Thursday,
February 22, 2007
Italians- Europeans Hate Bush-US
The
ANNOTICO Report
It's
looking Grim. It used to be that
Now,
Italians/Europeans are charging the Americans for the actions of the man THEY
Elected.
The
Italians/Euros HATE Bush and a
government that tramples on human rights and is devoid of any sense of decency.
They can't understand how the American people could choose such a reckless
cowboy to lead our nation and create havoc around the world.
For
the Italians it is heaping Insult on Injury. After 60 years, US continues to
remind Italy of its Fascist past, ignoring the odious price the Italians paid, and NOW
the U.S. government uses fascist tactics around the World, AND
on Italian soil, They get real upset.
80,000
Italians protested the proposed expansion of the US Air Base at
By
February
20 2007
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The true measure
of just how much Bush has systematically nurtured antipathy toward the
I asked a friend,
an Italian-American who often visits family there and had just returned from a
Christmas trip, what Italians are thinking of Americans these days. His answer
was grim and crisp: "They hate us."
Saturday, more
than 80,000 people marched on the streets of
Some of the anger
may be attributed to the general European resentment toward American cultural
arrogance and unbridled materialism. Perhaps some of it is rooted in the
Europeans' own sense of cultural and intellectual superiority.
But those strains
and attitudes have been around a long time and are usually accepted with mutual
accommodations. What we are seeing now is unprecedented and tragic. They hate
us because of Bush and a government that tramples on human rights and is devoid
of any sense of decency. They can't understand how the American people could
choose such a reckless cowboy to lead our nation and create havoc around the
world.
The Italians
suffered greatly under Benito Mussolini's government, his alliance with Hitler,
the war, the Nazi occupation and the Allied invasion. They had their fill of
fascism, and when the
A judge has
indicted 26 Americans, most thought to be CIA officers, and five Italians on
charges they were involved in kidnapping a Muslim cleric outside his mosque in
Milan in 2003.
The case pivots
around the abduction of Hassan Mustafa Nasr, a
radical cleric known as Abu Omar. The prosecutor, Amando
Spataro, says after Nasr
was snatched off the street, the CIA flew him to
Nasr told ANSA, an Italian
news service, "I have been reduced to a wreck as a human being." He
said he could hardly walk because "they burst my kidneys." An
Egyptian court freed Nasr last week, finding his four
years of detention were "unfounded."
At the time of
his abduction, Italian officials were investigating Nasr
for suspected terrorism-related activities and recruiting fighters for radical
Islamic causes. But prosecutors say the kidnapping breached Italian sovereignty
and compromised the nation's anti-terrorism efforts.
Bush, Vice President
Dick Cheney, comedian Rush Limbaugh, the chorus of right-wing pundits and far
too many Americans just shrug off such conduct. Their usual refrains are:
"Hey, this guy is a terrorist." "We can do anything we want to
protect
That attitude
infuriates the Italians and our other former friends in
While the
European people consistently support human rights and oppose the abuses of the
Bush administration, their governments don't always reflect that. An
investigation for the European parliament released last week accuses
Several countries
were criticized for a "lack of cooperation," and specifically the
investigators "accused
The report found
that "more than 1,200 CIA-operated flights have used European airspace
between 2001 and 2005." The Swiss government has authorized prosecutors to
investigate the flight that took Nasr from
A prosecutor in
These cases of
"extraordinary rendition," the ridiculous term coined to describe
kidnappings, which have no basis in
The people
rounded up are deliberately taken to nations where torture is routine. Their
families usually have no idea where they are. They are never charged with
crimes, since there is no proof of crimes. They are often labeled
"terrorists" based on hearsay remarks or questionable information
from paid informants.
The entire
practice is repugnant to everything
No doubt, the CIA
types will never face the consequences for what they did, but they may be tried
in absentia and won't be taking any European vacations soon. The Italian
defendants aren't so lucky. One of them is the former Italian chief of military
intelligence, Nicolo Pollari.
He told the judge
his organization took no part in the kidnapping, but he will be unable to
defend himself properly because documents supporting his innocence contain
state secrets and cannot be presented as evidence in open court.
But given Pollari's shady past and sordid dealings with the Bush
administration, he may be trying to cover his tracks. Pollari
was the courier in one of the greatest hoaxes of our times and a lie Cheney and
others embraced with ruthless zeal.
In September
2002, while Pollari headed SISMI, the Italian
military intelligence agency, he made a secret trip to the White House,
specifically to Condoleezza Rice's office. His mission was to deliver the
forged documents and phony dossier claiming Saddam had been shopping for
enriched uranium in
The
already-discredited hoax and bag of lies Pollari
delivered were used within days. This was the material Cheney drooled over so
he could declare with certainty that
Pollari was actually the tail end
of a long, convoluted plot to peddle the phony documents as evidence that
Saddam had been shopping for yellow-cake uranium used to refine into
fissionable material for nuclear weapons.
Reporters Carlo Bonnini and Giuseppe D'Avanzo
blew the lid off the plot for
Back in 1999,
Rocco "smelled a business opportunity" in selling information to the
French about uranium being stolen from the mines in
The clever Rocco
knew Saddam did buy uranium from
Rocco saw Saddam
as a convenient usual suspect. With the help of some confederates, the hoax was
hatched. Rocco arranged to have papers with government letterhead stolen from
the
They tried to
sell the fabricated dossier to the French, and it was quickly recognized as a
transparent, amateurish fake. But Rocco knew there were other interested
customers, especially people in the Bush administration looking for any
scintilla of evidence linking
Rocco
hand-delivered the forged documents to MI6, British intelligence in
The CIA is now
blamed for those "16 words" that helped ignite an unnecessary war,
but the real culprits are in the White House. When Pollari
delivered the
No, he brought
the forged papers to Stephen Hadley, then Rice's top deputy, who now heads the
National Security Council. Why not sit down with the CIA and discuss the
documents and their authenticity?
Rice had to know
what was going on, but she'll start speaking the truth the day after hell
freezes over. The whole uranium story was a colossal hoax Rice, Cheney and Bush
used sell their war.
As least Rocco Martino
admits a little of what he did. "It's true, I had a hand in the
dissemination of those (forged
We know the
Italian end of the lie operation. It's high time Bush, Cheney and Rice admitted
theirs.
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ANNOTICO Reports
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