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"The DOD definition of terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or the
threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate
governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political,
religious, or ideological."
-
TERRORISM DEFINED, U.S. Army, Field Manual 100-20, Stability and Support
Operations, (Final Draft), "Chapter 8: Combating Terrorism."
"There is no single, universally accepted, definition of terrorism.
Terrorism is defined in the Code of Federal Regulations as “...the unlawful
use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce
a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance
of political or social objectives.” (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85)"
-
FBI - Counterterrorism Threat Assessment and Warning Unit Counterterrorism
Division, "TERRORISM in the United States 1999"
"Dominance" means the ability to affect and dominate an
adversary's will both physically and psychologically. Physical dominance
includes the ability to destroy, disarm, disrupt, neutralize, and to render
impotent. Psychological dominance means the ability to destroy, defeat, and
neuter the will of an adversary to resist; or convince the adversary to accept
our terms and aims short of using force. The target is the adversary's will,
perception, and understanding. The principal mechanism for achieving this
dominance is through imposing sufficient conditions of "Shock and Awe" on the
adversary to convince or compel it to accept our strategic aims and military
objectives."
“Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance”
Written By, Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, With: L.A.
"Bud" Edney, Fred M. Franks, Charles A. Horner, Jonathan T. Howe, and Keith
Brendley, NDU Press Book, December 1996
“We've had allies throughout our history that aren't necessarily of the
same philosophy and persuasion that we are, regarding principles and values.
Sometimes your realpolitik interests demand that.”
-
James Baker, former U.S. Secretary of State, PBS Frontline interview, October
2001
re·al·po·li·tik (Miram Webster on-line)
: politics based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical
or ethical objectives
realpolitik (Yahoo! Reference: The Britannica Concise)
Politics based on practical objectives rather than on ideals. The word does
not mean "real" in the English sense but rather connotes "things"--hence a
politics of adaptation to things as they are. Realpolitik thus suggests a
pragmatic, no-nonsense view and a disregard for ethical considerations.
In diplomacy it is often associated with relentless, though realistic, pursuit
of the national interest.
‘The Salvador Option’
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in
Iraq
By Michael Hirsh and John Barry, Newsweek
Updated: 5:33 p.m. ET Jan. 8, 2005
Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that
dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle
against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s.
Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government
funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death
squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually
the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to
have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent
Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.
...
Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to
advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish
Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their
sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders
familiar with the discussions.
...
Shahwani also said that the U.S. occupation has failed to crack the problem of
broad support for the insurgency. The insurgents, he said, "are mostly in the
Sunni areas where the population there, almost 200,000, is sympathetic to them."
He said most Iraqi people do not actively support the insurgents or provide them
with material or logistical help, but at the same time they won’t turn them in.
One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux
of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that
would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no
price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their
point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."
"Basic civil liberties including the right to life, liberty and the freedom of
personal and political expression, suffered a drastic setback in 1981. In more
than a dozen regional nations, even the most fundamental rights -- life and the
inviolability of the person -- were transgressed by the government-condoned
practice of harassing, torturing and murdering political opponents of those in
power ... These reverses can be linked to policies adopted by the Reagan
administration ... [which] has allied the U.S. with the most violent regimes in
the hemisphere. He [Reagan] has sanctioned atrocities and human rights abuses by
providing those governments with essentially unconditioned U.S. support."
-
Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, 1982,
source
Backyard terrorism
The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's
still at it
George Monbiot, Tuesday October 30, 2001, The Guardian
"If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents," George Bush
announced on the day he began bombing Afghanistan, "they have become outlaws and
murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril."
I'm glad he said "any government", as there's one which, though it has yet to be
identified as a sponsor of terrorism, requires his urgent attention.
For the past 55 years it has been running a terrorist training camp, whose
victims massively outnumber the people killed by the attack on New York, the
embassy bombings and the other atrocities laid, rightly or wrongly, at al-Qaida's
door. The camp is called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation, or Whisc. It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by
Mr Bush's government.
Until January this year, Whisc was called the "School of the Americas", or SOA.
Since 1946, SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers and
policemen. Among its graduates are many of the continent's most notorious
torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists. As hundreds of pages
of documentation compiled by the pressure group SOA Watch show, Latin America
has been ripped apart by its alumni.
In 1993, the United Nations truth commission on El Salvador named the army
officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war. Two-thirds of
them had been trained at the School of the Americas. Among them were Roberto
D'Aubuisson, the leader of El Salvador's death squads; the men who killed
Archbishop Oscar Romero; and 19 of the 26 soldiers who murdered the Jesuit
priests in 1989. In Chile, the school's graduates ran both Augusto Pinochet's
secret police and his three principal concentration camps. One of them helped to
murder Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington DC in 1976.
The FBI defines terrorism as "violent acts... intended to intimidate or coerce a
civilian population, influence the policy of a government, or affect the conduct
of a government", which is a precise description of the activities of SOA's
graduates. But how can we be sure that their alma mater has had any part in
this? Well, in 1996, the US government was forced to release seven of the
school's training manuals. Among other top tips for terrorists, they recommended
blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.
“For some time I have been disturbed by the way
CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an
operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. …We have grown
up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to
maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has
been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I
feel that we need to correct it.”
-
President Harry S. Truman, Washington Post, December 22, 1963
"... the CIA had been running thousands of operations over the years... there
have been about 3,000 major covert operations and over 10,000 minor
operations... all designed to disrupt, destabilize, or modify the activities of
other countries... But they are all illegal and they all disrupt the normal
functioning, often the democratic functioning, of other societies. They raise
serious questions about the moral responsibility of the United States in the
international society of nations."
- John Stockwell, former U.S. CIA Official,
source
A Foreign Policy for Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty
Congressman
Ron Paul
U.S. House of Representatives
September 5, 2002
Now we have entered the 21st century, and there is not a country in the world
that does not either depend on the U.S. for protection, or fear her wrath if
they refuse to do her bidding. As the 20th century progressed, American
taxpayers were required to finance, with great sacrifices to their pocketbooks
and their liberty, the buying of loyalty through foreign aid and intimidation of
those countries that did not cooperate.
Killing Hope – U.S. Military and CIA interventions since World War II by William
Blum. (Blum previously worked at the U.S. State department)
“Philip Deane (the pen name of Gerassimos Gigantes) is a Greek, a former UN
official, who worked during this period both for King Constantine and as an
envoy to Washington for the Papandreou government. He has written an intimate
account of the subtleties and the grossness of this conspiracy to undermine the
government and enhance the position of the military plotters, and of the raw
power exercised by the CIA in his country.”
“…During one of the perennial disputes between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus,
which was now spilling over onto NATO, President Johnson summoned the Greek
ambassador to tell him of Washington’s “solution”. The ambassador protested that
it would be unacceptable to the Greek parliament and contrary to the Greek
constitution. “Then listen to me, Mr. Ambassador,” said the President of the
United States, “fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. America is an
elephant. Cyprus is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant,
they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good. …We pay a lot
of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister
gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament
and his Constitution may not last very long.” (p. 216, Greece 1967-1974)
"U.S. Ieaders commit war crimes as a matter of
institutional necessity, as their imperial role calls for keeping subordinate
peoples in their proper place and assuring a "favorable climate of investment"
everywhere. They do this by using their economic power, but also ... by
supporting Diem, Mobutu, Pinochet, Suharto, Savimbi, Marcos, Fujimori,
Salinas, and scores of similar leaders. War crimes also come easily because
U.S. Ieaders consider themselves to be the vehicles of a higher morality and
truth and can operate in violation of law without cost. It is also immensely
helpful that their mainstream media agree that their country is above the law
and will support and rationalize each and every venture and the commission of
war crimes."
- Edward Herman, political economist and author,
source
“We've had allies throughout our history that aren't necessarily of the
same philosophy and persuasion that we are, regarding principles and values.
Sometimes your realpolitik interests demand that.”
-
James Baker, former U.S. Secretary of State, PBS Frontline interview, October
2001
U.S. Had
Key Role in Iraq's Chemical Weapons Buildup
Washington Post - December 30, 2002
By Michael Dobbs, Washington Post Staff Writer
High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq
are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological
programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials
rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was
seen in Washington as a valued ally.
U.S. Supplied Germs to Iraq in '80s
Mon Sep 30, 2002
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush wants to
eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to
government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war
against Iraq.
The disclosures put the United States in the uncomfortable position of possibly
having provided the key ingredients of the weapons America is considering waging
war to destroy, said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. Byrd entered the documents into
the Congressional Record this month.
Byrd asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the germ transfers at a
recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Byrd noted that Rumsfeld met
Saddam in 1983, when Rumsfeld was President Reagan's Middle East envoy.
"Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have
sown?" Byrd asked Rumsfeld after reading parts of a Newsweek article on
the transfers.
"I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of
it whatsoever, and I doubt it," Rumsfeld said. He later said he would
ask the Defense Department and other government agencies to search their records
for evidence of the transfers.
Regime change
From building ties to Saddam to removing him from power
Monday, September 30, 2002 Posted: 11:35 AM EDT (1535 GMT)
(CNN) -- Twenty years ago, the U.S. government was building ties to Saddam
Hussein's government -- not trying to overthrow it.
In the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration sent then-private citizen Donald
Rumsfeld as a special envoy to improve relations. Rumsfeld is now the U.S.
secretary of defense.
Rumsfeld 'offered help to Saddam'
Declassified papers leave the White House hawk exposed over his role during
the Iran-Iraq war
Tuesday December 31, 2002
The Guardian
The Reagan administration and its special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld,
did little to stop Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s,
even though they knew Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons "almost daily"
against Iran, it was reported yesterday.
US support for Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war as a bulwark against Shi'ite
militancy has been well known for some time, but using declassified government
documents, the Washington Post provided new details yesterday about Mr
Rumsfeld's role, and about the extent of the Reagan administration's knowledge
of the use of chemical weapons.
The details will embarrass Mr Rumsfeld, who as defence secretary in the Bush
administration is one of the leading hawks on Iraq, frequently denouncing it for
its past use of such weapons.
The US provided less conventional military equipment than British or German
companies but it did allow the export of biological agents, including anthrax;
vital ingredients for chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front
organisation in Chile, the report says.
Congressman Ron Paul
U.S. House of Representatives
September 10, 2002
Questions That Won't Be Asked About Iraq
23. How can our declared goal of bringing democracy to Iraq be believable
when we prop up dictators throughout the Middle East and support military
tyrants like Musharaf in Pakistan, who overthrew a democratically-elected
president?
24. Are you familiar with the 1994 Senate Hearings that revealed the U.S.
knowingly supplied chemical and biological materials to Iraq during the
Iran-Iraq war and as late as 1992 – including after the alleged Iraqi gas attack
on a Kurdish village?
25. Did we not assist Saddam Hussein’s rise to power by supporting and
encouraging his invasion of Iran? Is it honest to criticize Saddam now for his
invasion of Iran, which at the time we actively supported?
IRAQGATE
The Columbia Journalism Review is the premier publication on the web about
journalism, for journalists
March/April 1993
The United States and its European allies have laws and policies designed to
prevent arms and military technology from getting into the hands of developing
countries, especially where there is a likelihood of their reckless deployment.
If these controls were aimed at anyone, certainly they were aimed at the highly
repressive, swaggering Iraqi regime, with its history of threatening both its
neighbors and its citizens.
Still, when Saddam went to war against Iran, becoming the world's chief
practitioner of chemical warfare, U.S. realpolitikers dubbed him the lesser of
two evils, and the one less likely to disrupt the oil flow. The essence of
Iraqgate is that secret efforts to support him became the order of the day, both
during his long war with Iran and afterward.
And we've learned that the obscure Atlanta branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca
Nazionale del Lavoro, relying partially on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans,
funneled $ 5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans
were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the
purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture
department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took
advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been
left holding the bag for what looks like $ 2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
All of this was not yet clear in August 1989, when FBI agents raided U.S.
branches of BNL, hitting the jackpot in Atlanta. The branch manager in that
city, Christopher Drogoul, was charged with making unauthorized, clandestine,
and illegal loans to Iraq -- some of which, according to the indictment, were
used to purchase arms and weapons technology. Yet three months after the raid,
White House officials went right on backing Saddam, approving $ 1 billion more
in U.S. government loan guarantees for farm exports to Iraq, even though it was
becoming clear that the country was beating plowshares into swords.
"What
We Say Goes": The Middle East in the New World Order
Noam Chomsky, April 4, 1991
“Prior to August 2, 1990, the US and its allies found Saddam Hussein an
attractive partner. In 1980, they helped prevent UN reaction to Iraq's attack on
Iran, which they supported throughout. At the time, Iraq was a Soviet client,
but Reagan, Thatcher and Bush recognized Saddam Hussein as "our kind of guy" and
induced him to switch sides. In 1982, Reagan removed Iraq from the list of
states that sponsor terror, permitting it to receive enormous credits for the
purchase of US exports while the US became a major market for its oil. By 1987,
Iraq praised Washington for its "positive efforts" in the Gulf while expressing
disappointment over Soviet refusal to join the tilt towards Iraq (Tariq Aziz).
US intervention was instrumental in enabling Iraq to gain the upper hand in the
war. Western corporations took an active role in building up Iraq's military
strength, notably its weapons of mass destruction. Reagan and Bush regularly
intervened to block congressional censure of their friend's atrocious human
rights record, strenuously opposing any actions that might interfere with
profits for US corporations or with Iraq's military build-up.”
“Britain was no different. When Saddam was reported to have gassed thousands of
Kurds at Halabja, the White House intervened to block any serious congressional
reaction and not one member of the governing Conservative Party was willing to
join a left-labor condemnation in Parliament. Both governments now profess
outrage over the crime, and denounce those who did protest for appeasing their
former comrade, while basking in media praise for their high principle. It was,
of course, understood that Saddam Hussein was one of the world's most savage
tyrants. But he was "our gangster," joining a club in which he could find
congenial associates. Repeating a familiar formula, Geoffrey Kemp, head of the
Middle East section in the National Security Council under Reagan, observed that
"We weren't really that naive. We knew that he was an SOB, but he was our SOB."
“Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated
strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike
any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and
covert operations secret even in success.”
-
President Bush's address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night,
September 20, 2001
TERRORISM DEFINED
U.S. Army, Field Manual 100-20, Stability and Support Opperations,
(Final Draft), "Chapter 8: Combatting Terrorism."
The DOD definition of terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or
the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate
governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political,
religious, or ideological."
This definition was carefully crafted to distinguish between terrorism and other
kinds of violence. The act of terrorism is defined independent of the cause that
motivates it. People employ terrorist violence in the name of many causes. The
tendency to label as terrorism any violent act of which we do not approve is
erroneous. Terrorism is a specific kind of violence.
The official definition says that terrorism is calculated. Terrorists generally
know what they are doing. Their selection of a target is planned and rational.
They know the effect they seek. Terrorist violence is neither spontaneous nor
random. Terrorism is intended to produce fear; by implication, that fear is
engendered in someone other than the victim. In other words, terrorism is a
psychological act conducted for its impact on an audience.
Massive firestorm targets Iraqi leadership
Iraqi division commander surrenders to Marines
Friday, March 21, 2003 Posted: 11:15 PM EST (0415 GMT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. forces plan to drop more than 1,500 bombs and
missiles across Iraq in the first 24 hours of its "shock and awe" campaign that
began Friday, Pentagon officials said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the air campaign had shaken up the
regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, which he said is "starting to lose
control of their country."
"The confusion of Iraqi officials is growing," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon
briefing. "Their ability to see what is happening on the battlefield, to
communicate with their forces and to control their country is slipping away."
“Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance”
Written By, Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, With: L.A.
"Bud" Edney, Fred M. Franks, Charles A. Horner, Jonathan T. Howe, and Keith
Brendley, NDU Press Book, December 1996
"The aim of Rapid Dominance is to affect the will, perception,
and understanding of the adversary to fit or respond to our strategic policy
ends through imposing a regime of Shock and Awe. Clearly, the traditional
military aim of destroying, defeating, or neutralizing the adversary's
military capability is a fundamental and necessary component of Rapid
Dominance. Our intent, however, is to field a range of capabilities to induce
sufficient Shock and Awe to render the adversary impotent. This means that
physical and psychological effects must be obtained.
...
"Dominance" means the ability to affect and dominate an adversary's will both
physically and psychologically. Physical dominance includes the ability to
destroy, disarm, disrupt, neutralize, and to render impotent. Psychological
dominance means the ability to destroy, defeat, and neuter the will of an
adversary to resist; or convince the adversary to accept our terms and aims
short of using force. The target is the adversary's will, perception, and
understanding. The principal mechanism for achieving this dominance is through
imposing sufficient conditions of "Shock and Awe" on the adversary to convince
or compel it to accept our strategic aims and military objectives. Clearly,
deception, confusion, misinformation, and disinformation, perhaps in massive
amounts, must be employed.
The key objective of Rapid Dominance is to impose this overwhelming level of
Shock and Awe against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely
basis to paralyze its will to carry on. In crude terms, Rapid Dominance would
seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's
perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of
resistance at tactical and strategic levels. An adversary would be rendered
totally impotent and vulnerable to our actions.
Bush Gives CIA More Power to Oust Iraq's Saddam
Sun Jun 16, 2002
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. congressional leaders on Sunday applauded a move
by President Bush to let the CIA conduct covert operations to topple Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein and urged further action if such efforts fail.
"It is an appropriate action to take. I hope it succeeds in its quest," Gephardt
said on ABC's "This Week" program. He has previously endorsed the use of force
to oust Saddam.
"It's a wise and prudent thing to do," added House Republican leader Richard
Armey of Texas.
"If the covert action doesn't work, we better be prepared to move forward with
another action, an overt action," the Delaware Democrat told CBS' "Face the
Nation" program. "And it seems to me that we can't afford to miss."
THE SECRET
WARS OF THE CIA - Part 1
JOHN STOCKWELL, former CIA official, 10 October 1987
"I did 13 years in the CIA altogether. ..We're talking about 10 to 20 thousand
covert actions [the CIA has performed since 1961]. What I found was that lots
and lots of people have been killed in these things.... Some of them are very,
very bloody.”
“When the U.S. doesn't like a government, they send the CIA in, with its
resources and activists, hiring people, hiring agents, to tear apart the social
and economic fabric of the country, as a technique for putting pressure on the
government, hoping that they can make the government come to the U.S.'s terms,
or the government will collapse altogether and they can engineer a coup d'etat,
and have the thing wind up with their own choice of people in power.”
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
Stephen Kinzer
Hardcover, June 2003
"Half a century ago, the United States overthrew a Middle Eastern government for
the first time. The victim was Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected
prime minister of Iran. Although the coup seemed a success at first, today it
serves as a chilling lesson about the dangers of foreign intervention." In this
book, veteran New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer gives the first full
account of this fateful operation. His account is centered around an
hour-by-hour reconstruction of the events of August 1953, and concludes with an
assessment of the coup's "haunting and terrible legacy."
The Los Angeles Times
Fifty years ago, the CIA overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, the popular,
democratically elected prime minister of Iran, and reinstalled the country's
exiled monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah. In All the Shah's Men, Stephen Kinzer, a
longtime New York Times correspondent, covers this event in an exciting
narrative. He questions whether Americans are well served by interventions for
regime change abroad, and he reminds us of the long history of Iranian
resistance to great power interventions, as well as the unanticipated
consequences of intervention. — Nikki R. Keddie
Terrorism Works – Terrorism is not the Weapon of the Weak
Noam Chomsky, October 18, 2001
"That is the culture in which we live and it reveals several facts. One is the
fact that terrorism works. It doesn’t fail. It works. Violence usually works.
That’s world history. Secondly, it’s a very serious analytic error to say, as is
commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of
violence, it’s primarily a weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is
held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal
systems and their terror doesn’t count as terror. Now that’s close to universal.
I can’t think of a historical exception, even the worst mass murderers view the
world that way….”
Backyard terrorism
The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's
still at it
George Monbiot, Tuesday October 30, 2001, The Guardian
“The FBI defines terrorism as "violent acts... intended to intimidate or coerce
a civilian population, influence the policy of a government, or affect the
conduct of a government", which is a precise description of the activities of
SOA's graduates. But how can we be sure that their alma mater has had any part
in this? Well, in 1996, the US government was forced to release seven of the
school's training manuals. Among other top tips for terrorists, they recommended
blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.”
The
New War Against Terror
Noam Chomsky, October 18, 2001
Reagan-US War Against Nicaragua
But I’ll just mention one case which is totally uncontroversial, so we might as
well not argue about it, by no means the most extreme but uncontroversial. It’s
uncontroversial because of the judgments of the highest international
authorities the International Court of Justice, the World Court, and the UN
Security Council. So this one is uncontroversial, at least among people who have
some minimal concern for international law, human rights, justice and other
things like that. And now I’ll leave you an exercise. You can estimate the size
of that category by simply asking how often this uncontroversial case has been
mentioned in the commentary of the last month. And it’s a particularly relevant
one, not only because it is uncontroversial, but because it does offer a
precedent as to how a law abiding state would respond to…did respond in fact to
international terrorism, which is uncontroversial. And was even more extreme
than the events of September 11th. I’m talking about the Reagan-US war against
Nicaragua which left tens of thousands of people dead, the country ruined,
perhaps beyond recovery.
Nicaragua’s Response
Nicaragua did respond. They didn’t respond by setting off bombs in Washington.
They responded by taking it to the World Court, presenting a case, they had no
problem putting together evidence. The World Court accepted their case, ruled in
their favor, ordered the…condemned what they called the “unlawful use of force,”
which is another word for international terrorism, by the United States, ordered
the United States to terminate the crime and to pay massive reparations. The
United States, of course, dismissed the court judgment with total contempt and
announced that it would not accept the jurisdiction of the court henceforth.
Then Nicaragua then went to the UN Security Council which considered a
resolution calling on all states to observe international law. No one was
mentioned but everyone understood. The United States vetoed the resolution. It
now stands as the only state on record which has both been condemned by the
World Court for international terrorism and has vetoed a Security Council
resolution calling on states to observe international law. Nicaragua then went
to the General Assembly where there is technically no veto but a negative US
vote amounts to a veto. It passed a similar resolution with only the United
States, Israel, and El Salvador opposed. The following year again, this time the
United States could only rally Israel to the cause, so 2 votes opposed to
observing international law. At that point, Nicaragua couldn’t do anything
lawful. It tried all the measures. They don’t work in a world that is ruled by
force.
CASE CONCERNING THE MILITARY AND PARAMILITARY ACTIVITIES
IN AND AGAINST NICARAGUA (NICARAGUA v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)
International Court of Justice
Judgment of 27 June 1986
(4) By twelve votes to three,
Decides that the United States of America, by certain attacks on Nicaraguan
territory in 1983-1984, namely attacks on Puerto Sandino on 13 September and 14
October 1983, an attack on Corinto on 10 October 1983; an attack on Potosi Naval
Base on 4/5 January 1984, an attack on San Juan del Sur on 7 March 1984; attacks
on patrol boats at Puerto Sandino on 28 and 30 March 1984; and an attack on San
Juan del Norte on 9 April 1984; and further by those acts of intervention
referred to in subparagraph (3) hereof which involve the use of force, has
acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under
customary international law not to use force against another State;
The
New War Against Terror
Noam Chomsky, October 18, 2001
”The United States responded to the World Court and the Security Council by
immediately escalating the war very quickly, that was a bipartisan decision
incidentally. The terms of the war were also changed. For the first time there
were official orders given…official orders to the terrorist army to attack what
are called “soft targets,” meaning undefended civilian targets, and to keep away
from the Nicaraguan army. They were able to do that because the United States
had total control of the air over Nicaragua and the mercenary army was supplied
with advanced communication equipment, it wasn’t a guerilla army in the normal
sense and could get instructions about the disposition of the Nicaraguan army
forces so they could attack agricultural collectives, health clinics, and so
on…soft targets with impunity. Those were the official orders.”
THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA - Part 2
JOHN STOCKWELL (13 year member of the CIA), 10 October 1987
To destabilize Nicaragua beginning in 1981, we began funding this force of
Somoza's ex-national guardsmen, calling them the contras (the
counter-revolutionaries). We created this force, it did not exist until we
allocated money. We've armed them, put uniforms on their backs, boots on their
feet, given them camps in Honduras to live in, medical supplies, doctors,
training, leadership, direction, as we've sent them in to de-stabilize
Nicaragua. Under our direction they have systematically been blowing up
graineries, saw mills, bridges, government offices, schools, health centers.
They ambush trucks so the produce can't get to market. They raid farms and
villages. The farmer has to carry a gun while he tries to plow, if he can plow
at all.
If you want one example of hard proof of the CIA's involvement in this, and
their approach to it, dig up `The Sabotage Manual', that they were circulating
throughout Nicaragua, a comic-book type of a paper, with visual explanations of
what you can do to bring a society to a halt, how you can gum up typewriters,
what you can pour in a gas tank to burn up engines, what you can stuff in a
sewage to stop up the sewage so it won't work, things you can do to make a
society simply cease to function.
Systematically, the contras have been assassinating religious workers, teachers,
health workers, elected officials, government administrators. You remember the
assassination manual? that surfaced in 1984. It caused such a stir that
President Reagan had to address it himself in the presidential debates with
Walter Mondale. They use terror. This is a technique that they're using to
traumatize the society so that it can't function.
I don't mean to abuse you with verbal violence, but you have to understand what
your government and its agents are doing. They go into villages, they haul out
families. With the children forced to watch they castrate the father, they peel
the skin off his face, they put a grenade in his mouth and pull the pin. With
the children forced to watch they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts
off. And sometimes for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these
things to the children.
This is nobody's propaganda. There have been over 100,000 American witnesses for
peace who have gone down there and they have filmed and photographed and
witnessed these atrocities immediately after they've happened, and documented
13,000 people killed this way, mostly women and children. These are the
activities done by these contras. The contras are the people president Reagan
calls `freedom fighters'. He says they're the moral equivalent of our founding
fathers. And the whole world gasps at this confession of his family traditions.
Read Contra Terror by Reed Brodie [1], former assistant Attorney General of New
York State. Read The Contras by Dieter Eich. [4] Read With the Contras by
Christopher Dickey. [2] This is a main-line journalist, down there on a grant
with the Council on Foreign Relations, a slightly to the right of the middle of
the road organization. He writes a book that sets a pox on both your houses, and
then he accounts about going in on patrol with the contras, and describes their
activities. Read Witness for Peace: What We have Seen and Heard. Read the
Lawyer's Commission on Human Rights. Read The Violations of War on Both Sides by
the Americas Watch. [15] And there are many, many more documentations of
details, of names, of the incidents that have happened.
US
fails to block torture treaty
Thursday, 25 July, 2002, 00:22 GMT 01:22 UK
“The United States has failed to block a United Nations treaty on preventing
torture, but the country is under no obligation to adopt the new convention at
home.”
Three Reagan-era hard-liners return to help run Bush's foreign policy team
December 1, 2002, Newsday
They were key figures in the Iran-Contra scandal and U.S.-backed "dirty wars" in
Central America in the 1980s. Now Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte
are back, helping run White House policy toward Latin America.
The re-emergence of the three has caused consternation among human rights
activists and some regional experts, who fear President George W. Bush's team is
taking the country back to Cold War days, when the United States intervened
flagrantly in Latin America by supporting coups, bankrolling dictatorships that
suppressed leftists, and training soldiers linked to human rights abuses.
"The resurfacing of the Iran-Contra culprits has been nothing short of
Orwellian in this administration," said Peter Kornbluh of the liberal
National Security Archives, a Washington, D.C., research institute. "These are
not 21st-century appointments. They are retrograde appointments, a throwback to
an era of interventionism when the U.S. was the big bully on the block."
America vs. Its Allies
By Jørgen Wouters, ABCNEWS.com
July 17, 1998 — The world’s top cop is siding with some of the world’s top
criminals to weaken the power of a proposed global court.
Delegates from some 150 nations have spent the past five weeks in Rome at a U.N.
conference trying to establish an International Criminal Court (ICC) to
prosecute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
At issue is just how much authority such a court would enjoy; who would decide
which cases are investigated; and who would have to consent to a prosecution.
Ironically, the United States—the world’s self-appointed defender human rights
and the rule of law—finds itself at odds with nearly all of its allies, and in
bed with some of its worst enemies.
“I think this damages our moral authority and undermines our interests,” said
John Steinbruner, senior fellow of foreign policy studies at the Brookings
Institution. “We are not living up to what people think we do and should stand
for.”
Bush Mocks Saddam on Weapons Disclosure
Wed, Feb 26, 2003
On Tuesday, Bush said that if the Iraqi president and his generals "take
innocent life, if they destroy infrastructure, they will be held accountable as
war criminals."
"If killing hundreds of thousands of innocent peasants by dropping
millions of tons of bombs on undefended civilian targets is not a war crime,
then there are no war crimes. If Kissinger is not responsible for these
crimes, then there are no war criminals."
-
'Wanted' by Fred Branfman, Salon.com
Bush appoints Kissinger to head 9/11 investigation
THE BOSTON GLOBE
Thursday, November 28, 2002
WASHINGTON -- President Bush tapped former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
yesterday to lead an investigation into intelligence lapses before the Sept. 11
attacks, urging the panel to "follow the facts wherever they may lead" even as
White House advisers insisted that the president himself should not be called to
testify.
Bush lauded Kissinger, who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, for his
"careful judgment" at a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room -- the third such
elaborate bill-signing event in three days, part of a weeklong effort by the
administration to promote the president's legislative accomplishments.
The Latest
Kissinger Outrage
Why is a proven liar and wanted man in charge of the 9/11 investigation?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Wednesday, November 27, 2002, at 3:36 PM PT
"Our leaders are cruel because only those
willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of
leadership in the foreign policy establishment ... People capable of
expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway
powerless strangers ... do not become president of the United States, or vice
president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of
the treasury. Nor do they want to."
- William Blum, former employee of the US State department,
Rogue State - A Guide to the World's Only Superpower,
source
Henry Kissinger: Haunted by his past
Friday, 26 April, 2002, 15:04 GMT 16:04 UK, BBC
Documents recently released by the CIA, strengthen previously-held suspicions
that Kissinger was actively involved in the establishment of Operation Condor, a
covert plan involving six Latin American countries including Chile, to
assassinate thousands of political opponents.
Kissinger has admitted that mistakes were "quite possibly" made by the
administrations in which he served. But he has questioned whether, 30
years after the event, "courts are the appropriate means by which
determination is made".
International War Crimes Tribunal Approved
Permanent Court to Come Into Force Over U.S. Objection
Thursday, April 11, 2002; 3:17 PM
UNITED NATIONS, April 11--Despite fierce American opposition, advocates of the
world's first permanent international war crimes court today obtained more than
the 60 government ratifications required for the creation of the tribunal, which
may begin prosecuting its first cases in 2003.
Bill Summary (HR4775) & Status for the 107th Congress
SEC. 2008. AUTHORITY TO FREE MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED
STATES AND CERTAIN OTHER PERSONS DETAINED OR IMPRISONED BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.
(a) AUTHORITY- The President is authorized to use all means necessary and
appropriate to bring about the release of any person described in subsection (b)
who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the
International Criminal Court.
US
fears persecution
Monday, 1 July, 2002, 11:02 GMT 12:02 UK, BBC
“The United States regards the International Criminal Court as a potential
weapon to be used by its opponents.”
“But the court's supporters regard it as a potential weapon in the application
of the principles of international law."
The Trial of Henry Kissinger
An indictment of Henry Kissinger for genocide, crimes against humanity, and
war crimes would include (but not be confined to) the following.
VIETNAM
Kissinger scuttled peace talks in 1968, paving the way for Richard Nixon's
victory in the presidential race. Half the battle deaths in Vietnam took place
between 1968 and 1972, not to mention the millions of civilians throughout
Indochina who were killed.
CAMBODIA
Kissinger persuaded Nixon to widen the war with massive bombing of Cambodia and
Laos. No one had suggested we go to war with either of these countries. By
conservative estimates, the U.S. killed 600,000 civilians in Cambodia and
another 350,000 in Laos.
BANGLADESH
Using weapons supplied by the U.S., General Yahya Khan overthrew the
democratically elected government and murdered at least half a million civilians
in 1971. In the White House, the National Security Council wanted to condemn
these actions. Kissinger refused. Amid the killing, Kissinger thanked Khan for
his "delicacy and tact."
CHILE
Kissinger helped to plan the 1973 U.S.-backed overthrow of the democratically
elected Salvador Allende and the assassination of General René Schneider.
Right-wing general Augusto Pinochet then took over. Moderates fled for their
lives. Hit men, financed by the CIA, tracked down Allende supporters and killed
them. These attacks included the car bombing of Allende's foreign minister,
Orlando Letelier, and an aide, Ronni Moffitt, at Sheridan Circle in downtown
Washington.
EAST TIMOR
In 1975 President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger met with Indonesia's
corrupt strongman Suharto. Kissinger told reporters the U.S. wouldn't recognize
the tiny country of East Timor, which had recently won independence from the
Portuguese. Within hours Suharto launched an invasion, killing, by some
estimates, 200,000 civilians.
Kissinger Resigns as Head of Sept. 11 Commission
Fri, Dec 13, 2002
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Under fire for potential conflicts of interest, former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger abruptly resigned on Friday as chairman of an
independent commission investigating the government's failure to prevent the
Sept. 11 attacks.
"It is with regret that I accept Dr. Kissinger's decision to step down as
chairman of the National Commission to investigate the events of Sept. 11, 2001
and the years that led up to that event," Bush said in a statement.
"As I stated at the time of his appointment, Dr. Kissinger is one of our
nation's most accomplished and respected public servants. I thank him for his
willingness to consider serving his country once again."
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