DRANT #325: COLIN POWELL - MSCUMFFYBHN

This is a DRANT from May 2004 about the cowardly treasonous Uncle Tom Squared Colin Powell. There was a time when he had the world in his hands, when he could have simply said "NO" and walked- and the world would have changed. But Cheney and Rove knew their man, they knew they had hired a House Slave, who always worked for the Man, and they were right. Powell did what he always had done- and shucked and jived fo' Massuh. Now comes Remus Powell, to endorse Obama. And comes Obama to rub Powell's head, and promise him a nice warm job in Da Main House. It makes sense. Obama, one of the iconic go-along-to-get-along Oreos in memory, being endorsed by Powell, who- in his zeal to please his bosses, caused the death, poisoning, immolation and forced expulsion of millions- became one of history's great war criminals. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DRANT Number 31 May 5, 2004 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ COLIN POWELL – MSCUMFYBHN BUSINESS AS USUAL Once a Massuh Sucking Covering Up MF Yassuh Boss Oreo House Nigger, ALWAYS a MSCUMFYBHN. Wait a minute don’t tell me. Sounds realllly familiar. Ummmmmmmmmmm. Colin Powell, Seymour Hersh. War crimes, atrocities ummm Hold it, Hold it, it’ll come to me. Sorry, but maybe I have Abuseimers Disease, like Rumsfeld. YES ! Now I remember ! MY LAI ! (That’s in Viet Nam). Aha. 1968. The first REPORT comes to Powell. He smothers it, covers it up, and gets his promotion. Yassuh Boss rides again. All the way to Iraq '91, and those ohsoMANly fatigues on CNN. And you know who OUTED him ? Why Seymour Hersh. And here it is all over again. Horrendous atrocities, lies, covering for The Man. Just like at the UN Security Council, one of the MSCUMFYBHN award winning performances of all time. And then- can you believe this – in JENIN- where Sec of State Colin Magoo testified that he never saw any atrocities or graves. Just like in King George’s office, when he coulda woulda shoulda said NO WAY, and this massacre would never have happened. Just like yesterday sitting on Kofi’s lap and purring to order that Sharon was a cool guy. Let’s take a walk down Memory Lane, and try not to throw up. And one more time- Let’s HEAR IT for HARRY BELAFONTE ! Harry knows a Tom when he sees one, and man did he smell the Tom in Powell. “There's an old saying in the days of slavery. There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master. Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house of the master.” “- - - we have high expectations. Necessarily for those who come from color, who come from a history of oppression, or at least an understanding of it. And what we would hope is that people who come from that experience would use it effectively to change the way in which others do business in the world of oppression.” H Belafonte on CNN Larry King show October 15, 2002 And speaking of Larry King, which I never do General MSCUMFYBHN his seff was on last night. In the best tradition of Steppen Fetchit he said: "In war, these sorts of horrible things happen every now and again, but they're still to be deplored," he said. "It's a fairly small number of soldiers. Let's not let that take away from the magnificent contributions being made by most of our soldiers." "We will deal with this by telling the people of the world that this is an isolated incident." Business as usual for Colin Powell. Here is what General OREO, then just a Major, said in defense of My Lai: "There may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs," Powell wrote in 1968. But "this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the Division." Business as usual for Colin Powell. Here is a direct quote from Powell’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY: “- - -We burned the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters ... Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said people were like the sea in which his guerillas swam. We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference does it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?" Behind Colin Powell's Legend -- My Lai THE CONSORTIUM (c) Copyright 1996 http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html By Robert Parry & Norman Solomon On May 16, 1968, a bloodied unit of the Americal division stormed into a hamlet known as My Lai 4. With military helicopters circling overhead, revenge-seeking American soldiers rousted Vietnamese civilians -- mostly old men, women and children -- from their thatched huts and herded them into the village's irrigation ditches. As the round-up continued, some Americans raped the girls. Then, under orders from junior officers on the ground, soldiers began emptying their M-16s into the terrified peasants. Some parents desperately used their bodies to try to shield their children from the bullets. Soldiers stepped among the corpses to finish off the wounded. The slaughter raged for four hours. A total of 347 Vietnamese, including babies, died in the carnage that would stain the reputation of the U.S. Army. But there also were American heroes that day in My Lai. Some soldiers refused to obey the direct orders to kill. A pilot named Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. from Stone Mountain, Ga., was furious at the killings he saw happening on the ground. He landed his helicopter between one group of fleeing civilians and American soldiers in pursuit. Thompson ordered his helicopter door gunner to shoot the Americans if they tried to harm the Vietnamese. After a tense confrontation, the soldiers backed off. Later, two of Thompson's men climbed into one ditch filled with corpses and pulled out a three-year-old boy whom they flew to safety. A Pattern of Brutality While a horrific example of a Vietnam war crime, the My Lai massacre was not unique. It fit a long pattern of indiscriminate violence against civilians that had marred U.S. participation in the Vietnam War from its earliest days when Americans acted primarily as advisers. In 1963, Capt. Colin Powell was one of those advisers, serving a first tour with a South Vietnamese army unit. Powell's detachment sought to discourage support for the Viet Cong by torching villages throughout the A Shau Valley. While other U.S. advisers protested this countrywide strategy as brutal and counter-productive, Powell defended the "drain-the-sea" approach then -- and continued that defense in his 1995 memoirs, My American Journey. (See The Consortium, July 8) After his first one-year tour and a series of successful training assignments in the United States, Maj. Powell returned for his second Vietnam tour on July 27, 1968. This time, he was no longer a junior officer slogging through the jungle, but an up-and-coming staff officer assigned to the Americal division. By late 1968, Powell had jumped over more senior officers into the important post of G-3, chief of operations for division commander, Maj. Gen. Charles Gettys, at Chu Lai. Powell had been "picked by Gen. Gettys over several lieutenant colonels for the G-3 job itself, making me the only major filling that role in Vietnam," Powell wrote in his memoirs. But a test soon confronted Maj. Powell. A letter had been written by a young specialist fourth class named Tom Glen, who had served in an Americal mortar platoon and was nearing the end of his Army tour. In a letter to Gen. Creighton Abrams, the commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam, Glen accused the Americal division of routine brutality against civilians. Glen's letter was forwarded to the Americal headquarters at Chu Lai where it landed on Maj. Powell's desk. "The average GI's attitude toward and treatment of the Vietnamese people all too often is a complete denial of all our country is attempting to accomplish in the realm of human relations," Glen wrote. "Far beyond merely dismissing the Vietnamese as 'slopes' or 'gooks,' in both deed and thought, too many American soldiers seem to discount their very humanity; and with this attitude inflict upon the Vietnamese citizenry humiliations, both psychological and physical, that can have only a debilitating effect upon efforts to unify the people in loyalty to the Saigon government, particularly when such acts are carried out at unit levels and thereby acquire the aspect of sanctioned policy." Glen's letter contended that many Vietnamese were fleeing from Americans who "for mere pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves." Gratuitous cruelty was also being inflicted on Viet Cong suspects, Glen reported. "Fired with an emotionalism that belies unconscionable hatred, and armed with a vocabulary consisting of 'You VC,' soldiers commonly 'interrogate' by means of torture that has been presented as the particular habit of the enemy. Severe beatings and torture at knife point are usual means of questioning captives or of convincing a suspect that he is, indeed, a Viet Cong... "It would indeed be terrible to find it necessary to believe that an American soldier that harbors such racial intolerance and disregard for justice and human feeling is a prototype of all American national character; yet the frequency of such soldiers lends credulity to such beliefs. ... What has been outlined here I have seen not only in my own unit, but also in others we have worked with, and I fear it is universal. If this is indeed the case, it is a problem which cannot be overlooked, but can through a more firm implementation of the codes of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) and the Geneva Conventions, perhaps be eradicated." Glen's letter echoed some of the complaints voiced by early advisers, such as Col. John Paul Vann, who protested the self-defeating strategy of treating Vietnamese civilians as the enemy. In 1995, when we questioned Glen about his letter, he said he had heard second-hand about the My Lai massacre, though he did not mention it specifically. The massacre was just one part of the abusive pattern that had become routine in the division, he said. Maj. Powell's Response The letter's troubling allegations were not well received at American headquarters. Maj. Powell undertook the assignment to review Glen's letter, but did so without questioning Glen or assigning anyone else to talk with him. Powell simply accepted a claim from Glen's superior officer that Glen was not close enough to the front lines to know what he was writing about, an assertion Glen denies. After that cursory investigation, Powell drafted a response on Dec. 13, 1968. He admitted to no pattern of wrongdoing. Powell claimed that U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were taught to treat Vietnamese courteously and respectfully. The Americal troops also had gone through an hour-long course on how to treat prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, Powell noted. "There may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs," Powell wrote in 1968. But "this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the Division." Indeed, Powell's memo faulted Glen for not complaining earlier and for failing to be more specific in his letter. Powell reported back exactly what his superiors wanted to hear. "In direct refutation of this [Glen's] portrayal," Powell concluded, "is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." Powell's findings, of course, were false. But it would take another Americal hero, an infantryman named Ron Ridenhour, to piece together the truth about the atrocity at My Lai. After returning to the United States, Ridenhour interviewed Americal comrades who had participated in the massacre. On his own, Ridenhour compiled this shocking information into a report and forwarded it to the Army inspector general. The IG's office conducted an aggressive official investigation and the Army finally faced the horrible truth. Courts martial were held against officers and enlisted men implicated in the murder of the My Lai civilians. But Powell's peripheral role in the My Lai cover-up did not slow his climb up the Army's ladder. Powell pleaded ignorance about the actual My Lai massacre, which pre-dated his arrival at the Americal. Glen's letter disappeared into the National Archives -- to be unearthed only years later by British journalists Michael Bilton and Kevin Sims for their book Four Hours in My Lai. In his best-selling memoirs, Powell did not mention his brush-off of Tom Glen's complaint. MAM Hunts Powell did include, however, a troubling recollection that belied his 1968 official denial of Glen's allegation that American soldiers "without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves." After mentioning the My Lai massacre in My American Journey, Powell penned a partial justification of the Americal's brutality. In a chilling passage, Powell explained the routine practice of murdering unarmed male Vietnamese. "I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age male," Powell wrote. "If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so. But an able battalion commander with whom I had served at Gelnhausen (West Germany), Lt. Col. Walter Pritchard, was killed by enemy sniper fire while observing MAMs from a helicopter. And Pritchard was only one of many. The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong." While it's certainly true that combat is brutal, mowing down unarmed civilians is not combat. It is, in fact, a war crime. Neither can the combat death of a fellow soldier be cited as an excuse to murder civilians. Disturbingly, that was precisely the rationalization that the My Lai killers cited in their own defense. But returning home from Vietnam a second time in 1969, Powell had proved himself the consummate team player. My Lai Massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre The My Lai massacre (pronounced "Me Lie") was a massacre of hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War. It prompted widespread outrage around the world and may have helped end public support for the war in the United States. Initial investigations of My Lai were undertaken by the 11th Brigade's CO, Col Oran Henderson, under orders from Americal's Ass't CO, BG Young. Six months later a young soldier of the 11th Light Infantry (The Butcher's Brigade) named Tom Glen, wrote a letter accusing the Americal division (and other entire units of the US military, not just individuals) of routine brutality against Vietnamese civilians; the letter was detailed, its allegations horrifying, and its contents echoed complaints received from other soldiers. Colin Powell, then a young US Army Major, was charged with investigating the massacre. Powell wrote: "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." Later, Powell's refutation would be called an act of "white-washing" the news of the Massacre, and questions would continue to remain undisclosed to the public. Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai story on November 12, 1969 and on November 20 The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) published explicit photographs of dead villagers killed at My Lai. The carnage at My Lai would have gone unknown in history if not for another soldier who, independent of Glen, sent a letter to his Congressman. Courts martial Ron Ridenhour learned about the events at My Lai second-hand, by talking to members of Charlie Company. He then appealed to Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon and eventually got Calley charged with murder in September 1969. It was another two months before the American public learned about the massacre. On March 17, 1970 the United States Army charged 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident. American Army Lt. William Calley was convicted in 1971 of premeditated murder in ordering the shootings and initially sentenced to life in prison; two days later, however, President Richard Nixon ordered him released from prison. Calley served 3½ years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia and was then ordered freed by a federal judge. Calley claimed that he was following orders from his captain, Ernest Medina: Medina denied giving the orders and was acquitted. There were no other convictions. Seymour Hersh published a story after discussions with Ron Ridenhour. The Powell Doctrine: Baghdad/Jenin/My Lai by Heather Wokusch August 17, 2002 http://www.antiwar.com/orig/wokusch4.html “- - - Back home, flag-waving hysteria followed Operation Desert Storm to its climax, and returning conquerors, including then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, were feted as national heroes. Minor glitch. A few months later it was revealed that actually 100,000 to 200,000 Iraqis, many of them unarmed civilians, had died during the six-week attack, including tens of thousands mowed down in aerial assaults as they were trying to flee along what became nicknamed "The Highway of Death." Equating civilians and combatants is integral to "The Powell Doctrine" which recommends using overwhelming force on the enemy, regardless of civilian casualties. In his autobiography, Colin Powell discusses the Vietnam War and explains the benefits of destroying the food and homes of villagers who might sympathize with the Viet Cong: "We burned the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters ... Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said people were like the sea in which his guerillas swam. We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference does it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?" - - - Fast forward to April 2002, and having risen to Secretary of State, Colin Powell reported to a US congressional panel about his visit to the Jenin refugee camp, site of a recent Israeli attack. Powell testified, "I've seen no evidence of mass graves ... no evidence that would suggest a massacre took place ... Clearly people died in Jenin - people who were terrorists died in Jenin - and in the prosecution of that battle innocent lives may well have been lost." In the same vein, Amnesty International issued a short release stating that while it appeared "serious breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed ... only an independent international commission of inquiry can establish the full facts and the scale of these violations." For its part, the White House also claimed more facts were needed, and then Bush called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a "man of peace." So in essence, the whole Jenin attack would need to be swept under the carpet because (since Israel had not allowed a UN investigation and NGOs had come up with very little) there was not enough solid information to support accusations. Minor glitch. Unmentioned is the fact that the US military, under the auspices of learning about urban warfare, had accompanied the Israeli military on its attack on Jenin (Marine Corps Times, 5-3-2002). Or the fact that dozens of foreign journalists witnessed 30 Palestinian corpses being buried in a mass grave right near the hospital. Or the fact that local hospital personnel describe seeing the Israeli military loading other corpses "into a refrigerated semi-trailer, and taking them out of Jenin" (which would answer the question posed in Amnesty's release, "What was striking is what was absent. There were very few bodies in the hospital. There were also none who were seriously injured, only the 'walking wounded'. Thus we have to ask: where are the bodies and where are the seriously injured?''). Moral of the story? Truth is often the first casualty of war. Before we hang our hopes on heroes or unquestioningly believe what we hear from even the most reliable sources, we need to dig deeper to find the real story. Second, while the US was appropriate to be outraged at the targeting of its civilians in the September 11 attacks, we should extend that outrage to scenarios in which our government targets, or is complicit in targeting, civilians elsewhere. CNN LARRY KING LIVE Interview with Harry Belafonte Aired October 15, 2002 - 21:00 ET HARRY BELAFONTE, ACTIVIST: There's an old saying in the days of slavery. There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master. Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house of the master. - - -Last year, in South Africa, the United Nations under Kofi Annan gave us an excellent opportunity in convening the International Conference on Racism directed by a woman of remarkable credentials, the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson. There was a place where the United States should have been in attendance, and given us the benefit of thought on a very grievous set of conditions that affect the human family -- the issue of race. And in that instance, the United States government sought to turn its back on the thousands of people who were gathered there to make a difference. And Colin Powell was the point person on that distancing of our country. KING: What did you want him to do? What do you want him to do? BELAFONTE: I would like him to live up to a higher moral standard. - - - Where is Colin Powell's conscience ? CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=6228 IRAQ The Unread Report The news is filled today with the ongoing allegations of abuse in Iraqi prisons. The NYT reports, "In the last 16 months, the Army has conducted more than 30 criminal investigations into misconduct by American captors in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 10 cases of suspicious death, 10 cases of abuse, and two deaths already determined to have been criminal homicides, the Army's vice chief of staff said Tuesday." The U.S.-appointed Human Rights Minister in Baghdad, Abdul-Basat al-Turki, said yesterday "he had resigned to protest abuses by American guards." He claims he is stepping down "not only because I believe that the use of violence is a violation of human rights but also because these methods in the prisons means that the violations are a common act." According to the Financial Times, "It has become commonplace for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to assert that the insurgents are enemies of democracy, but it is the US that most Iraqis see as anti-democratic. This is a disastrous image for a nation that waged a war promising freedom and democracy." This underscores one dramatic fact: the United States has lost credibility and needs to act to restore it immediately. RESTORING CREDIBILITY: The new strategy put forward by American Progress calls for the U.S.-administered prison system to be opened up to international inspections as one step towards restoring lost credibility. A permanent committee to monitor prison conditions should be established and the new Iraqi Ministry of the Interior should keep a centralized database of all detainees in Iraqi prisons. THE UNREAD REPORT: The NYT writes, "the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House had difficulty explaining why they had not acted earlier and more aggressively to deal with the abuse." One reason: No one wants to admit to having read the report. According to the LA Times, the White House has known about the investigation since December. The report was completed in February. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers called Dan Rather at CBS three weeks before the story ran and asked the network to hold it; this past Sunday, questioned on Face the Nation, Myers admitted he still hadn't read the report himself. Two days after Myers's admission, President Bush still hadn't read the report and his press secretary attempted to shield him, claiming the president "only become aware of the photographs and the Pentagon's main internal report about the incidents from news reports last week." And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, commenting on the report for the first time yesterday, said while he'd seen a summary and recommendations from the investigation, he hadn't read the full report. The report is 53 pages. It is available online. What are they waiting for? KEPT IN THE DARK: The NYT reports the State Department is frustrated that the Pentagon knew about the report weeks ago, knew about the abuse allegations, knew that it was about to become public, yet did not tell the State Department. U.S. lawmakers are also incensed at having been kept in the dark about the report. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said, "It's a neglect of the responsibilities that Secretary Rumsfeld and the civilian leaders of the Pentagon to keep the Congress informed." Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) said, "It's been a month since that report has been available. It should have been sent to this committee immediately." And Senator John W. Warner (R-VA) Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, "said the Pentagon should have informed Congress earlier. He said he would summon Mr. Rumsfeld to testify in a public hearing as soon as possible." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~