[ssf] Fw: Gore Sells but Not American Gore

[Gerald Ali.]

1/.... Spanish Inquiry of Alleged Bush-Era War Crimes Begins Monday 
2/.... Gore Sells but Not American Gore 
3/.... The Carp of Truth: Jack Straw, Colin Powell and the Smoking Guns of War Crime
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Spanish Inquiry of Alleged Bush-Era War Crimes Begins Monday 
http://thedesperateblogger.com/2010/02/spanish-inquiry-of-alleged-bush-era-war-crimes-begins-monday/

(In a break from our usual satirical content, we present the following real news item - exclusive to The Desperate Blogger.)

On Monday February 15 in Madrid, Judge Baltasar Garzon will convene an investigation of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity allegedly committed by U.S. government officials and others during the Bush administration.

The first witness called to testify will reportedly be American international human rights lawyer Dr. William F. Pepper.  Dr. Pepper, who convened the International Human Rights Seminar at Oxford University, stated that he was, "asked by the Court to file an Opinion and testify as an expert on the issue of jurisdiction of the Spanish Court with respect to the various crimes being alleged."  He may also testify as to his opinion on the validity, or invalidity, of the most likely defenses to be offered by defendants should criminal charges result, namely 'Sovereign Immunity' and 'Superior Orders' (more commonly known as 'The Nuremberg Defense').

In his Opinion submitted to the Court last spring, Pepper concluded:

". from the U.S. government's own documents and the public statements of its leaders, that there is prima facie evidence of the following crimes:

  a.. 
    a.. Torture and the Conspiracy to Commit Torture 
    b.. War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity 
    c.. Waging Aggressive War 
    d.. Illegal (Arbitrary) Detention 
[He] places varying degrees of responsibility on particular government officials including George W. Bush and Richard Cheney and dismisses as inapplicable to serious international crimes the relevant defenses available to them and their subordinates including the government lawyers who [he argues] have a special professional responsibility."

He further concluded that the Spanish Court, "is fully able and obligated .under international law and Universal Jurisdiction" to prosecute if the evidence indicates that prosecutions are legally justified.

Pepper, who in 2007 won the landmark case Nikbin v. the Islamic Republic of Iran in which - for the first time in U.S. history - a sovereign state, as opposed to individuals or government agencies, was held accountable for torture, is no stranger to controversial cases.  A friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the last year of his life, Dr. Pepper went on to represent James Earl Ray in his quest for a new trial.  After Ray's death in 1997, he later represented the King family in the 1999 wrongful death civil suit King v. Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators.  In that case, after a month-long trial in which over 70 witnesses testified, the jury found, after only 59 minutes of deliberation, that defendant Loyd Jowers and "others, including government agencies" participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King.

Dr. Pepper is expected to be followed to the witness-stand on Monday by two former Guantanamo detainees.

The investigation by the Spanish Magistrate is expected to last several months and include testimony from a number of victims, five of whom are Spanish citizens or residents who were allegedly detained and tortured. Judge Garzon's inquiry will be the first, and perhaps only, formal examination of alleged criminal activity that could lead to a number of officials being charged with violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, both of which were signed by the United States and ratified by the U.S. Senate.

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Gore Sells but Not American Gore 
by Dave Lindorff 
Originally published in This Can't Be Happening yesterday, 14 February 2010

US military related corporations and their political handmaidens in Congress and the White House don't think that showing the authenic gore of American casualties is a good idea. It might get Americans to thinking too hard about those wars, and about whether we ought to be fighting them. 
NBC, the Military Industry Network owned by General Electric, at least unless or until it is sold to Comcast, was, along with most of the rest of the US corporate media, outraged when, last year, the Associated Press circulated, and some newspapers ran, a photo of an American Marine, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, dying after being shot in battle in Afghanistan. 

There was all kinds of high-minded talk about the protecting the dignity of the dead, and about how it was not appropriate to show such images without the permission of the deceased's close relatives.

But then how to explain the spectacle of poor Notar Kumaritashvili, the 21-year-old luge rider from the Georgian olympic team. Kumaritashvili had the misfortune of hitting the edge of the luge shute he was on during a training run in British Columbia, and, at a speed of 89 mph, he was thrown from his sled and over the safety wall into the air, where he hit a steel pole, which killed him.
NBC, which was taping the run, rushed to air the grisly death. No attempt was made to seek permission from Kumaritashvili's family. Hey, this was good TV. Why risk ruining it by giving the family a veto over the tape?Well, NBC, when criticized, claimed it was all in the interest of public safety. They had a "legitimate need," you see, to inform the public that riding a luge is dangerous, the network pontificated. Never mind that almost nobody rides a luge, and that all of those who do are keenly aware that it is a life-risking sport.

The word for this kind of nonsense is hypocrisy. Another word is capitalism. Blood and gore sell, and this tape meant great ratings for NBC.

On the other hand, you'd think that showing what the war in Afghanistan, or the war in Iraq, look like would be good for ratings too. And shouldn't there be a journalistic responsibility to show Americans what is going on in our name and with our tax dollars, in our country's wars, not to mention that if it's important for potential sledders to know how dangerous a luge shute is, shouldn't potential military recruits be shown how dangerous wearing a uniform can be? Anyhow, we should be able to take the real ugliness and the blood: We Americans pay good money to see the fake gore of military slaughter--even of Americans--in movies like Avatar, or Saving Private Ryan, or Apocalypse Now.

But when it comes to war, politics intervenes. The military and its political handmaidens in Congress and the White House, don't think that showing the authenic gore of American casualties that occur daily in the course of our bloody imperial adventures is a good idea. It might get Americans to thinking too hard about those wars, and about whether we ought to be fighting them. And so NBC, and most of the rest of the US media, politely keep those images safely abroad.

Seriously. They have the footage, and the photos. They just don't let Americans see them. I was stunned, for example, when I lived in Taiwan in 2004 for five months, to see that CNN International, which is viewed all around the world, but not seen in the US, had plenty of film footage of dead American soldiers. They have to air that stuff if they want to compete commercially overseas with such other international news programs as the BBC and Al Jazzeera. But those scenes get censored out in Atlanta, so we don't see them here.

We get to see dead Haitians. We get to see dead Sri-Lankans. We get to see dead Taliban fighters. We get to see dead Olympians--especially if they're foreigners like poor Kumaritashvili. They don't get shown any "respect for their dignity."

But we don't get to see dead or dying American soldiers. That would be a shameful thing to do.

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About the author: Philadelphia journalist Dave Lindorff is a 34-year veteran, an award-winning journalist, a former New York Times contributor, a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a two-time Journalism Fulbright Scholar, and the co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of a well-regarded book on impeachment, The Case for Impeachment. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.

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The Carp of Truth: Jack Straw, Colin Powell and the Smoking Guns of War Crime
by Chris Floyd..First published in Empire Burlesque yesterday, 9 February 2010
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.
-- Shakespeare, Hamlet 


The documentary evidence shows that every single purported reason or justification for the war -- the WMD, connections to 9/11, the repressive nature of Saddam's regime -- was false to the core, and known to be false by the leaders who put these explanations forward. 
Britain's "Chilcot Inquiry" into the origins of the invasion of Iraq has largely faded from the headlines, following Tony Blair's bravura display of pious bluster before the panel of Establishment worthies last month. And in truth, it has been a rather toothless affair, with the already deferential worthies further constrained by the narrow confines placed upon their investigation by the government: chiefly, the cloak of secrecy wrapped around the many documents that detail the deceptions and manipulations of the Bush and Blair regimes as they schemed their way to war.

But as Chris Ames points out in the Guardian, in the wind-up of its first phase, the Chilcot panel seem to be trying to tell the public, obliquely, about some of the smoking guns in these buried documents: an official record of knowing deceit that confirms, yet again, the damning fact that the US and UK were determined to invade Iraq no matter what: with or without UN backing, whether or not Iraq had WMD -- and as we have pointed out here for many years, even if Saddam Hussein were no longer in power. The documentary evidence shows that every single purported reason or justification for the war -- the WMD, connections to 9/11, the repressive nature of Saddam's regime -- was false to the core, and known to be false by the leaders who put these explanations forward.
The Chilcot panelists were terribly craven when it came to confronting Tony Blair -- and they are likely to be equally circumspect when they politely pose a few inquiries to Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, sometime in the next few weeks. But they seem to have chosen the odious figure of Jack Straw -- foreign secretary at the time of the Iraq invasion, now serving, laughably, as justice secretary -- as the outlet for their frustrations at the strictures of the inquiry and the soft-shoe shuffling they've encountered from witness after witness.

And while their kid-glove massage of Blair was inexcusable, the Chilcoteers are quite right to focus on Straw. Like so many of his "New Labour" colleagues, this pathetic figure began his career as a radical leftist, honed his political teeth fighting for the poor and disadvantaged during the ravaging Thatcher years -- then transformed himself into a scurrying toady for the powerful and the privileged, championing war, Big Money and neo-Thatcherism, launching stern crackdowns on the "anti-social" lower classes, and imposing draconian "security" measures that have far outstripped even the liberty-gutting policies adopted by the U.S. government.

What's more, aside from Blair, Straw was the only top UK figure completely "in the loop" throughout the long, complex manipulations toward war. Along with his American counterpart, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Straw played a key role both in the transatlantic talks that engineered the act of aggression and the hugger-mugger manipulations at the UN.

And so, to close out its first phase, the Chilcot Inquiry recalled Straw -- who had already given one sweaty, white-knuckle performance on the witness stand a few weeks ago. With the implacable politesse of the true British mandarin, panelist Sir Lawrence Freedman seized the opportunity to suggest to the right honorable minister that the right honorable minister might, perhaps, be lying through his right honorable teeth in denying that Colin Powell had informed him quite clearly that the Americans were going to war, come hell or high water, in March 2003. As the Guardian notes, Freedman's questions "make it clear that [he] has obviously seen some very interesting paperwork. Here is the exchange, from the Guardian:

  Freedman asked: Can you start by confirming that you knew that military action was planned by the US for the middle of March come what may? You were copied in, presumably, to reports of conversations between the prime minister and the president?

  Straw replied: Yes, I don't think there was any key document that I should have seen that I didn't.

  Freedman: Was there any point where [Colin] Powell said to you that even if Iraq complied, president Bush had already made a decision that he intended to go to war?

  Straw replied: Certainly not to the best of my recollection.

  Freedman went on: I was going to suggest you might want to look through your conversations and check.

  Mr Straw at last got the hint: I will go through the records because I think you are trying to tell me something.

Yes, Mr Straw. He is trying to tell you, and the world, that he has the paper in his hand documenting your conversation with Colin Powell: a clear admission of the war crime of military aggression, as it reveals that there was not even a pretense of a legally justifiable casus belli among the American and British leaders -- just the cold, pre-determined intention to attack.

(And Powell, as we all remember, was the "good American," the "honorable American" in the run-up to war, a "decent man" who somehow got "railroaded" into making a false case for war before the entire world at the UN. A man so honorable and decent that the progressive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama proudly claimed him as one of his advisers, even as the million corpses from the war that Powell and Straw knowingly and willingly helped launch were rotting in the ground.)

But, as Ames notes, these kinds of oblique references are "the best we will get for now" from the panel: "At the end, Sir John Chilcot said that, however revealing the sessions have been, the great bulk of the evidence, telling us 'what really went on behind the scenes,' is in the documents." And the documents have not been and probably will not be released -- at least not for many decades, by which time Blair and Straw and Powell and Bush will have all lived out their days in wealth and comfort.

But although documents can be kept under wraps, and testimony can be falsified or prettified, the monstrous moral rot that has infected the warmongers can never be fully hidden. "For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak/With most miraculous organ." And Straw revealed his own moral depravity, his own arrogant and unfeeling blindness, in his remarks at the end of his testimony.

In his final statement, hoping to paint himself has a decent and honorable man (like Powell!), Straw spoke of how he "grieves" for the "huge heartache" suffered by "those who lost loved ones out there." But he could not resist offering up one more transparent lie -- a lie, furthermore, contradicted by his own testimony earlier in the session. Here is the lie:

The last thing I would say is this: the purpose of the action was not regime change.

Here is his testimony about an hour earlier, taken directly from the Inquiry transcripts:

  SIR RODERIC LYNE: ... The American administration's stated objective was to change the regime in Iraq, and they didn't feel that further UN authorisation for that was required. At this point, these two objectives came to a crunch and time ran out for your diplomacy.

  RT HON JACK STRAW MP: In terms of the American objective for regime change had gone back to President Clinton.

  SIR RODERIC LYNE: Yes, we have been through all of that.

  RT HON JACK STRAW MP: We have been through all of that.

Here the right honorable Mr Straw says clearly that the American aim was regime change, and that he knew it was regime change all along. Therefore, when "time for diplomacy ran out," he willingly and deliberately helped facilitate a war for regime change -- which in the circumstances obtaining in Iraq in 2003 was, by any possible construal, a blatant war crime under international law. It was, in terms of its illegality, the precise equivalent to the crime of aggression for which the Nazi leaders were prosecuted at Nuremberg. 

Note too Straw's reference to "President Clinton." He apparently thinks this nod to a good "liberal" Democratic president somehow makes his kowtowing to the barbaric rightwingers of the Bush regime less humiliating. [A good deal of his testimony is taken up with whining about the "neocons" like Don Rumsfeld who put so much pressure on everybody to go to war.] But of course this reference makes his lie about the war's aims even more egregious, for it confirms the fact that America's intention to overthrow the Iraq regime -- officially enshrined by Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton -- was known for years and years. 

But Straw is not done yet. After assuring the grieving families of Britain that he himself -- yes, he, the great right honorable high minister of state -- feels their pain and shares their heartache, and after acknowledging that yes, it seems that perhaps a few mistakes were made (albeit only with the best intentions), he goes on to justify the whole mass-murdering enterprise:

  But that having happened, I think there are few in Iraq, despite the bloodshed, would now say that they want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003.

Putting aside Straw's unconscious but most apt echo of the poet Paul Celan's phrase for the unspeakable evil of the Holocaust -- "that which happened" -- the moral depravity on display here is astonishing, breathtaking, obscene. The right honorable minister might consider asking the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by the invasion and by the virulent extremists it loosened and empowered: would you want to go back to what existed -- i.e., you -- before 20 March 2003? The right honorable minister might want to ask the more than four million people driven from their homes by the war and the savage sectarian conflicts and "ethnic cleansing" it unleashed and abetted: would you want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003? The right honorable minister might want to ask the tens of millions of Iraqis who have lost their loved ones: would you want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003 -- and see if there were any alternatives for a better life other than a massive, unprovoked military invasion, mass death, mass destruction, chaos, collapse, civil war and violent terror from occupiers, mercenaries, sectarians and criminals? 

O that the universe was not cold and indifferent, with no avenging furies to drive these bloodstained, sanctimonious wretches into soul-rending storms of madness and remorse. But there is not even an earthly venue where the scurrying servitors of power can receive even a modicum of justice. All we have are a few locked-down, buttoned-up, quasi-secret panels of worthies here and there now and then, to cause, at most, a moment or two of embarrassment before the servitors walk free to line their pockets and heap themselves with honors. Their only punishment, I suppose, must be to be what they are: the stunted, deadened husks of a full humanity that they have lost and will never recover.

Chris Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University. Floyd co-founded the blog Empire Burlesque, and is also chief editor of Atlantic Free Press. He can be reached at cfloyd72 at gmail.com. 
This column is republished here with the permission of the author.

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