1-31-07, 8:59 am

'We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it... no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war.  It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.' - Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson, a U.S. representative to the International Conference on Military Trials at the close of World War II.

What strange liberators we must look like to the Iraqi people and the world.  While families in this country grieve over the loss of close to 3100 troops and the more than 48,000 wounded soldiers in V.A. hospitals across the country, the Iraqi people have paid a higher price in the total number of lives lost and broken in conflict with the United States. Conservative estimates from the first Gulf Warto the present reveal that the United States has directly or indirectly contributed to the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi people in the past 17 years.  Comparatively speaking, Saddam Hussein was officially accused of killing an estimated 180,000 Kurds and other Iraqi citizens.  And he was charged, tried, convicted and hung for killing 126 people. 

In 1991 George H.W. Bush's Persian Gulf War left an estimated 250,000 Iraqis dead according to the Red Crescent Society of Jordan. Of the quarter million casualties, 113,000 were civilian deaths, 60% of them children.   As a consequence of Clinton Administration economic sanctions in the 90's, the U.N. estimated that over 500,000 Iraqi children perished. During an interview CBS's Leslie Stahl asked then U.N Ambassador Madeleine Albright what she thought about the U.N. report and the deaths of so many due to lack of medicine, food, and clean water. 'Is it worth it?' asked Stall.  Albright, after a considered pause, said, 'Yes, we think the price is worth it.'   Now, fast forward to the recent Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report published in The Lancet medical journal in which a team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that '655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.'

So, despite Michigan Senator Carl Levin repetitious laments that, 'We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves,' it is fairer to say that the Iraqis need to be saved from us. And, while the George W. Bush Administration is now being confronted for its scapegoating of Iraq after 9/11, the U.S.'s deadly policies toward the Iraqi people did not start with the present occupant of the White House. It started with his father and continued with the husband of the current Democratic presidential frontrunner. When will it end?

A Newsweek poll, conducted just before election day, showed 51 percent of Americans believed that impeachment of President Bush should be either a high or lower priority and measures such as the New Mexico legislature's  impeachment initiative has given life to impeachment chatter.  The familiar charge is that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Pearl, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and their apparatchiks lied about the reasons for invading Iraq. And that a President can commit no more serious crime against our democracy than lying to Congress and the American people to get them to support a military action or war.

We know there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq. Not even the ones that Ronald Reagan allowed Hussein to acquire  in the 80's so that he could gas the Iranians who in 1979 kicked America's guy, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, out of power, embarrassed Jimmy Carter by seizing the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking hostages and then installing the theocratic government in power today. 

We know there was never any serious intelligence to support Vice President Dick Cheney's insistence that Hussein and Al Qaeda were working together. Nonetheless, the Administration repeatedly tried to claim the connection to show that the invasion was a justified response to 9/11. Nor was there reliable intelligence to support the Administration's claim that Hussein was about to acquire nuclear weapons capability. Both claims have been repeatedly proved untrue although to this day the vice president still makes them.

Yet the Democrats were no sooner elected in November than their leader, Nancy Pelosi, said 'impeachment is off the table.' So the likelihood of their moving on their own to impeach the president for lying about the reasons for war is as improbable as 21,500 additional United States troops bringing security and easing chaos in Iraq. But the people must insist, 'Where is the accountability?'

We know a few other things. We know that Bush admits that he repeatedly authorized wiretaps, without obtaining a warrant, of hundreds, possibly thousands, of American citizens engaged in international calls. On the face of it, these warrantless wiretaps violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires court approval for national security wiretaps and sets up a special procedure for obtaining it.  Violation of the law is a felony. Since when does the justice system shrug at felonies?

And we know that wanton disregard for international treaties, unprovoked invasion of another country, occupation and torture are grounds for war crimes charges. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights is trying to bring such a case against Bush et al. through the German courts. The chance that Bush or any administration official will ever be charged with war crimes or stand trial for violating the Nuremberg code's prohibition against launching a war of aggression may be as unlikely as impeachment. Nevertheless, CCR should continue the work - at best, to hold accountable or, the very least, to embarrass and hold up for scorn those responsible for so much death, destruction and sadness. Instead of civil rights groups such as the NAACP honoring Secretary of State Rice because of her job title, they should excoriate her for promoting the war, violating international law and the public trust.

The very threat of constitutional and legal consequences and international embarrassment may be the only 'arrows in the quiver,' as Rice is prone to say, to deter the Bush Administration and its successors from attacking Iran. Rice claims the president has the power to authorize troops to go into Iran without Congressional approval. The Democratic Party's rising star Senator Barack Obama said he might support a 'surgical' missile strike against the country.  And, should the unthinkable happen, Congress would have to take seriously New York Congressman Charles Rangel's legislation to reinstitute the draft. The scenario ought to worry anyone.

Recently on BET a comedian named ‘Katt' Williams asked the audience, 'What kind of uniforms do the Iraqis army wear?'  After an uncomfortable pregnant pause by the crowd, he sarcastically mocked, 'I'll wait for the answer.'  Then he said, 'You can't answer the question because the people we are killing are not wearing uniforms; they are civilians.'  Williams' observation is perhaps 80% correct (give or take a few points) if we go by the estimates of the independent observers keeping track of the deaths.  And while there is no official 'al Qaeda' or 'insurgent' uniform, most of the remaining 20 percent are Iraqis fighting United States occupation and a U.S. installed government in their country. They are young men. (At the time of invasion over 50% of Iraq's population was under 15 years of age.)  And their families support them. 

So, we must ask ourselves and find answers for some tough questions. Why are we doing all this killing? At what point does it becomes so clear that a President has so systematically abused the powers of the presidency and so threatened the rule of law that he must be removed from office? When is enough, enough?

The war in Iraq was a choice, not a necessity, not an act of self-defense. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Bush, ‘'You break it; you've bought it,' as plans for the war were being laid out. Now it's time to pay for what we broke.  We pay by leaving Iraq and letting the people figure out what kind of society and government they wish to create.  We should pay for the infrastructure and societal damage we have inflicted over the past 17 years.  And we should pay by making the architects of this war pay.

South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham carved out a positive national persona in 1998 while serving as one of the House managers who brought the body's case against Bill Clinton at his impeachment trial in the Senate.  For whatever reason, Graham is staking his 'straight shooter' image on Bush's escalation of the war.  What would be more useful to his constituents would be his recalling the principles behind why he thought Clinton should be impeached.  He claimed that Clinton lied and broke the law. What say he about the current occupant of the White House?   Until Graham and others stand up and hold the Bush Administration accountable, the United States will not regain its stature around the world as a democracy that honors the rule of law by keeping its leaders in check.

What we on the home front can do is ask and advise our kids, family and friends not to sign up for military service to be used on  a 'fools' errant.'  That to fight to protect the lives of family and country is one thing. To kill for a lie or because you need the money is another.



--From . Kevin Alexander Gray is lead organizer of the Harriet Tubman Freedom House Project in Columbia, South Carolina, which focuses on community-based political and cultural education. He is also a contributing editor to Black News in South Carolina. Gray served as 1988 South Carolina coordinator for the Presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson and as 1992 southern political director for Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's Presidential bid. He can be contacted at