An article in the Oct. 31 issue of The New Yorker about Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to former President Bush, is a damning indictment of current President Bush’s foreign policy decisions and decision-making process. But Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer faults Scowcroft’s “realist” approach to foreign policy — which he defines as caring only about how leaders interact with other countries, not how they treat their own people — for allowing Saddam Hussein to slaughter thousands of Kurds and Shiites. Krauthammer wrote: “It is not surprising that Scowcroft, who helped give indecency a 12-year extension in Iraq, should disdain decency’s return. But we should not.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- CapnAmerica on Too many exemptions
- Heckler on Open thread 11/23
- Monkeyhawk on Open thread 11/23
- Pleefer on Open thread 11/23
- CapnAmerica on Too many exemptions
- CapnAmerica on Too many exemptions
- Heckler on Open thread 11/23
- CapnAmerica on Too many exemptions
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- Pleefer on Open thread 11/23
10 Comments
Charles Krauthammer wouldn’t be published in a Zionist-free America. His Israeli-empire-first, slaughter the Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians, and divert attention away from the cabal of the illicit role of the Neocons, inside and outside the White House, including Feith, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Wurmser, Hannah, Pearl, Ledeen, Franklin etc. and an endless “war” in Iraq, all bite the dust, the smokescreen hiding his deathly fear that poor ole Cindy Sheehan might lead America to her senses.
His outrageous anti-American column crosses the borders on treason.
The Washington Post, the standard-bearer of a Zionist-controlled world from the Empire of Israel is as sold-out as it gets. Krauthammer’s nest.
Any Krauthammer condemnation is the best endorsement Brent Scowcroft could hope for, as it must be good for America, while slamming the brakes on Israel’s trouble-making activities in our White House.
Karl Rove’s buddy never mentions that the so-called indecency of a 12-year extension in Iraq was caused by the sanctions, which killed millions of Iraqi children.
But why should Krauthammer bother with facts, when so busy with misrepresentations.
The “realist” in Iraq is the boots on the ground. They know exactly what is going on. Not some armchair critics like the rest of us.
Dick Cheney on why George H. W. Bush didn’t overthrow Saddam and take Baghdad in Operation Desert Storm:
“How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stablity in a situation that is inherently unstable? . . . it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.” (1991)
Colin Powell (2001): “Frankly sanctions have worked. Saddam has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.”
Condi Rice (2001): “Saddam does not [even] control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”
The Bush team is so full of crap, they squish when they walk . . .
As for Krauthammer getting all bent out of shape about massacred Kurds, I’m betting he didn’t breath a word of objection when it happened, because then Saddam Hussein was our ally against Iran, and Reagan was selling him the poison gas he used on the Kurds.
In fact at the time, Reagan & Co. said it was IRAN that had poisoned the Kurds.
So it’s Iran when we want to attack Iran. And Iraq when we want to attack Iraq.
See how conservative logic works. You start with the conclusion you want, and you change the facts to make them support that conclusion.
Let’s get the boots home, along with our kids who wear them.
Tracy
In order to bring our troops home Bush has to stand-up to Sharon and tell him no more.
That’s not going to happen, unless we put so much heat and bring our involvement with Israel out into the open.
With enough NO MORE ISRAEL around the White House that can happen.
Short of that, everything stays the same and Bush will keep enough distractions going to hide our soldiers dying.
From 2000 to 2100 deads weren’t noticed. 100 died in the “background noise,” as Bush likes to call it.
Part of what got us out of the Vietnam quagmire was seeing it on TV every night. Notice how Bush @ company won’t let us see what’s happening in Iraq. Oh we get a little controlled peek, but we don’t see the big-picture.
They even won’t allow us to see the coffins. { which doesn’t violate whoever is inside, as we can’t see them } Bushco is controlling too much. Who do they think they are: Nazis? Zionists? or both?
The Israeli/neoconservative cabal and what they do is so rotten, they dare not show it.
Times Union
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=415119
Tracy, Check this out!
Here is a breath of fresh air { unlike Charles Krauthammer’s crap } from the The Baltimore Sun
Illegal Conduct of War and Torture Are Nothing Less Than War CrimesJeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith, The Baltimore SunProsecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s name has reaffirmed the basic American principle that even the highest government officials are subject to the rule of law. His charges represent the start of a revitalization of the institutions designed to maintain government under law. But that revitalization still has a long way to go.
As a prosecutor, Fitzgerald rightly brought charges where the law was clearest and the evidence most compelling. But the alleged crimes he is investigating are in essence the apparent cover-up operation for another possible set of crimes against national and international law. Why would I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby commit perjury and lie to FBI agents, as he is accused of doing?
The letters from Acting Attorney General James B. Comey appointing Fitzgerald delegated to him “all the authority of the attorney general” to investigate and prosecute “violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure.”
On the basis of the evidence he has uncovered, the special prosecutor must now go on to ask:
• Did top Bush administration officials deceive Congress? Several federal statutes make it a crime to lie to Congress. As Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York recently put it, “If, as mounting evidence is tending to show, administration officials deliberately deceived Congress and the American people, this would constitute a criminal conspiracy against the entire country.”
• Did top administration officials violate the US Anti-Torture Act? The law makes torture and conspiracy to commit torture a crime. The former commander at Abu Ghraib prison, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, has stated that abusive techniques were “delivered with full authority and knowledge of the secretary of defense and probably (Vice President Dick) Cheney.”
• Did top administration officials violate the War Crimes Act? Passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, the law makes it a federal crime for any US national to commit a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.
In a 2002 memo, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, urged that the United States “opt out” of the Geneva Conventions for the Afghan war on the grounds that opting out “substantially reduces the likelihood of prosecution under the War Crimes Act.”
What was he worrying about? Did the special prosecutor find evidence that top Bush administration officials ordered or condoned the string of Geneva Conventions violations that run from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay and from the leveling of Fallujah to attacks on medical facilities?
• Did top administration officials violate the War Powers Act? The law requires the president to present to Congress the basis for proposed US military action. If the administration provided false information, is it guilty of violating the War Powers Act and, in effect, usurping the war powers given to Congress under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution?
• Did top administration officials violate the UN Charter? UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the US attack on Iraq was “illegal.” The conduct of the war has involved many breaches of internationally guaranteed protections of civilians. Did the special prosecutor find evidence of deliberate violation of US treaty obligations, which under Article VI of the Constitution are the law of the land?
If the special prosecutor found evidence of violation of “any criminal laws,” he is obliged to investigate and prosecute. Where the abuses he finds are not covered by existing federal law, they must be addressed by Congress, either by new laws or through the impeachment process.
The Bush administration’s alleged abuses of national and international law are closely linked. The Valerie Plame affair was not just a random incident, but rather an effort to silence critics attempting to halt an aggressive war whose initiation and conduct appear to have violated both national and international law. Indeed, aggressive war, illegal conduct of war and torture are nothing less than war crimes.
Investigation and, if warranted, prosecution of such crimes is crucial for the revitalization of democratic government in our country. To let such flagrant flouting of the rule of law go unpunished would be to invite government officials to subvert our Constitution again.
Repudiating war crimes committed by high US officials is also an essential starting point for repairing the damage done to our country’s international relationships and reputation. There is no way to take the taint off our country for the abuses symbolized by Abu Ghraib without holding those responsible for them accountable.
— Brendan Smith, a legal scholar, and Jeremy Brecher, a historian, are editors of “In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond.”
Can criminal charges be filed following impeachment, or is it a double jeopardy thing? Or do we just wait until the next regime? At least the South Koreans did have guts to imprison former presidents.