO bombing of Serbia, then part 
of Yugoslavia, the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade 
was hit by a US missile, causing considerable 
damage and killing three embassy employees. The 
official Washington story on this -- then, and 
still now -- is that it was a mistake. But this 
is almost certainly a lie. According to a joint 
investigation of The Observer of London and the 
Politiken newspaper in Denmark, the embassy was 
bombed because it was being used to transmit 
electronic communications for the Yugoslav army 
after the army's regular system was made 
inoperable by the bombing. The Observer was told 
that the embassy bombing was deliberate by 
"senior military and intelligence sources in 
Europe and the US" as well as being "confirmed in 
detail by three other Nato officers -- a flight 
controller operating in Naples, an intelligence 
officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from 
Macedonia and a senior [NATO] headquarters officer in Brussels."[7]

Moreover, the New York Times reported at the time 
that the bombing had destroyed the embassy's 
intelligence-gathering nerve center, and two of 
the three Chinese killed were intelligence 
officers. "The highly sensitive nature of the 
parts of the embassy that were bombed suggests 
why the Chinese ... insist the bombing was no 
accident. ... 'That's exactly why they don't buy 
our explanation'," said a Pentagon official.[8] 
There were as well several other good reasons not to buy the story.[9]

In April 1986, after the French government 
refused the use of its air space to US warplanes 
headed for a bombing raid on Libya, the planes 
were forced to take another, longer route. When 
they reached Libya they bombed so close to the 
French embassy that the building was damaged and 
all communication links knocked out.[10]

And in April 2003, the US Ambassador to Russia 
was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry due 
to the fact that the residential quarter of 
Baghdad where the Russian embassy was located was 
bombed several times by the United States during 
its invasion of Iraq.[11] There had been reports 
that Saddam Hussein was hiding in the embassy.[12]

So, we can perhaps chalk up the State 
Department's affirmations about the inviolability 
of embassies as yet another example of US foreign 
policy hypocrisy. But I think that there is some 
satisfaction in that American foreign policy 
officials, as morally damaged as they must be, 
are not all so stupid that they don't know 
they're swimming in a sea of hypocrisy. The Los 
Angeles Times reported in 2004 that "The State 
Department plans to delay the release of a human 
rights report that was due out today, partly 
because of sensitivities over the prison abuse 
scandal in Iraq, U.S. officials said. One 
official ... said the release of the report, 
which describes actions taken by the U.S. 
government to encourage respect for human rights 
by other nations, could 'make us look hypocritical'."[13]

And last year the Washington Post informed us 
that Chester Crocker, former Assistant Secretary 
of State and current member of the State 
Department's Advisory Committee on Democracy 
Promotion, noted that "we have to be able to cope 
with the argument that the U.S. is inconsistent 
and hypocritical in its promotion of democracy 
around the world. That may be true."[14]

Like pornography, torture doesn't require a 
definition. You know it when you see it. Or feel it.

With all the media coverage of "waterboarding" 
and all the congressional questioning of 
government officials about their views on the 
subject, I imagine that by now many people think 
that waterboarding must be the worst kind of 
torture that the United States has engaged in, 
and that if waterboarding is in fact not torture 
then the idiot king is correct when he says: "We 
don't torture." This is the way myths are born, 
so let's try and squash this particular one while it's still young.

Here in capsule form is a sample of some of the 
acts carried out in recent years by American 
military forces, their contract employees, and 
the CIA against detainees in one or another 
edifice of the sprawling global prison complex 
maintained by the United States in occupied Iraq, 
occupied Afghanistan, occupied Cuba, and various 
other secret prisons occupied by the CIA around 
the world. It may be torture to read but the 
point needs to be made. Lest we forget.

Standing or kneeling or forced into contorted, 
painful positions for many hours ... in leg 
shackles and handcuffs with eyes, ears and mouth 
covered, exposed to extremes of heat or cold ... 
stripped naked, led around with a dog leash ... 
deprived of sleep, kicked to keep them awake for 
days on end, subjecting them to a 24-hour 
bombardment of bright lights or blaring noise ... 
guards staging races of detainees in short leg 
shackles, violently punishing them if they fall 
... withholding painkillers and other medications 
from the injured ... sensory deprivation, with 
all human contact cut off ... made to lie naked 
on a sheet of ice ... fake blood smeared on 
Muslim men when they are about to pray, telling 
them that it's menstrual blood.

The Iraqi general "was put headfirst into a 
sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord and 
knocked down before the soldiers sat and stood on 
him. The cause of death was determined to be suffocation."

Chained to the ceiling, shackled so tightly that 
the blood flow stops ... shackled to the floor in 
fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, 
left without food and water, and allowed to 
defecate on themselves; a detainee found with a 
pile of hair next to him; he had apparently been 
literally pulling his own hair out throughout the 
night ... wrapping a prisoner in an Israeli flag 
... use of unmuzzled, growling dogs to frighten, 
in at least one instance actually biting and 
severely injuring a detainee ... burn marks on 
their backs ... detainee left at an Iraqi 
hospital, comatose, with massive head trauma, 
burns on the bottoms of his feet caused by 
electrocution, bruises on his arms ... more than 
a hundred detainees have died during interrogations ...

The death of two captives in Afghanistan: one 
from "blunt force injuries to lower extremities 
complicating coronary artery disease"; an autopsy 
showed that his legs were so damaged that 
amputation would have been necessary; the other 
captive suffered from a blood clot in the lung 
that was exacerbated by a "blunt force injury" ...

Kicks to the groin and legs, shoving or slamming 
detainees into walls and tables, forcing water in 
their mouths until they could not breathe ... He 
had his hands handcuffed behind him and was 
suspended by his wrists -- "His arms were so 
badly stretched I was surprised they didn't pop 
out of their sockets." ... forced to masturbate 
while being photographed and videotaped ... seven 
naked Iraqis piled on top of each other in a 
pyramid ... detainee punched in the chest so hard 
he almost went into cardiac arrest ... forcing 
naked male detainees to wear women's underwear.

The report by General Taguba found that between 
October and December of 2003 there were numerous 
instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton 
criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, 
including breaking chemical lights and pouring 
the phosphoric liquid on detainees, threatening 
male detainees with rape, sodomizing a detainee 
with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, raping female prisoners ...

Eighteen days naked and alone in a cell, often 
with his hands and feet bound together, 
frequently beaten ... "He locked his arm under 
mine and holding the back of my head he beat my 
head against the doors of the cells" ... his 
hands and feet were pushed through the metal bars 
of the cell door and then tied together.

Six weeks after his release, he says he has lost 
the will to live. He is too ashamed to be seen by 
his friends and family and has not seen or spoken 
to his fiancée. The wedding is off. "I was a man 
before, but my manhood was taken away. Since this 
happened to me, I consider myself dead. My life feels over."

Iraqi prisoners were forced to crawl through 
broken glass and wear women's sanitary products 
... two drunken interrogators took a female Iraqi 
prisoner from her cell in the middle of the night 
and stripped her naked to the waist ... an Iraqi 
woman in her 70s was harnessed and ridden like a 
donkey ... detainees were pressed to denounce 
Islam, or force-fed pork and liquor ...

Jamadi died an hour after his arrival at Abu 
Ghraib in early November 2003; he had been beaten 
while in CIA custody and then hung by his wrists, 
with his arms crossed across his back. US Army 
guards at the prison then packed his body in ice 
and posed with the corpse in mocking photographs.

"They forced us to walk like dogs on our hands 
and knees ... and we had to bark like a dog, and 
if we didn't do that they started hitting us hard 
on our face and chest with no mercy." ... "Do you 
believe in anything?" the soldier asked. "I said 
to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, 'But I 
believe in torture and I will torture you'."

Taken out and tied to a post, rubber bullets were 
fired at them; made to kneel in the sun until 
they collapsed ... "They tied my hands to my feet 
behind my back. My left hand to my right foot and 
my right hand to my left foot. I was lying face 
down and they were beating me like this" ... 
inmates kept in wire cages with concrete floors 
and no protection from the elements.

"They actually said: 'You have no rights here'. 
After a while, we stopped asking for human rights 
-- we wanted animal rights" ... crosses shaved 
into their scalp or body hair ... dislocated his 
arms, beat his leg with a bat, crushed his nose, 
and put an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled 
the trigger ... Six Kuwaiti prisoners said they 
were severely beaten, given electric shocks and 
sodomized by US forces in Afghanistan ...

The Afghan detainee had been captured in Pakistan 
along with a group of other Afghans. His 
connection to al Qaeda or the value of his 
intelligence was never established before he 
died. "He was probably associated with people who 
were associated with al Qaeda," one US government 
official said. ... numerous suicide attempts ...

And here's George W. in 2004: "The world is 
better off without Saddam Hussein in power. The 
world is better off because he sits in a prison 
cell. Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, 
rape rooms no longer exist."[15]

Bryan Whitman, spokesman for the US Department of 
Defense, 2005: "The United States treats all 
detainees in their custody with dignity and respect."[16]

It should be noted that the CIA has been treating 
(real and alleged) opponents of American 
imperialism with similar dignity and respect ever 
since the Agency's founding.[17] Police and 
prisons within the United States have been torturing for even longer.[18]

Now for the good news: The Bush administration, 
trying to shore up support for its military-trial 
procedures, has cabled US embassies with 
instructions that evidence obtained through 
torture will not be allowed. But evidence 
obtained through treatment considered "cruel, 
inhuman, and degrading" is to be allowed.[19]

George Bernard Shaw used three concepts to 
describe the positions of individuals in Nazi 
Germany: intelligence, decency, and Naziism. He 
argued that if a person was intelligent, and a 
Nazi, he was not decent. If he was decent and a 
Nazi, he was not intelligent. And if he was 
decent and intelligent, he was not a Nazi.

I suggest the reader make the obvious 
substitution: "Bush supporter" in place of "Nazi".

That oh-so-precious world where words have no meaning

In December, 1989, two days after bombing and 
invading the defenseless people of Panama, 
killing as many as a few thousand, President 
George H.W. Bush declared that his "heart goes 
out to the families of those who have died in 
Panama".[20] When a reporter asked him: "Was it 
really worth it to send people to their death for 
this? To get [Panamanian leader Manuel] 
Noriega?", Bush replied: "Every human life is 
precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it."[21]

A year later, preparing for his next crime 
against humanity, the invasion of Iraq, Bush, Sr. 
said: "People say to me: 'How many lives? How 
many lives can you expend?' Each one is precious."[22]

At the end of 2006, with Bush's son now 
president, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel, 
commenting about American deaths reaching 3,000 
in Iraq, said Bush "believes that every life is 
precious and grieves for each one that is lost."[23]

In February 2008, with American deaths about to 
reach 4,000, and Iraqi deaths as many as a 
million or more, George W. Bush asserted: "When 
we lift our hearts to God, we're all equal in his 
sight. We're all equally precious. ... In prayer 
we grow in mercy and compassion. ... When we 
answer God's call to love a neighbor as 
ourselves, we enter into a deeper friendship with our fellow man."[24]

Inspired by such noble -- dare I say precious -- 
talk from their leaders, the American military 
machine likes to hire like-minded warriors. Here 
is Erik Prince, founder of the military 
contractor Blackwater, whose employees in Iraq 
kill people like others flick away a mosquito, in 
testimony before Congress: "Every life, whether 
American or Iraqi, is precious."[25]

  NOTES

[1] Central Intelligence Agency, "The Perfect 
Storm: Planning for Negative Consequences of Invading Iraq," August 13, 2002

[2] Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz in 
August 2002 told Dan Rather: "We do not possess 
any nuclear or biological or chemical 
weapons."(CBS Evening News, August 20, 2002) In 
December he stated to Ted Koppel: "The fact is 
that we don't have weapons of mass destruction. 
We don't have chemical, biological, or nuclear 
weaponry."(ABC Nightline, December 4, 
2002)      Gen. Hussein Kamel, former head of 
Iraq's secret weapons program, and a son-in-law 
of Saddam Hussein, told the UN in 1995, that Iraq 
had destroyed its banned missiles and chemical 
and biological weapons soon after the Persian 
Gulf War.(Washington Post, March 1, 2003, page 15)

[3] Washington Post, July 11, 2004

[4] State Department press release, February 24, 2001

[5] Washington Post, February 22, 2008

[6] Associated Press, February 21, 2008

[7] The Observer October 17 and November 28, 1999

[8] New York Times, June 25, 1999

[9] see note 7

[10] Associated Press, April 15, 1986, "France 
Confirms It Denied U.S. Jets Air Space, Says Embassy Damaged"

[11] Interfax news agency (Moscow), April 2, 2003

[12] CBS News, April 9, 2003

[13] Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2004

[14] Washington Post, April 17, 2007, p.2

[15] White House press release, May 3, 2004

[16] Associated Press, February 10, 2005

[17] See the manuals put out by the CIA from the 
1950s to the 80s on what they called "interrogation".

[18] See William Blum, Rogue State, chapters 4, 5 
and 27 for examples and sources for the above

[19] Washington Post, February 13, 2008, p.3

[20] New York Times, December 22, 1989, p.17

[21] Ibid., p.16

[22] Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1990, p.1.

[23] Washington Post, January 1, 2007, p.1

[24] National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, DC, February 7, 2008

[25] Testimony before the House Committee on 
Oversight and Government Reform, October 2, 2007

William Blum is the author of:  Killing Hope: US 
Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only 
Superpower West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir 
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed 
copies purchased, at <www.killinghope.org >





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