RESOLUTION OF INQUIRY

Coalition of citizen groups seek formal inquiry into whether Bush acted illegally in push for Iraq war

• RESOLUTION OF INQUIRY
• Coalition of citizen groups seek formal inquiry into whether Bush acted illegally in push for Iraq war
  
• By Larisa Alexandrovna RAW STORY
• http://tinyurl.com/8kpzh
  
  
• A coalition of activist groups running the gamut of social and political issues will ask Congress to file a Resolution of Inquiry, the first necessary legal step to determine whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in misleading the country about his decision to go to war in Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.
  The formal Resolution of Inquiry request, written by Boston constitutional attorney John C. Bonifaz, cites the Downing Street Memo and issues surrounding the planning and execution of the Iraq war. A resolution of inquiry would force relevant House committees to vote on the record as to whether to support an investigation.
  The Downing Street Memo, official minutes of a 2002 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, members of British intelligence MI-6 and various members of the Bush administration, notes that MI-6 director Richard Dearlove said, “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
  Bonifaz says the minutes were the impetus for his request.
  “The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people,” Bonifaz wrote in a memo to the ranking House Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI), outlining the case (read his memo here).
  Blair and other British officials have not questioned the minutes’ veracity.
  In response to the revelations in the Downing Street memo, Conyers and eighty-eight other members of Congress issued a letter to the White House on May 5 requesting an explanation and answers to questions about whether the President misled Congress into voting for the Iraq war.
  White House press secretary Scott McClellan waived off the letter, saying he had “no need to respond,” according to the New York Times.
  Frustrated by the media’s silence, save a few articles buried in major American newspapers and pieces in the alternative media such as Air America Radio, the Ed Schultz Show, Salon and RAW STORY, a grassroots progressive movement has pushed the story forward, culminating in a formal request for a Resolution of Inquiry.
  Bonifaz wrote the request and outlined the case on behalf of a joint effort by several groups, including: Veterans for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), 911Citizens Watch, Democracy Rising, Code Pink, Global Exchange, Democrats.com, Velvet Revolution, and Gold Star Families for Peace.
  “The president, among other alleged crimes, may have also violated federal criminal law if the evidence from the Downing Street memo is proven to be true, including the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996,” Bonifaz wrote.
  Some have criticized the media’s coverage of the memo.
  "To me it's kind of the smoking gun, or maybe the latest in a number of smoking guns,” Editor and Publisher senior editor Dave Astor told RAW RADIO Saturday. “And the fact that the media either didn't cover it or buried the coverage or poo-pooed it is appalling.”
  “It goes back to the fact of who owns the media and the media being intimidated by this administration,” he added. “I think that memo indicates an impeachable offense, personally. If we had a Congress that had some spine, and was maybe Democratic-controlled, it could be an impeachable offense.”
  Coalition member Medea Benjamin, founding director of Global Exchange, said she supports legal proceedings.
  “When a president so callously distorts the facts, manipulates the public and is responsible for so much needless death and destruction, he must be held accountable,” Benjamin told RAW STORY.
  Other members of the coalition, loosely titled “After Downing Street,” concur.
  “We will be organizing the grassroots to demand Congress move forward with a Resolution of Inquiry,” PDA director Tim Carpenter stated.
  As part of Congressional approval for H.R.Res. 114; Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, the administration was required to report to Congress that diplomatic options had been exhausted before or within 48 hours after military action had started.
  In a conversation with RAW STORY, Bonifaz expressed the disappointment of many who put their faith in the President.
  “Within 48 hours after the attack on Iraq, the president wrote a letter to Congress indicating that Iraq posed a serious and imminent threat to national security and if he knew that was not true at the time he submitted that letter it is a clear violation of the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996,” Bonifaz said.
  Under this Act, amending 18 U.S.C. § 1001, it is a crime knowingly and willfully
• (1) to falsify, conceal or cover up a material fact by trick, scheme or device;
• (2) to make any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
• (3) to make or use any false writing or document knowing it to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; with respect to matters within the jurisdiction of the legislative, executive, or judicial branch.
  He goes on to discuss the other statutes and laws that may have been violated, including but not limited to the Federal Anti-Conspiracy Statute (more per above link).
  When asked if the Inquiry of Resolution would apply to others involved in the alleged effort to mislead the public into war, Bonifaz explained that the procedure requires that a full inquiry begin from the top of the chain of command.
  “Provisions in U.S. Constitution guarantee that when a President abuses power, engages in excesses, and subverts the constitution, the people have a recourse through their elected officials in congress,” he said.
  Other member groups behind this coalition want that recourse.
  We are "behind this resolution of inquiry because our loved ones were killed for deception and betrayal from George Bush and the rest of the administration," said Gold Star Families for Peace founder Cindy Sheehan. "We would like to see George Bush, Dick Cheney, et al, be held accountable for their lies and arrogance for sending our children off to die in a war that is illegal and immoral."
  “We support this resolution of inquiry because we stand for truth and accountability,” said co-founder of 911CitizensWatch Kyle Hence. “It's more important than ever as whistleblowers stand up and documents emerge that point to potential crimes in high places all too often of late veiled by government secrecy.”
  Brad Friedman, co-founder of Velvet Revolution, agrees with the need for transparency.
  "We believe that a proper inquiry into the facts underlying the Downing Street memo are vital to our constitutional democracy because only Congress can declare war, and a President and his appointed officials cannot be allowed to run the country if indeed they have misled and lied about the basis for the Iraq war,” said Friedman.
  Bonifaz hopes the groups, which boast a total membership of several million, are just the beginning of the grassroots groundswell.
  The others agree.
  “It is time for Congress to do its duty and ask: “Did the administration mislead us into war by manipulating and misstating intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction, suppressing contrary intelligence …and exaggerated the danger Iraq posed to the United States and its neighbors?” said Kevin Zeese, founder of Democracy Rising.
  Bonifaz and others ask that citizens of all party affiliations and backgrounds help support his request by writing to their Congressional leaders. They are also seeking other groups to sign on.
  More information will be up shortly at:
• http://www.afterdowningstreet.org.
• postCount('res52505'); 49 Comments
  
• Article originally published May 25, 2005.

The Calls Are Coming For Responsibility!!!!!

• Published on Thursday, May 26, 2005 by the lnter Press Service
  
• Give Rumsfeld the Pinochet Treatment, Says US Amnesty Chief
  
• by Jim Lobe http://tinyurl.com/bgcd4
  
  
• WASHINGTON - If the administration of President George W. Bush fails to conduct a truly independent investigation of U.S. abuses against detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, foreign governments should investigate and prosecute those senior officials who bear responsibility for them, the head of the U.S. chapter of Amnesty International said here Wednesday.
  Speaking at the release of Amnesty's annual report, William Schulz charged that Washington has become ''a leading purveyor and practitioner'' of torture and ill-treatment and that senior officials should face prosecution by other governments for violations of the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture.
  
• "If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal.
  William Schulz Amnesty Intl USA"
• Among those officials, Schulz named Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George Tenet, and senior officers at U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Abu Ghraib, Iraq.
  
• ''If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal,'' said Schulz, who added that violations of the torture convention, which has been ratified by the United States and some 138 other countries, can be prosecuted in any jurisdiction.
  ''If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them,'' he added. ''The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as (former Chilean dictator) Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.''
  Schulz also called on state bar associations to investigate administration lawyers who helped prepare legal opinions that sought to justify or defend the use of abusive interrogation methods for breach of their professional and ethical responsibilities.
  He cited, in particular, Vice President Dick Cheney's general counsel, David Addington; Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes; and top officials in the Justice Department's Office of General Counsel, one of whom, Jay Bybee, has since been confirmed as a federal appeals court judge.
  ''A wall of secrecy is protecting those who masterminded and developed the U.S. torture policy,'' Schulz said. ''Unless those who drew the blueprint for torture, approved it, and ordered it implemented are held accountable, the United States' once-proud reputation as an exemplar of human rights will remain in tatters.''
  Schulz's appeal for foreign governments to take the initiative coincided with the launch of a bipartisan drive endorsed by some 350 attorneys and legal scholars urging the administration to establish an independent commission to address the allegations of abuse and torture, including an assessment of the responsibility of senior administration officials and military officers.
  ''By establishing an independent bipartisan commission to fully investigate the issue of abuse of terrorist suspects,'' said John Whitehead, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Ronald Reagan administration, ''Congress and the president have a unique opportunity to send a message to the rest of the world that the United States is committed to respecting the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings, whether they are U.S. citizens or prisoners of war.”
  Whitehead said a high-level, independent investigation was necessary because the Pentagon's ongoing or recently completed investigations were too narrowly focused and not designed to produce recommendations to prevent future abuses.
  Among the signers of the initiative, which was sponsored by the bipartisan Constitution Project at Georgetown University, were prominent right-wing activists including David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, two former Republican congressmen, as well as former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering, and former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director William Sessions. The National Institute of Military Justice (NIMJ) also endorsed the statement, as did more than a dozen military law specialists and retired high-ranking military officers.
  Since the abuses first came to light with the publication of photos of prisoners at Abu Ghraib 13 months ago, the Pentagon has carried out dozens of reviews, courts-martial, and disciplinary proceedings. But virtually all of them have dealt only with the responsibility of the soldiers who carried out the abuses or their immediate superiors.
  The failure to address the responsibility of officials and officers at the top of the command chain, particularly in light of the disclosure of memos which appeared to authorize at least some of the tactics carried out against detainees, has provoked repeated demands by human rights groups to appoint an independent commission to conduct a thorough examination. Last summer, the 400,000-lawyer American Bar Association joined Amnesty, Human rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in those demands.
  But the Bush administration has rejected them, arguing that the Pentagon's own efforts to investigate and prosecute abuses were adequate. The Republican leadership in Congress has also paralyzed efforts by Democratic and some Republican lawmakers to create a commission.
  The refusal to investigate translates into effective ''tolerance'' for torture and mistreatment, Schulz said, resulting not only in the spread of such practices but also in the destruction of U.S. credibility when it assails other countries, such as Syria or Egypt, for human rights violations.
  ''It is the height of hypocrisy for the U.S. government itself to use the very torture techniques that it routinely condemns in other countries,'' he said. ''When the U.S. government then calls upon foreign leaders to bring to justice those who commit or authorize human rights violations in their own countries, why should those foreign leaders listen?''
  As he spoke, the ACLU released new documents it had obtained from the FBI under court order that disclosed that prisoners held at Guantanamo complained that guards there had repeatedly mistreated the Koran. In one 2002 summary, an FBI interrogator noted a prisoner's allegation that guards had flushed a Koran down a toilet.
  The disclosure comes on the heels of controversy over a Newsweek report saying that government investigators had corroborated an almost identical incident. Newsweek ultimately retracted its story because a confidential government source could not be confirmed.
  Other documents released Wednesday by the ACLU provided accounts of beatings, planned suicide attempts, hunger strikes to protest mistreatment and sexual assaults, including an incident in which a female guard fondled a detainee's genitals while he was held down by male guards.
  ''The United States government continues to turn a blind eye to mounting evidence of widespread abuse of detainees held in its custody,'' said ACLU director Anthony Romero. ''If we are to truly repair America's standing in the world, the Bush administration must hold accountable high-ranking officials who allow the continuing abuse and torture of detainees.''
  

Memorial Day Press Release

Veterans For Peace.org

• For Immediate Release
• Veterans For Peace: www.veteransforpeace.org
• NEWS ADVISORY CONTACT:David Cline: 201 876-0430 May 25, 2005 daoudc@...
• Veterans For Peace Remembers and Commemorates the Sacrifices Made by theNation’s Fallen Service Men and Women, Memorial Day 2005
• Who: Veterans For Peace, a national organization of military veterans includingmen and women from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Iraq War,other conflicts and “peacetime.”
• What: Memorials, vigils and solemn programs.
• Why: To remember the fallen and educate the public about the human cost of war.Across the nation, veterans, military families and friends will gather on MondayMay 30, 2005 to remember fallen loved ones, comrades and all service members whohave died in defense of our nation. Veterans For Peace will commemorate thesewomen and men who have made the ultimate sacrifice with vigils and solemnprograms. Several chapters will display temporary cemeteries to represent theover 1,600 fallen in the current conflict in Iraq. Other chapters will have laywreaths, flowers, have speakers, readings and march in parades.Veterans For Peace National Executive Director stated, “It is not enough tosimply remember and mourn. If we are able, we must also act. As Gene Glazer a World War II medic and Veterans For Peace board member once told me, ‘There is no better way to remember the dead than to defend the living.’ We have a responsibility to educate the public on the human cost of war, the lives shattered, broken and lost. We stand as witnesses to this terrible cost and we say to our fellow citizens there is a better way. Join us as we walk the path of peace.”
• For more information, please visit www.veteransforpeace.org .
• Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985. It is structured around a national office in Saint Louis, MO and comprised of members across the country organized in chapters or as at-large members. The organization includes men and women veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, other conflicts and peacetime veterans. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus,other means of problem solving are necessary.#####
• Veterans For Peace: www.veteransforpeace.org
  ***************

Exclusive Interview w/Guantanamo Detainee Martin Mubanga - Now Free

• The Laura Flanders Show
  
  
• For the first time to any journalist in the U.S., freed Guantanamo detainee, Martin Mubanga talks tonight [ Last Night 5-22-05 ] to the Laura Flanders Show about his experiences at the hands of U.S. forces in Guantanamo. Over three years in detention, he says he experienced and witnessed multiple acts of abuse of the Koran starting in the early months of 2002. He also describes the persecution - including pepper-spraying - of detainees who objected to such treatment.
• Listen here : http://tinyurl.com/dzp2u

The Unknown Unknowns of the Abu Ghraib Scandal

• The Unknown Unknowns of the Abu Ghraib Scandal
• By Seymour Hersh
• The Guardian UK
  
• Saturday 21 May 2005
• http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/052205X.shtml
  
• The 10 inquiries into prisoner abuse have let Bush and Co off the hook.
  
• It's been over a year since I published a series of articles in the New Yorker outlining the abuses at Abu Ghraib. There have been at least 10 official military investigations since then - none of which has challenged the official Bush administration line that there was no high-level policy condoning or overlooking such abuse. The buck always stops with the handful of enlisted army reservists from the 372nd Military Police Company whose images fill the iconic Abu Ghraib photos with their inappropriate smiles and sadistic posing of the prisoners.
  It's a dreary pattern. The reports and the subsequent Senate proceedings are sometimes criticised on editorial pages. There are calls for a truly independent investigation by the Senate or House. Then, as months pass with no official action, the issue withers away, until the next set of revelations revives it.
  There is much more to be learned. What do I know? A few things stand out. I know of the continuing practice of American operatives seizing suspected terrorists and taking them, without any meaningful legal review, to interrogation centres in south-east Asia and elsewhere. I know of the young special forces officer whose subordinates were confronted with charges of prisoner abuse and torture at a secret hearing after one of them emailed explicit photos back home. The officer testified that, yes, his men had done what the photos depicted, but they - and everybody in the command - understood such treatment was condoned by higher-ups.
  What else do I know? I know that the decision was made inside the Pentagon in the first weeks of the Afghanistan war - which seemed "won" by December 2001 - to indefinitely detain scores of prisoners who were accumulating daily at American staging posts throughout the country. At the time, according to a memo, in my possession, addressed to Donald Rumsfeld, there were "800-900 Pakistani boys 13-15 years of age in custody". I could not learn if some or all of them have been released, or if some are still being held.
  A Pentagon spokesman, when asked to comment, said that he had no information to substantiate the number in the document, and that there were currently about 100 juveniles being held in Iraq and Afghanistan; he did not address detainees held elsewhere. He said they received some special care, but added "age is not a determining factor in detention ... As with all the detainees, their release is contingent upon the determination that they are not a threat and that they are of no further intelligence value. Unfortunately, we have found that ... age does not necessarily diminish threat potential."
  The 10 official inquiries into Abu Ghraib are asking the wrong questions, at least in terms of apportioning ultimate responsibility for the treatment of prisoners. The question that never gets adequately answered is this: what did the president do after being told about Abu Ghraib? It is here that chronology becomes very important.
  The US-led coalition forces swept to seeming immediate success in the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and by early April Baghdad had been taken. Over the next few months, however, the resistance grew in scope, persistence and skill. In August 2003 it became more aggressive. At this point there was a decision to get tough with the thousands of prisoners in Iraq, many of whom had been seized in random raids or at roadside checkpoints. Major General Geoffrey D Miller, an army artillery officer who, as commander at Guantánamo, had got tough with the prisoners there, visited Baghdad to tutor the troops - to "Gitmo-ise" the Iraqi system.
  By the beginning of October 2003 the reservists on the night shift at Abu Ghraib had begun their abuse of prisoners. They were aware that some of America's elite special forces units were also at work at the prison. Those highly trained military men had been authorised by the Pentagon's senior leadership to act far outside the normal rules of engagement. There was no secret about the interrogation practices used throughout that autumn and early winter, and few objections. In fact representatives of one of the Pentagon's private contractors at Abu Ghraib, who were involved in prisoner interrogation, were told that Condoleezza Rice, then the president's national security adviser, had praised their efforts. It's not clear why she would do so - there is still no evidence that the American intelligence community has accumulated any significant information about the operations of the resistance, who continue to strike US soldiers and Iraqis. The night shift's activities at Abu Ghraib came to an end on January 13 2004, when specialist Joseph M Darby, one of the 372nd reservists, provided army police authorities with a disk full of explicit images. By then, these horrors had been taking place for nearly four months.
  Three days later the army began an investigation. But it is what was not done that is significant. There is no evidence that President Bush, upon learning of the devastating conduct at Abu Ghraib, asked any hard questions of Rumsfeld and his own aides in the White House; no evidence that they took any significant steps, upon learning in mid-January of the abuses, to review and modify the military's policy toward prisoners. I was told by a high-level former intelligence official that within days of the first reports the judicial system was programmed to begin prosecuting the enlisted men and women in the photos and to go no further up the chain of command.
  In late April, after the CBS and New Yorker reports, a series of news conferences and press briefings emphasised the White House's dismay over the conduct of a few misguided soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the president's repeated opposition to torture. Miller was introduced anew to the American press corps in Baghdad and it was explained that the general had been assigned to clean up the prison system and instil respect for the Geneva conventions.
  Despite Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo - not to mention Iraq and the failure of intelligence - and the various roles they played in what went wrong, Rumsfeld kept his job; Rice was promoted to secretary of state; Alberto Gonzales, who commissioned the memos justifying torture, became attorney general; deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz was nominated to the presidency of the World Bank; and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defence for intelligence and one of those most directly involved in the policies on prisoners, was still one of Rumsfeld's closest confidants. President Bush, asked about accountability, told the Washington Post before his second inauguration that the American people had supplied all the accountability needed - by re-electing him. Only seven enlisted men and women have been charged or pleaded guilty to offences relating to Abu Ghraib. No officer is facing criminal proceedings.
  Such action, or inaction, has special significance for me. In my years of reporting, since covering My Lai in 1969, I have come to know the human costs of such events - and to believe that soldiers who participate can become victims as well.
  Amid my frenetic reporting for the New Yorker on Abu Ghraib, I was telephoned by a middle-aged woman. She told me that a family member, a young woman, was among those members of the 320th Military Police Battalion, to which the 372nd was attached, who had returned to the US in March. She came back a different person - distraught, angry and wanting nothing to do with her immediate family. At some point afterward, the older woman remembered that she had lent the reservist a portable computer with a DVD player to take to Iraq; on it she discovered an extensive series of images of a naked Iraqi prisoner flinching in fear before two snarling dogs. One of the images was published in the New Yorker and then all over the world.
  The war, the older woman told me, was not the war for democracy and freedom that she thought her young family member had been sent to fight. Others must know, she said. There was one other thing she wanted to share with me. Since returning from Iraq, the young woman had been getting large black tattoos all over her body. She seemed intent on changing her skin.

An Ally From Hell [U.S. Business As Ussual,Especially For The African Continent]

• An Ally From Hell
• By Nat Hentoff
• The Village Voice http://tinyurl.com/cysal
  
• Friday 20 May 2005
• http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/052205Y.shtml
• CIA's close relationship with Sudan's government enables genocide there to continue.
  
• " In Um Seifa, a dusty village in Sudan's western region of Darfur, a crowd of white-robed children stood outside their newly reopened school. . . . 'The government never gave us education, development, health [services or] equality,' said the headmaster. . . . So the people of Um Seifa built their own school. A week after your correspondent visited it, it was burned to the ground, and eight children murdered [by Sudanese army forces and the Arab Janjaweed] -The Economist, April 2, 2005 "
  
• During George W. Bush's campaign to spread the spirit-and eventually the letter-of freedom and democracy to other lands, he has made some nightmarish allies. Torture of prisoners, homegrown or supplied by the CIA, has been endemic in Jordan, Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Uzbekistan. In the latter's prisons, the specialty of the house is boiling prisoners, including political prisoners, to death.
  But now-thanks to a carefully documented report by Ken Silverstein in the April 29 Los Angeles Times, which has had far too little follow-up by the media-it is clear that the CIA, with the blessings of the Bush administration, is closely connected to the horrifying government of Lieutenant General Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, the head perpetrator of the ongoing genocide in Darfur: over 400,000 black Africans dead, with some 500 more dying every day, and more than two million, many in peril of starvation, turned into refugees as their homes and villages are destroyed.
  The lead to the L.A. Times story by Ken Silverstein, datelined Khartoum: "The Bush administration has forged a close intelligence partnership with the Islamic regime that once welcomed Osama bin Laden. . . . The Sudanese government . . . has been providing access to terrorism suspects and sharing intelligence data with the United States."
  Before going into more details of this alliance from hell, the story explains the great concern of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof-who should have won this year's Pulitzer Prize, instead of being a finalist, because he has done more than any other journalist in the world to keep the pressure on George W. Bush, the United Nations, and every one of us to force the government of Sudan to stop the killings, the mass rapes, and the murders of black Africans and their children.
  In his April 17 column, Kristof wrote: "President Bush seems paralyzed in the face of the slaughter. He has done a fine job of providing humanitarian relief, but he has refused [for months now] to confront Sudan forcefully or raise the issue himself before the world."
  In his May 3 column, Kristof-who has made repeated trips to Darfur, at some risk-added: "Incredibly, the Bush administration is fighting to kill the Darfur Accountability Act, which would be the most forceful step the U.S. has taken so far against genocide."
  The bill, passed by the Senate, "calls for such steps as freezing assets of the genocide's leaders and imposing an internationally backed no-fly zone to stop Sudan's army from strafing villages." (That bill has now been killed.)
  It is up to the United States, the last hope of those who have so far escaped genocide in Darfur, to lead and organize a systematic and forceful rescue effort. The United Nations, after delaying meaningful action again and again, finally slid this horrendous problem-that the U.N. was formed to solve-to the International Criminal Court.
  But-keep this in mind-a May 9 editorial ("Dying in Darfur") in the Financial Times, which keeps prodding Britain and the United States to move to end the killing, revealed: "It will be at least a year, maybe two, before the ICC even issues its first indictments." (Emphasis added.)
  This is good news for the Janjaweed and Lieutenant General Bashir's remorseless soldiers and attack helicopters.
  The Financial Times editorial ends by despairing that Tony Blair will act: "The doctrine of humanitarian interventionism must be preserved. This is the moment for an untarnished leader to pick up the mantle." No such leader was named.
  The Bush administration, as Kristof says, is paralyzed. For example, in its April 29 article, "Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to America's War on Terrorism," the Los Angeles Times added: "Last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent a letter to the Bashir government calling for steps to end the conflict in Darfur."
  This part of her letter was pro forma because, as the L.A. Times continues, "the letter, reviewed by the Times . . . also said the administration hoped to establish a 'fruitful relationship' with Sudan and looked forward to continued 'close cooperation' on terrorism." (Emphasis added.)
  John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute reminds us that "[r]eportedly, when President George W. Bush first read reports of former-President Clinton's indifference to the genocide that left roughly 800,000 dead in Rwanda, he scribbled 'not on my watch' in the margins."
  Now, very much on his watch, to nurture his partnership with the genocidal government of Sudan, Bush has become an accomplice in that genocide by not mobilizing action against it.
  Next week: unmistakable evidence that Sudan's equivalent of the CIA, the Mukhabarat, is indeed providing the CIA with exceptionally valuable information on terrorists' organizing, and their planned actions, against the United States. Can the Bush administration make a reasonable survival argument that for America's self-defense, it has no choice but to continue its "fruitful relationship" with this ruthless force of evil-even if more white-robed children, like those outside the school in Um Seifa, are raped and murdered?
  I'll be very interested in your reactions.
  -----------------