Add Up the Damage

Writes: BOB HERBERT

Does anyone know where George W. Bush is?

You don’t hear much from him anymore. The last image most of us remember is of the president ducking a pair of size 10s that were hurled at him in Baghdad.

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We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is thrashing the Palestinians in Gaza. And the U.S. economy is about as vibrant as the 0-16 Detroit Lions.

But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd.

When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry ? a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches ? over the damage he’s done to this country.

This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantanamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.

The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

Exploiting the public’s understandable fears, Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us: “We cannot wait,” he said, “for the final proof ? the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (A car bomb over the weekend killed two dozen more Iraqis, many of them religious pilgrims.) The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz. — [ READ MORE ]

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Real Reason For Iraq Invasion Revealed

Cheney OK With Torture, Admits To War Crimes

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Cheney unrepentant on Guantanamo

ISTANBUL – The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay should remain open indefinitely, Vice-President Dick Cheney told ABC News in an interview, while he also defended the practice of subjecting detainees to simulated drowning during questioning, known as waterboarding.

The vice president was asked on late Monday that when the United States could responsibly close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which was set up to hold detainees in the war on terror launched after Sept. 11.”

Well, I think that would come with the end of the war on terror,” Cheney said. “And when is that?” he asked.

“Well, nobody knows,” Cheney replied. “Nobody can specify that.”

The vice-president also admitted he was aware that waterboarding was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged planner of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. ABC asked him if in hindsight he thought the tactics went too far. “I don’t,” Cheney said.

In previous wars the United States has “always exercised the right to capture the enemy and then hold them till the end of the conflict. That’s what we did in World War II with, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of German prisoners,” Cheney said, as reported Agence France-Presse.

“The same basic principle ought to apply here in terms of our right to capture the enemy and hold them,” he added.

The other option, Cheney said, “is to turn them over to somebody else. A lot of them, nobody wants. I mean, there’s a great resistance sometimes in the home countries to taking these people back into their own territory.”

According to Cheney, some 30 detainees who were released from Guantanamo “ended up back on the battlefield again, and we’ve encountered them a second time around. But they’ve either been killed or captured in further conflicts with our forces.”

In another interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, Cheney said Guantanamo “has been very well run” and the incoming administration of Barack Obama would have a difficult time closing it. “Guantanamo has been very, very valuable. And I think they (the Obama administration) will discover that trying to close it is a very hard proposition,” Reuters quoted Cheney as saying. The United States is holding about 250 prisoners at Guantanamo and has released or transferred out another 520.

Taken From — Hurriyet Daily News

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The Guantanamo Bay prison is a reviled symbol of America’s arrogance and disrespect for the Geneva conventions and other international laws. In the name of fighting terrorism the Bush administration has violated the sovereignty of foreign countries, tortured suspected terrorists, denied prisoners habeas corpus and violated the privacy of Americans.

Barack Obama realizes that symbols are very important, and he has made it his priority to close down the notorious prison camp.

The Statue of Liberty is an important symbol that speaks volumes about the generosity of America in opening its arms to foreigners seeking freedom. The Guantanamo Bay is a hated symbol that speaks volumes about the xenophobia of the Bush administration. We should take down all symbols that paint a false portrait of our great democracy.

“President-elect Obama’s advisers are crafting plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and prosecute terrorism suspects in the U.S., a plan that the Bush administration said Monday was easier said than done.

Under the plan being crafted inside Obama’s camp, some detainees would be released and others would be charged in U.S. courts, where they would receive constitutional rights and open trials.” — MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writers

Bush tried to establish democracy in Iraq, an utterly impossible mission in a country with no history of democracy and no taste for it. At the same time he made a mockery of democracy by denying the suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay the most basic human rights.

Maybe developing countries wouldn’t have such a poor opinion of democracy, if we set a good example and treat everyone, even suspected terrorists, as human beings who are entitled to protection under the Geneva conventions.

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| More About The Detention Camp |

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is located on the shore of Guantánamo Bay at the southeastern end of Cuba and has been used by the United States Navy for more than a century. It is the oldest overseas U.S. Navy Base, and the only one in a country with which the United States does not have diplomatic relations.[1] The Cuban government opposes the presence of the naval base, claiming that the lease is invalid under international law. The US government claims that the lease is valid. — [MORE]