- DETROIT -- President George
W. Bush has created an atmosphere of unparalleled distrust toward the
United
States as people from places around the globe now shudder when he makes
increasingly frequent declarations about his "vision" for the
world. From avowed enemies to longtime allies and even our closest
neighbors,
open hostility toward the United States is epidemic.
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- People who once looked toward America with admiration
and respect and as a beacon for liberty and civility now see a supremely
arrogant rogue nation that holds international law and institutions in
disdain.
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- George W. Bush and the neocon crazies who pull his
strings,
led by Vice President Dick Cheney, have created this reality and an
indelible
image and ignominious legacy that will take generations to erase.
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- Every day, we see Bush's high and hamhanded arrogance
toward the rest of the world. The bullying and unipolar madness are
despicable
qualities more suitable for 19th-century British colonialism and
20th-century
Stalinism than the behavior of a great nation.
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- We do as we please, never accept responsibility for
failed
policies and routinely duck accountability for the tragic mistakes and
miscalculations of our military machine. The president's cavalier assurance
-- his substitute for true leadership -- the righteousness of his messianic
mission and the infallibility of his strategies foster a sense of national
supremacy that is as wrong as it is dangerous.
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- The death of Italian secret service agent Nicola Calipari
has outraged an ally and generated even more hostility toward the United
States. Calipari heroically protected the life of Giuliana Sgrena, the
journalist he had just helped free from her Iraqi captors.
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- With few facts available, U.S. military commanders
quickly
defended the troops who fired hundreds of rounds into the car carrying
Calipari and Sgrena to the Baghdad airport. It was all justified and the
Italians were blamed for the tragedy. A chorus of retired generals on the
payrolls of cable news networks echoed the same fact-devoid conclusion
-- whatever our troops did was provoked and our flawless intelligence made
no mistakes about the passengers in the approaching car.
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- But Giuliana Sgrena, the only eyewitness speaking on
the record, tells an entirely different story. The Italian and U.S.
versions
of the events are radically opposed.
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- Italian intelligence told U.S. authorities Sgrena had
been freed as she was being hurried to the airport for a flight to Rome.
The U.S. military authorities say they didn't know a thing about her
release.
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- They say the car was traveling at a high rate of speed
-- estimated to be over 100 mph -- did not stop at a checkpoint and warning
shots and lights were unheeded. Sgrena says the car was traveling at
moderate
speed and there was no checkpoint, no warning shots or lights. Somebody
is very wrong.
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- I don't believe for a moment U.S. troops were
deliberately
targeting the Italians, but the unending instability in Iraq breeds
fear-inspired
trigger-happiness and recklessness. This week, as we mark the second year
since the U.S. invasion, Iraq remains in bloody chaos and the overstretched
troops make plenty of mistakes every day with Iraqi civilians, and more
than a few Americans in uniforms commit acts of murder and
brutality.
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- Calipari's death and the wounding of Sgrena caused more
furor because, instead of nameless Iraqis, this incident struck well-known
Europeans.
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- The Italian people were torn from the euphoria over
Sgrena's
release to the searing anguish of Calipari's death. The Italian media
reported
on the anger and outrage on the streets and the sense people have there
that the United States will shrug off the incident as one of those things
that are unavoidable in war.
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- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who usually
defends his friend George W. Bush, rejected the U.S. account of the
incident
and demanded an investigation and answers. The Italians are skeptical and
for good reason.
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- They will never forget the 1998 incident when a U.S.
Marine pilot's jet sliced through a ski gondola cable, sending 20 people
plunging to their deaths. Capt. Richard Ashby was charged with involuntary
manslaughter and was accused of recklessly flying his EA-6B Prowler jet
on the training mission in the Italian Alps.
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- The prosecution in the military trial argued Ashby was
getting his machismo kicks "flat-hatting" -- flying too low and
too fast -- when the aircraft cut the cable. People in the area long had
complained that pilots from the NATO base in Aviano, Italy, engaged in
dangerous "Top Gun" antics.
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- Ashby testified under cross-examination that he ignored
Marine flight procedures during the flight and admitted adjusting his
altitude
warning device from the prescribed minimum of 1,000 feet to 800 feet
because,
he said, "you don't want the thing going off
continuously."
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- Ashby and his navigator also faced an obstruction of
justice charge because of the mysterious disappearance of a videotape the
navigator made of the fatal flight. Ashby blamed malfunctioning equipment
and poor maps for the tragedy. The Marine Corps jury acquitted the Marine
Corps flight crew on all charges.
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- A member of the Italian Parliament, Achille Occhetto,
said, "In the face of many dead, and such clear responsibility, this
verdict is an act of arrogance and prevarication."
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- The Pentagon's typical tendency with controversial
incidents
is to lie, deny, cover up and create myths. This is nothing new, but the
Bush administration has encouraged new depths of military deception,
further
eroding our national credibility with friends and providing our enemies
with convenient propaganda.
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- Bush has fostered an attitude where the United States
acts as though it is not responsible for terrible deeds and is immune from
international accountability. Bush proclaims and the world is supposed
to bow in fealty.
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- The Canadians bucked our demand that they join in a North
American missile shield and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice petulantly
canceled a planned trip to Canada. Tests on the "Star Wars"
system
have failed repeatedly, but Bush is adamant about proceeding with the
project
that will provide billions of dollars to his cherished military
contractors.
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- Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said Ottawa will
not support the "weaponization of space." That remark sparked
a hissy-fit from Paul Celluci, U.S. ambassador to Canada. He said the
decision
"stunned" him and accused the Canadians of giving up their
sovereignty.
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- Celluci is a third-rate political hack from Massachusetts
posing as a diplomat, whose knowledge of Canada extends to hockey and maple
syrup. He publicly insulted the Canadians for their refusal to support
the war in Iraq.
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- The Canadians did, however, send troops to Afghanistan
and some died there in a friendly fire incident that still outrages many
Canadians. A U.S. fighter pilot mistakenly bombed Canadians training near
the Kandahar airport, killing four and wounding eight.
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- Maj. Harry Schmidt was charged initially with
manslaughter
and aggravated assault, but the charges were reduced to dereliction of
duty. He was flying an Illinois Air National Guard F-16 over Afghanistan
when, according to his account, he thought he was under attack. The
Canadian
troop was below in a recognized training zone drilling with live
ammunition.
They were not firing in the air.
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- Schmidt requested permission to fire at the flashes he
saw and an air controller explicitly ordered him to "hold fire."
Schmidt instead dropped a 500-pound bomb, killing the Canadian
troops.
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- A U.S. military inquiry found Schmidt "acted
shamefully
on April 17, 2002, over Tarnak Farms, Afghanistan, exhibiting arrogance
and lack of flight discipline." He was found guilty of dereliction
of duty but only fined $5,000.
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- Maureen Decaire, whose son Brian was killed, told the
Toronto Star, "I would like to see him accept responsibility, which
I don't think has happened." Taking responsibility is not a big deal
in George W. Bush's world, especially if it gets in your way.
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- That's what our neighbors in Mexico learned when the
United States withdrew from a world judicial body after it ordered new
hearings for 51 Mexicans on Death Row in the United States.
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- The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations gives people
arrested abroad the right to contact their home countries' embassies or
consulates. The United States signed the protocol to protect its own
citizens.
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- The treaty gives the International Court of Justice in
the Hague -- the World Court -- the final say in cases in which foreign
citizens claim their access to their own consulates was denied.
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- The World Court ruled last year that the Mexican
nationals
were not given the treaty protection and required American state courts
to grant "review and reconsideration" to claims that their cases
had been hurt because local authorities failed to allow them to contact
their consulates.
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- The decision would not get the inmates off Death Row.
It only required a hearing. But the Busheviks would have none of that.
How dare anyone tell us what to do! We'll just withdraw from the protocol.
Peter J. Spiro, an international law professor from the University of
Georgia,
told The New York Times that the United States' behavior was "a
sore-loser
kind of move," saying, "If we can't win, we're not going to
play."
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- Ironically, the United States was the first nation to
invoke the protocol when Iran took 52 American hostages at our embassy
in Tehran in 1978 and the World Court upheld the U.S. position.
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- The nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations trumpets George W. Bush's disdain for international law
and amounts to giving the world community of nations his middle
finger.
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- Bolton, whose thinking was conceived in some wild neocon
mating festival, despises what the UN stands for and once said there should
be only one permanent seat on the Security Council -- occupied, of course,
by the United States.
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- Bush has brought back his old handler and confidante
Karen Hughes to try to polish the nation's tarnished image abroad. Hughes
is very skilled in imagery, having helped a dry-drunk, intellectually lazy,
mediocre Texas governor become president.
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- Bush has nominated her to become Undersecretary of State
for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Her job will be to spin a positive
image of his warped world view.
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- That's a formidable task anywhere, but especially outside
the United States, where people do more than watch the cable news networks
and listen to Rush Limbaugh to understand George W. Bush's pitiful stature
in the world.
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- - Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former
Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His
e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@sbcglobal.net.
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- http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/gallagher205.html
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