[Peace-discuss] Letter to N-G

[C. G. Estabrook]

Although the News-Gazette hosts one of the few local examples of political 
conversation - its letters page - they refuse for reasons of penury or 
timorousness to post the letters on their website.

The following advisory to their editor ran in today's edition. Constant readers 
will notice that it is an edited version of Chomsky's remarks, posted here 
earlier.  --CGE

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To the editor, News-Gazette:


The Obama administration clearly planned to assassinate Osama bin Laden,
contrary to the most elementary principles of international law - as the rest of
the world recognizes.

What would we say if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound,
assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic? Without a doubt, his
crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s. Bush was the self-proclaimed “decider” who
gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime, differing only from
other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal), for which Nazi criminals were hanged.
Bush is responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of
refugees, destruction of much of the country, and the bitter sectarian conflict
that has now spread to the rest of the region.

The Obama administration obviously had no plan to apprehend the unarmed Osama 
bin Laden - easily done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition. In
societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and
brought to fair trial. (In 2001, the US refused to show evidence to the
government of Afghanistan that Osama was responsible for 9/11 - as the director
of the FBI admitted, because they didn't have any.) Thus Obama was simply lying
when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the
9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Not for the first time, Obama ordered an illegal extra-judicial execution.


Sincerely,

Carl G. Estabrook