JEDDAH, 23 May 2004 — When a person commits a crime punishable by law or performs some reprehensible action, he usually takes the utmost care to conceal it.
But the official confessions remove only the last vestiges of doubt that the criminal acts of torture, inhumane treatments and the murders committed by American soldiers in the various prisons and holding cells in Iraq, Afghanistan or Guantanamo did indeed take place, so well documented were the acts — photographed and videotaped for the American forces’ high command to view.
Evidence shows that a good number of officers and soldiers participated in these dirty crimes, all of whom appeared to enjoy the horrific pain they were inflicting on their victims. They actually kept the photos of these crimes as a record to pass around and boast about to their friends and relatives once they got home.
It is unacceptable to claim that the torture that took place and which sometimes led to the death of the victim and always to the violation of human dignity are the isolated acts of a handful.
This was a systematic, authorized policy of the US occupation forces, decreed by the highest levels. To claim otherwise is just another in a series of blatant lies by President Bush and his men to the American people and the world at large — just like their claims about weapons of mass destruction and the ties between Al-Qaeda and Saddam’s regime.
What is by far more dangerous, however, is that the government of the greatest power and the largest modern democracy in the world should publicly and at an international level squander all principles of legal responsibility for the war crimes and human rights infringements including torture and killing, and that it should put pressure on all the countries of the world to absolve each member of the US armed forces and all Americans without exception from any legal responsibility for the actions they are committing outside the US. The US refuses to recognize the jurisdiction of the international war crimes tribunal, which has been ratified by every country in the world except for America and Israel.
Accordingly, the US established Guantanamo as well as other known and secret prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and a number of other countries where people are arrested on the basis of suspicion alone, deprived of every legal and human right, subjected to the worst kinds of beatings and torture, humiliated and degraded. These prisons and the horrific crimes being committed there are outside the reach of the law or legal questioning even in US courts. The American administration has thereby relegated the international community to the laws of the jungle.
Perhaps readers will remember the statement from US Attorney General John Ashcroft after the events in New York — that the Muslims’ God calls on them to sacrifice their sons and daughters for Him, while the Christians’ God sacrifices himself for their sake. This man is more dangerous than Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Zionist gang around them, for he is supposed to be a man of law and justice.
One of the accomplishments of this disastrous US administration is that it is the first in American history to consider the crimes of the Zionist state as legitimate self-defense and the Palestinian resistance to the occupation criminal terrorism. It is also the first to provide absolute protection to Israel against any legal questioning or international measures and sets the Zionist apartheid state above all laws and international organizations.
This is a message to Arabs and Muslims that wasn’t fully understood until after the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, when America emulated Israel and began to commit the most horrific acts with impunity. Israel found in the American president a man of shallow thinking, who lacked experience and was overzealous, and thus it was able to lead him in whatever direction it chose.
What I have just said is not directed at Arabs and Muslims but at the millions of good Americans who have never had an administration so devious and dishonest. I conclude by referring to a study published by a colleague, Dr. Fahd Al-Arabi Al-Harthi in Al-Watan in March, which proves that the American forces’ horrific actions are ancient traditions. My hope is that each and every American and Arab reads this study.
