Iraq

The Great Barbarian's Obscenity

While many people were genuinely horrified by the recent beheading of a Korean hostage by militants in Iraq, there were hypocritical noises from some usual circles.

President Roh Moo-Hyun of South Korea denounced Kim Sun-Il's killers in a televised statement in this vein: "We strongly condemn terrorism. We must never allow it to achieve its purpose."

U.S. President George W. Bush condemned the killing as "barbaric". He added: "They're tying to force us to withdraw from the world so they can impose their dark vision on people. In order to impose their vision, they want us to leave. But the United States will not be intimidated."

If the person or persons listening to Roh and Bush's words were born only yesterday, then they could and should be forgiven for thinking that those words were sensible, sane, sound and utterly reasonable - seemingly so full of compassion , love even, care and peace and perhaps even justice.

For Roh and Bush were less than honest: they were talking without context as though the killing were done without any rhyme or reason. It was deliberately done so that people would forget the chain of cause and effects. In the New World Order, whenever it suits the naked emperor and his minions, things must be conducted a historically. And that included all discourse and violence.

But people who love Kim Sun Il most were not convinced. His mother Shun Young-Ja, 63, and his father Kim Jong-Kyu, 69, blamed the South Korean government for his death. They accused the government of betrayal for failing to prevent his execution.

"My poor son was killed by the government", said Kim's mother. "The cursed government kept declaring it stood firm on its decision to send troops while claiming it was doing its best to save him."

Kim's father said the South Korean government had not been sincere with them and blamed the foreign ministry for failing to secure his son's release.

"I want to bury him in the foreign ministry building. That is all I want from this government," he said.

And George W. Bush should keep his big, stupid mouth shut. In May, the father of American businessman, Nicholas Berg, who was executed in Iraq, blamed Bush for his son's death.

Berg's father, too, couldn't be hoodwinked and deceived by the lying politicians and warmongers like Bush and Roh. He knows very well what and who actually killed his beloved son.

Fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters the world over know who are the terrorists and barbarians who have destabilized Iraq and the lives of the Iraqi people for the past 14 years. They know what barbaric, horrific and almost unspeakable things were done to the Iraqi people between August 1990 and now.

The so-called First Gulf War against Iraq by George H.W. Bush, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld which killed a few hundred thousand Iraqi civilians and combatants; the trade sanctions in the name of the United Nations, insisted mostly upon by the US and UK governments, which killed and maimed more than a million Iraqis including hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in the 2003 terrorism mainly by aerial bombardment by George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Rumsfeld and Condolezza Rice, which again destroyed the socio-economic infrastructure of Iraq, much of it flimsily restored after 1991. Remember?

And after all these war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace against the people of Iraq by father and son Bush and their terrorist lieutenants, this highly immoral creature called George W. Bush has the audacity to call Iraqi militants who oppose him "barbaric"!

It is an obscenity and a vulgarity which only the Great Barbarian himself is capable of uttering and demonstrating.

Thank Almighty God that a courageous American with conscience like Michael Moore has come out with books like Stupid White Men and Dude, Where is My Country and his documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 to expose George W. Bush of what he really is: a shallow, disinterested and flippant man, a bumbling fool easily manipulated by the evil power brokers around him, and a cynical Christian fundamentalist bent on reshaping the world to suit him, his religious beliefs, the oil industry and the other corporate cronies he owes his career to. (See Andy Goldberg, "Unasked questions in anti-Bush Movie", dpa)

Bush, it seems, is seeking NATO's help in stabilizing Iraq. Really? Who is the criminal who destabilized Iraq in the first place?

Colin Powell says the Iraqi militants do not care about human life, do not care about the Iraqi people. He and his evil cabal do? No wonder they have killed man maimed a few million Iraqis over the last 14 years!

The Great Barbarian's perversity doesn't seem to have limits. Can there be a head of state or head of government at the present time who has a mind which is more warped than his? NATO should insist that his head be examined before he blows up the world.

Is this all the Skull & Bones secret society at Yale University taught him about the real world? If so, then Yale must change its curriculum before more monsters emerge from there.

In the May 29, 2003 issue of Rolling Stone, Paul Krugman, professor of economics at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of International Relations, talks about George W. Bush's "Voodoo Economics". Today, the world also knows much more about voodoo international politics of the puffed-up cowboy.

Father George H.W. Bush and son George W. Bush are among the least qualified people in the whole wide world to call anyone else "barbaric". As a matter of fact, they and their cronies should be hauled in front of some U.N. war crimes tribunal for having violated (1) the Brussels Convention 1874 on the bombing of undefended towns and villages and of buildings devoted to religion, the arts, sciences and hospitals; (2) the Hague Regulations of 1907 for aerial bombardment of civilians and the destruction of private property; and (3) the four Geneva Conventions of 1949.

For instance, the third Geneva Convention 1949 provides very detailed rules as to the way in which prisoners of war are to be treated. As Prof. Peter Rowe has pointed out in his article "The Gulf and the Laws of War" (New Law Journal, London, February 22, 1991), "Prisoners of war are entitled to be humanely treated and they must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity". Yes, like the dark American deeds at Abu Ghraib.

He adds: "Where the offence involves the willful killing of a person protected by the conventions, the convicted person may be sentenced to life imprisonment and, in any other case, to a maximum of 14 years."

No wonder some U.S. leaders are so wary of the International Criminal Court and keep on asking for special immunity!

Barbaric? Does George W. Bush really want to know about barbarism besides his own? Simple. Just consider these cases.

The Italians invaded an occupied Libya in 1911. The Libyans fought courageously against Italian occupation. Mussolini, the Italian fascist, assumed power as dictator in Rome in 1922.

Mussolini's executor in Libya - Marshal Graziani - ran a line of barbed wire entanglements from the sea to the sand dunes in the south - a distance of 300 km, in order to stop guerilla supplies coming from Egypt. (Compare this to what the Israelis are doing today by their wall in Palestine).

Graziani executed all Libyans who had dealings of any kind with the guerrillas Omar Mukhtar, the great indomitable and best known soldier - patriot of the Libyan resistance, was among thousands of Libyan fighters and prisoners martyred.

According to Peter Mansfield, in his book The Arabs (Penguin, 3rd Edition, 1992), another of Graziani's methods was to have captured nationalist Libyans "taken up in planes and thrown out".

Or as David Blundy and Andrew Lycett point out in their book Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution (Corgi Books, London, 1988), "It is claimed that the Italians bombed civilians, killing large numbers of women, children and old people. They raped and disemboweled women, they trampled upon copies of the Koran and they forced men into aero planes and threw them out from a height of 400 meters".

They add: "Under Graziani's civilizing force, 12,000 Libyans were executed every year and nomads were moved to concentration camps, where they died in their thousands".

The Libyan holocaust. And yet, on a visit to Rome, Winston Churchill told Mussolini: "Externally your government has rendered a service to the whole world".

Six years later in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt termed Mussolini "that admirable Italian gentleman".

Who says it was barbaric?

When Richard M. Nixon was president of the United States and Henry Kissinger was his National Security Adviser and later also Secretary of State, they seemed to have taken a leaf from Mussolini and Graziani's book on how to get rid of prisoners.

Yes, you guessed it. Under Nixon and Kissinger, the US Army in Vietnam were throwing enemy Vietnamese prisoners out of helicopters to their deaths.

The exclusive photos carried on the front page of the Chicago Sun Times newspaper of Saturday, November 29, 2969 tell part of the story.

A Chicago teacher had sent the newspaper the photos he said show a POW being dropped to his death from a US Army helicopter in Vietnam. The fact that photos were taken of the murder from an escort aircraft shows the whole horrific scheme was premeditated and planned.

The question is: How many Vietnamese captured and made prisoners by the American aggressors in Vietnam, during the entire period the Americans were actively involved in the war, were killed in this manner?

Not just the Nixon-Kissinger years, but also the Kennedy and Johnson years, how many did the barbarians kill in this way?

This masterpiece of Western civilization from Italy and America later was copied by fascist dictator General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte after his bloody coup and overthrow of Allende, a duly elected president of Chile, in September 1973.

As Christopher Hitchens has pointed out in his book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, many of the US-Chile communications before, during and after the coup are still kept as top secrets in US archives.

Of relevance to us in Malaysia is, of course, the fact that about eight years ago, Malaysian authorities invited Pinochet to Malaysia. He not only came; he was given some very high award! How our so-called cultured leaders like to rub shoulders with bloody barbarians - in the case of Pinochet, he killed and tortured tens of thousands of Chileans during his US-backed reign of terror. He was a terrorist, but he is now apparently enjoying his retirement in his eighties. Who says crime doesn't pay?

The next time George W. Bush wants to open his big mouth to talk about things and people "barbaric", let us know beforehand. We can supply him with all the necessary details, including of course those essential ones of his father and himself.

Now he can go on to deceive the world and the American people that he has handed back sovereignty to the Iraqi people. No fear, all his lies cannot and will not hide the fact that the US military occupation of Iraq continues, and the puppet show staged by Iraqi agents and proxies of the CIA is continuing. The barbarians are not at the gates; they are tight inside Iraq and the Middle East.