A Plague on the Nation

Bush's newest deceptions and the tragedy of Iraq
A message from Ramsey Clark, recently returned from Baghdad
"If fear is the ultimate enemy of freedom, Iraq is the least free society on earth."

The Bush Administration’s presentation of its purpose and continuing role in Iraq is one of elaborate and shifting deception just as were its original explanations of why it waged its war of aggression against Iraq. First one thing, then another: weapons of mass destruction, ties to Al Qaeda, to rid the country of a tyrant, to establish democracy and freedom in the Middle East, to destroy international terrorism at center stage.

All were fabricated and known to be false by the President and the principal “civil officers of the United States” whose purpose led us down this garden path to genocide and the enmity of friend and foe alike.

Today, as the Congressional mid-term elections approach, the Bush Administration is  desperate to lay blame elsewhere for its failure to stabilize the country, curtail the rising U.S. casualties while still ignoring Iraqi casualties, and offer any hope for peace and the withdrawal of U.S. and all foreign forces from Iraq. It charges its own puppet government responsible for the violent chaos its policies have caused and it has failed to prevent.

A time table, heretofore verboten as playing into enemy hands, is to be presented to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki within which he must disarm sectarian militias and reach other political, economic and military benchmarks toward social stability, which the U.S. with all its fire power and billions misspent has failed to approach.

The U.S. knows Maliki cannot achieve such goals.  Just staying alive is a challenge he cannot meet without U.S. help and even then perhaps not for long, if the U.S. remains in Iraq.

Ramsey Clark interviewed on CNN from Iraq.

Every time I go to Iraq, the government of Iraq is harder to find.  It used to appear to run the airport. Last week armed U.S. contractors rushed me and other lawyers, Iraqi and different Arab nationalities, from the plane through customs and immigration, to waiting U.S. military vehicles, both coming and going.  On the drive into Baghdad the protection was entirely U.S. military in the SUV with us, but with U.S. Army tanks, engines running, a crew member scanning the area with binoculars from tank turrets and fortified positions stationed near the roadway.

The government of Iraq, almost as badly fragmented as the society, is hidden away in the international zone secured by the U.S., plotting to gain advantage over other segments of the government and control of the oil producing areas within the country.  Outside this comparatively safe haven the various factions work with regional and local leaders of their sects and government forces and militia’s more loyal to them.

If fear is the ultimate enemy of freedom, Iraq is the least free society on earth.  Fear is pervasive, at home, work if any, school if accessible, mosque, market, the street where you live.

Conditions are heart breaking, even more so than during sanctions which killed over 1.5 million Iraqis, half under 5 years of age, between 1990 and 2003.  Then the people were united in sharing food and medicine to protect the poor, the weak and the sick, as best as possible.  Fear, except for the specters of malnutrition and sickness, was minimal.

The new ImpeachBush New York Times ad

Today fear is omnipresent. The death rate exceeds that of the genocidal sanctions with more than 500,000 dead after 3 and a half years of foreign aggression and occupation. Most Iraqis I talk to insist a million have died, but we do not know. And those killed are your mother, child, brother, father, friend, neighbor. Death is indiscriminate and capricious. Those who died were strong and able this very morning. And all assaults are shrouded in unbridled hatred.

The government of the United States brought this misery to the people of Iraq.

No one is more aware of the impotence and abject dependence of what George Bush calls the sovereign democracy he has brought to Iraq than the President himself.  He knew before we read it on page 1 of the New York Times for October 18, 2006, that “Senior American officials including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice... issued stark warnings to the Maliki government of growing American impatience, especially at the governments failure to stop the scourge of death squads operating with the knowledge, or support of the Interior Ministry...”

“For Maliki, these concerns have taken on a keen personal edge, exposed Monday when the White House revealed that Mr. Maliki asked President Bush in a telephone call whether there was any truth to rumors that the Americans had plans to replace him ‘if certain things don’t happen within two months,’ in the words of Mr. Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow.”

A more pitiful plea of subservience by the head of the government of a purported democracy of sovereign equality is hard to find in history.  How long will the American people tolerate these deceptions?

As for U.S. intentions in Iraq, for the first time during my visits, this October the new U.S. Embassy had risen above the high concrete barrier sealing it from view.  It is a huge complex with at least 14 cranes still lifting construction materials for its completion, still on schedule.  They say for next summer.

It is the “Mother of all U.S. Embassies.”   Its initial was cost set at $570 million.  We will learn of the cost overruns later.  No Iraqis work on construction of the Embassy, for the same reason the architects of the Pyramids were murdered.  No outsider must know its secrets.  It will have its own assured water system and generators for electricity.

More significantly, it is located in the heart of Baghdad, presently in the International Zone immediately across from the Iraqi Special Tribunal where Saddam Hussein and other officials of the government the U.S. overthrew are on trial.

The U.S. Embassy in Iran was located in the heart of Tehran. It could not be protected from angry crowds that captured and held the residual staff and Marine Guards hostage. After that the U.S. has built secure Embassies removed from easy access by potentially hostile mobs. But none nearly so large, or expensive as the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The ultimate deception is that the Bush Administration intends to remain in Iraq with sufficient military force to assure the security of this huge Embassy situated in the center of a metropolitan area of six million people, a fourth of the nation.

These deceptions, too, are impeachable offenses intended to conceal the most grievous of all high crimes and misdemeanors.

The people of the United States cannot begin to rehabilitate their government in the opinion of the peoples of the world, or in the hearts of their own patriots until we impeach George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others complicit in their crimes against peace and humanity and continuing war crimes.

We will place a new ad in the New York Times in the coming weeks and we will continue our mobilization efforts to get Congress to introduce articles of impeachment. We have been able to make great strides so far with the support of all those who believe in the impeachment movement. We need to raise $100,000 in the next few weeks to place the new newspaper ads.  Please take a moment to make your generous donation by clicking here. 

Ramsey Clark
October 25, 2006
http://www.impeachbush.org/