Decisions, Decisions Made And Not Made

OK.  What to write about this week?  The Pope?  Enough already.  Like anyone who has lived in public life, he has baggage that comes with him.  Although the assertions that he needed to do more to end the “Dirty War” in Argentina when he was Archbishop is sort of specious, since he wasn’t the Archbishop yet.  All I have to say about him is that he is certainly, in some respects, a breath of fresh air.  We can all hope that he will be like Bishop Oscar Romero, who when he became Bishop was very conservative.  His experiences as Bishop, however, caused a conversion, and he became a very outspoken advocate for economic and social justice for his people.  But, to condemn Pope Francis for not doing more would be to condemn Archbishop Dolan for not doing more to stop the Bush administration from invading Iraq. 

How about gun control?  I’ve written about that already.  Except I was really ticked off at Harry Reid for not having a vote on banning assault weapons.  So there were not enough votes to pass.  We need to know who would have voted for or against banning them so we could hold our elected officials accountable for that vote. 

Holding elected officials accountable brings me to the next issue I have been thinking about.  Rachel Maddow’s documentary:  Hubris: Selling The Iraq War.  I have watched it twice now, and it pretty much confirmed what I had determined as these events were occurring in real time.  That Bush, et al, were lying in their teeth.  I was discussing this with my daughter who is in law enforcement one day.  My comment was that any mother who really pays attention to not only what her child is saying, but the facial expressions, eye movements, etc., that are going on at the same time could tell when George was lying.  Her comment was that whenever someone is lying their speech patterns also indicate that.  And his speech patterns were lying patterns. 

But some other information has surfaced recently.  I remember when VP Cheney had his secret Energy Task Force meetings.  According to Marjorie Cohn, writing in Reader Supported News, 3/20/13, “A War of Aggression”, a document produced for the task force, “…included a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals as well as charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects and ‘Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts’.  This document was dated 3/2001, six months before 9/11 and two years before Bush invaded Iraq.”

Another article from Reader Supported News by Angelo Young, International Business Times, titled “Cheney’s Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War” was really interesting.  It was during this time that many of the services provided by troops in past engagements were sent out to be privatized.  Oddly enough, it was Halliburton, Cheney’s old company, which was the No. 1 recipient.  These privatized contracts were on a no-bid basis, and, “Acccording to the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the level of corruption by defense contractors may be as high as $60 billion.  Disciplined soldiers that would traditionally do many of the tasks are commissioned by private and publicly listed companies.”

But back to the war itself.  In 1945 the United States signed onto the United Nations Charter which permitted nations to use military force against another country only in self-defense or with Security Council permission.  But according to the above-mentioned article by Marjorie Cohn referring to the UN Charter, “But the evidence indicates that the US-led invasion satisfied neither condition and is therefore a war of aggression, which constitutes a Crime Against Peace – exactly the kind of war the Charter was meant to prevent.”

There is more than enough evidence by this time that what I used to call our low-carb administration (Cheney Ashcroft Rumsfeld Bush) violated all criteria for a just war, if there ever could have been a just war, by invading Iraq.  They violated every decent human impulse in order to acquire the Iraqi oil fields for their own aggrandizement.  Does anyone else remember that Iraqi oil was supposed to pay for the cost of the war, so it wouldn’t cost the American people anything to invade? 

I haven’t figured out yet whether it was gross incompetence or gross greed that caused the Bush administration to kill nearly 5,000 American service people, wound nearly 40,000 more, kill nearly 600,000 Iraqi civilians, and nearly bankrupt the United States.  But does it make a difference?  They need to be held accountable for crimes against humanity.  For two reasons.  The first is they committed crimes.  And second, if they aren’t held accountable, then that means any future administration can get away with whatever crimes against humanity they happen to commit. 

Why aren’t these loathsome people in prison!!