This Week You Need To Know
The Assassination in Mosul
The assassination of Saddam Hussein's two sons in Mosul this past week, tells a story that goes to the heart of the moral and psychological flaw of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the Chickenhawk crew which they head. It demonstrates that this Administration has taken up an explicit policy of assassination, which moves it morally in the direction of Nazism.
The reports indicate that the operation began with an exchange of small-arms fire between what appears to have been a small special-warfare operations force, and the occupants of the house. When the numerous hours of assault were not successful, someone apparently gave the order for the opening of tank-fire from the 101st Airborne unit, with the resulting destruction of the house, Saddam Hussein's two sons, and two others inside.
What was going on here? According to the July 20 Sunday Telegraph of London, Donald Rumsfeld had commissioned "Task Force 20," a special operations team, to operate in Iraq as part of the "Gray Fox" operation, which is centered in the Defense Department under Stephen Cambone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. EIR's intelligence sources report that Gray Fox has been constituted as Rumsfeld's personal assassination squad, a re-creation of the Vietnam-era "Phoenix" assassination program. Ostensibly, the special hit squad was on the verge of carrying out their assassination assignment against the Hussein brothers, but needed help. They got it, and got their men.
There is one glaring problem. This is the stuff of which Nazi war-crimes are made! Every competent military commander understands that the use of politically motivated assassinations could spell disaster for the occupying powerand a place in a Nuremberg Tribunal-style dock.
To start with, assassinations of foreign leaders are contrary to the stated policy of the United States government. This policy, even if honored in the breach, was put into place by President Gerald Ford in 1976, and has been formally extended by all subsequent Presidents.
More importantly, political assassinations are contrary to the rules of the civilized world. These rules were established for all to see in the conduct of the victorious United States, toward the defeated Nazi regime. After the war ended, Washington opposed summary executions of the leaders of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, and insisted that they be placed on trialand even given lawyers!
Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who presided over the Nuremberg trials, argued that the United States had no choice but to provide these rights. He declared: "The President of the United States has no power to convict anyone. He can only accuse." In his opening statement to the Nuremberg tribunal, Jackson said, "That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of law, is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason." Jackson feared that taking the opposite path, of summary executions, would erode the moral high ground of the victorious powers.
Yet, surrendering that moral high ground is precisely what the Bush Administration is doing. It chose to use overwhelming force against four men, in order to demonstrate its ruthlessness and power. This mentality reflects that of the Nazi policy of Schrecklichkeit, of attempting to terrorize the enemy into submission, rather than winning the peace.
Thus, what we see in this "bloody example," is the mentality of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the Chickenhawksthe controllers of that Trilby-style mental case, President George Bush. Their mentality is that of the new fascists, who are not far distant in their thinking from those demonic apparatchiks who ordered the razing of the Warsaw Ghetto, to celebrate Hitler's birthday.
It's traditional for fascists, dictators, and Roman emperors to hang up their bloodied victims before the populace, to instill fear and submission. With this assassination, the Cheney-acs in the Bush Administration have shown their determination to set the United States on the road to that tradition. Are there enough moral Americans to stop them?
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