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Appeasement or Cover-up
by cleaves Friday, Oct 28 2005, 3:38pm
international / social/political / commentary

Bush has announced that Libby is “innocent until proven guilty”, one law applies for disgraced officials while another for the Australian, David Hicks (and many others) who have been denied even the most basic human rights (while they rot for years in illegal detention centres around the world). Should we cite the flagrant double standard or rest in the assurance that a glaring hypocrisy and double standard would not pass unnoticed?

The behaviour of the Bush administration at present equals the bizarre antics of characters in a popular English fairytale. Do Bush and Cheney (in wonderland) actually believe that populations across the globe are unable to discern the obvious double standard and injustice they represent? The selective awareness of neo-conservatives under pressure would be amusing if not for the needless deaths, torture and other tragic circumstances they have imposed on innocents.

Those responsible for fabricating the fictions that led to the illegal invasion of Iraq have been exposed on numerous previous occasions. Information in this regard has been freely available for the past two years and is now a matter of public record. Should we question the delay in taking action against two individuals when we can name the principal architects and advisers involved, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, Kissinger, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rove to name the most culpable? Is the (scapegoat) action against Libby a feeble attempt at appeasement or a political manoeuvre in the face of mounting pressure and a shift in public opinion?

‘Cover-up’, is often heard in pressrooms and galleries since the Libby indictment. Would anyone doubt that Libby ‘fell on his sword’ in order to save those in higher positions? In this instance speculation has a greater degree of integrity than that which we are led to believe by those who dread the dock at the ICC.

Regardless of the outcome of the Libby case the above named individuals will find it difficult to avoid the dock at the Hague in the future. The public is not duped for long and the people will not be taken for granted. Take note Wolfowitz, Perle and others who think their current positions outside the Administration provides some form of immunity.

Of special interest to analysts is the behaviour of the US mass media in view of the Libby indictment. It is too late to feign impartiality and start asking the hard questions of those who should have been ‘grilled’ on a daily basis. It is not rediscovering integrity that awakens you to doing your job impartially; it is the fact that you have lost credibility and readership. You are slowly being displaced by those outlets and sources that cried foul two years ago – the Independents. Your partisanship regarding the Bush regime and the resulting compromise of the ‘impartiality of the press’ condemns you to your fate as a third rate source of information. We thank you for taking your readership for granted – once lost extremely difficult to retrieve.

Some peace and stability may return to the world when all those responsible for the Iraq intervention find themselves defending their actions at the Hague. The ICC was created for precisely that purpose – use it!