[graffis-l]THE WAR CRIMINAL IN THE LIVING ROOM

[Guest guest]

At 08:22 AM 9/4/07, you wrote:

>1. The War Criminal in the Living Room

>Posted by: " Mark Graffis " mgraffis mgraffis

>Mon Sep 3, 2007 6:32 am (PST)

>http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18287.htm

>

>The War Criminal in the Living Room

>

>By Paul Craig Roberts

>

>08/31/07 " ICH " -- -- The media is silent, Congress is absent, and

>Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression

>against Iran.

>

>US Navy aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran.

>

>US Air Force jets and missile systems are deployed in bases in countries

>bordering or near to Iran.

>

>US B-2 stealth bombers have been refitted to carry 30,000 pound " bunker

>buster " bombs.

>

>The US government is financing terrorist and separatist groups within Iran.

>

>US Special Forces teams are conducting terrorist operations inside Iran.

>

>US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on

>Iran and other non-nuclear countries.

>

>Bush's war threats against Iran have intensified during the course of this

>year. The American people are being fed a repeat of the lies used to

>justify naked aggression against Iraq.

>

>Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of

>Iran for threatening " the security of nations everywhere " and of the Iraqi

>resistance for " a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and

>justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit

>of political power. " Those are precisely the words that most of the world

>applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration. The Pew Foundation's

>world polls show that despite all the American and Israeli propaganda

>against Iran, the US and Israel are regarded as no less threats to world

>stability than demonized Iran.

>

>Bush has discarded habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justified

>torture and secret trials, damned critics as anti-American, and is

>responsible, according to Information Clearing House, for over one million

>deaths of Iraqi civilians, which puts Bush high on the list of mass

>murderers of all time. The vast majority of " kills " by the US military in

>Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians.

>

>Now Bush wants to murder more. We have to kill Iranians " over there, " Bush

>says, " before they come over here. " There is no possibility that Iranians

>or any Muslims who have no air force, no navy, no modern military

>technology are going to " come over here, " and no indication that they plan

>to do so. The Muslims are disunited and have been for centuries. That is

>what makes them vulnerable to colonial rule. If Muslims were united, the

>US would already have lost its army in Iraq. Indeed, it would not have

>been able to put an army in Iraq.

>

>Meanwhile the US media focuses on whether Republican Senator Larry Craig

>is a homosexual or has offended gays by denying to be one of them. The

>run-up for the public's attention is why a South Carolina beauty queen

>cannot answer a simple question about why her generation is unable to find

>the United States on a map.

>

>The war criminal is in the living room, and no official notice is taken of

>the fact.

>

>Lacking US troops with which to invade Iran, the Bush administration has

>decided to bomb Iran " back into the stone age. " Punishing air and missile

>attacks have been designed not merely to destroy Iran's nuclear energy

>projects, but also to destroy the public infrastructure, the economy, and

>the ability of the government to function.

>

>Encouraged by the indifference of both the American media and Christian

>churches to the massive casualties inflicted on Iraqi civilians, the Bush

>administration will not be deterred by the prospect of its air attacks

>inflicting massive casualties on Iranian civilians. Last summer the Bush

>administration demonstrated to the entire world its total disdain for

>Muslim life when Bush supported Israel's month-long air attack on Lebanese

>civilian infrastructure and civilian residences. President Bush blocked

>the attempt by the rest of the world to halt the gratuitous murder of

>Lebanese civilians and infrastructure destruction. Clearly, turning the

>Muslim Middle East into a wasteland is the Bush policy. For Bush, civilian

>casualties are a non-issue. Hegemony uber alles.

>

>The Bush administration has made its war plans for attacking Iraq and

>positioned its forces without any prior approval from Congress. The

> " unitary executive " obviously doesn't believe that an attack on Iran

>requires the approval of Congress. By its absence and quietude, Congress

>seems to agree that it has no role in the decision.

>

>In the improbable event that Congress were to make any fuss about Bush's

>decision to attack yet another country, the State Department has devised

>legalistic cover: simply declare Iran's military to be a " terrorist

>organization " and go to war under the cover of the existing resolution.

>

>The " Iran issue " has been created by the Bush administration, not by Iran.

>Iran, like many other countries, has a nuclear energy program to which it

>is entitled as a signatory to the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty.

>Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have found no

>evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

>

>The Bush administration has brushed away this fact, which should be

>determining, just as the Bush administration brushed away the fact that

>weapons inspectors reported, prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq, that there

>were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

>

>The Bush administration managed to disrupt the work of the pesky IAEA

>weapons inspectors in Iran. Iran has been working successfully with the

>IAEA and has achieved what a senior IAEA official recently described as a

>milestone agreement. The Bush administration instantly went to work to

>discredit the agreement and unleashed its new lapdog, French President

>Nicolas Sarkozy, to threaten " the bombing of Iran. "

>

>The Bush administration's position is legally untenable and is really

>nothing but a contrived excuse to start another war. Bush claims that

>Iran, alone among all the signatories of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation

>Treaty, must be denied its right under the pact to develop nuclear energy,

>because Iran, alone among all the other signatories, will be the only

>country able to deceive the IAEA inspectors and develop nuclear weapons.

>Therefore, Iran must be denied its rights under the agreement.

>

>Bush's position on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is as legally

>untenable as his position on every other issue--the Geneva Conventions,

>the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, habeas corpus, the

>constitutional separation of powers, and presidential signing statements

>that he cavalierly attaches to new laws in order to override the

>legislative power of Congress. Bush's position is that the meaning of laws

>and treaties varies with his needs of the moment.

>

>Bush has declared himself to be the " decider. " The " decider " decides

>whether Americans have any rights under the Constitution and whether Iran

>has any rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As the

> " decider " has decided that Iran has no such rights, the " decider " decides

>whether to attack Iran. No one else has any say about it. The people's

>representatives are just so much chaff in the wind.

>

>Whatever form of government Bush is operating under, it is far outside an

>accountable constitutional democratic government. Bush has transitioned

>America to caesarism, and even if Bush leaves office in January 2009, the

>powers he has accumulated in the executive will remain. Unless Bush and

>Cheney are impeached and convicted, there is no prospect of the US

>Congress and federal judiciary ever again being co-equal branches of

>government.

>

>---

>

>Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan

>administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal

>editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor

>of The Tyranny of Good Intentions

 

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Kraig and Shirley Carroll ... in the woods of SE Kentucky

http://www.thehavens.com/

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