Bush and Co. Real Threat to Peace
www.republicons.org by: Scott Thomas 2/27/2003 In his speech on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell once again asserted that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda (yawn). Yet even intelligence operatives in the FBI and CIA argue that such ties don't exist. Their unending threats and unwavering stance is likened to grasping at straws in an already failed policy that has already caused untold suffering to the Iraqi people. Powell's tactics on Wednesday, then Ashcroft's "orange alert" on Friday, Feb. 7, was simply an attempt to further their selfish goals through fear-mongering and is still not a case for war. He and his cohorts are still using Americans' sorrow and fear about September 11th to "sell" this war to us. I, for one, am not buying.
It also masks the the hypocrisy behind the inspections. Though Saddam Hussein, and brutal despots like him, should certainly be disarmed through international efforts, the bigger question remains as to why this is being carried out by governments with just as many human rights violations in their closet, past and present. The constant mantra of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, repeated ad nauseum, and obviously fabricated evidence with no possibility of verification, cannot hide the fact that the governments of the United States, Great Britain, France, and others, have much larger arsenals -- including nuclear weapons, have colonized the entire planet, and whose own business interests are pressing the need for a full-scale ground invasion-- to get that oil.
At this point in history, the US military/industrial/media complex stands as the biggest threat to world peace and security. With a nuclear arsenal of over 7,000 missiles, conventional weapons tipped with depleted uranium (DU) which remains deadly for centuries, hundreds of thousands of military personnel, bases and nuclear submarines throughout the world, why hasn't the UN resolved to disarm the US? Our government invented the Bomb, is the only nation on Earth to actually use it twice, carried out a low-intensity nuclear war in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq for the past dozen years using DU, and now has a policy of pre-emptive strikes on any nation it feels threatens its global domination. It has invaded many nations weaker than itself or provided military support for fascist regimes throughout the years for no other reason than their desire for self-determination that did not agree with US business interests: the Philippines, Cuba, Korea, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, Iran, Columbia, Venezuela, et al. This is certainly more colonization than Saddam Hussein has ever achieved, yet no one in the UN seems to notice the pink elephant in the middle of the room. Or perhaps UN justice is selective, not according to the rule of law, but the law of the jungle
Since Bush and Co. cannot make the case for war, I would like to make the case for impeachment. In 1999, Congress saw fit to impeach (unsuccessfully) Pres. Bill Clinton, not for his war crimes in Yugoslavia and Iraq (impeachable offenses), but for a sex scandal because the Republicans saw an opportunity to discredit the Democrats for a 2000 victory. Yet Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft (and maybe Powell) are responsible for blatantly violating the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, continuing an ongoing war against Iraqi civilians, ordering "first strike" aggression towards Afghanistan, Iraq, and possibly N. Korea, ordering and condoning assassinations, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners, and ordering false statements and propaganda to be given to the public, all violations of international law and the Geneva convention. Bush & Co. have also backed out of the IBM treaty and reinvigorated Star Wars, sparking a new arms race. These guys make Nixon look like a petty thief.
For more info go to VoteToImpeach.org and sign the petition.
Scott Thomas is a peace activist and co-chair of the Taos/Rio Arriba County (TRAC) Green Party in Taos, NM For more information visit: www.VoteToImpeach.org