Random thoughts from the Pacific Rim
Here’s the headline of an interview with President Bush in the New York Times:
Bush Says Iraqi Leaders Will Want U.S. Forces to Stay to Help
Well, I’m glad that’s cleared up. I guess we could have waited until after the election before we decide what’s good for them, but why even pretend the Iraqis have any say in that matter…
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You really know that your country is in deep trouble when members of the government can’t travel abroad without fear of being arrested as war criminals.
It seems that Rumsfeld and his second in command at the Pentagon can’t travel to the Munich Security Conference since they would quite possibly be arrested at the airport.
A New York-based human rights group, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a suit with a German court in December, accusing Rumsfeld of war crimes and torture. If Rumsfeld or Cambone would set foot on German soil, it would be within the rights of the German federal court to hold them until trial.
It will be interesting to see if any of the newspapers here in the States will pick up on this story. This government is a disgrace and an embarassment for the US and the citizens of this country have to finally wake up to what this will mean for all of them in the future.
Torture taints everybody.
(via the Left Coaster)
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Babylon, first mentioned as a capital of a kindgom on a clay tablet 4500 years ago, can truly be called a world heritage. Thousands of years of history are encapsulated in its ruins and it is a site that should inspire awe in all of us.
Babylon is part of our common history.
These things really matter. It is how our historical memory works. Only very few people make it into our common history, some kings, a few heroes and villains… but we all remember the places, palaces and treasures. Babylon is one of these places and that makes it i-m-p-o-r-t-a-n-t.
Should you by any chance invade a country that holds a world heritage site, you should try and protect it (it’s another one of those pesky international treaties that are also US federal law), or at least stay away and keep your hands off the place.
Not this US government. Oh no…
The morons in charge of this fucking circus had the glorious idea to build an army camp in and around the site of ancient Babylon. It just blows my mind how they could do something so incredibly stupid.
I’ve been in the military and I can guarantee you that if I ever want to preserve an ancient archeological site, the very last thing I could come up with would be to make it part of a military encampment. You could as well command the Three Stooges to protect the place.
So guess what. The military did what it is really, really good at. They made a mess.
Here’s a few quotes from the article in the Guardian that made all archeologists on this planet go into cardiac arrest:
Among the damage found by Mr Curtis, who was invited to Babylon by Iraqi antiquities experts, were cracks and gaps where somebody had tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming the famous dragons of the Ishtar Gate.
He saw a 2,600-year-old brick pavement crushed by military vehicles, archaeological fragments scattered across the site, and trenches driven into ancient deposits.
Vast amounts of sand and earth, visibly mixed with archaeological fragments, were gouged from the site to fill thousands of sandbags and metal mesh baskets. When this practice was stopped, large quantities of sand and earth were brought in from elsewhere, contaminating the site for future generations of archaeologists.
and
He found that large areas of the site had been covered in gravel brought in from outside, compacted and sometimes chemically treated to provide helipads, car parks and accommodation and storage areas. “The status of future information about these areas will therefore be seriously compromised,” he said.
Archaeologists were horrified by the confirmation of reports which have been filtering out of Iraq for months.
Yep… that sounds exactly like what I would have expected.
Now I know there is more important things going on in Iraq right now, like the US trying to extract 150.000 of its soldiers from this deathly snake pit that they dug themselves.
So yeah, just a bunch of old colored tiles… but do you remember when the Taliban blew up the Buddha statues at Bamiyan? They showed the world that they are culturally inept barbarians. Does the United States want to be judged along the same lines?
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The Associated Press has compiled a short highlights reel of the bullshit that has been coming from the White House. I’ll post it here completely because this should be burnt into the forehead of Bush, Rice, Powell and the rest of this gang of war criminals:
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Statements by the Bush administration before and after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs:
BEFORE THE WAR
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” – Vice President Dick Cheney, Aug. 26, 2002.
“The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Sept. 8, 2002.
“After 11 years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more.” – President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002.
“Saddam Hussein is a man who told the world he wouldn’t have weapons of mass destruction, but he’s got them.” – Bush, Nov. 3, 2002.
“The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction pose to the world.” – Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5, 2003.
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AFTER THE WAR
“Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq. … We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder.” – Bush, July 12, 2004.
“We got it wrong. We have seen nothing to suggest that he had actual stockpiles.” – Powell, Oct. 1, 2004.
“We were all unhappy that the intelligence was not as good as we had thought that it was. But the essential judgment was absolutely right. Saddam Hussein was a threat.” – Rice, Oct. 3, 2004.
“It turns out that we have not found weapons of mass destruction. Why the intelligence proved wrong I’m not in a position to say, but the world is a lot better off with Saddam Hussein in jail.” – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Oct. 4, 2004.
“He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction and he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies.” – Bush, Oct. 7, 2004.
“Based on what we know today, the president would have taken the same action because this is about protecting the American people.” – White House press secretary Scott McClellan, on Wednesday.
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So this is it… Two years of war. Iraq as a nation is destroyed, more than 100.000 Iraqis and 1500 coalition soldiers have died. The US is now universally identified with torture and war crimes and a new generation of Muslim terrorists has been born. More than 200 billion tax dollars have been flushed down the toilet and the US economy is so deep in debt that buying gold is again becoming sound economic advice.
And what do we get from the government? A mumbled “Oops”?
I’d suggest that somebody starts working on the impeachment papers for this bunch.
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Finally I’ve found a quote from Colin Powell that I can fully agree with…
Here is a description of an exchange between Bush and Powell courtesy of the Financial Times:
According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. “We’re losing,” Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.
Of course our head-in-the-sand war-hero president coudn’t take the truth about his little adventure in Iraq. There is word going around that the president has given instructions on what kind of news he wants to hear from Iraq… I can’t find the original source for this, but this quote is reportedly from the very-plugged-into-Washington Nelson Report:
Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear “bad news.” Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq . . . building democracy. “That’s all he wants to hear about,” we have been told. So “in” are the latest totals on school openings, and “out” are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that “it will just get worse.”
These reports in some way provide the right background for Mr. Bush’s recent interviews and sound bites where he usually gets this dreamy look in his eyes when he talks about the wonderful and hopeful things that the blooming democracy is going to bring to Iraq…
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