Bush at the Hague

The Wall Street Journal reports that 34% of the American population still supports the job the president is doing. 34% seems a bit high to me considering...

Foreign Corruption & Profiteering
In case you have not been following closely, the "reconstruction" in Iraq has been marred by staggering corruption. There are literally billions of dollars in Iraqi money and oil (and millions of American tax payer money) missing under the occupation, spirited away by Western corporations and completely unaccounted for. The New York Times reports that “an American has been charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to American occupation authorities and their spouses to obtain construction contracts” in “what is expected to be the first of a series of criminal charges against officials and contractors overseeing the rebuilding of Iraq .“ [1]

Christian Aid reported in 2004 that an audit of the CPA handling of Iraqi oil money revealed billions of dollars in Iraqi oil missing. They state, "Billions of dollars of oil money that has already been transferred to the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has effectively disappeared into a financial black hole. For all the talk of freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people - before, during and after the war which toppled Saddam Hussein - there is no way of knowing how the vast majority of this money has been spent." [2]

The Christian Science Monitor estimates that high oil prices will bring in $20 million or more in oil revenues for 2005. They go on to note “that very little, if any, of that money will actually be used in the country's stalled reconstruction” because of “smuggling and outright theft of the revenues.”[3] In another staggering example of theft, American appointed officials in the Iraqi Defense Ministry stole one billion dollars and fled the country. Some have wondered how they could do this under American oversight without being noticed. [4]

Earlier this year, the London Review of Books published an investigation that found under the U.S. coalition provision authority $20 billion of Iraqi money had been spent on reconstruction, compared to $300 million of U.S. funds. Of the money spent, $8.8 billion was unaccounted for, with little hope of ever knowing where it went. [5]

Obviously, the level of corruption and theft in Iraq has been staggering.

One former CPA official, Franklin Willis, testified before congress that corruption and graft were direct consequences of American policies. Willis told them, “Several key decisions by leaders in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq enabled contractors to bilk the authority out of billions in reconstruction funds.” He described a “Wild West” approach to contracting and showed pictures of himself and other U.S. officials holding plastic wrapped bricks of $2 million dollars in cash. [6]

The ‘Wild West’ does have some rules. The former chief of the CPA, Paul Bremer, passed 100 laws to help facilitate corporate robbery before he left the country. His laws exempted corporations from domestic taxes, tariffs, and laws and opened up Iraqi banks and oil industry for foreign ownership; laws that no sovereign nation would accept. Antonia Juhasz comments, “They lock in sweeping advantages to American firms, ensuring long-term U.S. economic advantage while guaranteeing few, if any, benefits to the Iraqi people.“ [7]

Thomas Catan wrote in The Financial Times of London that many legal experts believed the Bremer laws fundamentally altered Iraq's existing laws, and were therefore illegal. The transformation of an occupied country's laws violates the Hague regulations of 1907, ratified by the United States, and the U.S. Army's Law of Land Warfare. Then British attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair in the first days of the war "major structural economic reforms would not be authorized by international law."[8]

A U.N. audit has asked the U.S. government to pay back several hundred million dollars for fraudulent contracts. In the past the U.S. has avoided paying back any money, arguing that the then occupation government it installed and staffed with American officials known as the Coalition Provisional Authority (now defunct), was a multinational institution and therefore not an arm of the U.S. government. This property of the CPA absolved the U.S. of any responsibility for mismanagement and corruption.

Many multinational firms will not be prosecuted under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act because the statute only applies to U.S. based firms. Halliburton has infamously escaped prosecution for bribery and corruption in Nigeria by virtue of being incorporated offshore. [9]

Domestic Corruption & Profiteering
Speaking of Halliburton, they are in the news for literally using slave labor in the Gulf Coast rebuilding effort. Halliburton used hundreds of undocumented and legally vulnerable workers for several weeks of labor before firing them without pay.

One of Bush's first actions after the hurricane hit was to relax labor standards in the region. Reuters reported in September 2005, "President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage."[10]

War Crimes in Iraq
In November of 2004 U.S. forces staged a massive assault against the city of Fallujah. War crimes were committed, mistakes were made: the details of which are still emerging.

Many of you saw the video of a marine shooting a wounded prisoner in a mosque; much ado was made about that scene by the western media. The crime was a footnote compared to what else went on. At it times it seems the attention and energy spent investigating crimes is inversely proportional to their magnitude.

During the assault, coalition forces refused to allow any men of fighting age to flee the city, even when accompanied by their families and without any trace of fighting. (The U.S. can chemically test for residues that come from firing weapons, rockets, etc.) The men were forced back into the city to die. Not allowing refugees to flee a war zone is a war crime covered by the Geneva Conventions. [11]

At the start of the assault, U.S. forces bombed a small hospital to rubble. Our nation's leading newspaper ran a front-page story about an assault on a larger Fallujan hospital. The report noted that U.S. forces needed to "shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Falluja General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties." The logic is horrifying: The hospital was releasing figures about how many civilians are being killed or injured; therefore we needed to eliminate the hospital. During the assault U.S. soldiers forced doctors, nurses, and the sick and wounded from their beds and rooms, handcuffed them, and threw them on the ground. These two crimes were far more serious than the shooting of a wounded insurgent in a Mosque. Article 18 of the 4th Geneva Convention states, "Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict." [12]

There were reports about strange weapons used in Fallujah, initially denied by the Pentagon. Over time, because of mounting documentary evidence to the contrary, they have been forced to admit they used the chemical weapons White Phosphorous and Mark 77, an alternate form of Napalm.

MK77, like napalm, is an incendiary gel that sticks to structures and victims. The bombs lack stabilizing fins, making them imprecise weapons. At first, the U.S. denied not only using MK77, but also claimed it was not part of their arsenal. Their “special partner” Britain seemed surprised and embarrassed when the deceit was uncovered several months after the assault. (Britain, unlike the U.S., is a signatory to international pledges not to use napalm weapons.) The U.S. retracted its denial and admitted to using these weapons in violation of international agreements after “evidence from reporters had become irrefutable.“

White Phosphorous, or Whiskey Pete in military slang, burns incredibly hot at low temperatures. It creates an uncontrollable, noxious cloud that indiscriminately kills civilians and combatants alike. It is banned under a number of international agreements. When it gets on the skin it continues to burn, with no way to extinguish it even when submerged under water, until it reaches the bone. The U.S. denied using this weapon until an Italian documentary showed the U.S. military using it and dead Iraqis with tell tale signs of WP burns in Fallujah. A U.S. army journal also documented the extensive use of the WP during the attack. [13]

Torture
A steady stream of torture stories have been pouring out from Coalition and Iraqi prisons. In one case an interrogator hung a detainee by his wrists, which were bound behind his back. The interrogator then covered his head. After a while, a few witnesses to the interrogation noticed that he was limp. They cut him down and blood poured from his nose and mouth as if "from a faucet." He was dead, and his interrogators packed him on ice and removed the evidence before an investigation could take place.

In another case a young Afghan froze to death after a CIA case officer stripped him naked, chained him to a concrete floor, and left him over night with no blankets. [14]

It has recently emerged that the Navy Seals used ice water on prisoners to induce hypothermia during interrogation. In yet another case, American interrogators threatened to feed detainees to the lions in one of Saddam’s palaces if they did not speak.

American troops discovered 173 malnourished and abused prisoners in an Iraqi Ministry Detention Center after investigating persistent reports about abuse. They discovered torture devices in the same location. Last year an Iraqi court found that there was no doubt that torture and abuse was rampant in Iraqi prisons. [15]

The national debate has slid downhill from condemning regimes such as Saddam Hussein's that openly torture prisoners (moral high ground), to denying that we torture in spite of extensive photographic evidence (“frat house hazing”), to how our torture compares to other nations (moral relativism), to who we should entrust with the legal right to torture prisoners: the CIA, the military, or both (embracing torture).

It seems that no matter how many CIA analysts, FBI agents, or U.S. victims of torture such as John McCain argue that torture does not work practically, corrupts torturers morally, and damages the U.S. more than any intelligence it yields helps, the Cheney cabal continues to push for the legalization of American torture. This may look like another example of American policy planners building legality based on the principle that Americans do not commit crimes in foreign affairs by definition.

Philippe Sands, a professor of law at University College of London, offers another explanation. He cites the precedent set by the British detainment and extradition of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet was a notorious murderer that ruled Chile and ran an international terrorist operation known as Condor. (He also enjoyed crucial U.S. support for years.) After Pinochet lost power he fled Chile. The British Courts stripped Pinochet's immunity based on violations of international conventions prohibiting torture and offered him for trial. [16]

It may seem inconceivable that the lawyers and officials of the current administration may end up in The Hague one day facing trial for their crimes, but such a fear would explain the bizarre series of legal memos and Dick Cheney's opposition to any legislative restriction for U.S. sponsored torture.

This article began by mentioning a political poll published in the Wall Street Journal reporting that 36% of the American public approve of the job Bush is doing. Who are Bush's supporters and why do they approve of the job he is doing? Indifference would be understandable. Some may not pay enough attention to form an opinion. But approval implies some knowledge of what he is doing.

I have only mentioned a few issues here that demonstrate how disastrous - and often criminal - Bush’s policies are. The focus has been centered on foreign affairs because the executive branch operates most freely from checks and balances when making foreign policy. But the same patterns emerge in other areas of governance, the environment, social programs, deficit spending, and public office.

Bush is by all accounts a proud and arrogant man, stubborn, and like other presidents, worried about his place in history. This is a lethal combination. There appears to be no amount of blood – American or Iraqi – that will deter him from trying to be remembered as a successful president. The Iraq war is dangerously tied to his ego, which would help explain the blizzard of shifting and contradictory justifications for the Iraq war. Bush has repeatedly said the war in Iraq is the “central front in the war on terror.” Bush does not appear to be aware that many of the given justifications are directly contradictory. Either we are intentionally creating a magnet for terrorism so we can fight them there rather than here, or we are creating a Middle Eastern Democracy on behalf of the Iraqi people that will transform the region – but it cannot be both. One wonders where the line between self-deception and public manipulation is for Bush. When Bush emphatically declares on behalf of the U.S., “We do not torture,” is he aware of the thousands of pictures released from Abu Gharaib that contradict his claim? Is he aware that his Vice President is on record for opposing legislation that would ban the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of any detainee held by the United States government, specifically introduced by John McCain to prevent torture? [17]

Notes:
[1] Glanz, James. New York Times. 17 November 2005
[2]Christian Aid. "Fuelling suspicion: the coalition and Iraq's oil billions." 27 June 2004.
Christian Aid. “Iraq: The Missing Billions.” 24 October 2003
[3] LaFranchi, Howard. Christian Science Monitor. 14 July 2005
[4]Cockburn, Patrick. Independent UK. 19 September 2005.
[5]Harriman, Ed. London Review of Books. Vol. 27 No. 13. 7 July 2005
[6]Castelli, Elise. LA Times. 15 February 2005
Reuters. “Wild West Iraq Occupation Authority Criticized.” 14 February 2005
[7] Juhasz, Antonia. LA Times. 5 August 2004
[8]Catan, Thomas. The Financial Times. 30 October 2003
[9] Hirsh, Michael. Newsweek. 4 April 2005
Catan, Thomas. Financial Times. 30 October 2003.
[10]Staff. "Bush Lifts Wage Rules for Katrina." Reuters, 9 September 2005. Lovato, Roberto. "Gulf Coast Slaves." Salon.com, 15 November 2005
[11] Associated Press. U.S. Won’t Let Men Flee Falluijah. 13 November 2004
[12]Schmitt, Eric. New York Times. 15 November 2004.
Oppel,Richard & Worth, Robert. New York Times. 8 November 2004.
[13]Buncombe, Andrew. Independent UK. 17 November 2005.
Brown, Colin. Independent UK. 17 June 2005
Army. U.S. Field Artillery. March 2005
[14]White, Josh. Washington Post. 7 November 2005
[15] Staff. "Iraq Says Abused Detainees From All Sects." Associated Press. 16 November 2005.
[16]Sands, Phillipe. San Francisco Chronicle. 13 November 2005.
[17] Associated Press. “Bush defends detainees policy” 7 November 2005.
Schmitt, Eric. New York Times. 25 October 2005