THE
GREAT CRIME SPREE OF 2004
RAPE, TORTURE, MURDER,WAR CRIMES - YOUR
GOVERNMENT AT WORK
By: Justin Raimondo
If 2003 was the
year of the liars, as I opined last year, then 2004 was the year of the war criminals,
starting with Time magazine's designated Man of the
Year, criminal-in-chief George W. Bush. It was Bush who presided
over the torture
and abuse not
only at Abu Ghraib but in
U.S.-run dungeons from Guantanamo to
Afghanistan – and spare me the cries of protest that he didn't know, and Abu
Ghraib was an "isolated incident."
To begin with, he did know. Thanks to a lawsuit
brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the president's personal responsibility in
this disgusting
saga has been revealed, along with the existence of FBI internal memos and other
material that cite a previously
unknown Executive Order authorizing torture at Abu Ghraib and other prison facilities.
Bush, the Janus-faced ruler of an empire of hypocrites, loudly announces a "global
democratic revolution" even as he whispers to subordinates that torture is okay:
he's a liar and a criminal.
Lynndie England had her day
in court: when will Bush have his?
Government, which supposedly exists to protect us from criminals, is itself a criminal
organization, bigger, more destructive, and certainly better-funded than the Mafia, the Bloods, and the
Crips. The essential criminality of government – not just the American
government, but all government – is underscored by the news that agents of the
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) who had knowledge of abuses were threatened by
Special Operations personnel if they revealed the illegal activities taking place at
Guantanamo.
Every once in a while liberals discover this truth, and are shocked – shocked!
– that what they consider the instrument of human good could so easily become the
source of so much evil. It's a rude awakening, and much needed: but it may not come in
time. I fear it's too late to halt the political and moral degeneration of our old
republic into a decadent and cynical imperial power, like pagan Rome, where torture was a
common form of public
entertainment.
In these days when "moral values"
are said to motivate American politics, how is it that we have a president with the morals
of the Marquis
de Sade?
If Janet
Jackson bares her breast, there's a national outcry – and the threat of government action.
But if the Pentagon, with the full backing of the president, authorizes an orgy of sadism and, yes, systematic terrorism
inflicted on the "liberated" people of Iraq – 10,000 of whom now
languish in U.S. torture pens – there is … silence. The only action taken by the
U.S. government has been to cover up the burgeoning scandal, with full congressional
complicity.
What are we becoming: this,
and – ugh! – this?
Follow the first link, and you find the story of two Iraqis stopped by the U.S. for
being out after curfew, who were then taken to the Tigris river and forced to jump in
– one drowned, the other survived. The irony here is that the victims are related to
a prominent Iraqi blogger, lionized by the pro-war "blogosphere" for hailing the
Americans as his "liberators" – but when
Zeyad blogged the death of his cousin, rightly pointing out that this wasn't exactly
the sort of behavior one expects from "liberators," he was quickly dropped and
even denounced by the pro-war bloggers.
At the trial, lawyers for
the four accused American soldiers
argued that there was no proof the drowning ever occurred – this in spite of the
offer of the family to exhume the body. All charges have been dropped against two of the
accused, but two others face trial in the
coming year.
The second link goes to a story about "consensual" sex between Pvt. Federico
Daniel Merida and 19-year-old Falah Zaggam that ended in the murder of the latter by the
former: Merida gave several versions of how the crime unfolded, first saying that the
young Iraqi National Guard tried to rob him, later claiming the Iraqi "forced"
him into sexual relations, and eventually taking the "gay panic" defense –
admitting that the sex was consensual yet averring that he, Merida, then
"snapped" and killed the kid by shooting him 11 times. Merida tried to
cover it up by making it appear as if his victim had fired shots.
It looks like a
sentence of 25 years in prison for Merida, which seems awfully light, but if I were
the Iraqi insurgency, I would broadcast the following video and accompanying headline far
and wide: GI sentenced
to three years in death of Iraqi teen. After blowing up a truck and finding a badly
wounded 16-year-old boy in it – who had nothing to do with the insurgents –
Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne Jr. shot the kid to "put him out
of his misery." Horne, 30, of Winston-Salem, N.C., "also received a
reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of wages and a dishonorable discharge."
Three years – for murder? Is that how much an Iraqi life is worth?
Where are all the "pro-life" conservatives now?
If 2004 was a year of untrammeled American criminality, the worst crimes of our
government may have been rhetorical: as the president's speechwriters are crafting soaring
phrases hailing the arrival of "democracy" and "freedom" in Iraq, his
lawyers are constructing legal
arguments justifying the torture of Iraqis and other foreigners – and immunizing
the president and his minions from prosecution. |
No better pitch could be made by the insurgents than to cite the slap on
the wrist meted out to Horne. They need only point to Abu Ghraib, the drowning of Zaydun Fadhil, and
the numerous reports of torture and worse that are pouring out of Iraq in a veritable
tsunami of moral degradation to underscore the religious imperative and moral necessity of
the insurgency. It is not a hard argument to make to those whose homes have been bombed out of existence and who
must endure the daily depredations of an occupying army.
Constantly reminded of their ongoing national and personal humiliation, young Iraqi men
are naturally drawn to the resistance, which is growing exponentially – possibly beyond the ability of the
occupation force, as presently constituted, to contain it. "More troops!" the
War Party cries, and the chorus of criticism coming at this administration is loudest on
the pro-war right. But the visibility and ubiquity of American troops is the insurgency's
prime recruiting device: the latest
strategic wisdom coming from many military experts is to lower the profile of the
American occupation, and at least try to give the administration's Potemkin Village
"democracy" in Iraq a thin veneer of credibility.
More troops mean more targets, without necessarily ensuring more order. Rummy, who's no
dummy, knows this, as does the neocon mob calling for his head. The latter, however, are
less concerned about keeping order in Iraq – "creative destruction" is
more the neocon style – than they are about gathering American forces for the next
war, which, in my opinion, is bound to take place in and around Syria, including Lebanon,
and the Kurdish regions of Iraq.
Speaking of the Kurds, much is made of the Sunni-Shi'ite division in Iraq and how it's
leading to civil war,
but the really big problem, which has been largely put off so far, is what to do about the
burning desire of most Kurds to strike out on their own. A petition demanding
independence signed by 1.7 million Kurds – more than half the Kurdish population
of northern Iraq– was recently delivered to the United Nations. Its arrival heralds a
fresh crisis for the Americans, who have so far managed to keep their most enthusiastic
supporters, the Kurdish peshmerga ,
from going off the reservation. But the Israelis, whose Kurdish incursions have been detailed by Seymour Hersh,
may have other ideas.
(By the way, the news that some of the Guantanamo prisoners had been wrapped by their
captors in the
Israeli flag must provoke even the most doggedly incurious to ask where U.S.
interrogators picked up a trick like that.)
In any case, this stirring of the Kurdish pot seems to be having repercussions on the
home front – or, possibly, vice versa – in light of the FBI's recent take-down
of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the epicenter of Israel's
powerful lobby in the U.S., and long rated as one of the most powerful in Washington.
After two raids on AIPAC's D.C.
headquarters, and four subpoenas issued to top officials Israel's premier lobbyist
accompanied by extensive "leaks" to the media, Israel's amen corner is reeling.
Their crimes, including espionage – and, in my own view, treason – were uncovered in
2004, and it looks like 2005 is going to be the year of their comeuppance.
Oh yes, it was a banner year for criminality at the highest levels of government: look
at Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin,
who confessed to being a spy for Israel and was "flipped" by the FBI's
counterintelligence unit. Franklin, who agreed to help ferret out his confederates in top
policymaking positions, is at the center of a storm that has already done considerable damage to the once
mighty AIPAC – and may yet give new meaning to the "special relationship"
between the U.S. and its truculent ally.
Franklin was caught
red-handed relating top secret government intelligence to Naor
Gilon, the top political affairs officer at the Israeli embassy, at a lunch with two
high-ranking AIPAC officials. Now we learn that, having been flipped, Franklin was on the phone to Richard Perle, Francis Brooke, and
no doubt others intimately involved in the neocon-Chalabi intelligence network centered in
the Pentagon's "Office
of Special Plans." Chalabi is accused of handing over vital U.S. secrets to
Iran, and the Americans are beginning to ponder if perhaps they haven't been
snookered, and not only by the Iranians.
How, one wonders, did Chalabi get his hands on U.S. signal intercepts, sensitive
intelligence that only top U.S. policymakers could access? The FBI is wondering, too, and
the Washington Post (Sept. 2) reports that AIPAC is the number-one
suspect:
"FBI counterintelligence agents are investigating whether several Pentagon
officials leaked classified information to Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi and the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to a law enforcement official and other people
familiar with the case. … Initially, news reports revealed that the FBI was
investigating whether Lawrence A. Franklin – a mid-level analyst specializing in
Middle East issues in the Pentagon office of Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense
for policy – had passed a draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, and whether
the group had passed the information to Israel. AIPAC is an influential lobbying group
with close ties to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"The FBI probe is actually much broader, according to senior U.S. officials,
and has been underway for at least two years. Several sources familiar with the case say
the probe now extends to other Pentagon personnel who have a particular interest in
assisting both Israel and Chalabi."
So the crime of treason is added to murder, torture, and other war crimes, including an
extensive and ongoing cover-up: the year 2004 has been little more than one long, non-stop
crime spree in the corridors of power.
What the Franklin case will show, I believe, is that the same cabal that lied us into war then turned around and stole our
secrets, handing them over to Chalabi and Iran via AIPAC. A recent piece in The Forward by
AIPAC-defender Edwin Black
tries to portray the pursuit of AIPAC by law enforcement as the intelligence community's
"war" on the neoconservatives: Black has repeatedly accused the head of the
FBI's counterintelligence unit of "anti-Semitism," and apparently some of the
principals in this case have a longstanding adversarial relationship. However, by Black's
logic – which has led him to call for the release
of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard – any pursuit of AIPAC is, by
definition, suspect. As to why AIPAC must be granted immunity from investigation,
especially when it comes to such a serious charge as espionage, is not at all clear.
In any event, if 2003 was the year of the liar, and 2004 the year of the war criminal,
then let 2005 be the year of justice. That is not a prediction, but only a hope.
Justin Raimondo is Editorial Director
of AntiWar.Com.
He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.
Justin Raimondo may be contacted at egarris@antiwar.com
Published in the December 31, 2004 issue of Ether Zone
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