Dear
Mr. President,
Early Saturday morning, a
helicopter gunship attacked Taliban insurgents in Ghazni province who had attacked
Afghan security forces. There are conflicting reports about the death toll,
about whether the helicopter was called in by Afghan forces in violation of
Karzai’s ban (the military first said that was the case, then denied it), and whether
civilians were killed. As usual, the military claims only terrorists were
killed but a Reuters reporter saw the body of a boy, still in his school
uniform, and the hand and foot of a toddler nearby. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/30/us-afghanistan-airstrike-idUSBRE92T03020130330) In
the initial battle between Taliban and Afghan security forces, a woman was killed
and 8 civilians wounded. Ahmad Jan, a 15-year-old wounded in the helicopter
attack, was in a car and describes what happened: “The Taliban stopped our
vehicle and one of them embarked. All of a sudden, there was a strike that left
me unconscious.” Of the five passengers in the car, three are missing,
presumably dead, collateral damage. (http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2013/03/30/two-civilians-among-16-killed-in-ghazni-nato-airstrike.html) Today
is Easter, Mr. President, a day that’s supposed to be about peace, rebirth, redemption
and forgiveness, but there is little of that in the world today; there is only vengeance
and violence, death and destruction. In spite of the Nobel Peace Prize, there
are no peacemakers in Washington today, only warmongers who spread fear and
preach hatred for their own gain, who understand nothing of the reality of war,
of the misery and hardship it causes, the enduring hatred it creates and the seeds
for future conflict it plants. I often wonder what you feel each Tuesday when
you select names to go on your Kill List; whether you’ve ever looked through
the eye of a predator drone at those tiny blobs going about their business
8,000 miles away, civilians indistinguishable from terrorists; whether you’ve
ever listened to drone operators or helicopter gunship crews exult over the
carnage they’ve just created, heard the blood lust and adrenaline rush apparent
in their voices, their pure joy of the game. You are responsible for the deaths
of thousands and the misery and hardships of many times that number and I wonder
if you are ever embarrassed by your Nobel Peace Prize and whether there is even
room for peace in your heart. On this Easter day you are perhaps the one most in
need of redemption and rebirth,
Photo credit: Reuters
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Monsanto's War on Humanity
Dear
Mr. President,
There’s the direct war on children—killing them with bullets bombs and missiles—and the indirect war—degrading the environment and social structure, keeping them poor, undereducated and unhealthy. Some weapons straddle both categories—they kill directly but they keep on killing. Weapons that contain depleted uranium—used in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya—kill intended targets but also scrambles the DNA of survivors which causes cancers and a host of other problems for them and high rates of birth deformities and early death for their children. The chemical weapons Saddam Hussein used against the Iranians and Kurds and the atomic bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki also had this effect. Indirect war on children includes embargoes on other countries and here at home, cuts in child health care, food programs and education. But there’s another more subtle way we wage war on children—by genetically modifying and filling their food with a potent stew of additives and chemicals—pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and hormones. One study found more than 150 chemicals in the pollen and wax of beehives. In this morning’s NYT there’s an article on the mass deaths of honeybees and the link to a new pesticide, neonicotinoid, which those clever scientists at Bayer and Monsanto have embedded into their patented seeds so it becomes part of the plant’s structure. Neonicotinoids are now the most widely used pesticide in the world; it’s in everything from soybeans and sunflowers to sugar beets, corn and canola. When neonicotinoids began to be widely used around 2005 the rate of honeybee deaths jumped from 5-10% a year to 30%; it’s now 40-60%. That’s scary. No bees, no pollination, no food. With all the chemicals used on crops today it’s hard to sort out but hundreds of studies point to neonicotinoids. GMOs, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, the chemical companies are waging all-out war on the food we eat, the food our children eat, and the bees that make it all possible. Some countries have outlawed neonicotinoids, the European Food Safety Authority declared it an unacceptably high risk to bees and this month the EPA was sued for failing to adequately evaluate it but on Tuesday you signed the Monsanto Protection Act (written by Monsanto and added to the spending bill by Sen. Roy Blunt), which allows them to continue to sell, and farmers to plant, GMO crops, immune to lawsuits and regulation by the FDA. The war of self-annihilation rages on.
There’s the direct war on children—killing them with bullets bombs and missiles—and the indirect war—degrading the environment and social structure, keeping them poor, undereducated and unhealthy. Some weapons straddle both categories—they kill directly but they keep on killing. Weapons that contain depleted uranium—used in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya—kill intended targets but also scrambles the DNA of survivors which causes cancers and a host of other problems for them and high rates of birth deformities and early death for their children. The chemical weapons Saddam Hussein used against the Iranians and Kurds and the atomic bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki also had this effect. Indirect war on children includes embargoes on other countries and here at home, cuts in child health care, food programs and education. But there’s another more subtle way we wage war on children—by genetically modifying and filling their food with a potent stew of additives and chemicals—pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and hormones. One study found more than 150 chemicals in the pollen and wax of beehives. In this morning’s NYT there’s an article on the mass deaths of honeybees and the link to a new pesticide, neonicotinoid, which those clever scientists at Bayer and Monsanto have embedded into their patented seeds so it becomes part of the plant’s structure. Neonicotinoids are now the most widely used pesticide in the world; it’s in everything from soybeans and sunflowers to sugar beets, corn and canola. When neonicotinoids began to be widely used around 2005 the rate of honeybee deaths jumped from 5-10% a year to 30%; it’s now 40-60%. That’s scary. No bees, no pollination, no food. With all the chemicals used on crops today it’s hard to sort out but hundreds of studies point to neonicotinoids. GMOs, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, the chemical companies are waging all-out war on the food we eat, the food our children eat, and the bees that make it all possible. Some countries have outlawed neonicotinoids, the European Food Safety Authority declared it an unacceptably high risk to bees and this month the EPA was sued for failing to adequately evaluate it but on Tuesday you signed the Monsanto Protection Act (written by Monsanto and added to the spending bill by Sen. Roy Blunt), which allows them to continue to sell, and farmers to plant, GMO crops, immune to lawsuits and regulation by the FDA. The war of self-annihilation rages on.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Moving Up The Ladder: Rewarded for War Crimes
Dear Mr. President,
According to this morning’s NYT, the female undercover CIA agent behind the order to destroy those torture tapes is moving up the ladder, poised to be appointed head of the CIA’s clandestine service, “one of the most coveted jobs in the CIA.” (I love that euphemism, “clandestine service,” like it’s some banal, mundane service agency instead of a killing and torture machine). This female agent “spent years working inside the agency’s Counterterrorism Center and once was in charge of a so-called black site, played a role in developing the CIA’s detention and intervention program…” [the rendition program]. And who will make the decision whether her temporary appointment becomes permanent? None other than Mr. Death-by-Drone himself, John O. Brennan, the guy responsible for Kill Lists who sits at your right hand every Tuesday nodding approval or disapproval of your choices for who dies this week, the architect of drone wars, the guy who institutionalized perpetual war, who claims civilian casualties are in “single digits” when the evidence is right there for everyone to see what a bald-faced lie that is. So here we have two peas in a pod, Brennan and the “female agent,” both guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, rewarded for their “service to the country,” promoted for the evil they have done and continue to do. What an obscenity! The drone wars have killed at least 4,700 (Sen. Lindsey Graham); no one knows how many wounded or how many civilians. I’m sending pictures again showing 6 children we killed in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2011 and 2012, and a 10 year old with his leg blown off by a Hellfire missile—none were insurgent threats to the U.S. Nor were Afghan villagers like Hayat Gul, a school guard wounded in a battle between the Taliban and Afghan and NATO forces, or the aged Ghulam Rasool, who abandon his mountain home in a village in the Hisarak district because of the relentless drones (benghai, they call them—“buzzing flies”) and the constant threat of death by Hellfire. You and Brennan and the CIA and the whole military-industrial complex are conducting a War of Terror, a war that is a crime against humanity, Mr. President. There are many many people who are responsible for these atrocities but no one has ever been held accountable while those who expose them are sent to prison—whistle-blowers like John Kiriakou and Bradley Manning. And that is another obscenity, call it the collateral damage of the obscenity of war.
According to this morning’s NYT, the female undercover CIA agent behind the order to destroy those torture tapes is moving up the ladder, poised to be appointed head of the CIA’s clandestine service, “one of the most coveted jobs in the CIA.” (I love that euphemism, “clandestine service,” like it’s some banal, mundane service agency instead of a killing and torture machine). This female agent “spent years working inside the agency’s Counterterrorism Center and once was in charge of a so-called black site, played a role in developing the CIA’s detention and intervention program…” [the rendition program]. And who will make the decision whether her temporary appointment becomes permanent? None other than Mr. Death-by-Drone himself, John O. Brennan, the guy responsible for Kill Lists who sits at your right hand every Tuesday nodding approval or disapproval of your choices for who dies this week, the architect of drone wars, the guy who institutionalized perpetual war, who claims civilian casualties are in “single digits” when the evidence is right there for everyone to see what a bald-faced lie that is. So here we have two peas in a pod, Brennan and the “female agent,” both guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, rewarded for their “service to the country,” promoted for the evil they have done and continue to do. What an obscenity! The drone wars have killed at least 4,700 (Sen. Lindsey Graham); no one knows how many wounded or how many civilians. I’m sending pictures again showing 6 children we killed in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2011 and 2012, and a 10 year old with his leg blown off by a Hellfire missile—none were insurgent threats to the U.S. Nor were Afghan villagers like Hayat Gul, a school guard wounded in a battle between the Taliban and Afghan and NATO forces, or the aged Ghulam Rasool, who abandon his mountain home in a village in the Hisarak district because of the relentless drones (benghai, they call them—“buzzing flies”) and the constant threat of death by Hellfire. You and Brennan and the CIA and the whole military-industrial complex are conducting a War of Terror, a war that is a crime against humanity, Mr. President. There are many many people who are responsible for these atrocities but no one has ever been held accountable while those who expose them are sent to prison—whistle-blowers like John Kiriakou and Bradley Manning. And that is another obscenity, call it the collateral damage of the obscenity of war.
Monday, March 25, 2013
The War of Self-Annihilation
Dear Mr. President,
The military sanitizes war, hides the ugly reality with euphemisms like “collateral damage” (civilians killed), “enhanced interrogation” (torture) and the latest one, “kinetic event” (dropping a bomb or firing a missile at a target). If an obscenity of war can’t be obscured by euphemisms then lies and denial work for awhile—like denial of the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam or depleted uranium (DU) in the Gulf War. It took decades for the military to acknowledge the effects of Agent Orange but linkage between DU and an increase in cancers, birth deformities and other medical problems is still denied; they cite studies showing DU is harmless—the U.S. UK, France and Israel have all blocked studies by the UN.) But the physical evidence is overwhelming—wherever DU munitions were used—Kuwait, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan—the rate of childhood leukemia and birth deformities rose significantly over the next decade and health problems of those exposed to DU skyrocketed. I read that in a 3 week period in 2003 we used more than 100 tons of DU munitions in Iraq (oh, there’s the weapons of mass destruction!). Another article had this: in September 2009, there were 170 births in Fallujah General Hospital; 42 died within 7 days and 31 of those who died were deformed. In August 2002, there were 530 births in the same hospital; 6 died within 7 days and only one had a birth defect. Remember the Bunker Busters we used in Baghdad and Tora Bora trying to kill Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden? Each one contains 1.5 tons of DU. In Afghanistan some Bunker Busters were dropped within a half kilometer of villages; everyone watched the planes, watched the bombs drop, the explosions. A fine dust settled over everything and within 24 hours everyone was suffering the symptoms of radiation sickness. The half-life of DU is 4.468 billion years. 4.468 billion years! That’s almost as long as Earth has existed. DU scrambles DNA in people, plants and animals and that gets passed on from generation to generation. “[T]housands upon thousands of Iraqi children will suffer for tens of thousands of years to come. This is what I call terrorism.” Dr. Ahmad Hardan, adviser to WHO, 2003. Our War of Terror is no longer just against children, Mr. President, it’s a war against Mother Earth herself. Forget terrorists, forget global warming, even; DU is making Earth uninhabitable. War is an obscenity but the use of DU takes obscenity to a new level. This is a war of self-annihilation.
The military sanitizes war, hides the ugly reality with euphemisms like “collateral damage” (civilians killed), “enhanced interrogation” (torture) and the latest one, “kinetic event” (dropping a bomb or firing a missile at a target). If an obscenity of war can’t be obscured by euphemisms then lies and denial work for awhile—like denial of the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam or depleted uranium (DU) in the Gulf War. It took decades for the military to acknowledge the effects of Agent Orange but linkage between DU and an increase in cancers, birth deformities and other medical problems is still denied; they cite studies showing DU is harmless—the U.S. UK, France and Israel have all blocked studies by the UN.) But the physical evidence is overwhelming—wherever DU munitions were used—Kuwait, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan—the rate of childhood leukemia and birth deformities rose significantly over the next decade and health problems of those exposed to DU skyrocketed. I read that in a 3 week period in 2003 we used more than 100 tons of DU munitions in Iraq (oh, there’s the weapons of mass destruction!). Another article had this: in September 2009, there were 170 births in Fallujah General Hospital; 42 died within 7 days and 31 of those who died were deformed. In August 2002, there were 530 births in the same hospital; 6 died within 7 days and only one had a birth defect. Remember the Bunker Busters we used in Baghdad and Tora Bora trying to kill Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden? Each one contains 1.5 tons of DU. In Afghanistan some Bunker Busters were dropped within a half kilometer of villages; everyone watched the planes, watched the bombs drop, the explosions. A fine dust settled over everything and within 24 hours everyone was suffering the symptoms of radiation sickness. The half-life of DU is 4.468 billion years. 4.468 billion years! That’s almost as long as Earth has existed. DU scrambles DNA in people, plants and animals and that gets passed on from generation to generation. “[T]housands upon thousands of Iraqi children will suffer for tens of thousands of years to come. This is what I call terrorism.” Dr. Ahmad Hardan, adviser to WHO, 2003. Our War of Terror is no longer just against children, Mr. President, it’s a war against Mother Earth herself. Forget terrorists, forget global warming, even; DU is making Earth uninhabitable. War is an obscenity but the use of DU takes obscenity to a new level. This is a war of self-annihilation.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
The War Against Afghan Children
Dear Mr. President,
On February 8, the U.S. military ‘strongly rejected’ the UN’s report on children killed in Afghanistan, claiming it was “categorically unfounded.” The report documented hundreds of children killed over the past 4 years by the U.S. military due to a “lack of precautionary measures and indiscriminate use of force.” This is your war, Mr. President, and these dead children are your responsibility. You could have ended the killing 4 years ago but expanded it instead. The war has brought nothing but misery, hardship and death to Afghanistan; their infant mortality is 122 per 1,000 (Cuba’s is 4.8 per 1,000), their government spends, on average $46 per person per year on health care; their life expectancy is 49 years; their average schooling is 3.3 years. Every day more children are killed or maimed, more deformed babies born. There are reports of children as young as 9 or 10—both boys and girls—being raped and tortured by Afghan security forces (who we train and to whose atrocities we turn a blind eye). Occasionally, one of our own heroes is guilty of an atrocity, like Robert Bales who massacred 16 Afghan villagers in 2012, or the platoon from 5th Stryker Combat Brigade that randomly shot and killed Afghan civilians for sport in 2010. You were elected to end war, not institutionalize it. You were given a Nobel Peace Prize for furthering the cause of peace and you further only the cause of war. But war never stays ‘over there’—we are a more violent nation, a greater threat to world peace than a decade ago, we have many wounded among us—the 30,000 from Iraq, the 20,000 from Afghanistan—and of those exposed to DU, many have multiple medical problems (and like their predecessors in Vietnam, the VA provides scant help, denies their claims, denies that DU is the cause, even denies they have a medical problem). Children born to these vets have a much higher rate of birth defects as well: like Gerard Darren Matthew’s little girl who was born with only 3 fingers on one hand. There are other ways the war comes home, too: on Friday, Chicago announced the closure of 54 schools for lack of funds; Philadelphia is closing 23; Newark, Detroit and Washington have already closed a number of schools; Head Start eliminated 70,000 slots and other social programs are being cut back. The Pentagon, meanwhile, has requested an additional $200 million to rebuild Guantanamo prison. All wars are against the children and your dumb war, like Bush’s dumb war, is no exception.
On February 8, the U.S. military ‘strongly rejected’ the UN’s report on children killed in Afghanistan, claiming it was “categorically unfounded.” The report documented hundreds of children killed over the past 4 years by the U.S. military due to a “lack of precautionary measures and indiscriminate use of force.” This is your war, Mr. President, and these dead children are your responsibility. You could have ended the killing 4 years ago but expanded it instead. The war has brought nothing but misery, hardship and death to Afghanistan; their infant mortality is 122 per 1,000 (Cuba’s is 4.8 per 1,000), their government spends, on average $46 per person per year on health care; their life expectancy is 49 years; their average schooling is 3.3 years. Every day more children are killed or maimed, more deformed babies born. There are reports of children as young as 9 or 10—both boys and girls—being raped and tortured by Afghan security forces (who we train and to whose atrocities we turn a blind eye). Occasionally, one of our own heroes is guilty of an atrocity, like Robert Bales who massacred 16 Afghan villagers in 2012, or the platoon from 5th Stryker Combat Brigade that randomly shot and killed Afghan civilians for sport in 2010. You were elected to end war, not institutionalize it. You were given a Nobel Peace Prize for furthering the cause of peace and you further only the cause of war. But war never stays ‘over there’—we are a more violent nation, a greater threat to world peace than a decade ago, we have many wounded among us—the 30,000 from Iraq, the 20,000 from Afghanistan—and of those exposed to DU, many have multiple medical problems (and like their predecessors in Vietnam, the VA provides scant help, denies their claims, denies that DU is the cause, even denies they have a medical problem). Children born to these vets have a much higher rate of birth defects as well: like Gerard Darren Matthew’s little girl who was born with only 3 fingers on one hand. There are other ways the war comes home, too: on Friday, Chicago announced the closure of 54 schools for lack of funds; Philadelphia is closing 23; Newark, Detroit and Washington have already closed a number of schools; Head Start eliminated 70,000 slots and other social programs are being cut back. The Pentagon, meanwhile, has requested an additional $200 million to rebuild Guantanamo prison. All wars are against the children and your dumb war, like Bush’s dumb war, is no exception.
 | |||
| Mohammed Salim, 10, rests in a Kabul, Afghanistan, hospital after having a leg amputated and being treated for other injuries. He was reportedly injured by a U.S. bombing. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) |
 |
| Boy killed in Kabul by NATO troops, 2008 |
 |
| Afghan children killed in 2011 NATO air strike (Photo: Uruknet) |
 |
| Children killed in drone attack, Dande Darpa Khel, N. Waziristan, 2012 (SANA Photo) |
Friday, March 22, 2013
War Against The Children of Fallujah
Dear Mr. President,
The more I think on it the angrier I get: The American war
machine and your betrayal of America and humanity, your pretense of peace and
your acts of war. War is the ultimate obscenity and those who promote war—the politicians,
the arms merchants, the generals—are especially despicable. War, in the end, is
always waged against the children; ultimately they suffer the most, if not in
death or physical injury, then in trauma, in poverty and hardship, in
displacement, in the loss of parents, family, protection. But there is a
special class of obscenity resulting from our use of depleted uranium (DU) in the
Iraq war that is never talked about here: birth deformities. In Fallujah where
depleted uranium was used extensively, birth defects are 14 times the rates in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki after the Bomb. There are some types of birth deformities never
seen before, some so horrific they have no name. Fallujah women are afraid to
bear children and there is no help from either the Iraqi or U.S. government. On
April 14, 2003, the BBC reported that the Pentagon had no intention of cleaning
up depleted uranium from battlefields: “There are no long-term effects,” a
spokesman stated, but high levels of lead, mercury and DU remain in the air, ground
and water around Fallujah and cancers and neurological problems have increased to
levels 8 times higher than those in the U.S. The use of DU in bullets, bombs,
artillery shells and rockets is a violation of the Geneva Conventions; the use
of phosphorous is a war crime as well; so is the use of cluster bombs. We used
all of them in Iraq and there is no doubt we used them all in Afghanistan as
well. Iraq was Bush’s war (and Cheney’s and the other neocons) but you are
complicit in their crimes against humanity by refusing to hold anyone
accountable. The heavy wall of silence, denial and secrecy that surrounds our War
of Terror makes you as guilty as any of them. Not to mention your expansion of
the obscenity that is the War in Afghanistan or the Drone Wars or the Kill
Lists or the Targeted Assassinations. Who gave you the right to wreak violence
and destruction on humanity and the planet like some latter-day Attila the Hun?
Who gave you the right to decide who lives and who dies? I found images of
deformed babies born to the women of Fallujah that you need to see, Mr. President.
Your web site doesn’t accept images so I’m printing them out and mailing them. Take
a good long look at the horror of war. Think on it.
  |
| Photo Source Dr. Samira Alani / Al Jazeera |
 |
| Photo Source: sunni-news.net |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Do Nobel Peace Prizes Blush?
Dear Mr. President,
Washington’s silence on the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is not unexpected. No one wants to talk about defeat but defeat it was. After 2 trillion U.S. taxpayer dollars and 4,486 U.S. casualties (plus 30,000 wounded), here’s what the war reaped: 190,000 to 600,000 Iraqis killed, their infrastructure, culture and government destroyed, one strongman dictator (Hussein) replaced by another (al-Maliki), millions displaced, widespread poverty, hunger and pain. Contrary to Bush and the neocons’ prediction of easy victory and a peaceful and free Iraq that would “be a model of democracy and stability,” Iraq today is torn by civil strife and sectarian violence (yesterday alone, 17 car bombs, 2 adhesive bombs and a shooting killed 57 and wounded 190); Iraq is an ally of Iran not the U.S.; al-Maliki is arresting Sunni government officials including his own VP on charges of terrorism; Iraqi oil contracts are going to China, not the U.S.; and the entire region has been destabilized. The war was based on lies and deceit; Iraq was not a threat and the invasion was not warranted but 10 years later we have learned nothing from this disaster. Once elected, you betrayed America by refusing to investigate the Bush administration’s war crimes—not a single person has been held responsible for the carnage, the violence, the torture, the crimes against humanity. Your refusal to have a public discussion of the causes of 9/11 or the Iraq war or the war in Afghanistan guarantees that, in our blind arrogance we will repeat the mistakes of the past. Someone asked me today if I still thought you were the worst president ever, even worse than Bush, and I said yes. You could have stopped the war in Afghanistan in 2009 but instead expanded it. You could have changed foreign policy to prevent future 9/11s but didn’t. You could have stopped the erosion of liberty and democracy by vetoing legislation like the NDAA, the Patriot Act, etc. but you signed them all. You could have investigated and held accountable those responsible for torture and war crimes but gave them a free pass while prosecuting whistle-blowers like John Kirakou who revealed the CIA’s use of waterboarding and Bradley Manning who exposed war crimes by the military and duplicity by the government. You could have ended drone strikes and targeted assassinations but instead you expanded and institutionalized them. Throw a shroud over that Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. President, it’s blushing from shame.
Washington’s silence on the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is not unexpected. No one wants to talk about defeat but defeat it was. After 2 trillion U.S. taxpayer dollars and 4,486 U.S. casualties (plus 30,000 wounded), here’s what the war reaped: 190,000 to 600,000 Iraqis killed, their infrastructure, culture and government destroyed, one strongman dictator (Hussein) replaced by another (al-Maliki), millions displaced, widespread poverty, hunger and pain. Contrary to Bush and the neocons’ prediction of easy victory and a peaceful and free Iraq that would “be a model of democracy and stability,” Iraq today is torn by civil strife and sectarian violence (yesterday alone, 17 car bombs, 2 adhesive bombs and a shooting killed 57 and wounded 190); Iraq is an ally of Iran not the U.S.; al-Maliki is arresting Sunni government officials including his own VP on charges of terrorism; Iraqi oil contracts are going to China, not the U.S.; and the entire region has been destabilized. The war was based on lies and deceit; Iraq was not a threat and the invasion was not warranted but 10 years later we have learned nothing from this disaster. Once elected, you betrayed America by refusing to investigate the Bush administration’s war crimes—not a single person has been held responsible for the carnage, the violence, the torture, the crimes against humanity. Your refusal to have a public discussion of the causes of 9/11 or the Iraq war or the war in Afghanistan guarantees that, in our blind arrogance we will repeat the mistakes of the past. Someone asked me today if I still thought you were the worst president ever, even worse than Bush, and I said yes. You could have stopped the war in Afghanistan in 2009 but instead expanded it. You could have changed foreign policy to prevent future 9/11s but didn’t. You could have stopped the erosion of liberty and democracy by vetoing legislation like the NDAA, the Patriot Act, etc. but you signed them all. You could have investigated and held accountable those responsible for torture and war crimes but gave them a free pass while prosecuting whistle-blowers like John Kirakou who revealed the CIA’s use of waterboarding and Bradley Manning who exposed war crimes by the military and duplicity by the government. You could have ended drone strikes and targeted assassinations but instead you expanded and institutionalized them. Throw a shroud over that Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. President, it’s blushing from shame.
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