How Could Hillary Have Known?
By WILLIAM BLUM
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) ...
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 ...
Apart from the fact that UN nuclear inspectors had determined before the
war
that Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program ...
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."
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, 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."
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."
Moreover, the New York Time 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. There were as well
several
other good reasons not to buy the story.
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.
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. There had been reports that Saddam
Hussein was hiding in the embassy.
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'."
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."
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."
Brian Whitman, spokesman for the US Department of Defense, 2005: "The
United
States treats all detainees in their custody with dignity and respect."
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. Police and prisons within the United States
have been torturing for even longer.
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.
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". 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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only
Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
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