Götterdämmerung

[Antid Oto]

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A.s. dinsdag komt G.W.Bush naar Brussel. Even tijd om het
geheugen nog eens op te frissen.

http://www.museletter.com/archive/144.html
by Richard Heinberg
March 2004

1. Steal an election.

The means by which Bush and Cheney
gained office were profoundly subversive of the democratic
process. Florida, under the direction of governor Jeb Bush,
had illegally purged its voter rolls of thousands of
eligible voters, most of them Democrats. At the time the
vote count was halted by a highly politicized decision of
the US Supreme Court, Bush was ahead by a mere 300 votes.
Had the election been conducted legally, there is no doubt
that Al Gore, who led by half a million votes nationwide,
would have become president.1

2. Place criminals and human rights violators in prominent
policy-making positions.

As a result of former President Reagan's Contra war against
Nicaragua, the United States became the first country in
history to be convicted of international terrorism in a
world court tribunal and to be condemned by the United
Nations. Several key Reagan administration officials were
indicted or tried in connection with the massive human
rights violations that occurred in Central America during
the Contra war. In the early months of the G. W. Bush
presidency, several of these officials were given prominent
new jobs: Elliott Abrams, who was convicted of lying to
Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal, was appointed National
Security Council (NSC)Special Advisor on Democracy, Human
Rights, and International Operations. John Poindexter, the
mastermind behind the Iran-Contra scam (guns for hostages),
had been found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice,
and destruction of evidence; he was made Director of the
Information Awareness Office (IAO), a new agency "to counter
attacks on the US." John Negroponte, whom rights groups
charge with covering up political killings and purging
information from embassy human rights reports that
implicated the military and CIA in disappearances of
civilians, became US ambassador to the UN. Other criminals
and purported human-rights violators appointed to high posts
included Roger Noriega, John Maistro, and Otto Reich.2

3. Facilitate a terrorist attack on the US in order to
consolidate political power.

After spending countless hours
sifting the evidence, I find the conclusion inescapable:
persons within the US government had clear foreknowledge of
the attacks, and efforts to prevent those attacks were
systematically thwarted on orders from higher levels.
Moreover, the collapse of the three buildings in New York
has been inadequately explained. Many warnings had been
received by the US government that a terrorist attack would
occur in the week of September 9 - some specifying that
commercial airliners would be hijacked and that the World
Trade Center and Pentagon would be targeted. Then, after the
hijackings occurred, no fighter jets were dispatched to
intercept the airliners, despite the fact that there was
plenty of time for this to have occurred, and that it is
standard procedure. There are many other serious holes in
the official version of the events, too numerous to discuss
here. Finally, the administration has engaged in public -
and largely successful - efforts to prevent or limit any
serious inquiry into the 9/11 attacks (the recent public
hearings of the 9/11 Commission went to great pains to avoid
nearly all of the serious questions that independent
researchers have been asking for many months, and members of
the commission have numerous and obvious conflicts of
interest). In short, lines of evidence point to
foreknowledge, complicity, and cover-up at the top levels of
government. These are extraordinary assertions, and they
require extraordinary evidence to support them. The detailed
presentation and discussion of that evidence is beyond the
scope of this article; however, I have appended print and
online resources. See especially David Ray Griffin's
excellent book, The New Pearl Harbor (Interlink), which has
just been released.3

4. Lie to the American people and the world in order to
justify the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation.

Again and again, the administration cited Iraq's continued
possession of weapons of mass destruction as the reason for
the invasion. Iraq permitted UN weapons inspectors back into
the country in the waning months of 2002, but this step was
deemed insufficient, so great and immediate was the threat
from that country's alleged nuclear weapons and
remote-controlled delivery systems. As of this writing, it
is abundantly clear that Iraq had no weapons of mass
destruction and that administration officials knew this but
deliberately concocted "evidence" with which to sell the
invasion to the gullible American public.4

5. Undermine the system of international law by proclaiming
the validity of a policy of pre-emptive attack.

We have yet to see the ultimate fallout from this brazen
action. The neoconservatives in charge of American foreign
policy have essentially put forward the view that the US is
above international law. The Bush administration has refused
to join the World Court and has undermined existing
conventions on nuclear missiles. The unprovoked invasion of
one sovereign nation by another (of Iraq by the US and
Britain) is a direct violation of the UN Charter; indeed, it
is exactly the sort of behavior the UN was established to
prevent. In addition, the United States' actions with regard
to prisoners held at Camp Delta at the Guantanamo Bay naval
station have directly violated the Geneva Conventions: the
prisoners are being held as "unlawful combatants," a term
with no meaning in international law. By asserting unique
rights, immunities, and privileges, the US has alienated the
rest of the international community. Eventually, such
behavior will cause other nations to form political and
military alliances to oppose US hegemony. While the US has
the military capability of defeating nearly any individual
foe, it cannot subdue the rest of the world working in
concert. And economically America is in a far weaker
position than it is militarily: if only a few key nations
were to cease supporting US trade deficits and government
borrowing, the results would be catastrophic. Unilateralism
sets the stage for a battle that America cannot win; indeed,
it is one that the entire world is certain to lose.

6. Use weapons that kill indiscriminately - i.e., "weapons
of mass destruction"

- in the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. While time
has shown that Saddam Hussein did not possess banned
weapons, the Americans and British did possess
indiscriminately lethal and possibly illegal weapons, and
proceeded to use them - as they had done in the 1991 Gulf
War and (with other NATO forces) in the former Yugoslavia.
The UN has sought to ban depleted uranium munitions and
cluster bombs (the US has objected), and a recent UN report
stated that these weapons breach several international
conventions.5 Some allege that hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis and Afghanis, and tens of thousands of American
soldiers, have been sickened or killed by DU weapons, which
disperse radioactive particles throughout the battlefield
landscape. Each M1 tank round consists of 10 pounds of
uranium 238, which vaporizes into a highly toxic aerosol
upon impact. Much of Iraq is now covered with tons
of the stuff. Major Doug Rokke of the US Army, who was
assigned by the Army in 1990 to assess the health effects of
DU ammunition, told a Palo Alto audience in April 2003 that
"When I did their research, [I found out] that you can't use
[DU munitions] because you can't clean up and you can't do
the medical." According to Rokke, the effects of DU on
American soldiers themselves have been horrific (so much for
supporting our troops); but for the land and people of the
nations we are "liberating," DU carries far longer-term
consequences: soil and water are poisoned virtually forever.
In May, 2003 a Christian Science Monitor correspondent took
a Geiger counter to areas of Baghdad that had been subjected
to heavy shelling by US troops and found radiation levels
1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal. To be fair, it
should be emphasized that DU munitions had been deployed
prior to the advent of the Bush administration; however,
these weapons' continued and expanded use (between 1,100 and
2,200 tons used during the 2003 invasion of Iraq versus 300
tons in the 1991 Gulf War and 10 tons during the bombing of
Serbia in 1999) in a war fought ostensibly to prevent
another nation from using banned weapons is a bitter irony.6

7. Subvert the US Constitution.

Since 9/11/2001 the Bush
administration, the US Justice Department, and the Congress
have enacted a series of Executive Orders, regulations, and
laws that have seriously undermined civil liberties and the
checks and balances that are essential to the structure of
democratic government. The framers of the US Constitution
sought to prevent any one branch of government from
accumulating excessive power. By using Executive Orders and
emergency interim agency regulations as standard tools to
combat terrorism, the Executive branch has chosen methods
largely outside the purview of both the legislature and the
judiciary. Many of these Executive Orders and agency
regulations violate the US Constitution and the laws of the
United States, as well as international and humanitarian
law. In addition, these actions have been shrouded in a
cloak of secrecy that is incompatible with democratic
government. Hundreds of non-citizens have been rounded up
and detained, many for months, in violation of
constitutional protections, judicial authority, and INS
policy. The government has repeatedly resisted requests for
information regarding the detainees from loved ones,
lawyers, and the press; it has denied detainees access to
legal representation; and has conducted its hearings in
secret, in some cases denying the very existence of such
hearings. In a democracy, the actions of the government must
be transparent, or our ability to vote on policies and the
people who create those policies becomes meaningless.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the government's
actions has been its attack on the Bill of Rights, the very
cornerstone of American democracy. The War on Terror has
seriously compromised the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth
Amendment rights of citizens and non-citizens alike. From
the USA Patriot Act's over-broad definition of domestic
terrorism, to the FBI's new powers of search and
surveillance, to the indefinite detention of both citizens
and non-citizens without formal charges, the principles of
free speech, due process, and equal protection under the law
have been seriously undermined. At the time of this writing,
three states and 246 cities, towns, and counties (including
New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago) have passed resolutions,
ordinances, or ballot initiatives condemning, or refusing
local cooperation with enforcement of, the Patriot Act.7

8. Undermine the US economy through unwise tax cuts and
vastly increased government borrowing.

The administration's
evident goal is to bankrupt the US government so that social
programs (including Social Security) can be entirely
privatized or eliminated. However unwise (to put it
charitably) that strategy may be on its own terms, the
timing for its implementation could not possibly be worse.
Since World War II the world has relied on the US dollar as
the basis for monetary stability. Increasingly, the US has
taken advantage of this situation by running up ever-larger
trade deficits and more foreign-financed government debt.
The current level of American debt - internal and external -
is unprecedented and unsustainable, and Treasury officials
made efforts in 2003 and early 2004 to gently lower the
value of the dollar in relation to other currencies.
However, if the dollar is devalued too much, other nations
(including China) may decide to cease investing their
savings in American stocks and Treasury securities; this in
turn could trigger a dollar collapse. In short, the global
monetary system that has maintained relative stability for
the past several decades appears to be fraying. Just when
the nations of the world need to invest heavily in renewable
energy systems, efficiency measures, and sustainable
agricultural production in order to deal with problems
previously mentioned, investment capital may disappear
altogether in a global financial crisis. The Bush
administration's response - sweeping tax cuts and immense
borrowing to fund an elective war in Iraq - greatly
exacerbates the situation. The damage is by now likely
irreparable. At the end of 1993, According to Al Martin,
"The total national debt of the United States on a fully
realized basis, inclusive of federal, state, county and
local debt stood at a record $20.613 trillion (83.73% of
said debt having been created from 1981-92 and from 2001 to
present.) The total public and private indebtedness of the
United States ended the year 2003 at $39.384 trillion. The
total public and private assets of the United States ended
the year 2003 at $26.134 trillion. Thus, the United States
by the end of 2003 has a negative net worth of approximately
$13 trillion. The total debt service of the United States
ended the year 2003 at 309.4% of GDP (Gross Domestic
Product). These are numbers never before seen. This is a
higher debt to gross domestic product ratio than [that of]
any other country on earth, which still services its debt.
For instance this is a higher fraction of debt service to
GDP than [that of] the government of Nigeria. The United
States federal government, as of the end of 2003, was
servicing 41.3% of total debt - the only first-world nation
on the planet that services less than 100% of its debt."8
This is an extraordinary performance by any measure. In the
current Bush administration we see a combination of gross
incompetence, high criminality, ideological monomania, and
almost limitless power - and this in the context of a time
that requires the deftest and most visionary of leadership
if we are to avert or at least minimize ecological and human
catastrophe. It is difficult to overstate the peril inherent
in such a combination. These people will not easily be
unseated: if they stole one election, why not another?

 >And if various legal battles threaten to overtake them, why
would they not resort to facilitating another "terrorist"
incident as justification for declaring martial law? In an
interview in November, 2003 former US General Tommy Franks,
who led America's campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, stated
that if a WMD attack were to hit the US, the Constitution
probably would not survive: "the Western world, the free
world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and
liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this
grand experiment that we call democracy."9 Was Franks giving
us a heads-up on what is in store?

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