With more evidence emerging of US war crimes in Iraq, even hawkish critics are asking whose agenda America is following abroad, writes Mohamed Hakki* If you listen to the Bush version of reality, columnist Bob Herbert wrote in The Washington Post last month, the president is all- powerful. In that version, he continued, we are fighting a war against terrorism, which is a war that will never end. And as long as we are at war (forever) there is no limit to the war-fighting powers the president can claim as commander-in-chief. One result is that crimes can be committed and vast cover up operations conducted without the knowledge of the American people. Ten days ago one such crime surfaced as Congressman John Murthe accused the US marines of over two dozen Iraqi civilians in Haditha. A military investigation, he said, would substantiate the allegation. Soon thereafter, details of the crime began to appear on the front pages of the leading dailies. The New York Times said that 24 Iraqi civilians were "killed during a sustained sweep of a small group of marines that lasted for five hours ... " The victims included women and children killed in two houses, as well as five men standing near a taxi at a checkpoint. Next, The Los Angeles Times said that photographs taken by a marine intelligence team has convinced investigators that the 24 unarmed Iraqis were killed "execution style," after a roadside bomb killed an American in November. The pictures showed wounds to the upper bodies of the victims, including several women and six children. Some were shot in the head and some in the back, congressional and Defence Department officials admitted. One government official said the pictures showed infantry marines from Camp Pendelton "suffered a breakdown in morality and leadership, with tragic results". Of the dead Iraqis, 19 were killed in three to four houses US marines stormed. Five others were killed near a vehicle. Time magazine, in a report published in March, quoted witnesses, including a nine-year-old girl, Eman Waleed, who said she saw marines kill her grandparents, her mother and father and other adults in the house died shielding her and her eight-year-old brother, Abdul-Rahman. The marines involved initially reported that they had become embroiled in a firefight with "insurgents". "There wasn't a gunfight, there were no pockmarked walls," a congressional aide said. "The wounds indicated execution- style [shootings]," said a Defence Department official. "But why would the troops respect the rules of engagement," wrote Katrina Vanden Henvel in The Nation, "when the president, vice president, and secretary of defence are hell-bent on reserving the right to torture? When the attorney general refers to the Geneva Convention as 'quaint'? When the administration recklessly asserts that it can do whatever it wants to do as long as -- in its opinion -- it is acting to protect the American people?" More graphic accounts of the slaughter of unarmed civilians have been published by The Times of London. Residents of Haditha have stepped forward to corroborate Eman's story and to describe the murder of a second family which included five children, the youngest of whom were two and three years old. Once more, Congressman John Murtha, a former marine and a harsh critic of the war, was a lone voice in condemning the incident, saying that it might prove America's "darkest hour in Iraq". "This is the kind of war in which you have to win the hearts and minds of the people. And we're set back every time something like this happens. This is worse than Abu Ghraib," he told ABC Television. One of the critics most enraged about the incident is Karen Kwiatkowski. The retired Air Force lieutenant colonel blasted the Bush administration, the Pentagon and the US marines in a strongly worded piece on Lew Rockwell.com, condemning what she called the "horrendous bit of terroristic brutality committed by US marines in the name of freedom, democracy, human rights and anti-terrorism." Kwiatkowski went further. The Haditha horror, she wrote, should jolt the American people, and the American brass, into asking why American soldiers and marines are even in Iraq, and what is the mission there. Is it policing? Is it Chapter 7 peacekeeping? Is it nation building? Is it to provide security for American civilians and politicos in the Green Zone? Is it to secure the world's largest (and clearly least needed) embassy, or the US's biggest and most advanced military bases? If so, why? What are we there to win? And how can we tell if we're winning? America, Kwiatkowski puts it: we are living with someone's agenda in Iraq. Is it our agenda? One can find the answer in an article in the American Prospect by senior correspondent Robert Dreyfuss, entitled "Vice Squad". The article recounts: "Since 2001, reporters and columnists have tended to refer to Cheney's office obliquely, if at all. Rather than explicitly discuss the neo- conservative cabal that has assumed control of important parts of US policy since 11 September, they couple reference to 'the civilians at the Pentagon' with 'officials in the vice-president's office' when referring to administration hard liners. But rarely do the mainstream media provide much detail to explain who those people are, what they have done, and how they operate." Dreyfuss continues, "Larry Wilkerson, formerly a top aid to Secretary of State Colin Powell, is a no-nonsense, ex-military man who has spoken bluntly about what he calls a "cabal" led by Cheney, Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld, and their top aides. Wilkerson portrays the vice president's office as the source of a zealous, almost messianic approach to foreign affairs. 'There were several remarkable things about the vice president's staff,' he says. 'One is how empowered they were, and one was how in sync they were. In fact, we used to say about both [Rumsfeld's office] and the vice president's office that they were going to win nine out of 10 battles, because they are ruthless, because they have a strategy ... They make a decision, and they make it in secret ... and then suddenly foist it on the government.'" Dreyfuss adds, "In particular, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the creation of a pro-American regime in Baghdad was, for at least 10 years before 2003, a top neoconservative goal, one that united both the anti-China crowd and the far-right supporters of Israel's Likud. Both saw the invasion of Iraq as the prelude to an assault on neighbouring Iran. Several of Cheney's top aides, as well as the vice-president himself, were early supporters of the neoconservative flagship Project for a New American Century, whose founding statement called for a return to a 'Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.' The pivotal role of Cheney's staff in promoting war in Iraq has been well documented." Dreyfuss says that not one in a hundred Americans would know the names of those in Vice President Cheney's staff, or how much power and influence they wield over the Bush administration. He concludes: "The true measure of how powerful the vice president's office remains today is whether the United States chooses to confront Iran and Syria or to seek diplomatic solutions. For the moment, at least, the war party led by Dick Cheney remains in ascendancy." * The writer is a political analyst resident in Washington.
