In an interview with Aljazeera today, former Chief of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq told the TV that he and the Head of the IAEA “Mohamed Al-Baradei” were subjected to direct threats from Dick Cheney before the war.
Blix said that Cheney threatened to defame both men’s reputations if they didn’t came with the “required” answers.
It’s the same story from everyone else - Bush and Cheney demanded pro-war lies under one threat or another - being defamed, getting fired, and even outing covert CIA operatives. The Bush Administration was nothing more than a mafia operation.
But here’s the good part:
Blix also added that he is ready to be a witness on the United States’ false allegations before an International tribunal.
“It sends a cold shiver down my spine. I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination is terrifying.” ___________________________________________________________________________
The American military is planning to build robot soldiers that will not be able to commit war crimes like their human comrades in arms.
The Pentagon aims to develop ‘ethical’ robot soldiers, unlike the indiscriminate T-800 killers from the Terminator films
The US Army and Navy have both hired experts in the ethics of building machines to prevent the creation of an amoral Terminator-style killing machine that murders indiscriminately.
By 2010 the US will have invested $4 billion in a research programme into “autonomous systems”, the military jargon for robots, on the basis that they would not succumb to fear or the desire for vengeance that afflicts frontline soldiers.
A British robotics expert has been recruited by the US Navy to advise them on building robots that do not violate the Geneva Conventions.
Colin Allen, a scientific philosopher at Indiana University’s has just published a book summarising his views entitled Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “The question they want answered is whether we can build automated weapons that would conform to the laws of war. Can we use ethical theory to help design these machines?”
Pentagon chiefs are concerned by studies of combat stress in Iraq that show high proportions of frontline troops supporting torture and retribution against enemy combatants.
The film was researched by award-winning journalist Najibullah Quraishi.
Produced and directed by Irish filmmaker and former BBC producer Jamie Doran, the film tells the story of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military’s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz.
According to the film, some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison. When the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.- allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds.
Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a mass grave.
Outraged human rights groups and lawyers are calling for an investigation but the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan refuses any U.N.-backed investigation until the Afghan government can protect witnesses. Two of the witnesses in the film have already been killed.
The film provides eyewitness testimony that U.S. troops were complicit in the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners during the Afghan War.
The film has sent shockwaves around the world. It has been broadcast on national television in Britain, Germany, Italy and Australia. It has been screened by the European parliament. It has outraged human rights groups and international human rights lawyers. They are calling for investigation into whether U.S. Special Forces are guilty of war crimes.
But most Americans have never heard of the film. That’s because not one corporate media outlet in the U.S. will touch it. It has never before been broadcast in this country.
“Afghan Massacre” is produced and directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran. Doran is has worked at the highest levels of television film production for more than two decades. His films have been broadcast on virtually every major channel throughout the world. On average, each of his films are seen in around 35 countries. Before establishing his independent television company, Jamie Doran spent over seven years at BBC Television.
The film was researched by award-winning journalist Najibullah Quraishi, who was beaten almost to death when he tried to obtain video evidence of US Special Forces’ complicity in the massacre. Two of the witnesses who testified in the film are now dead.
BBC NEWS: “Fighting between Russia and Georgia began on 7 Augustafter the Georgian military tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force.” (Medvedev: Saakashvili is a political corpse)
As the last of the refugees returned to the war-scarred city of Tskhinval, the horrors they’d experienced while waiting for evacuation are gradually coming to light. A video filmed on a mobile phone, which appears to show Georgian troops firing on civilian buildings, has surfaced on the Internet.
The video was apparently recorded by a Georgian soldier as he manned a machine gun. His cry of ‘Yoo hoo!’ as he fired on the building reminded viewers of ‘a child playing a video game’ - but they were real bullets and real human targets.
An investigation into crimes allegedly committed by Georgian troops is currently underway and the exact number of casualties has yet to be established.
With what moral authority do these mainstays of the neoconservative, corporate elitist, greedy, self-interested Washington regime speak, when in their own closet there are skeletons labelled Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Guantanamo, mass murder, war crimes, illegal invasion, torture, illegal detention, disrespect for international law, denial of due process, rape…?Continue reading »
So you have the colossal audacity, Mr. Bush, to “warn” Russia to pull back? As the wanton, perverse war criminal under whose watch the world saw the crime known as “shock and awe” committed, I’d say you were well out of your mind to suggest that Russia should pull back.
What’s a little shock and awe among inferior people we want to rob and destroy, eh?
What do human beings need an infrastructure for?
Why do they need clean water? Why do they need electricity?
What’s a little torture?
What’s a little regime change? Don’t recall when that was a goal of yours?
What’s a little deviant, perverted sexual experimentation and humiliation?
What’s a few secret detention camps?
What’s wrong with destroying an environment for 4 billion years and generations after generations of people? After all, they’re just rag heads, aren’t they Mr. Bush?
Perhaps when Russia even begins to match your tremendous feats of glory can you speak about pulling back you fool of the worst kind.
A little refugee from South Ossetia, victim to what has to be described as an ethnic
cleansing operation and terror campaign by Georgian troops, advised by the Israeli
military - who undoubtedly shared their experience of terrorizing the Palestinians
over the years. This cold, hard fact is being blatantly ignored by the heavily Zionist
influenced press in the US, who continue to paint Russia as the aggressor and the
Georgians as the innocent victims. [INCOG]
“Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century.” -President Bush Condemns Russia (AP August 10, 2008)
The usual suspects who control the media and politics of the United States are once more lying to the American people and to the world. Here are the facts that can be easily verified within the mainstream media, but are buried beneath the rhetoric of anti-Russianism. -Dr. David Duke
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. ___________________________________________________________________________________
In last weekend’s edition of CounterPunch, Alexander Cockburn updates the ongoing persecution of Sami Al-Arian by federal prosecutors. Al-Arian was a Florida university professor of computer science who was ensnared by the Bush Regime’s need to produce “terrorists” in order to keep Americans fearful and, thereby, amenable to the Bush Regime’s assault on US civil liberties.Continue reading »
The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic lived under US protection after the Dayton peace accords until the CIA intercepted a phone call in which he broke the terms of a “secret deal” to stay out of politics, a Serbian newspaper claims.
