The first warning should have come before the 9/11/01 attacks on America when George W. Bush removed the U.S. from the World Court after failing to convince the other member nations to exempt Americans from facing circumstances expected of other countries should war crimes committed by Americans be suspected or committed. Bush's decision meant, if U.S. lawmakers, military leaders or military personnel committed war crimes, they'd be spared trial and possible conviction by the World Court.
Earlier this month, Japan Today reported that the U.S. failed to block U.N. anti-torture vote. In case this page expires, here's the brief report:
The United States failed to block a U.N. vote Wednesday on a plan to strengthen a treaty on torture, and was widely criticized by allies for trying to do so.
The United States argued that the measure, known as a protocol, could pave the way for international and independent visits to U.S. prisons and to terror suspects being held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
The U.N. measure was made soon after news and images of U.S. military and private contractors (which included numerous plain-clothes covert intelligence operatives) torturing, humiliating and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners circled the globe. This news follows previous reports with some shocking images taken of Americans torturing prisoners of war in Afghanistan and at the U.S. Navy compound, Guantanamo Bay.
Bush publicly reacted with claims of shock and disgust. Some of us question his sincerety, given his record as Texas governor and since he assumed the U.S. President title.
GNN contributing writer, Heather Wokusch, responds to the recent POW abuse scandal and questions Bush's sincerety in "From Texas to Abu Ghraib".
The Sunday Herald reported that Bush and Blair claimed to be shocked, but that they knew about the abuse of U.S. POW's two years ago. James Cusick (S.H. Westminster editor) wrote, "THE US and British governments have received Red Cross reports 'month after month' since the declared end of the Iraq war a year ago, detailing the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners." Cusick said that Bush and Blair didn't make public statements until after the recent broad circulation of evidence depicting some of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners made headlines around the world.
Despite Bush attempting to portray himself as ill-informed of the true extent of the abuse and torture, the White House has been fully aware for the past year of the violations of the Geneva Convention committed by its personnel in Iraq.
Bush's top man in Iraq, Bremer, received reports from the Red Cross, Amnesty International and others about the abuse and "Geneva violations throughout US-run camps in Iraq last July." Like Rumsfeld and Bush, Bremer did nothing to end the abuse, because they already knew about it and wanted it to continue, as you'll see near the end of this post. James Cusick wrote:
...Bush called defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the White House for briefings on January 16. Rumsfeld is said to have told Bush the extent of the concern over abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. The meeting was attended by White House chief of staff Andrew H Card Jr.
Male Iraqis aren't the only ones detained and abused by Americans. Baghdad based Guardian Unlimited correspondent,Luke Harding, reported in the May 12th edition that Female Iraq Inmates are also being abused:
According to Prof Shaker, several women held in Abu Ghraib jail were sexually abused, including one who was raped by an American military policeman and became pregnant. She has now disappeared.
The Bush regime has attempted to give the impression that the abuses were isolated and that they did not result from official orders from the Bush regime, including Pentagon brass and heads of any American intelligence agencies. Bush and Rumsfeld alleged that the responsible party was limited to some rogue military personnel and civilian contractors who acted on their own to mistreat the prisoners this way (which led to some deaths already known). Yesterday, the Guardian published a U.S. soldier's account in this story, headlined: US forces were taught torture techniques. The Washington D.C. based writer, Suzanne Goldenberg, refers to the Bush regime's "no tolorance" attitude toward international laws and "domestic niceties" after the the September 11, 2001 attacks on America, indicating enough reason to suspect that members of the Bush regime gave the orders to put aside recognition for U.S. and international laws regarding torture and that the orders trickled down the chain of command. Goldenberg indicated (via an unnamed soldier as her source) that her source and other military personnel officially reported their conscientious objections to the methods used on captives.
Donald Rumsfeld put on quite a show of mock humility when he assumed responsibility for the abuse happening on his "command," as if to suggest that he was as a parent assuming responsibility for his childrens' misbehavior that went on behind his back. Seymour Hersh, of The New Yorker exposes a secret Pentagon plan for torture, how much Rumsfeld really knew and the extent of his personal and indirect involvement. Hersh's sources may very well fill in the gaps of the sketchy details others report via their sources (Red Cross spokespeople, Iraqi prisoners, and U.S. military personnel willing to talk.)
Add up the facts that the Bush regime pulled the United States out of the World Court after failing to convince the other member nations to exempt Americans from war crimes laws, the fact that the Bush regime set the stage to allow covert forces and military personnel to commit war crimes and then attempted to block the U.N.'s measures to strengthen war crimes laws, and then consider the details of the neocons' Plan for a New American Century (PNAC). If the United Nations needs to step in where certain Americans in power (Congress members and Supreme Court Justices, just to name a few) fail, then so be it. Bring on the U.N. inspections of U.S. prisons. It's a start and just might also benefit American society, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment