Bring Bush to trial as a war criminal
January 22, 2006
By Raffique Shah
SO, M'lud, I have presented a case for the impeachment of one George Dubya Bush, maybe even for having him charged as a war criminal and brought before the International Criminal Court. The latter would tickle me, because I believe that's where Karl Hudson-Phillips sits as a judge, and I bet he'd love presiding over Dubya's trial rather than be stuck defending the indefensible. May I therefore summarise my arguments?
Firstly, Dubya lied, yes, lied to the world, to his own people, to his military commanders, to the ordinary "grunts" he sent into Dante's Hell, when he sanctioned the invasion of Iraq. That has been proved a million times over and again. From top-ranking CIA officers who said there was no such intelligence (pointing to weapons of mass destruction), to the American Civil Liberties Union, from old Walter Cronkite to young Americans who refuse to join the military and be posted to Iraq, Bush has been exposed as a fraud. If we take into consideration only the deaths and injuries-for-life he inflicted on his own people, thousands and thousands of them, he deserves to be drawn-and-quartered, no less.
I shall not, the way Pastor Pat Robertson did by calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, call for the beheading of Bush. But like so many others, I want him to stand trial for crimes against humanity. He spent over US$300 billion to destroy Iraq. Some experts suggest the "war" must have cost the American economy up to $2 trillion! In my last column I mentioned visiting the ancient city-state of Babylon. It was a wonder of the world, with its famous "hanging gardens". No more. The Americans have trampled those ruins to... well, dust, in many instances. What do they know or care about ancient history? They looted invaluable relics from Iraq's museum. In short, to put it in Trini-language, "dey mash up de place".
As if that was not enough -which any good prosecutor can run with to get a conviction-the Bush regime stands guilty of kidnapping people, many of them ordinary, harmless souls, and holding them prisoners against all the conventions of war. The Guantanamo prison, now simply "Gitmo", holds more than 500 men (no one knows the exact number) and is an indictment against the world for tolerating what is little short of Hitler's infamous concentration camps and gas chambers. Amnesty International had this to say in a recent report: "There are approximately 500 men who have been treated with complete disdain-the antipathy of the American value of recognising the basic human dignity of all people."
This is not Shah talking. These are international bodies whose reports the same American government has used to condemn other countries that violate human rights. And "Gitmo" is only the tip of a very nasty iceberg. The Yanks kidnapped scores, maybe hundreds of "terrorist suspects", mainly in Europe and friendly Islamic nations like Pakistan, and sent them to third Islamic states where they were sure to be tortured and killed. Brigands in places like Kandahar were kidnapping and delivering these "suspects" for a few dollars more. That's what Bush has reduced America to. I trust California's "Terminator Governor", who recently sent a 76-year-old cripple to the electric chair, has a spare seat for his President.
And as if to add vinegar to his many crimes, Bush has left New Orleans in a mess, denying that city and its mainly black population any kind of help after it was struck by Katrina last year. Tens of thousands of displaced citizens still live in camps. Corruption is rife not only within his close circle of friends, but among his and his daddy's contractor friends who have milked American taxpayers of billions of dollars, and who have done nothing for the people of New Orleans. Poverty is rampant in his backyard, but he wants to solve other people's problems.
Look, Bill Clinton was impeached for what was not even a crime. In fact, if anything, Bill suffered because of his love of pleasure! But Bush has taken official crime to new heights-or depths, depending on how one looks at it. He sits like Ali Baba at the head of the thieves' table... Abramoff, Cunningham, hell, I can't name them all. He has disgraced America to the point where the new German Chancellor, a conservative woman, told him point blank to stop his kidnapping ways in Europe!
Now, the citizens of America are fast losing their hard won freedoms under the guise of Bush's imaginary war against terrorism. From Homeland Security to the NSA spying on citizens, Big Brother has come to Washington, finally. Their every movement, their e-mails, their telephone calls are monitored. If allowed to complete his term of office, Bush will leave America a wounded country, impotent to face Iran, far less giants like China and the new bulwark of freedom, South America.
I rest my case.
