------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 26, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
THE RESIGNATION OF DR. STRANGELOVE By Leslie Feinberg When the door to the Sept. 11 commission of inquiry hit Henry Kissinger on his backside, President George W. Bush was compelled by the Dec. 13 resignation to hang out the "help wanted" sign again. Kissinger, the president's appointed chairperson, was the panel's second senior member to bail out. Just two days earlier, former Sen. George Mitchell had bolted. In January, the 10-member panel is supposed to start scrutinizing circumstances surrounding the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Democrats can choose five members. House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert and Trent Lott of Mississippi--Senate GOP leader as of this writing--each selects two. Bush handpicks the chair. The Commander in Chief had dragged his heels on convening the panel for more than a year, before signing an Act of Congress that brought the Joint Commission into being on Nov. 27. He reportedly relented under the weight of widespread accusations that his reluctance was due to the fact that the commission is to release a report less than six months before the 2004 election. That could very well leave his administration with egg on its face. The panel has been mired in strife since its onset. Partisan wrangling broke out when the Oval Office issued a missive mandating a majority of at least six votes to issue subpoenas to impede Democrats from being able to serve the powerful summonses on their own. United Press International reports that, according to unnamed White House sources, the day before Kissinger jumped ship the commission still had no offices or desks--not even a telephone number. Kissinger, who was secretary of state under Richard Nixon, came under fire from Senate Democrats who demanded he disclose his international consulting firm's client list. The White House countered that Kissinger needn't comply because he was just a part-timer appointed by the president. After locking horns with Democrats on the Senate's so-called ethics committee, Kissinger stepped down. He had been at the helm for only 16 days. He resigned just 24 hours after fruitlessly trying to guarantee loved ones of Sept. 11 victims that his wining and dining with the corporate and banking elite who have direct interests in U.S. international policy would not conflict with his task. National columnist Robert Scheer noted in the Dec. 16 Los Angeles Times that Kissinger Associates is an "ultra-connected consulting firm" that has engaged in financial wheeling and dealing with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The firm employed both Brent Scowcroft, who became national security advisor for President George H.W. Bush, and Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of state in that administration. "That those ties crisscross with other suspicious activities of close Bush family advisors--including Poppy Bush's consulting role with the Carlyle Group that took him to Saudi Arabia to drum up business--makes Kissinger's selection as understandable as it is dishonest." No wonder President Bush wrote that he accepted Kissinger's departure as head of the commission with regret. It's a tough job to fill, calling for an adroit applicant skilled in the art of cover-up. In fact Scheer headlined his article: "Want a Cover-Up Expert? Kissinger's Your Man." He wrote that Kissinger was "the member of the Nixon White House most bent on destroying Daniel Ellsberg for giving a copy of the Pentagon Papers, the government's secret history of the Vietnam War, to the New York Times. His obsession with preventing all government leaks, except those of his creation, is well documented in the Nixon tapes." Scheer also recalled that Kissinger lied about the bombing of Cambodia, the Watergate break-in of Democratic Party headquarters and the death of the democratically elected leader of Chile. Another columnist, Andrew Greeley rhetorically asked in his Dec. 13 Chicago Sun-Times article why Bush saw fit to appoint a man with such a "legendary reputation for deception." He queried: "Does he expect that Kissinger will add credibility to the report? Or rather, does he hope that Kissinger will cover up what needs to be covered up?" Top Republicans certainly must have hoped that such a prominent and prestigious statesperson as Kissinger would bring a shovel of credibility to help clean up this Augean stable. But when the opposition made a stink about his role, it became clear he wasnup to the Herculean task. A Dec. 14 New York Times editorial lost no time heralding Kissinger's resignation, stressing, "The only way to conduct such an inquiry is if all the commission members are free of business interests that could influence their work." It might be easier to locate the Holy Grail. For now, Bush has reportedly drafted a Republican with a much lower profile--former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean--to fill Kissinger's wing- tip brogues. TERRORIST, WAR CRIMINAL The problem is not just Kissinger's mendacity, not that he's a closed- mouth, sneaky kind of guy with business conflicts of interest. Kissinger came onto the stage of U.S. politics as a trusted aide to the Rockefeller oil and banking dynasty. And he proved as secretary of state and national security advisor that his business and political objectives were not at odds. Kissinger and Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia was an act of terror that massacred an estimated 500,000 people. Under the Nixon administration, Kissinger became synonymous with the escalation of U.S. military aggression against Vietnam, a war that claimed an estimated 3 million lives in that country. He reportedly menaced the North Vietnamese with weapons of mass destruction many times, repeatedly threatening to drop nuclear weapons on the Asian socialist nation while at the "peace" negotiations in Paris. When the Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed on Kissinger in 1973, brilliant political satirist Tom Lehrer announced he was retiring his musical performances. "It was at that moment that satire died," Lehrer observed. "There was nothing more to say after that."(BBC, Dec. 16) The Machiavellian premise of Kis singer's book "Nuclear War and Foreign Policy," published in 1957, was that limited atomic war was winnable. Many people believe that Kissinger inspired Jewish Hollywood director Stanley Kubrick's movie character "Dr. Strangelove," whose arm spasmodically stiffened into "hail Hitler" salutes. It was a razor-sharp condemnation that cut to the bone. And it was well deserved. Kissinger worked hand-in-glove with Nixon, a notorious anti-Semite, to bolster the Israeli garrison state, protect Big Oil interests in the Middle East and crush Palestinian resistance. Kissinger engineered the 1973 CIA coup that carried out a "regime change" in Chile, resulting in the death of President Salvador Allende, the slaughter of some 30,000 worker organizers and torture and exile of tens of thousands more. Kissinger carried out these and other high crimes against humanity while orchestrating U.S. international policy from 1969 to 1976. That is why he is in the upper echelons of the Empire that Washington wants to protect from any international criminal court. Kissinger has stepped back from the commission on Sept. 11. Not good enough. He should be receiving a subpoena, not handing them out, because he himself has been so instrumental in fanning the flames of rage against the United States that contributed to that disaster. People all over the world and across the United States would rejoice to see Kissinger in the docket of a genuine people's war crimes tribunal. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. 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