Torture: Empire's Dirty Little Secret, Part II By Mike Whitney

Torture: Empire's Dirty Little Secret, Part II

By Mike Whitney

Al-Jazeerah, May 6, 2004

Normally, I don’t respond to angry e mail, but I will make the exception here because I think the author is sincere and because I consider Al Jazeerah.info a first rate forum for ideas that don’t appear in the mainstream media.
Ursula Mosley challenges my sincerity because I am critical of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, but did not speak out during Saddam’s regime.

Actually, this comment is not entirely accurate, as I am a long standing member of Amnesty International, a group that works tirelessly to address the issues of human rights on all seven continents. I also belong to various civil liberty and social justice groups.

For most of us, our support of these groups is the extent of our involvement, but it does demonstrate a commitment to the very values for which I am being criticized.

UM should also recognize that virtually no one who belongs to Amnesty International, ACLU, Human Rights Watch etc. ever supported the murderous Saddam. It was, in fact, the US who assisted the Ba’athists to power originally, preferring them to the left-leaning government at that time. After the Ba’athist party seized power the CIA graciously provided them with the names of thousands of members in the Iraqi communist Party, which they dutifully went out and killed. (You might want to read Tariq Ali’s "Bush in Babylon" for a thumbnail sketch of Iraqi history).

We also know that it was the US and Britain who sold Saddam the precursors for his bio and chemical weapons.

Once again, I think you can see the hypocrisy of selling someone weapons and then saying, “We have to kill him; he has weapons.”

Regardless, this was the Bush rationale for going to war, however feeble it may seem.

UM’s rage at the Arab countries that did not “speak out during Saddam’s time,” is also misdirected. Most of these nations are simply lines on the map that were drawn after the British left. The main players in the area, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are just America clients (puppets?) that never veer too far from whatever suits US requirements.

How is it that UM does not know this, but everyone in the Arab world is painfully aware of it?

Is she expecting a puppet government to start criticizing his benefactors in Washington?

It will never happen.

As for the European governments dealing illegally with Saddam…who cares? Governments are always acting in their own self interests. That doesn’t diminish the crime of invading a country stealing its resources and killing 10,000 of its people. The crime of aggression far surpasses whatever marginal dealings that Europe had with Saddam.

In many ways UM’s e mail is actually positive. She is mad at me because she thinks I am bashing America. I am. America needs a good bashing … and new leadership, too.

I want to see America reenter the world community; commit ourselves to international standards of justice, and work to address the grave issues that face the whole of humanity. (AIDS, global warming, environmental degradation, poverty, ignorance).

The clock is ticking on our species, and we simply do not have the time for George Bush’s foolish crusade.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03).

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.

editor@aljazeerah.info