"Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons
of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive,
bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into
chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person,
belligerent, arrogant, and sure of himself, truly is
the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is
that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our
president."

Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law
and the First Ammendment, Yale Law School, September
22, 2002
"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you
tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I
have come to hate war. War settles nothing."

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th president of
the United States
"Force always attracts men of low morality."

Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
----
When senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
muses aloud about how the U.S. Constitution could take
care of a would-be dictator president, who is
dismissive of both the American people and the U.S.
Congress, you know that things are getting pretty bad
for George W. Bush. Underneath the thick layers of
propaganda and lies, the president is stark naked. And
the picture isn't pretty: incompetence, insecurity,
inflexibility, arrogance, manipulation, lies, a
gangster-like, sociopath and sadistic mentality,
... etc. –
Bush's lack of empathy
was appallingly illustrated when, in 1999, as the
sitting governor of Texas, he publicly mocked
convicted grandmother Mrs. Karla Faye Tucker's begging
for mercy, whimpering in derision: "Please," referring
to her demand, "don't kill me."— He had her executed.
On May 21, 2000, New York Times' columnist Nicholas D.
Kristof warned the American people about [GWB's lack of
empathy,->http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/052100wh-gop-bush-bio.html]
his insensitivity and his penchant for cruelty when he
reported that, as a youngster, growing up in Midland,
Texas, Bush Jr. was known to enjoy putting
firecrackers into frogs' mouths, throwing them in the
air, and then watching them blow up. Nobody paid any
attention to Bush's troubling trait of character.
Nevertheless, it is well known by psychiatrists that
cruelty to animals among youngsters is a common
precursor to later criminal violence as adults.—No one
should be surprised that under the Bush-Cheney regime,
[the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq are killing Iraqi
civilians indiscriminately->http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17393.htm]
and that this administration crafted an official
policy of running [secret prisons and of resorting to
illegal torture.->http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4989481/]
To compound matters, as an incompetent and a failure,
after winning a very contested election with the help
of his father's rich friends, Bush made sure to
surround himself with like-minded persons. He made a
power-sharing agreement with co-oil-man Dick Cheney,
most likely under the inducement of rich campaign
money contributors: He would play the role of
president while the vice-president would run the
government and name the all important deputy
secretaries. For secretaries, Bush chose people who
would not overshadow or contradict him: Donald
Rumsfeld as Defense secretary, John Ashcroft, and
later, Alberto Gonzales, his small town personal
lawyer from Texas, as Attorney General, and yes-woman
Condoleezza Rice as Security Advisor, later to replace
Colin Powell as Secretary of State, etc. A competent
person squeezed into Bush's inner circle by accident.
This was Paul H. O'Neill,
the former CEO of Alcoa and former president of
International Paper Company. But he resigned two years
later, disgusted at the improvisation he was
witnessing, especially as the invasion of Iraq was
being planned under a cloud of lies, dishonesty and
misinformation.

As it turned out, the military invasion of Iraq was an
apparent case of "redirected aggression", a phenomenon
typically observed in the animal kingdom. Unable to
retaliate effectively against the shadowy Osama bin
Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network, after the
9/11 terrorist attacks, they saw an opportunity in
Iraq, a country which they had their eyes on for a
long time. The country was run by a ruthless dictator,
was sitting on the second largest oil pool in the
world, and was seen by Israel as financing terrorists
in Palestine.
Moreover, the neocon hierarchy at the Pentagon had
plans for a war without end
in the Middle East, and they were ready and available.
Indeed, General Wesley Clark, the former Commander of
NATO, has confirmed that as early as 2001, [the
Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz Pentagon had war plans->http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/19200] "to
take out seven countries in five years, starting with
Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan
and, finishing off, Iran." What we have been
witnessing since 2003 was the implementation of this
long term plan.
After more than four years, one would think that
George W. Bush's misguided personal war of aggression
against the sovereign country of Iraq has lasted long
enough and has killed enough people. To begin with,
this is a war that was sold to the American people on
the basis of lies, disinformation and
misrepresentation. Democracies should never go to war
on the basis of lies and misrepresentation because
this means they occupy the low moral ground. Not that
totalitarian regimes should launch wars of aggression on
such dishonest bases, but for a democracy to do so is
a fundamental contradiction in terms and is a sign of
moral decay. Secondly, this is a war that has resulted
in fanning the flame of terrorism not only in Iraq,
but all over the world. This is a failed policy and a
failed war. The British are beginning to understand
that and have begun to withdraw from Iraq. The only ones
who do not understand that seem to be the Bush-Cheney
regime and its neocon sycophants within and outside
the administration.
So far, the Iraq war has been a total human disaster.
Some 3,245 American soldiers have perished (losses
equivalent to ten fully loaded 747 plane crashes); an
estimated 655,000 Iraqis have lost their lives, and
millions of people have been impoverished and rendered
miserable. But against all advice, the war goes on and
Bush is pressing the escalation button. There seems to
be something in George W. Bush's personality
that prevents him from showing empathy toward other
human beings. He seems oblivious to deaths and
sufferings of other people, not the least are the
hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqi families
who lost love ones in this insane and illegal war.
In fact, the entire military adventure that the
Bush-Cheney regime initiated in the Middle East has
all the odor of a criminal
enterprise. This may explain why the Bush-Cheney duo
fought so much to prevent the creation of the new
International Criminal Court..
Indeed, for this war to have taken place, a lot of
principles had to be violated and a lot of laws had to
be broken. Bush's proclivity for thinking that he can
violate international law with impunity is well known.
In his 2004 State of the Union address, for example,
he publicly showed his contempt for international law
when he said: "America will never seek a permission
slip [from any world body] to defend the security of
our country".
What laws were broken? — First of all, the Iraq war was
never approved by the United Nations. This led then UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan, in September 2004, to
declare: "The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal
act that contravened the UN charter." Case closed as
far as the United Nations is concerned. But there is
more.
Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, the Iraq
war is a war that violated the Nuremberg Charter.
Indeed, the Nuremberg Charter (Article 6) which is
both U.S. law and international law, makes it a crime
for anybody to engage in the "planning, preparation,
initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war
in violation of international treaties, agreements or
assurances, or participation in a common plan or
conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the
foregoing; ... Leaders, organizers, instigators and
accomplices participating in the formulation or
execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any
of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts
performed by any persons in execution of such plan."
— Article 7 of the Nuremberg Charter even specifies
that "The official position of defendants, whether as
Heads of State or responsible officials in Government
Departments, shall not be considered as freeing them
from responsibility or mitigating punishment."
If a Nuremberg Court were
established to judge those who planned and initiated
the Iraq War of March 20, 2003, they would be reminded
that “To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an
international crime, it is the supreme international
crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it
contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole.” Moreover, "Individuals have international
duties which transcend the national obligations of
obedience…therefore [individual citizens] have the
duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes
against peace and humanity from occurring."
The Iraq War that George W. Bush initiated on his own
on the basis of fabricated lies will be judged by
history as one of the most blatant abuses of power
ever by any American administration. It is a war based
on false pretenses and on false perceptions of the
Muslim Middle East. For example, it is not true
that Middle Eastern Muslims hate the West "because
they hate our way of life, our freedom, and our
democracy." Polls indicate that such ideas are simply
based on ignorant prejudices. But when Bush II sent
American troops storming into private homes in Baghdad
and Haditha, and elsewhere in Iraq, shooting first and
asking questions later, in a juvenile Texan way, it is
no surprise that the entire Muslim world started
hating him. That is the way most people view lawless
thugs.
If ever there were a president-by-accident, it is the
present occupant of the White House. An electoral
accident resulted in placing into office a candidate
who had not received the democratic approval of the
people. And the American people could not have been
more out of luck, because it could not have fallen
upon a more mediocre politician than George W. Bush.
— Unfortunately, it is highly likely that the worst is
still to come, with more blunders ahead, if those who
have the power to act in the U.S. Congress continue to
put their heads deep in the sand.
_______________________________________
Rodrigue Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached
at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Visit his blog site.
Author's Website
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book ["The Code for Global
Ethics"->http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com] or
at:
http://www.MoralityWithoutReligion.com