A truly well-written piece by an old warrior who understands only too well how the game is played. Cutting cleanly through all the propaganda and media hype, the reality of widespread war crimes being perpetrated over the last decade with greater impunity and barbarity under cover of sanitized press reports is laid bare for all without blinders on to see. The longest rope comes to an end and given enough time and length, today's 'respectable' arch-villains will eventually be brought to justice.

Murder and Torture, the Lasting Legacy of America

DO WE HAVE ONE FOR WAR CRIMINALS? WE WOULD NEED A CONTAINER OF THEM

Bataan Death March, Gestapo, Russian Gulags, America Has Exceeded It All

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

  

So many Americans still think torture, murder, gang rape of children is “fair and balanced” as a way of, of what?  Waging war?  Afghanistan is a war?  Oh come now.  Its an occupation, no more.  

What America is doing, has been doing for a decade, is imprisoning Muslims, mostly, from around the world, on any pretense, and killing thousands of them.  We may never know but as many as 200,000 people may have been systematically murdered, not just raped or tortured, very little of which involved “waterboarding.”

The numbers are that high, not just Iraq and Afghanistan but even Gaddafi picked up his own political enemies, sold them to the US and we got rid of them.  The few survivors, very few, come forward with tales beyond anything we have proof of from World War 2. 

The problem is we have video of all of it and the “classified” stuff, not just the few pictures that hit the internet, is leaking out.  We have hours of gang rapes of children, of people being butchered like cattle.

Christian Zionism - A National Security Threat ?

We also have a political party, the GOP, that thinks this should remain national policy, we have a religion, Christian Evangelism and its offshoot, Christian Zionism, that think rape is a form of legitmate questioning, we have political and military leaders who continue to support these policies.

We also have, within our society, those who ordered these acts, those who provided legal cover, those who commanded the murder and rape squads and those who participated who are war criminals, people with ranks from President of the United States to Private First Class.

Don’t forget the US Supreme Court, 5 of their members chose to participate as well.

How many of our military are war criminals?  Over 2 million served, over 500,000 of them claim to be permanently psychologically damaged from taking part.  My hope is the number is a minority, the smaller the better.  These are our children.

I know a little about this.  As a combat Marine serving in Vietnam, I periodically shot at people, perhaps a bit more than that.  These were armed people.  I also searched hundreds of homes. 

I saw some among us choose to shoot at unarmed civilians.  I saw this once.  I saw one Marine lose his temper and scream at a civilian.  I quieted him down.

We were trained professionals and did the best we could.  To me, the rules were simple.  You treat people with dignity and respect.  Some didn’t follow that rule and in one case I saw a small unit singled out for attack because of abusive acts toward Vietnamese children, very minor by current standards.  Slapping, not gang rape.

I was the first to reach them. 

My Lai - Just One of So Many Incidents - by Both Sides

 Vietnam is all about My Lai.  Whatever the rest of us were doing, over 2 million of us, one command in the Americal Division decided to murder hundreds of unarmed civilians, women and children.  When the order came out, I would have immediately shot the person making it.

I am not just saying this.  If ordered to commit a war crime, I long ago learned turning away isn’t enough.  You kill mad dogs, you don’t “report them” to “mama.”

How would the Marine Corps have responded?  Does it matter?  Are “orders” just “orders?” 

I know there are thousands of American kids out there now, who served with decency, showed kindness to everyone they could, shot who they had to, defended themselves and their buddies, but did it with honor.

Then again, we have hundreds, maybe thousands, we don’t know, who are responsible for kicking down doors and killing families, we have alot of that. This is a grey area a bit, fear and adrenalin.  Then we have the torturers and murderers, some in the service and thousands veterans working for contracting companies.

In Vietnam we captured prisoners.  We turned them over to the Vietnamese.  I expected they would be tortured and killed.  In one case, I knew we had a Chinese officer with valuable intelligence.  In another, it was an 80 year old man one of my associates had shot in the leg, he had run because he was scared and my friend shot him because he was a mindless buffoon.

Did someone have the common sense to let the old man go?  I remember when Ed, one of our other writers, and I loaded him onto my poncho and had him carried back.  I think about this every day.

Now this is all we do, fueled by the Islamophobia of maniacs like Allen West, the congressman from Florida that lives on fear mongering and insanity.  Lindsay Graham is another of this gang.  John McCain, not a favorite of mine, is not.

He grew up.

International Criminal Court - the Hague

 There is a very real issue today.  We have an entire former administration that can’t travel anywhere but Israel and Saudi Arabia without fear of arrest. 

Indictments have been issued for top US government officials, former certainly.  Are our policies so changed that President Obama is innocent?  That has to be proven to me.

One of the funny things is the ICC (International Criminal Court) indictment of Gaddafi.  What he is accused of is done in Israel every day, in Afghanistan every minute. 

I am not a big fan of Gaddafi, I know too much about him, too many who suffered.  I am aware of his 40 year history.

Problem is, there is nobody in the United States in a position to point a finger at him.

The criminals?  Certainly the think tanks who supported the torture policies.  We could go further.  I would rather we opened up entirely and admitted tha the Global War on Terror was staged and orchestrated from day one, beginning with 9/11. 

I believe that was a war crime, certainly American and maybe involving some from Israel as well.  In fact, groups have prepared a list of 103 names of war criminals who they are ready to submit evidence against as complicit in 9/11.

Not one is a Muslim, Mr. West.

Everyone involved in handling the intelligence tied to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, no, not just Iraq, needs to be investigated.  Thousands are complicit in war crimes under the Geneva Convention.  These wars were and continue to be criminal acts.

Those who own and manage many of our military contracting firms are directly involved in war crimes.  The recent season of the TV show, Damages, covers one such issue in a ficitonal venue.  Everything seems to be “fictional” now.

In truth, most news Americans get has always been fictional, from the first report of 9/11 or earlier when the “election” of George W. Bush was announced.

The United Nations with a Full House

If there are international tribunals, governments of honor around the world, attorney’s who care, those who served who still have a conscience, then lists of those involved have to be made.

The guilty must be punished, the innocent expunged, the heroic rewarded.

I am very suspicious that we have punished many of the innocent, expunged the guilty and certainly rewarded war profiteers, war criminals and psychotics.

We continue to elect and reelect people who belong in prison or should have been executed years ago.

We have hundreds, thousands, we don’t know how many, officers, NCOs, enlisted, that are not fit to be among our honorable serving military, those who have murdered, tortured and raped innocent civilians.

The End of the Road

The proof is overwhelming, many of the names have been in print, the photos and videos that have been leaked to most are the sanitized ones, the real ones are barbaric. 

What kind of interrogation practice is dragging someone behind a vehicle until their body comes apart? 

This is a practice far more common that ‘waterboarding’ and everyone at every level of command, president down, authorized it and knew about it.

Even when it began coming out, millions of Americans continued to support these criminal practices which they said were consistent with their Christian beliefs.  We have the polls.  Torture and “Evangelical Christianity” go hand in hand.

We have to begin.

Every person “missing” has to be accounted for.  When were they taken, where did they go, where are they now.  If they are alive, their testimony must be taken.  If they cannot be found, we can assume they were murdered at one of our “rendition centers” around the world, their bodies disposed of.

We have to recognize everyone involved in this process, not just the Americans, the thousands of Pakistanis, Egyptians, Libyans, people from so many countries that sold their neighbors for a few pieces of silver. 

Missing Man Formation

Aafia Siddiqui was one of those, a victim sold by a Pakistani gang to a group of American torturers and rapists.  To cover the crime, an American court has jailed her for 87 years. 

That process, everyone involved, judges and prosecutors too, should face an international trubunal.

Tribunals must enter every nation, investigate every crime, even if the cost is billions and we fill prisons around the world.

Failing to do this, none of us will ever be safe, not being ruled by war criminals, not having our military commanded by psychotics, our intelligence services run by the delusional, the fabricators and fictionalizers.

If we are going to win the war on terror, we have to recognize the real enemy first and learn to fight without mercy.

We have been looking in the wrong places.