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November
1, 2006
Don't Look Too Closely
Bush's
Record on Anti-Terrorism
By SAUL LANDAU
President George W. Bush has promoted
himself as single-mindedly tough on terrorists and those who
protect them. "We make no distinction between those who
committed these acts and those who harbor them," he told
the nation on September 11, 2001. But Muslims or Arab suspects
with no evidence or charges against them generally get "rendered"
to other nations or Guantanamo while anti-Castro terrorists who
destroyed an airplane with passengers aboard get kid glove treatment.
The most dramatic example of Bush coddling Castro-hating terrorists
involves Luis Posada Carriles. On October 6, 1976, agents working
for Posada and Orlando Bosch, another hate screaming anti Castroite,
planted a bomb on a Cuban commercial plane and blew it up shortly
after it took off from Barbados. All 73 passengers and crew members
perished. Thirty years later, Posada sits in an El Paso jail
cell. Since his airliner "success" he went on to add
new notches to his terrorist gun including an attempted
assassination of Fidel Castro in Panama in 1999.
When Posada illegally entered the United States last year, Homeland
Security agents ignored him until he held a press conference.
Then, embarrassed that they had not grabbed him when he entered
the country without a visa, they gently arrested him and charged
him with "illegal entry." Washington has since refused
to answer Venezuela's request to extradite him to the place where
he plotted the airliner bombing. The excuse accepted by the El
Paso judge for not considering Venezuela was that Venezuela might
torture him; ironic in light of Bush authorizing torture for
terrorist suspects this October.
Compare the way Homeland Security handled Posada with the case
of Maher Arar. In 2002, officials arrested Arar when he landed
at JFK airport in New York, to change planes on his way to Canada
where he lived. U.S. immigration authorities placed the Syrian-born
Canadian citizen and software engineer on a plane. Before boarding
the aircraft he had demanded from U.S. authorities his rights
to a lawyer, to hear charges against him as established by international
law. The official told him: "The INS is not the body or
the agency that signed the Geneva Convention against torture."
Hearing he was bound for Syria, Arar says he foresaw torture.
Canadian police had previously informed U.S. officials that Arar
was "an Islamic extremist suspected of being linked to the
al-Qaida terrorist network." U.S. officials didn't ask Canada
to verify the data, however. Indeed, a Canadian inquiry completed
in September 2006 found that days before the U.S. rendered Arar
to Syria, Canadian police had advised the FBI that they possessed
no definitive evidence of Arar's links to terrorist groups. Yet,
Arar remained in solitary confinement and was tortured at the
behest of Washington for almost a year. Flimsy suspicion based
on one Canadian report and countered by another provided Homeland
Security with sufficient motive to deport Arar and request that
Syria torture him.
The September, 2006, thousand page Canadian Commission report
on the Arar case concluded that Canadian officials had not been
informed of the U.S. decision to send Arar to Syria. The commission
found no evidence that Canadian officials participated in or
agreed to the decision to send Arar to Syria.
Arar now back in Canada and still suffering the after effects
of his torture feels understandably bitter about his experience.
A man who had no terrorist connection, much less a history of
violence, compares his treatment to the anti-Castro Cubans who
boasted of their murderous achievements. Indeed, in the case
of the airline bombing, the CIA had information that could have
helped stop the sabotage.
According to declassified documents published by the National
Security Archives, in September 1976, Luis Posada Carriles, who
had worked with the CIA even before the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion
of Cuba and had gotten even more specialized CIA training subsequently,
told the Agency that he intended to destroy a Cuban passenger
jet. Thirty years ago, no one inspected passengers or restricted
gels. Hernan Ricardo, one of Posada's agents, told Trinidad police
that he took an explosive-filled toothpaste tube on board the
Cubana plane in Caracas, got off in Barbados and left behind
the volatile toothpaste.
On Oct. 6, 1976, the Cubana Airlines Flight 455 took off, the
bomb went off and the pilot helplessly shouted radio messages
over Barbados airspace. Everyone aboard died. Bosch and Posada
said violence against civilian targets was legitimate in their
"war" against Fidel. Venezuelan authorities imprisoned
them, but Posada "escaped" with help from Miami comrades
and found employment in the mid 1980s with Lt. Co. Oliver North,
helping him re-supply the Nicaraguan Contras in their war against
the Nicaraguan government. In 1989, over objections from the
FBI and Justice Department, George H. W. Bush granted amnesty
to Bosch who has resided in Miami ever since.
Subsequently, his sons George W. and Jeb, Florida Governor, have
re-assured Bosch he can live serenely in Miami while, as he admitted
to a New Times reporter, he continues to plot violent
terrorist acts against Cuba. (June 2, 2006)
In the mid 1990s, Posada organized bombings of Cuban tourist
sites, one of which killed an Italian tourist. He admitted his
complicity to New York Times reporters. (July 1998)
In 1999, Posada, Bosch's co-conspirator, had plotted to assassinate
Castro in Panama. Together with Guillermo Novo, one of the Letelier
killers, and two other Cuban exiles with long terrorist records,
they went to Panama and collected explosives, which Panamanian
police found in their rented car with their fingerprints
on them.
Posada's comrades bought him a pardon from outgoing President
Mireya Moscoso -- $4 million mysteriously appeared in her Swiss
bank account. Then, Posada entered the United States. Homeland
Security apparently did not "detect" that the hemisphere's
best-known terrorist had come to the United States without a
visa. But the Bush-Bosch-Posada connection dated back to 1976.
As Posada and Bosch began planning terrorist actions and informing
the CIA the former President George H.W. Bush headed that Agency.
Nothing was done to stop any of the dozen bombings of, and shootings
at, Cuban land targets and individuals; nor was Cuba warned that
the airliner would be blown up.
In 2005, after Posada brazenly held a press conference, U.S.
authorities gently arrested him and charged him with "illegal
entry" into the United States. He waits in an El Paso jail
cell for the Justice Department to charge him with terrorism
or let him go. Washington has asked Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Panama to take him. They have
all said "No thanks."
So, on September 11, 2006, a federal judge warned that he would
release Posada. At the last minute, government lawyers told the
judge not to release him to wait. Posada, meanwhile, declared
he will soon be free, implying that the Bush family is friendly
toward him.
For Bush, Posada, like Bosch, remains a zealous patriot, not
a terrorist. Even though the Justice Department filed papers
in mid October 2006at the El Paso federal court acknowledging
that Posada is "an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind
of terrorist plots and attacks on tourist sites," they refuse
to charge him. Bush's friendship patterns vitiate not only the
last shreds of law, but his supposed tough standards on terrorism.
Double standards? In fact, Bush has shown he has no standards.
His tough talk -- "Those who harbor terrorists are as guilty
as the terrorists themselves" (October 7, 2002) could
be read more literally as stating that Bush views himself as
guilty as the terrorists. His pseudo John Wayne imitation implied,
however, that he would stand as the invincible foe of anyone
who dared to even think of terrorism.
Bush's government, however, has yet to prosecute one serious
terrorist suspect some held for five years in Guantanamo.
Earlier this year, the Department of Justice charged seven poor
black men in Miami, none of whom had knowledge of explosives,
with conspiring to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower. It has also
held U.S. citizen Jose Padilla for four years as an enemy combatant,
but has yet to take him to trial. Padilla claims the government
tortured and drugged him.
Posada has received gentle treatment despite his unambiguous
terrorist credentials. Indeed, the government used men like Posada
and Bosch to carry out terrorism against Cuba. Felipe Millan,
Posada's lawyer, asked: "How can you call someone a terrorist
who allegedly committed acts on your behalf?" Calling Posada
a terrorist, he added, "would be the equivalent of calling
Patrick Henry or Paul Revere or Benjamin Franklin a terrorist."
(New York Times, Oct. 8, 2006)
Roseanne Nenninger Persaud's 19-year-old brother died on the
downed Cuban aircraft. She said Posada should be treated "like
bin Laden. If this were a plane full of Americans, it would have
been a different story." (Oct 8, 2006)
Bush's tough guy rhetoric and reality are far apart. He has yet
to bag a real terrorist. But Arar remains on the no entry-no
fly list despite his total exoneration by Canadian investigators.
The U.S. bullied an innocent man into a torture chamber. Bush's
tough talk on terrorism, like that of most bullies, relies on
public credibility. If the media looked at the record, Bush would
lose his "tough guy" image all that remains of
his presidency.
Saul Landau is a fellow of the Institute for Policy
Studies. His new book, A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD, will be
published by Counterpunch Press.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
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