October 12, 2006
Bush Has Achieved America's Demise
The Founding Fathers' country
no longer exists
by Paul Craig Roberts

When does "collateral damage" so dwarf combatant deaths that war
becomes genocide?

Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq has cost 655,000 Iraqis their lives.
That is the conclusion of a study financed by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies and
conducted by physicians under the direction of Johns Hopkins University
epidemiologists. These are deaths over and above the pre-invasion
mortality rate. Bush's illegal invasion raised Iraq's mortality rate
from 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 13.3 deaths per 1,000
people per year. The study is published by the distinguished British
medical journal, The Lancet, and is available on the journal's Web site
[.pdf].

The study uses a scientific method known as "cluster sampling." In 87
percent of the deaths, the researchers requested death certificates,
and more than 90 percent of the surveyed households produced the death
certificates. Violence accounted for 601,000 deaths, and disease and
destruction of civilian infrastructure accounted for 54,000 deaths. The
violent deaths are attributed to gunshot wounds, coalition air strikes,
and car bombs.

Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist Gilbert Burnham says, "We're
very confident with the results." Columbia University epidemiologist
Ronald Waldman says the survey method used is "tried and true" and that
"this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

When asked about the report, President Bush stated, "I don't consider
it a credible report." Bush, of course, is not reality-based, and he
knows that any unfavorable news is "enemy propaganda." That's what the
neocons who pull his strings tell him, and that is what he believes.

What percentage of these 655,000 deaths were insurgents or
"terrorists"? Probably 1 percent and no more than 2 percent. Bush's
"war on terror" is, in fact, a war on Iraqi civilians.

Bush's invasion has also spawned sectarian conflict or civil war,
although the Bush regime denies it. Even Bush is smart enough to know
that "bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq" is not compatible with
setting off a civil war in Iraq. Since Bush the faith-based believes
that he is bringing "freedom and democracy to Iraq," he cannot accept
the fact that he has started a civil war.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are not the only innocent
victims of Bush's illegal aggression. The New York Times (Oct. 11)
reports that Department of Veterans Affairs documents show that about
one in five U.S. soldiers who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan have
suffered at least partial disability.

To date, more than 100,000 U.S. troops who are veterans of these wars
have been granted disability compensation. Although the U.S. cannot put
on the ground in Iraq more than 150,000 troops at one time, 1.5 million
troops have served so far and 567,000 have been discharged, of which
100,000 are receiving disability payments.

Paul Sullivan, director of programs for Veterans for America, says that
the current rate of injuries will produce 400,000 American veterans
suffering 30 percent to 100 percent disability. Apparently, one of the
severe forms of disability is post-traumatic stress, which does not
count as a physical wound.

What is America's reward for Bush's illegal wars that have killed
655,000 Iraqis, an uncounted number of Afghans, and disabled as many as
400,000 U.S. troops?

According to the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate and to practically
every Middle East expert, Bush's invasions have radicalized the Muslim
Middle East, created legions of recruits for extremists, undermined
America's puppet rulers, imperiled Israel, and destroyed America's
reputation.

We are talking about over 1 million casualties that have no other cause
than blatant lies by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the bloodthirsty
neoconservative cabal that occupies Bush's subcabinet, and their
corporate media propagandists, especially The Weekly Standard, Fox
News, National Review, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
The Bush regime deceived America and the world with its lies that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that would be turned
against the West by terrorists. By giving speeches that continually
mentioned Iraq in the same context as 9/11, the Bush regime created the
widespread impression, still prevalent among Americans, that Iraq was
responsible for 9/11.

What kind of government would destroy the lives through death or
disability of over 1 million people for no valid reason?

The same kind of government that fires its own lawyers for doing their
constitutional duty. Navy lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was assigned
the task of bringing Salim Hamdan to a guilty plea before the
unconstitutional military tribunal that President Bush created for
Guantanamo detainees. Instead, Cmdr. Swift did his duty and defended
his client, winning in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Bush administration
retaliated by blocking Cmdr. Swift's promotion, which killed his
military career and sent the chilling message to all U.S. military and
government attorneys that constitutional scruples are career-enders in
the Bush regime. Anyone who stands for the U.S. Constitution is against
Bush and his neocon regime.

The Bush regime is proceeding exactly as the Nazi regime proceeded.
First, eliminate every person of conscience and integrity from the
government. Second, redefine duty as service to the leader: "You are
with us or against us" - a formulation that leaves no place for duty
to the U.S. Constitution. Patriotism is redefined from loyalty to
country and Constitution to loyalty to the government's leader.

Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave
danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American
liberty and to world stability. The neoconservative drive to achieve
hegemony over the American people and the entire world is similar to
Hitler's drive for hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to justify
Germany's right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the right of
the Nazi elite to rule over the German people. Neoconservatives use
"American exceptionalism" and "the war on terror." There is no
practical difference. Hitler cared no more about the peoples he mowed
down in his drive for supremacy than the neoconservatives care about
655,000 dead Iraqis, 100,000 disabled American troops, and 2,747 dead
ones.

When Bush the Decider claims unconstitutional powers and uses "signing
statements" to negate U.S. law whenever he feels the rule of law is in
the way of his leadership, he is remarkably similar to Hitler, the
Führer, who told the Reichstag on Feb. 20, 1938: "A man who feels it
his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership of his people is not
responsible to the laws of parliamentary usage or to a particular
democratic conception, but solely to the mission placed upon him. And
anyone who interferes with this mission is an enemy of the people."

You are with us or against us.
----------------------------------------------------------------

The Islamic Society of East Bay
iseb.org
feedback@iseb.org