U.S. Scholar Links Bush Admin Neocons to Imperial Japan

Pulitzer Prize winner Herbert Bix has come out and said that neocons of today, particularly the Bush administration, are very closely related to imperial Japan under the late emperor Hirohito. Bix is an expert on imperial Japan, and has actually said for years that the comparisons between post-9/11 U.S. government are plenty. He has stated that the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq was far worse than Pearl Harbor, and it "will live in infamy." It only makes sense that he would come out with more statements against this criminal government as they attempt to dupe Iran into a war for imperial supremacy in the Middle East.

"The current American rampage in Iraq and elsewhere, not to mention the Bush administration's threats of war against Iran, so clearly replicates Imperial Japan during the period when its leaders willfully disregarded international law and pursued the diplomacy of force," Bix said during a visit to Tokyo.

Japan defied the Nine-Party Treaty guaranteeing China's sovereignty, signed in 1922 in Washington, when imperial troops invaded Manchuria in 1931.

Bix compared Japan's action to current US efforts to scuttle the Treaty of Rome establishing the International Criminal Court, which President George W. Bush argues could unfairly target Americans.

He also said that senior US leaders -- not just rank-and-file soldiers -- should have been held to account for the killings of 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha.

"US war criminality is justice institutionalised, as Japan's once was," Bix said.

"In today's America, torture is not only standard battlefield practice in the so-called war on terror. Torture is celebrated in American popular culture as evidenced by the popularity of '24,' a TV programme in which the hero confronts a ticking bomb scenario... designed to justify torture."

But Bix, a professor at Binghamton University in New York state, said he remained optimistic for change as most Americans were opposed to "the Washington consensus."

UN Chief Scolds Israel Over Syria Bombing

Sunday longtime Director General of the IAEA Mohamed ElBaradei criticized Israel's September raid on a Syrian building they claim was a nuclear installation. The U.S. were the only ones that were shown the so-called "evidence" of a nuclear installation, and Israel decided to commit yet another war crime by going ahead with the strike. ElBaradei says as everyone knows that the IAEA nor anyone else received any evidence at all of a Syrian nuke site.

"That to me is very distressful because we have a system: if countries have information that the country is working on a nuclear-related program, they should come to us. We have the authority to go out and investigate," he said.

"But to bomb first and then ask questions later, I think it undermines the system and it doesn't lead to any solution to any suspicion, because we are the eyes and ears of the international community."

Blackwater Employees Say Iraqi Slaughter Was Unjustified

Two former and four current employees of Blackwater have spoken out on the mass killings of innocent Iraqis over a month ago that company officials say was in defense.

“Some guys are thinking that it was not a good shoot, that it was not warranted,” said one Blackwater contractor, using military jargon for an episode that results in a wrongful death. “I don’t think there was criminal intent involved. I just think it was the application of the use of deadly force gone horribly wrong.”

He added, “To mitigate one threat, 17 people had to die?” ...

“I’m just trying to hold on,” said one member of the Blackwater convoy that was involved in the Sept. 16 killings, in an e-mail message. “They’ve been trying to bring in so many State agents, it’s getting full over here.” ...

According to Blackwater employees, the leader of the convoy on Nisour Square was a man known as Hoss. He and two or three other members of the team have returned to the United States because their tours of duty were up or their contracts with the company had ended, one employee here said. In Hoss’s case, the trip home was to remove shrapnel from a wound he received before the Sept. 16 shootings.