'Playing with Fire': Saddam Hussein: The Trial of the Century?

2004-07-11T23:44:00.000-04:00

It has been reported in recent days that George W. Bush, as a re-election tactic, intends to “showcase” the preliminaries of the trial of Saddam Hussein as a war criminal. The always compliant corporate mass media have dutifully noted that the President and his advisers plan to use the proceedings to prove to the world what a savage Saddam has been for more than three decades.

What the President seems to have forgotten is that the Bush family and its war-profiteering cronies such as The Carlyle Group and Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) have secretly and lucratively done business with Saddam for much of that time.

The two major charges to be brought against Saddam will be the “illegal” invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the murder of innocent civilians. What George W. Bush seems to have ignored is that precisely by the same standards, he too can be held accountable for similar war crimes.

Put simply, if Saddam had no right to invade Kuwait – especially after then-Assistant U.S. Ambassador April Gillespie informed Iraqi officials the U.S. would have “no position” on such a military adventure – George W. Bush had no right to invade Iraq last year.

By the same token, if Saddam can be held accountable for the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians, so can Bush I and Bush II, who slaughtered countless non-combatant men, women and children in their own military adventures.
But of all the facts that will bubble to the surface of public awareness if Saddam is given the right to competent legal counsel and a fair, open trial, none is more intriguing than that inferred by an observation Saddam made at his globally-televised arraignment. If he can be held accountable for the repercussions of laws he signed as President, Saddam said, then other Presidents should be held equally accountable for laws they signed.

By that standard, under the provisions of the Patriot Act, George W. Bush is a terrorist, along with his father and Carlyle Group henchman and former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker, the man who helped Bush II steal the 2000 election. For three decades, Bush the elder, Baker and the current President have done business, via shadowy enterprises such as BCCI and Wackenhut Corporation, with a nasty cast of characters that includes Saddam Hussein, as well as former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, 80’s terrorist Abu Nidal, Burmese warlord and heroin exporter Khun Sa, Saudi arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi, and Osama bin Laden.

Congressional records show George H.W. Bush helped arm Iraq with biological and chemical materials throughout the 1980s, as Vice President under Ronald Reagan and as President, up until the moment he double-crossed his old ally and CIA collaborator Saddam Hussein and invaded Iraq.

There is credible evidence that Wackenhut Corporation, a CIA front enterprise whose owner has been a major financier of Bush campaigns, secretly helped supply Iraq with chemical weapons prior to Gulf War I.

Legendary Chicago investigator Sherman Skolnick – a man who has put many crooked judges in jail – has discovered little-known court records that show formal business partnerships between Bush I and Saddam Hussein, via BCCI, for the skimming of Persian Gulf oil kickbacks from 1980 until 1990.

On November 1, 2001, the current President Bush issued an Executive Order that prevented the scheduled release of papers from the Reagan and Bush I administrations under the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
Why would a man who promised to restore “honor and integrity” to the White House do such a thing?

The answer is simple: to prevent the truth from ever seeing the light of day.

In recent years, a number of respected independent journalists have reported well-documented accounts of the longstanding ties between the Bush family, Saddam Hussein and major international crime figures. These reporters include Russ Baker of Columbia Journalism Review, Asla Aydintasbas of Salon.com, Stephen Green and Chris Floyd of CounterPunch.org, Bill Engdahl and Jeffrey Steinberg of Executive Intelligence Review, Rick Wiles of American Freedom News and Larry Chin of Online Journal.

Each of them has done courageous, important work not matched by The New York Times, Washington Post or ABC News – all of whom have coddled the Bush cartel.

After three decades of Bush family criminality and corporate media cover-up, it is time for the truth.

In that sense, George W. Bush is right. The trial of Saddam Hussein will provide an excellent venue for the revelation of such truth.

Perhaps then the world will see, in a new “trial of the century,” who the real war criminals have been.

'Playing with Fire': Bush Guilty of Saudi Treason?

2004-07-08T21:57:00.000-04:00

Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution provides a clear definition that Treason shall be construed to include “…adhering to” or “giving…aid and comfort” to enemies of the United States in a time of war.

By that definition, given the three decades of secret and still-uninvestigated Bush family collaboration with the Saudi royal family – most notably since 9/11 – George W. Bush is guilty of treason.

Facts on the public record support such an allegation. The time has now come for a thorough independent inquiry in the name of the American people.

In its lead story July 4, The New York Times reported that “American officials agreed to return five terrorism suspects to Saudi Arabia from Guantánamo Bay…last year as part of a secret three-way deal intended to satisfy important allies in the invasion of Iraq.”

The Times story also noted that the transfer “…initially met with objections from officials at the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department…Those officials questioned whether some detainees were too dangerous to send back and whether the United States could trust Saudi promises to keep the men imprisoned.” Even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld opposed the deal.

“It didn't seem right,” a military official involved in the transaction told the Times. “It was clear that there was a quid pro quo…that we were not aware of.”

The secret exchange took place, the Times noted, “at a time of widespread mistrust among intelligence and law enforcement officials in Washington about the Saudi government's commitment to fight Islamic terrorism.” Over the past two decades, the Saudis have been the world’s #1 supporters and financiers of global terror.

The clandestine Bush administration liberation of the Saudis – in return for the release of five British citizens who claimed they had been tortured by the House of Saud regime into false confessions of terrorist acts – had been proposed in August 2002 by U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Robert Jordan, who happens to be a former George W. Bush personal attorney. A final deal was reached in February 2003, just before Bush invaded Iraq. The Saudi prisoners were transferred to Riyadh in May 2003. The five Brits and two others were freed three months later.

Last week, the Times story noted, “…a spokesman for the National Security Council denied that the Saudi detainees had been transferred in exchange for the British prisoners. ‘There is no recollection here of any linkage between these two actions,’ said the spokesman, Sean McCormick.”

For their part, the always double-talking Saudis “…gave contradictory accounts of the current whereabouts of the five men, saying at first that one or two of them had been released, then denying that any had been freed,” the Times reported. “The officials also gave contradictory accounts of the suspects’ legal status, first saying they had been tried and convicted of seeking to join Taliban forces in Afghanistan, but later saying prosecutions were still pending.”

Even more troubling than the now no longer secret prisoner exchange with the Saudis is a long-forgotten “exclusive report” from NBC Evening News last September that prominent representatives of the Saudi royals had met before and after 9/11 with Osama bin Laden. NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell also noted that Saudi representatives had personally made financial contributions to several of the hijackers. The other major networks, as well as CNN and Fox News, let the explosive story die.

To this day, the Bush White House has made no public acknowledgement of that report, nor any public statement chastising the duplicitous Saudis for their deadly subterfuge. More recently, the secret flight of 142 Saudis out of the U.S. on September 13, 2001 remains uninvestigated by the corporate-controlled “mainstream” media, despite eyewitness accounts in Craig Unger’s book, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties (Scribner, 2004).

Unger reported that one of the Saudi émigrés told former Tampa, Florida police officer turned private investigator Dan Grossi – retained to supervise “the great escape,” as Unger dubbed it – he was “good friends with George Bush senior.” Another Saudi on a flight out of Orlando – Khalil Binladin – had international terrorist connections, according to German wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Still, there have been no calls from Capitol Hill for a proper investigation of these three Saudi-Bush transgressions, nor has the White House or the Bush family publicly atoned for their sins.

It is politics as usual.

CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux reported earlier this week that “no one has called for an investigation” of the secret Saudi prisoner exchange.

The only recourse left now is a treason investigation – and trial.

johnbuchanan

'Playing with Fire': Saddam Hussein: The Trial of the Century?

'Playing with Fire': Bush Guilty of Saudi Treason?