[Peace-discuss] Bully-boy brags about assassinations

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The is from the political writer Richard Reeves at the Brookings
Institution, which Sam Husseini called "The Establishment's Think Tank";
the Stephen Cohen referred to was a right-wing member of the UIUC faculty
and the head of ACDIS. --CGE]


...The hidden war, a bit of it, had come home to Brookings, here on
Massachusetts Avenue, only the day before, the day of Bush's address to
the nation. A prominent Pakistani editor and scholar, Ejaz Haider, was
stopped by two armed men in plainclothes as he walked into the Brookings
building for a conference on immigration law and law enforcement. The men
identified themselves as agents of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service and took Haider away to jail in Virginia.

"We were stunned," said Stephen Cohen, the director of Brookings' South
Asia program, which employed Haider. "I never thought I'd see this in my
own country: people grabbed on the street and taken away. If he hadn't
come into the building to show the agents some notes, it is not clear we
would have known where he was."

Haider, who may have been in violation of an INS regulation requiring
visitors to contact the service if they stay in the United States for more
than 30 days, is a very lucky man. Among other things, he happens to be a
personal friend of Pakistan's foreign minister, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri,
who happened to be meeting with Attorney General John Ashcroft that same
day. Kasuri demanded to know where Haider was and why he had been picked
up.

The scholar was released. Kasuri said later: "If that is the sort of
person that can be nabbed, then no one is safe."

Yes. Haider could have disappeared in the American prisons and prison
camps that are hidden in the small print of the great war against
terrorism. Or he could have been executed without trial or mention.

Oh, you don't think that happens here? Americans don't do such things?

If so, then you were not watching and listening carefully to the president
last Tuesday night. I literally leaped out of my seat when Bush said this:

"To date we have arrested, or otherwise dealt with, many key commanders of
al-Qaida. ... All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been
arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's
put it this way, they are no longer a problem to the United States and our
friends and allies."

In other words, Americans are out there murdering "suspected" terrorists.
And the president smirked and almost wink-winked with pleasure. He was
bragging about American assassinations.

I wrote a book once about a president who was assassinated, John F.
Kennedy. I am often asked if I have a theory about his murder. And I do.
In those days, the U.S. government, at the highest level, was in the
assassination business. Fidel Castro was the most obvious target, but
there were others. Sudden political murder was in the air. In that
environment, Lee Harvey Oswald was among those, including an organization
called Fair Play for Cuba, who were frantically talking of American plots.

However it began, it ended when our president was the one gunned down. And
when you think of it, the president of a free country is at much more risk
than dictators in police states.

There is also the question of superpower. When you have the weapons and
capabilities that the United States has, it is stupid to reduce war and
threat to one man with a rifle. Assassination is the weapon of the weak;
it is a very dangerous business and ultimately a foolish one for the free
and the strong.

COPYRIGHT 2003 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE


Originally Published on January-30-2003