It couldn't happen to a nicer guy

Almost 8 years after the criminal invasion of Iraq, one of its architects is finally facing criminal charges. But sadly, its not for war crimes, but for corruption. Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney has been charged with bribery in Nigeria over a $US182 million bribery scandal which happened during his former career as CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton has already admitted to the crime in the USA, and paid $US177 million to settle the case with the SEC (because obviously, they couldn't possibly send wealthy executives to jail for corporate malfeasance - just punish their shareholders instead!). But the Nigerians, its actual victims, want justice too. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy...

America's death squads

Over the weekend a scandal erupted in Washington over the revelation that then-Vice president Dick Cheney had illegally ordered the CIA not to brief Congress on a special operations programme. That is enough for careers to end and people to go to jail, but today it got worse, when the nature of that secret programme was revealed: death squads:

Former counter-terrorism officials who retain close links to the intelligence community say that the hidden operation involved plans by the CIA and the military to launch operations, similar to those by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, to hunt down and kill al-Qaida activists abroad without informing the governments concerned, even though some were regarded as friendly if unreliable.

The CIA apparently did not put the plan in to operation but the US military did, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the programme.

The plan was apparently intended to apply to "friendly countries that don't want to co-operate or maybe we don't have enough confidence to entrust them with information" - in other words, countries with laws against murder who are unwilling (or unable, because they are democratic and have independent police and media) to look the other way when people are shot execution-style or blown to bits in a car-bomb. Countries like the UK. You can see why Congress would be concerned about that.

The proper response to terrorism is a legal one: arrest, prosecution, and trial. It is only the pathological secrecy of spies - their refusal to put their "evidence" before the courts - which prevents this. But their preferred methods - rendition, torture, death squads - simply incite more terrorism. Which suggests that we should really be prosecuting the CIA as accessories...

Voting to end the war III

The US Congress has set a deadline for the US to withdraw from Iraq. Both the Senate and the House passed the Iraq supplemental funding bill through its final stages today, and both voted to make continued funding of the war contingent on troop withdrawals beginning by October and complete by 31 March 2008. Bush is of course blustering about a veto, but as the withdrawal plan is contained in the very bill funding the war, he will be playing chicken with his troop's salaries (and suplies). While the Democrats don't have the numbers to overcome a veto, nothing is stopping them from waiting two months to add a sense of urgency, then again passing a bill which again makes funding contingent - or not passing one at all. In short, with COngress holding the purse strings, this is not a fight Bush can win.

Meanwhile, Congressman Dennis Kucinich has submitted articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney, charging that he manipulated intelligence to fabricate the threat of Iraqi WMD, deceived Congress about the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and undermined the national security of the US by threatening Iran. It has no hope of success - impeachment requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which the Dems just don't have - but these are "high crimes and misdemeanours", more so if you accept the joke of the Clinton impeachment (Clinton lied about his sex life, which was no-one else's business anyway; Cheney lied his way onto a war. Quite a difference there). The charges deserve a thorough going over, and even if the vote fails in the end, it will be an important step towards holding the Bush Administration to account.