Who are the No. 1 War Criminals?
(2001)–Willem Oltmans–
Auteursrechtelijk beschermd
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QaddafiWilliam Blum left the State Department in 1967 abandoning his aspiration of becoming a diplomat, because he opposed the war in Vietnam. He became a researcher of illegal us behaviour worldwide. In Rogue State he wrote that beginning in 1945, Washington had attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments and attempted to crush some 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes. ‘In the process’, he noted, ‘the us caused the end of life of several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair.’ Blum listed the following terrorist us interventions worldwide:
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In his Guide to the world's only super rogue power Blum produced this list covering about the same period I myself was active in international journalism. A number of us interventions and covert operations I recalled from my own reporting, like the many sessions of the Security Council, I covered at un headquarters. But then there were numerous covert interventions by the invisibles in Washington, that were never dealt with in the United-Nations, because they were top secret and impossible to prove who initiated them. Too often Washington literally got away with murder. Blum observed that countries that agreed with the American lexicon of what democracy should stand for can count on aid, in dollars and in weapons, and they will be considered allies. But, doomed are parties or leaders, that cherish different standards and hold other ideals than those accepted by Washington. Those, disagree-ing with the us, are up for grabs, because they are looked upon as enemies. Blum's observations are identical to my own gathered during 50 years of practicing journalism. ‘For secret assassinations the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.’ Blum quoted from us spy manuals. ‘The most efficient accident is a fall of 75 feet or more on a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stair wells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve.’ The us advice continued, ‘The act may be executed by sudden, vigorous grabbing of the ankles, tipping the subject over the edge. If the assassin immediately sets up an outcry playing the “horrified witness”, no alibi or surreptitious withdrawl is necessary’. Blum quo- | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ted various examples from us spy manuals. cia guidelines to Contras, who were fighting the Sandinista Government in Nicaragua included, ‘Kidnap all officials or agents of the government and place them in public places. Shame, ridicule and humiliate the personal symbols of the government (...) If a guerrilla fires at an individual, make the town see that it was the repressive system of the Sandinista regime, that really killed the informer, and that the weapon fired was one recovered in combat against the regime. It is possible to neutralize carefully selected and planned targets, such as court judges, justices of the peace, police and state security officials, Sandinista defense committee chiefs etcetera.’ cia guidelines clearly encourage plain murder. What, perhaps, is the most frightening about these instructions sanctioned by the White House and all top levels of government is, that Americans are accepting these rules as normal and acceptable in dealing with presumed enemies. It is the us mind-set that goes back to the traditions of the American Wild West and Wild Bill Donovan who remains the father of the us worldwide secret murder business. ‘If possible’, says a cia instruction book, ‘professional criminals will be hired to carry out specific jobs.’ Like shooting Sukarno, hacking Lumumba to pieces, or poisoning Castro to name a few of those jobs from the past. ‘Tasks will be assigned to others, in order to create a “martyr” for the cause,’ agents destined for Nicaragua were told. ‘Take demonstrators to a confrontation with Sandinista authorities, in order to bring about uprisings and shootings, which will cause the death of one or more persons, who could become the martyrs, a situation, that should be made use of immediately against the regime, in order to create greater conflicts,’ as quoted by William Blum in Rogue State. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya has for a long time been a favourite target of us cia and Mafia gangsters. With the exception of the Jimmy Carter Administration, when brother Billy Carter built a special relationship with the Libyan leader, Qaddafi is on the most wanted list of the Wild Bill Donovan boys. That in Washington terms means, anything goes, sending bombers or dozens of warships, get the guy is the password. Again it is the David versus Goliath option, because Yankees are sufficiently cowardly inclined to preferably pick on blasting and invading the smallest of nations, like the island of Grenada, Panama, Cuba, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, or Kosovo, places hard to find on the map. Plans for military actions against China or Russia are considerably more carefully analysed. Libya is a desert nation of 1.759.540 square kilometers. In 1973 there were 2.257.037 people living there, which turned the former kingdom into an ideal testing ground for us military might. The country was a former Italian colony. us and British military bases were allowed to remain there after World War II. Finally, September 1, 1969, Colonel Qaddafi ousted | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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King Mohammed Idris and took power on behalf of the people. No more us and British war games in Lybia. This caused much resentment in Washington and London. Qaddafi was registered with the intelligence Mafia as a nuisance and a troublemaker. Hence, several us heads-of-state approved attempts to kill him, even if large scale air- and sea operations were needed to achieve this goal. Washington lives by the weird notion, that the us alone should be the judge of what is acceptable to the entire world and who should he rooted out as unwanted. Qaddafi never made the Washington grade. Bob Woodward, assistant managing editor of the Washington Post published Veil: The Secret Wars of the cia, 1981-1987.Ga naar eind52 Those days Ronald Reagan occupied the White House, and William Casey was cia director. Hot spots, then, were Nicaragua, Iran and Libya. Casey supported President Hissen Habré of Chad, the former French colony south of Libya. ‘Habré came to power with cia paramilitary assistance as part of one of the early Reagan Administration findings to bloody Qaddafi's nose, noted Woodward. Sudan President Gaafar Mohammed Nimeri was likewise coveted as a close us ally to further box in Qaddafi. Simultaneously the deputy chief of Liberian President Samuel Doe's personal guard, Lieutenant Colonel Moses Flanzamaton was a cia agent. The Colonel launched a machinegun ambush on Joe's jeep. But the President escaped unharmed. Flanzamaton was captured, confessed to cia sponsorship of the coup attempt and was executed.Ga naar eind53 Woodward discovered, that Casey on the third day he became cia director, had received a twelve page Secret snie (Special National Intelligence Estimate) on Libya. That document turned Qaddafi into one of Casey's top priorities. The ussr was selling Libya arms at a rate of a billion dollars a year. According to cia shrinks, special circumstances in his youth contributed to exaggerated forms of Bedouin characteristics like naïve idealism, religious fanaticism, intense pride, austerity, xenophobia, and sensitivity to slight. Woodward ridiculed Freudian spy craft and armchair psychoanalysis by cia doctors. But the net result of all this dangerous cia nonsense was, that the Reagan White House considered Qaddafi in 1985 the most dangerous terrorist in the world. He was ready to provide money, weapons, etcetera to some 30 insurgent, radical or terrorist groups. Woodward reconstructed from his research some juicy details of what kind of simpleton Casey actually was. He had been told, for instance, that Qaddafi acted strangely when meeting Yemeni officials. Casey suspected the Libyan leader to be on the brink of a nervous breakdown. The cia arranged for us warplanes to fly close to the Libyan coast, in the cia director's words, ‘to humiliate Qaddafi.’ Woodward: ‘It was summer, there was comparatively little to do. Qaddafi could be Reagan's victory.’ Reagan had signed on April 30, 1985 National Security | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Directive (nsdd) No. 168, a six-page secret order. Libya was secretly spied upon, since Qaddafi was considered a monster, ready to set the world afire. He was buying mig 29s and t 32 tanks from the ussr and concluded an arms deal with Greece worth 500 million dollars. ‘Flower’ was the top code-name for covert actions against Libya. ‘Rose’ the code name for a pre-emptive military strike against Libya. Woodward: ‘Bill Casey (cia) and George Shultz (State Department) were determined to finish what had been started in Libya. The cia gave wide circulation to intelligence on the seven main residences that Qaddafi used perhaps hoping it would leak to the Colonel to remind him he was being watched.’Ga naar eind54 There was no crisis, but the Planning Group met on August 7, 1986 in the White House situation room to investigate if something could be done anyway to damage Libya. There were some strategic problems, because President Francois Mitterand did not want us bombers to fly over France on a bombing raid on Tripoli. On August 14, 1986, ready to strike, the top met again at the White House and were joined by Reagan himself. During the discussion how to eliminate the Libyan leader, Woodward detected in the minutes of the conversation a typical gem to illustrate how the minds in the White House ticked. Reagan: ‘Why not invite Qaddafi to San Francisco, he likes to dress up so much.’ Whereupon the Secretary of State, Shultz, observed ‘Why don't we give him aids?’ These are the people who want the world to be like them On April 14, 1986, under the code-name ‘Prairie Fire’, 200 American bombers appeared over the Gulf of Sidra and Tripoli and Bengazi were bombed. This was done in retaliation for a bomb attack on a discotheque ‘La Belle’ in West-Berlin, where two us soldiers had died. Reagan read on television three Libyan messages intercepted by the National Security Agency (nsa) on television. They contained ‘irrefutable proof’, the President said, that Libya was guilty of the Berlin blast. The bombers were accompanied to further humiliate Qaddafi, with an armada of 45 us Navy vessels. Eight bombers had been selected to hit ‘Splendid Gate’, the barracks of the President with 2.000 pound laserguided bombs. Qaddafi escaped injury. Two of his sons were wounded, and a fifteen-month old girl, described as an adopted daughter, was killed. Reagan went again on television and said, ‘Today we did what we had to do. If necessary, we shall do it again.’Ga naar eind55 Rereading these us war crimes against Libya in the 80s, one realizes that by today's standards the entire top of the Reagan White House qualifies to be issued one-way tickets to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Noam Chomsky described this us mentality, that Washington knows best what is ‘good for the world’ as follows: ‘Contempt for the rule of law is deeply rooted in us practice and intellectual culture’.Ga naar eind56 And, indeed, it is not the cancellation by Bush junior | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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of the Kyoto Treaty, the abolition of the abm Treaty with Moscow, or the unwillingness to stick to a biological weapons convention adopted by 143 nations, which isolates the us ever further from the rest of mankind. Washington has never really played ball in good faith. As Chomsky reminds us in his book, when the World Court in The Hague condemned the us in 1986 for ‘unlawful use of force’ against Nicaragua - like surrounding that nation with mines, that Soviet ships could not bring in fresh supplies - Washington ignored the judgement and refused to recognize the Court's jurisdiction. The bastards in Washington called their arms shipments to the fascist Contras in Nicaragua ‘humanitarian aid’. Therefore, it was said in Washington, the World Court did not know what it was talking about when it ordered the us to pay extensive reparations to the Sandinista government. Next, the Security Council of the United Nations accepted a resolution calling on all states to respect international law, which meant in 1986 to please leave Nicaragua and the Sandinista's alone. But, of course, the us busy with a world wide anti-communist crusade, vetoed the resolution and got one fellow un member to support them, as usual Israël. In other words Washington is quite accustomed to going it alone although Bush II is aggravating this solo-ride to entirely new levels of isolation evoking memories of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. At the time, President James Monroe aimed at numbering North and South America exclusively to a new concept of us Lebensraum. Bush II seems to entertain the wild delusion, that the entire globe must rightfully be considered of strategic imperative interest to Washington. Yes, nations are allowed to run their own affairs but if they entertain different ideas of what is best for them, they are on a collision course with the Wild Bill Donovan boys and can reckon on a stiff blockade to call them to order. And, if that doesn't help, the Yankee fleet win appear before the coast, cruise-missiles are being fired or, if need be, the bombers will fly out with their laser-guided explosives on board. Ask Qaddafi, he has had plenty of experience and a belly full of us Rogue Terrorism. |
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