The so-called "transfer of power" in Iraq is just the installation of a puppet government. US troops continue to control the country, giving them real power. The
Prime Minister is a
CIA Agent. And a series of
edicts were decreed by the occupation authority before the "transfer of power" that force the Iraqi government to work within a US-imposed straight-jacket. This includes granting US troops & contractors
immunity to Iraqi laws & courts, the appointment of government officials with multi-year terms and the creation of an election commission which has the power to disqualify candidates and parties from the upcoming elections.
Most of the Iraqi people support Al-Sadr. According to a
poll partially funded by the state department 68 percent of Iraqis support Al-Sadr and about a third strongly support him. By baring him from the elections the US is barring
the will of the people and imposing blatant minority rule. That's some "democracy." Bush isn't giving control to the people, he is outlawing the people's choice and imposing a puppet government. In addition
82% of Iraqis want US forces out of their country immediately and the US obviously isn't respecting that wish, hence denying democracy. Anyone who supports
the occupation and/or the banning of resistance leaders like Al-Sadr from the election is against democracy. You can support democracy or you can support these actions but you cannot support both.
Ronald Reagan was a mass murderer who supported Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden &
Pol Pot. He sponsored terrorism in Central American, the middle east and North Africa. He was responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of people. In the terminology of the current President, Ronald Reagan was an evildoer.
Central America in general and Nicaragua in particular provides a good illustration of this. Reagan suppressed the various pro-democracy movements in the region attempting to overthrow US-backed dictatorships, in the process murdering hundreds of thousands of people.
In 1979 rebels calling themselves the Sandinistas overthrew the US-supported dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. In the last days of Somoza’s dictatorship the US, realizing his imminent fall, attempted to put in power a different government that would still be subordinate to Washington but would not elicit as much opposition, “Somozaism without Somoza,” but this attempt failed. Carter flew commanders of Somoza’s national guard out of the country on planes with Red Cross markings and began to form them into a counter-revolutionary force, called Contras, to oppose the Sandinistas. Reagan expanded on this program, using the Contras to launch a terrorist war against Nicaragua and undermine its new, less dictatorial government.
The US placed an embargo on Nicaragua and mined many of its harbors. The Contras, often with CIA direction, would attack oil pipelines, cargo ships, farms, grain silos, irrigation projects, roads, bridges, fishing ships, agricultural cooperatives, hospitals and schools. Captives were often tortured, raped, burned, dismembered, blinded and/or beheaded. By November 1984 the Contras had assassinated 910 government officials and murdered 8,000 civilians. In 1984 a CIA manual for the Contras titled “Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare” was leaked. It encouraged the Contras to attack civilian targets and advised them on how to blow up public buildings, blackmail ordinary citizens, use mob violence and engage in political assassinations. Reagan called the Contras “freedom fighters” and “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.”
Without US support the Contras would have been either non-existent or limited to minor hit and run attacks that the Sandinistas could have easily defeated. With the kind of funding & support the Contras had you could start a guerilla war anywhere in the United States. In addition to massive funding, US planes would fly reconnaissance flights for the Contras, drop supplies to them, and even attack Sandinista forces. The Contras would sometimes claim credit for CIA attacks in Nicaragua, to cover up US influence in the conflict. Eventually, Congress voted to cut off support for the Contras but Congress’s orders were ignored.
The Sandinistas held and won elections that were at least as free as American elections (where only two parties are allowed to hold power) and far freer than the average Latin American election. Unlike the surrounding US-backed dictatorships, the Sandinistas did not rely on death squads and massive state terrorism to stay in power. Several opposition parties, both to the left of the Sandinistas and to the right, were on the ballot but the US-funded opposition boycotted the election because they had no chance of winning and did not want to help legitimize the Sandinista regime. The Sandinistas did commit occasional violations of civil liberties, but compared to most other wartime governments had a relatively good record.
In 1986 Nicaragua brought the issue to the World Court. The court ruled in favor of Nicaragua and against the US. It condemned the US for “unlawful use of force” (which is also called international terrorism) and ordered the US to end its terrorist war and pay reparations to Nicaragua. Reagan ignored the ruling and vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling on the US to follow the court’s orders.
The Sandinistas didn’t provide much material support to rebels in neighboring countries, but it did provide inspiration for those attempting to overthrow the US-backed dictatorships that ruled over the region. In El Salvador the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of several different groups with different ideologies (most of which were anti-Soviet), fought a guerilla war against the dictatorship. Reagan supported it with weapons, supplies and training. Sometimes US “advisers” would directly take part in combat. ‘President’ Duarte said in an interview, “the aid is given under such conditions that its use is really decided by the Americans and not by us. Decisions like how many planes or helicopters we buy, how we spend our money, how many trucks we need, how many bullets and of what caliber, how many pairs of boots and where our priorities should be – all of that … and all the money is spent over there. We never even see a penny of it, because everything arrives here already paid for.” Roberto D’Aubuisson, a major death squad leader, told European reporters, “You Germans are very intelligent. You realized that the Jews were responsible for the spread of Communism, and you began to kill them.” In the village of El Mozote US-trained soldiers massacred between 700-1,000 villages, mainly elderly women and children. Victims were raped, beheaded and/or hacked to death by machetes. In 1984 Amnesty international reported that it had received, “regular, often daily, reports identifying El Salvador’s regular security and military units as responsible for the torture, ‘disappearance,’ and killing of non-combatant civilians from all sectors of Salvadoran society.” The government, with Reagan’s support, murdered a least 70,000 civilians.
In 1954 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala because it threatened US domination of the region and interfered with the investments of the United Fruit Company. Over the next several decades several guerilla movements arose against the US-installed dictatorships and several more coups to keep the country under US control. The government viscously suppressed the guerilla movements. One woman, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, testified:
“My 16-year-old brother Patrocino was captured and tortured for several days and then taken with twenty other young men to the square in Chajul … An officer of [President] Lucas Garcia’s army of murderers ordered the prisoners to be paraded in a line. Then he started to insult and threaten the inhabitants of the village, who were forced to come out of their houses to witness the event. I was with my mother, and we saw Patrocino; he had had his tongue cut out and his toes cut off. The officer jackal made a speech. Every time he paused the soldiers beat the Indian prisoners. When he finished his ranting, the bodies of my brother and the other prisoners were swollen, bloody, unrecognizable. It was monstrous, but they were sill alive. They were thrown on the ground and drenched with gasoline. The soldiers set fire to the wretched bodies with torches and the captain laughed like a hyena and forced the inhabitants of Chajul to watch. This was his objective – that they should be terrified and witness the punishment given to the ‘guerillas’.”
These atrocities occurred on a regular basis after the ’54 coup, but that didn’t stop Reagan from supporting Guatemala’s dictatorship. In March 1982 Reagan backed yet another coup. In the next six months 2,600 peasants were massacred and in the next 17 months over 400 villages were destroyed. In 1988 the Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported that Guatemala still had the worst human rights record in Guatemala.
Reagan rationalized this as fighting the "international communist conspiracy." There was no Soviet aggression in Central America, that's the same BS American imperialists said everytime they intervened anywhere, even when their opponets were openly pro-capitalist (like Guatemala '54). In El Salvador the Communist Party was the last major left-wing organization to join the rebels. In Nicaragua the Communist party was opposed to the Sandinista government and ran against them in the elections. The dictatorships Reagan supported were worse than the Sandinistas and no worse than the "oppressive communist experiment" he claimed to be fighting against.
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