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Sacred Terror
By Chris Floyd
12/08/05 "Moscow
Times" -- -- The much-belated, poll-prompted outcry
of a few U.S. elected officials against the widespread use of
torture by the Bush administration -- following years of silent
acquiescence in the face of incontrovertible evidence of deliberate
atrocity -- is a welcome development, of course. But it has left an
even more sinister aspect of Bushist policy untouched, one that
likewise has been hidden in plain sight for years.
On Sept. 17, 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive
order authorizing the use of "lethal measures" against anyone in the
world whom he or his minions designated an "enemy combatant." This
order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no
charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no
oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field
carte blanche to designate "enemies" on their own initiative and
kill them as they see fit.
The existence of this universal death squad -- and the total
obliteration of human liberty it represents -- has not provoked so
much as a crumb of controversy in the American establishment,
although it's no secret. The executive order was first bruited in
The Washington Post in October 2001. We first wrote of it here in
November 2001. The New York Times added further details in December
2002. That same month, Bush officials made clear that the edict also
applied to U.S. citizens, as The Associated Press reported.
The first officially confirmed use of this power was the killing of
a U.S. citizen in Yemen by a CIA drone missile on Nov. 3, 2002. A
similar strike occurred in Pakistan this month, when a CIA missile
destroyed a house and purportedly killed Abu Hamza Rabia, a
suspected al-Qaida figure. But the only bodies found at the site
were those of two children, the houseowner's son and nephew, Reuters
reports. The grieving father denied any connection to terrorism. An
earlier CIA strike on another house missed Rabia but killed his wife
and children, Pakistani officials reported.
But most of the assassinations are carried out in secret, quietly,
professionally, like a contract killing for the mob. As a Pentagon
document unearthed by The New Yorker in December 2002 put it, the
death squads must be "small and agile" and "able to operate
clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover
arrangements to ... enter countries surreptitiously."
The dangers of this policy are obvious, as a UN report on
"extrajudicial killings" noted in December 2004: "Empowering
governments to identify and kill 'known terrorists' places no
verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those
against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists. ... While
it is portrayed as a limited 'exception' to international norms, it
actually creates the potential for an endless expansion of the
relevant category to include any enemies of the State, social
misfits, political opponents, or others."
It's hard to believe that any genuine democracy would accept a claim
by its leader that he could have anyone killed simply by labeling
them an "enemy." It's hard to believe that any adult with even the
slightest knowledge of history or human nature could countenance
such unlimited power, knowing the evil it is bound to produce. Yet
this is what the great and good in America have done. Like the
boyars of old, they not only countenance but celebrate their
enslavement to the ruler.
This was vividly demonstrated in one of the most revolting scenes in
recent U.S. history: Bush's State of the Union address in January
2003, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide during the
final frenzy of war-drum beating before the assault on Iraq.
Trumpeting his successes in the war on terror, Bush claimed that
"more than 3,000 suspected terrorists" had been arrested worldwide
-- "and many others have met a different fate." His face then took
on the characteristic leer, the strange, sickly half-smile it
acquires whenever he speaks of killing people: "Let's put it this
way: They are no longer a problem."
In other words, the suspects -- and even Bush acknowledged they were
only suspects -- had been murdered. Lynched. Killed by agents
operating unsupervised in that shadow world where intelligence,
terrorism, politics, finance and organized crime meld together in
one amorphous mass. Killed on the word of a dubious informer,
perhaps: a tortured captive willing to say anything, a business
rival, a personal foe, a bureaucrat looking to impress his
superiors, a paid snitch in need of cash, a zealous crank pursuing
ethnic, tribal or religious hatreds -- or any other purveyor of the
garbage data that is coin of the realm in the shadow world.
Bush proudly held up this hideous system as an example of what he
called "the meaning of American justice." And the assembled
legislators applauded. Oh, how they applauded! They roared with glee
at the leering little man's bloodthirsty, B-movie machismo. They
shared his contempt for law -- our only shield, however imperfect,
against the blind, ignorant, ape-like force of raw power. Not a
single voice among them was raised in protest against this
tyrannical machtpolitik: not that night, not the next day, not ever.
Not even now, when the U.S. people's growing revulsion at Bush's
bloody handiwork has emboldened a few long-time enablers of atrocity
to criticize the "excesses" of his gulag and his "mishandling" of
the war in Iraq. A few nips at the flank of the beast have been
permitted. But the corroded heart of Bush's system of state terror
-- officially sanctioned murder by presidential fiat -- remains
curiously sacrosanct.
Annotations
U.S. Missile Kills Two Children in Pakistan: Report
Reuters, Dec. 5, 2005
Guant_namo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive
power
Amnesty International, May 13, 2005
Wrongful Imprisonment:Anatomy of a CIA Mistake
Washington Post, Dec. 3, 2005
War Crimes Made Easy
TomDispatch, Dec. 7, 2005
CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2005
Seized, held, tortured: six tell same tale
The Guardian, Dec. 6, 2005
A Weak Defense
Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2005
Bush's State of the Union Speech
CNN, January 29, 2003
Manhunt
The New Yorker, Dec. 16, 2002
Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to Kill Terrorists
New York Times, Dec. 15, 2002
Special Ops Get OK to Initiate Its Own Missions
Washington Times, Jan. 8, 2003
Coward's War in
Yemen
Spiked, Nov. 11, 2002
Drones of Death
The Guardian, Nov. 6, 2002
Gonzales Excludes CIA from Rules on Prisoners
New York Times, Jan. 20, 2005
Copyright Moscow Times
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