DUCKPOND

The Bush Administration seems to be beyond the law. They have declared that International Law does not apply to them. That seems appropriate to the sole nation that dropped nuclear bombs, effectively on civilian targets. Nor it seems in there estimation does American law apply either. With the exciting, breathtaking Olympic Games about happen when the clock zero, or zero-eight three times, why bring up old news. Short answer: that is what people who write books, such as Ron Suskind do.

Suskind’s new book is called The Way of the World. Hubbush, Saddam’s intelligence chief, revealed that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. According to MSNBC, via Truthdig, the White House dismissed Sukind’s book as “gutter journalism”, denying the existence of the a forged letter, purportedly written by Hubbush, another charge made in the book. The following you tube sets out the case in trenchant terms:

Scott Horton Interviews Michael Scheuer at Anti-War.Com. Scheuer was the CIA’s head of the bin Laden Unit.

There is a problem with the Terror War: the invasion of Iraq was in the terms of the Nuremberg Tribunal apparently as blatant a crime as any perpetrated. Will those responsible stand trial? The conventional wisdom is no, yet the people found guilty at Nuremberg were hanged. Were they in retrospect murdered? Will the truth be told?

POSTSCRIPT:

Gandhi included among his seven blunders, politics without principles. If, as is the habit for the United States, and for the Bush Administration in particular, have a propensity for judging other States on moral grounds, then it is a simple matter to be judged in turn by consistency. What objection can the US Government have when torture and other malfeasance is carried out by others, even American citizens. Politics is about holding to principles and making compromises.

Furthermore, it would make a lot of sense to follow the Gandhian precept of being the change you wish to see in the world. Rather than go around invading other countries, especially when they are led by dictators that your country has been instrumental in installing, and holding differing standards when they leaders choose to do your bidding and when they do not, it would be productive to hold consistent principles over the long haul. These preferences might include support for democracy even when decisions go against you in the short term.

Principles do not matter to overlords and bullies, but then there is a tendency to find yourself caught up in invasions and empires. Violence as a political practice, if supposedly limited to international relationships, carries with it a remorseless logic. What the boosters for empire, including the retrospective supports of the British Empire’ fail to observe or remember, are the costs of empire. The consequence is that resources are frittered away, armies used to suppress civilian populations never quite cut it if push comes to shove (if that is what you want to do), and the opportunity costs continue to rise to the point where costs have to be cut on essentials, such as developing alternative energy sources to carbon fuels.

The quality of decision making is a good test by which any political system or institution or political process can be judged. That criterion alone would call into question the inherent viability of the American Empire, and perhaps it is now too late to lament what might have been.

The corporatist, privatized empire has its own problems with legal compliance. It seems that the private corporate contractors operating in Iraq and Afghanistan are largely, if not wholly, acting without regard to any law. The question of contractors would appear to be more ideology that objective economic efficiency or effectiveness, and behavior appears to be outside the public norms of morality. Legally, what is the difference then between contractors and terrorists, other than the puerile distinction of who their purported masters might be?

Here is Ron Suskind’s precis, via Huffington Post and Common Dreams:

What just happened? Evidence. A secret that has been judiciously kept for five years just spilled out. All of what follows is new, never reported in any way:

The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush — a man still carrying with $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush’s famous deck of wanted men — has been America’s secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, “resettled” Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.

In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD — as Habbush had foretold — the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a “small team from the al Qaeda organization.”

The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists with Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting CIA from conduction disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.

So, here we go again: the administration full attack mode, calling me names, George Tenet is claiming he doesn’t remember any such thing — just like he couldn’t remember “slam dunk” — and reporters are scratching their heads. Everything in the book is on the record. Many sources. And so, we watch and wait….

As per The LA Times it seems that R Cheney concluded that Nixon fell after Watergate not because of his criminal behavior, but the failure to have provided cover of “plausible deniability”. G Bush was the best and most obedient puppet ever to serve as President so far. There is as well an interview with John Dean who promises more of the same should McCain be elected.