The Stunning Absence of Moral Accountability Under Bush

More dire news for believers in the ideal of American democracy: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will remain at the U.S. Pentagon for the Bush regime’s second term.

It is a measure of the stunning absence of moral accountability under Bush that it is Colin
Powell who leaves the State Department, while Rumsfeld remain in office.

The acerbic-tongued 72-year-old Rumsfeld is one of the more hawkish members of the current fascist administration, and a chief architect of the upside-down morality of the Iraq colonial policy.

So far, Rumsfeld’s tenure has been marked by unanticipated postwar violence in Iraq, including the loss of an estimated 100,000 lives and more than 1,250 U.S. deaths, as well as enormous increases in spending on the military after the 9-11 attacks. Add to his character the stain of the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, not to mention other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Most recently there is the soldier captured on tape executing a wounded, unarmed prisoner in a mosque. Runners-up are a photograph of a two-year-old Fallujan in a hospital bed with one of his tiny legs blown off; a dead child lying in the street, clutching the headless body of an adult; and an emergency health clinic blasted to rubble.

Following the first invasion of Fallujah last spring, both al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya reported that hundreds of civilians had been killed. U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld replied that this coverage was “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable ...” Words which perfectly describe U.S. policy for Iraq.

Immediately after the U.S. election of a deceitful charlatan as president, American troops once again laid siege to Falluja - but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties last time around.

Among Rumsfeld’s career distinctions, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977. Wonderful. Except Rumsfeld’s recent additions to his curriculum vitae would excite the approval of Hitler, Mao and Stalin.

The current Secretary of Defense should return the Presidential Medal of Freedom with his resignation immediately and be prepared to share the same fate of Henry Kissinger – the real life model for Dr. Strangelove, viewed by many worldwide as an unindicted terrorist and war criminal for his role as eager facilitator of mass murder, totalitarian repression and other atrocities during the Nixon and Ford Administrations. Kissinger doesn’t dare step foot in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus and East Timor.

Perhaps Rumsfeld could enlist the legal services of former Secretary of State James A. Baker – now a senior counselor and equity partner with the merchant bank and defense contractor the Carlyle Group, where he has an estimated $180 million stake.

None of this will happen because the Bush administration is a rehab center for tainted Republicans.

During Bush’s first term, Retired Admiral John Poindexter, a leading Iran-contra player, was placed in charge of a sensitive, high-tech, Pentagon intelligence-gathering operation aimed at reviewing massive amounts of individual personal data in order to uncover possible terrorists. Elliott Abrams, who pled guilty to lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal, was warmly embraced and handed a staff position in Bush's National Security Council. And, let’s not forget that Bush initially appointed Kissinger - a proven liar and wanted man - to chair a special 9/11 investigation.

Why are 59 million Americans satisfied to accept a Corleone-styled government?