Fujimori guilty

Washington, DC, April 7, 2009 – As a special tribunal in Peru pronounced former president Alberto Fujimori guilty of human rights atrocities, the National Security Archive today posted key declassified U.S. documents that were submitted as evidence in the court proceedings. The declassified records contain intelligence gathered by U.S. officials from Peruvian sources on the secret creation of “assassination teams” as part of Fujimori’s counterterrorism operations, the role of the Peruvian security forces in human rights atrocities and Fujimori’s participation in protecting the military from investigation.

Indexed Trove of Kissinger Phone Transcripts Is Completed

Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger gave secret orders to record their calls, each evidently without the other’s knowledge.

Not at all a surprise that this pair recorded their calls; they were both so untrustworthy they did not even trust each other.

Nixon was a criminal: he broke the Constitution by usurping power, he broke laws by ordering illegal activities for the sake of his own political power, he lied, and then he was stupid enough to not destroy the tapes.

Kissinger was a manipulator, overly impressed with his own power and skills, and, in the end, has been proven to be not much more than a petty jerk: he recorded calls with the President of the United States (even if that was Nixon, it is still an amazing display of hubris, arrogance and distrust).

The words of these two are chilling, even 35 years later.

It was April 1972, and American B-52 bombers were pummeling North Vietnam. President Richard M. Nixon got on the phone with his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, for an update on the air assault on the port city of Haiphong. The men struggled to persuade each other that the war might still be won.

Did they actually believe the war could be won?

“They dropped a million pounds of bombs,” Mr. Kissinger said.

A million pounds of bombs dropped on one city. A million pounds. It staggers the mind that this could be used as a statement meant to impress.

Nixon was pleased. “Goddamn, that must have been a good strike!” he said.

His own words reveal what a depraved human being Nixon was.

Then the president had a moment of doubt, recalling the dismal experience of his immediate predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson: “Johnson bombed them for years, and it didn’t do any good.”

Exactly: LBJ had Viet Nam bombed for four years, and it did nothing to dissuade the North or the Viet Cong from pursuing their aims. LBJ and his advisers knew that. McNamara would, 30 plus years later, confess how own doubts (In retrospect: the tragedy and lessons of Vietnam is one of his books).

Mr. Kissinger reassured his boss, saying: “But, Mr. President, Johnson never had a strategy. He was sort of picking away at them. He would go in with 50 planes, 20 planes. I bet you we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month.”

Which accomplished absolutely nothing, to just bomb and bomb and bomb. That was no strategy, to simply drop more bombs. Bombing was the same tactic Johnson had used; to simply multiply the amount of bombs did not amount to a strategy.

What the two men said 36 years ago can be known with such precision today because they worked in what was, in retrospect, the golden age of White House taping. Both Nixon and Mr. Kissinger had given secret orders to record their calls, each evidently without the other’s knowledge.

A pair of twits, of criminals.

On Tuesday, the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group at George Washington University, published an online edition of transcripts of 15,000 Kissinger phone calls from 1969 to 1977, fully indexed and searchable for the first time. A selection was posted on the archive’s Web site, nsarchive.org, and the full collection is available to subscribers, which include many university libraries.

Hyperlinking to the NSA Archive website shows a page with this bon mot: "We can bomb the bejesus out of them all over North Vietnam.".

O, there is no doubt as to the historical import of these tapes and their transcripts; three and a half decades later my animus toward these two human beings remains intense.

The collection covers many serious policy matters, like Vietnam strategy, but includes a few calls memorable because they are so bizarre.

Nixon was bizarre; Kissinger? Ditto.

Bourke-White: 1945

Margaret Bourke-White: German civilians made to face their nation's crimes, Buchenwald, 1945

Karadzic Appears at U.N. Tribunal

The first picture I found on El Universal.
Look what a shave and a haircut did for Karadzic.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic appeared at the U.N.'s Yugoslav war crimes tribunal for the first time Thursday, telling the judge he would defend himself against charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

What's that old saying? The person who represents himself has a fool for a client, or lawyer? No, the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, apparently. Either way, Karadzic is a damned fool.

"I have an invisible adviser but I have decided to represent myself," he calmly told presiding judge Alphons Orie.

Rally for Karadzic Suggests Fissures Remain in Serbia

Associated Press

Rioters clashed with heavily armed police in downtown Belgrade late Tuesday.

Not enough they are celebrating a war criminal (of course, they don't see it that way): As many as 20,000 protesters chanted slogans tarring Serbia's pro-European president, Boris Tadic, as a fascist, as speakers accused the government of treason for agreeing to send Mr. Karadzic to the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Treason? Not every one feels that way.

Liberals and many analysts in Serbia argue that Western observers have consistently gotten the country wrong in predicting a nationalist revival. They note that in every election since 2000, Serbs have chosen democrats over ultranationalists. Opinion surveys invariably show support for joining the EU at about 70%. Tuesday's protest turnout was relatively small compared with previous pro-democracy and pro-Kosovo demonstrations.

One's poison is another's ...

Pictures seen today (disgust me)

Serbian Officials Provide Details on Arrest of Karadzic

Rather amazing details are emerging on Karadzic. He was hiding in plain sight. He disguised himself to live and work in Belgrade as practitioner of alternative medicine, “freely walking in the city,” Serbian authorities said Tuesday. Mr. Karadzic had lived under the alias Dragon Dabic and had adopted a “very convincing” false identity, Mr. Ljajic said.

[Rasim Ljajic is responsible for Serbia’s relations with the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.]

Mr. Karadzic had lived under the alias Dragon Dabic and had adopted a “very convincing” false identity, Mr. Ljajic said. “How convincing his false identity was, we can tell you that he has been freely walking in the city, being very public about his appearance,” Mr. Vukcevic said. “Even the people he rented a flat from were unaware of who he was.”

Enlarge This Image

Darko Vojinovic/Associated Press

Rasim Ljajic, a senior government official,

showed a photo of Radovan Karadzic

during a press conference in Belgrade, Serbia.

More Photos >

The officials gave no details of the continuing hunt for Mr. Karadzic’s wartime ally, Gen. Ratko Mladic, who is also being sought for trial in The Hague on genocide charges. Some analysts saw the arrest of Mr. Karadzic as an indication that Mr. Mladic would soon be seized. Natasha Kandic, director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, said: “Now the door is open for the arrest of Mladic. After this, he probably won’t get any more official protection. This government has changed its policy. It’s an historical event.”

While the European Union generally welcomed Mr. Karadzic’s arrest, some officials struck a cautious note. “Things will be easier, but let’s not prejudge anything,” Reuters quoted French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner as saying. “Karadzic has been arrested but Mladic has not.”

Prosecutors in The Hague and officials of the European Union have long suspected that he was, in fact, hiding in Serbia, and in recent years have pressed officials in Belgrade to hand him over. “This is a historic event,” said Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the agreements in Dayton, Ohio, to end the war in Bosnia in 1995. “Of the three most evil men of the Balkans, Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic, I thought Karadzic was the worst. The reason was that Karadzic was a real racist believer. Karadzic really enjoyed ordering the killing of Muslims, whereas Milosevic was an opportunist.”

Russia, a traditional ally of Serbia, called the arrest an “internal matter.”

Wanted

2 criminals.

2 down, 1 to go

In the gallery of asshole war criminals, the score in Serbia is now 2 down, 1 to go: Milosevic is dead, Karazdic has been captured, and only Mledic remains hiding in some rat's hole. In due time, he too will face one form of justice, or another: a war-crimes tribunal, or death.

Karadzic Is Arrested in Serbia

Hooray! One for the good guys. This barbarian was the civilian leader of the Bosnian Serbs who massacred Bosnian Muslims. A psychiatrist, to boot.

Mr. Karadzic, who was the leader of ethnic Serbs during the war that erupted with Bosnia's secession from Yugoslavia, is accused of masterminding massacres that the U.N. war crimes tribunal described as "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history."

Never again became a joke: Europeans stood by and watched, and the US finally did a little something, President Clinton ordering aerial bombing.

Mr. Karadzic's reported hide-outs included Serbian Orthodox monasteries and refurbished mountain caves in remote eastern Bosnia. Some newspaper reports said he had at times disguised himself as a priest by shaving off his trademark silver mane and donning a brown cassock.

As leader of Bosnia's Serbs, Mr. Karadzic hobnobbed with international negotiators and his interviews were top news items during the 3 1/2-year Bosnian war, set off when a government dominated by Slavic Muslims and Croats declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992.

But his life changed by the time the war ended in late 1995 with an estimated 250,000 people dead and another 1.8 million driven from their homes. He was indicted twice by the U.N. tribunal on genocide charges stemming from his alleged crimes against Bosnia's Muslims and Croats.