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Sat Jul 04 2009

Columns

Harvey Wasserman

Bush is history's top terrorist
September 28, 2004

As the fourth global-warmed hurricane in two months rips through Florida, we are reminded that George W. Bush is history's top terrorist.

We know, of course, that Bush has slaughtered thousands of Iraqis, imprisoned hundreds without trial or charges, and presided over the torture and sexual abuse of many of them. He is the world's leading recruiter for hate-America terrorists the world over.

Bush's preemptive militarism has paved the way for countless crusades for oil and fundamentalism in the decades to come. He overthrew the elected government of Haiti, resulting in hundreds of deaths. He tried to do the same in Venezuela. Other target nations are sure to follow.

Bush is also determined to turn AIDS into a profit center for the drug companies that help fund him. His attacks on sex education, birth control and reproductive choice will kill girls and women for the decades to come, especially if he re-criminalizes abortion in a second term.

As Texas's Governor Bush executed a record 150-plus people. He publically mocked at least one, Karla Faye Tucker, who had asked him to spare her. His escalated war on drugs has helped stuff 2.2 million Americans into the largest gulag in world history. Many suffer regular physical and sexual abuse. Many are also conveniently deprived of their right to vote.

Bush's catastrophic "No Child Left Behind" program is decimating America's once-proud educational system, vastly escalating illiteracy and ignorance. He is barring thousands of students who have traditionally come here from overseas. Their disappearance will further cripple American education, as well as America's historic role in spreading democratic values to young people around the world.

Bush has also decimated the Bill of Rights and basic freedoms embodied in the US Constitution, paving the way for a potential dictatorship should he get a second term.

In short, he has done to America things no foreign terrorist could ever imagine.

But it all pales before Bush's all-out attack on the natural environment, which will ultimately kill hundreds of millions of people.

Bush's eco-terror crusade has two primary roots: corporate greed and fundamental religious extremism.

On the corporate side, Bush's entire environmental policy can be summarized in a simple sentence: Any polluter favored by the Bush regime can pillage and destroy any sector of the American ecology, regardless of the consequences, with full official sanction, including huge taxpayer handouts.

Bush's signature flip flop has been on global warming. The scientific and insurance community is now virtually unanimous that rising carbon dioxide levels are wrecking utter havoc with global weather patterns, including this latest parade of Caribbean hurricanes. The only dissenters are oil company flacks, flat earth think tanks and fundamentalist fanatics.

Bush promised in 2000 that if elected he would endorse the Kyoto Accords to cut CO2 emissions. But then he joined Joseph Stalin in demanding that science fit his bizarre ideology. At the behest of his petro-backers, including Dick Cheney's Halliburton, Bush has scorned a global consensus that includes his primary ally in Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Two of the world's biggest insurance companies, Swiss Re: and Munich Re:, have issued strong warnings about the skyrocketing costs of climate catastrophes. Even British Petroleum has voiced concern, at the same time making massive investments in solar power.

Bush's fossil-nuke energy plan gives huge tax credits for gas guzzling HumVees, but has cynically stalemated long-standing green energy tax easements, crippling the once-booming US wind power industry.

Three years after Bush allowed 9/11, America's 103 atomic power reactors remain vulnerable to attacks from the air. The first plane that flew into the World Trade Center could instead have turned the Indian Point reactors north of New York City into radioactive infernos. Such an apocalyptic attack could still happen, killing millions and costing trillions, dwarfing Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. By doing nothing significant to make US reactors safer, Bush has painted them with a big terror bullseye.

Bush is also reviving nuke weapons production and testing, escalating the likelihood of nuclear war and production disasters.

After 9/11, Bush lied to the people of New York about the toxic fallout from the WTC collapses. His cover-up caused countless avoidable deaths. His assaults on the air, water, food and other regulatory responsibilities daily poison millions worldwide. They feed the on-going plague of cancers, lung and heart disease, childhood afflictions and too much more to catalog here.

Acid rain and ozone destruction add to the horrors of global warming, as do Bush's attacks on America's national parks and public lands.

As history's most environmentally destructive human, Bush's hate-nature crusade has been blessed by fanatic fundamentalists who believe destruction of the planet will hasten the Messiah. James Watt, Ronald Reagan's Interior Secretary, scorned attempts to preserve the Earth by announcing that Jesus was coming soon anyway.

Bush spinmeister Karl Rove bans such blunt talk. But his all-out attacks on environmental protection, fuel efficiency, renewable energy and much more have already guaranteed an avoidable death toll unparalleled in human history. The evil winds of climate chaos now blasting through the Caribbean may soon seem like mild breezes compared to the ultimate eco-curse of George W. Bush.

Attila the Hun. Genghis Khan. The Kaiser. Hitler. Stalin. Saddam. Bin Laden. None have killed more than those dying and destined to die at Bush's anti-green hands. His terror attacks have driven Mother Earth to the very brink.

Four more years and he just might finish her off---and all of us with her.

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HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is available at (http://www.harveywasserman.com) . He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service.

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