Special Report

Time for Nuremberg II
The international community must reconvene the Nuremberg Tribunal and try the Bush regime's top officials

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

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March 9, 2005—The venerable Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the closest America has to an elder statesman in the mold of Rome's Seneca, Cicero, or Cato the Elder, is the latest person to come under fire from a creepy coalition of right-wing pundits and pressure groups.

The usual suspects, including hate mongers Ann Coulter and Pennsylvania GOP Senator Rick Santorum, as well as the Anti Defamation League (ADL), condemned Byrd for his very cogent warning that the Republican Party has adopted Nazi political tactics in trying to change the rules of the Senate. Senator Edward Kennedy supported Byrd's comparison on ABC's This Week. Byrd's concerns were a response to the GOP plans to abolish the Senate filibuster rules in what the War and Racism Party has coined its "nuclear option."

Byrd is being subjected to blistering personal attacks, including references to his youthful membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Unlike the racist GOP governors of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, as well as one-time Louisiana GOP gubernatorial candidate, KKK leader, and ex-convict David Duke, Senator Byrd long ago repudiated the Klan. He now ranks among America's most sage and eloquent statesmen—equal in stature to Everett Dirksen, Daniel Webster, Barbara Jordan, and Adlai Stevenson.

I have much sympathy for the wise senior Senator from West Virginia. In print (including syndicated newspaper columns), on the web, on radio and on television, I have referred to the Nazi tactics of George W. Bush and his fascist henchmen and supporters. And true to form, the Bush fascists have responded by making personal threats; launching pressure campaigns against my employers, editors, publishers, and professional organizations; and making pathetic references to "conspiracy theories" and "tin foil hats." Never mind. I am the third generation in my family to take on the Nazis. My grandmother fought the Nazis as a leader of the wartime Danish Resistance. In addition to spying on and photographing the Nazi labor camps in Germany, my father fought the German Nazis and their Spanish and Italian allies in civil war-wracked Spain. Now, 50 years after they were routed from Berlin, it is my turn to fight the Nazis who have nested in Washington, DC, and in a secretive "Christian" cult fat cat club with Nazi roots called the Fellowship Foundation, headquartered in a mansion in Arlington, Virginia, just a few blocks from my home.

Predictably, Abraham Foxman, the Director of the ADL and a long-time toady for the Republicans, swiftly went after Byrd's comparative reference to the Republicans and their Nazi tactics. Foxman said, "It is hideous, outrageous and offensive for Senator Byrd to suggest that the Republican Party's tactics could in any way resemble those of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party." A rudimentary education is in order for Mr. Foxman, a survivor of the Holocaust, who seems ignorant of history and the maxim that if we do not learn from history we are forever condemned to repeat it. First of all, Foxman has no copyright on the use of the term "Nazi" and, therefore, cannot legitimately censor its use. He has tried this tactic in the past with George Soros, another Holocaust survivor, who had no qualms in comparing the Bush regime to the Nazis. Soros also faced Foxman's crybaby complaints.

Second, the people who brutally murdered, execution-style, the 89-year old mother and 64-year old husband (an Episcopal lay leader) of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow in her Chicago home are assuredly linked to the Nazi followers of jailed white supremacist Matthew Hale, who was jailed in 2004 for proclaiming his desire to kill Judge Lefkow, a Bill Clinton appointee. Hale erroneously believed Lefkow was Jewish. Nazi apocalyptic Christian reconstructionists like Hale's World Church of the Creator have a long history of murdering African Americans and Asian Americans. Their well-heeled apocalyptic co-religionists now run the U.S. Justice Department, the FBI, and the White House.

If there is any doubt as to the Bush regime's coddling of Nazi terrorists like Hale and his murdering friends, one should appreciate why FBI agent and right-wing terrorist hunter Mike German was finally forced to leave the bureau after 17 years. One can only wonder how many more innocent people like Judge Lefkow's loved ones in Chicago; James Byrd, Jr., in Texas; Ricky Byrdsong in Skokie, Illinois; Balbir Singh Sodhi in Arizona; Waqar Hasan and Vasudev Patel in Dallas, Matthew Shepard in Wyoming; and Won Joon Yoon in Bloomington, Indiana, must be murdered by Nazis thugs and their co-conspirators before the various "anti-defamation" and "hate watch" cottage industries and their financial donors wake up and smell the coffee.

In January, five men were indicted for destroying or damaging by arson 40 homes in an Indian Head, Maryland, subdivision. Many of the homes destroyed had been purchased by African Americans and the arsonists' motives were clearly racist in nature. However, Maryland police authorities, now controlled by neo-Nazi GOP Governor Bob Ehrlich, began to downplay the ties between the arsonists and a larger group of white supremacists—a secretive, membership oath group alternately called "The Family" and the "Unseen Cavaliers." Although there was evidence that The Family was part of a larger neo-Nazi organization, Maryland law enforcement brushed off the group as a bunch of automobile "street racers." The "car racing" link was pushed by The Washington Times, the right-wing rag owned by The Family's neo-Nazi fellow traveler and Asian crime boss "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon.

The apologies for the Maryland arsonists by the GOP and its minions should not be surprising. Ehrlich made political capital with the racist right by fighting to keep African Americans in Baltimore City from moving into largely white Baltimore County—Ehrlich's political base. Ehrlich's campaign also saw his supporters distributing leaflets in African-American precincts in Baltimore warning potential voters that it was illegal to vote if they had not paid their rent or electric bills. Ehrlich ran with African American Republican Lieutenant Governor candidate Michael Steele, who never held public office, but because there are so few GOP African Americans in Maryland, the Republicans had to pay Steele a salary of $5,000 a month to run on the ticket.

During the 2002 gubernatorial campaign between Ehrlich and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Julius Henson, a Townsend adviser, boldly called Ehrlich a Nazi. Furthermore, Henson was quoted by The Washington Post, "His [Ehrlich's] record is horrible, atrocious. . . . He should be running in Germany in 1942." The Republicans, who hate the truth, cried foul and forced Henson to quit the Townsend campaign. But Ehrlich, like his fellow Nazi sympathizer, Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, are doing to their states what Bush and his Nazis are doing to the federal government—turning their states over to corporate interests and gutting social safety nets to further statewide "homeland security" programs.

In a scene reminiscent of Hitler's Reichstag fire, the Prince George's County courthouse in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, mysteriously burned amid charges of electoral malfeasance emanating from the use of state-mandated Diebold voting machines throughout the county. Initial local news reports stated that records stored at the courthouse were destroyed. Might they have included evidence of technical problems with Diebold machines compiled by the county's election supervisor?

Hale and his followers are not the only Nazis operating in this country. They have also infiltrated the U.S. military, the police, the U.S. intelligence community, churches, veterans' organizations, corporate boardrooms, college campuses, the prison system, defense contractors, the U.S. Congress, the courts, and the White House.

At Santa Rosa Junior College in California, college Republicans have placed red stars on the office doors of professors they consider liberal. The Nazis just cannot change their stripes. Some 60 years ago in Europe it was yellow Stars of David on the clothing of Jews and Jewish-owned shops, now it is red stars on the doors of liberal college professors. Years ago, the tactic was pushed by Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. Now, it is advanced by Karl Rove and Grover Norquist.

Special Agent German discovered links between Nazi terror groups in the United States and Islamist radicals. But for all his efforts at cracking Nazi terrorist groups in California, Washington State, Florida and other places around the country, his investigations were stonewalled; stopped on orders from the top. Why would people like John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, and the other fascists in the government want to lean on members of their political base? The American Nazis, who have conveniently wrapped themselves in Christian clothing (as did their Nazi German forbearers), provide Bush much of his storm-trooping foot soldier support—from college campus-based "Young Republican" youth corps, to evangelical "super churches," web sites like Free Republic.com and GOPUSA.com, and hate mongering airwave pundits like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

Recent revelations that phony White House journalist "Jeff Gannon," a.k.a James Dale Guckert, was running a military-themed gay escort service, completes the circle on the similarities between the Bush administration and the Nazi Germans. Like some of the Nazi Germans, who were also officially anti-homosexual, the Bush White House and the Republican National Committee are teeming with closeted self-hating gays of the sadomasochistic variety.

The Nazi/Christian-Islamic fundamentalist links discovered by Special Agent German are nothing new. They go back to the days of the pact between Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the close working relationship between Nazi German intelligence agents and the Muslim Brotherhood. These ties now bind the Bush administration, their radical Islamic benefactors in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, and faux Christian and tax-exempt right-wing groups based largely in southern and western states. The jury is still out on whether the 1995 Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Office Building bombing was the joint work of neo-Nazis and Islamist radicals, but the evidence suggests that OKC '95 was such a joint operation and a fateful prelude for future cooperative efforts.

Having stolen another election, the Bush regime shows no signs of ever giving up political power peacefully. Therefore, the international community, through the International Criminal Court in The Hague, must give serious thought to reconvening the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg with a view to capturing and putting on trial those American leaders who have committed war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, and quite possibly helped carry out, with support from domestic neo-Nazi groups and Islamist radicals, the dastardly and treasonous aviation terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001. With the American Nazis now planning to wage war against Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and other countries, the stark fact is that the Bush regime represents the greatest threat to world security since the military forces of the Axis Powers rolled across border after border during the 1930s and 40s.

And it's not as if the Bush regime war criminals are insensitive to their possible fate. War Minister Donald Rumsfeld almost canceled a trip to a security conference in Munich in February because of a war crimes complaint filed against him in the federal prosecutor's office in Berlin. German authorities, technically, could have arrested Rumsfeld. The arrest of American war criminals should no longer rest on technicalities but should be the stated policies of the world community.

If the international community unites to grab American war criminals, these globe-hopping criminals will eventually land at the wrong airport in the wrong country and could be easily apprehended by international law enforcement teams with the cooperation of the host nation's security forces. In addition, there are a number of American diplomats and intelligence agents who would gladly look the other way as these fascist banes of today's America are whisked away to incarceration and trial in The Hague. The Air Force noncommissioned officers at Andrews Air Force Base who accompany some of America's war criminals on junkets abroad are ideally situated to pass advance travel plans to the International Criminal Court. Authorities in such jurisdictions as Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Cape Verde, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Panama, Fiji, Brazil, and Barbados are likely aware that Shannon, Keflavik, Lajes Field on Terceira in the Azores, Sal, Kastrup, Schipol, Zaventem, Geneva, Torrijos International, Nandi, Rio de Janeiro International, and Grantley Adams International are favored for logistics stops for U.S. military "VIP flying units" that ferry around some of America's most notorious war criminals.

Those former members of the Bush regime who are complicit in war crimes often travel abroad for conferences and business meetings. A review of upcoming conferences and speakers can provide a wealth of information, including probable dates of arrival and departure, hotel and conference center venues, and on- and off-site banquet and luncheon locations. If the Bush regime can grab innocent people off the streets of the United States and abroad and transport them to foreign torture centers, the same criteria should apply for American war criminals like Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Stephen Cambone, Elliot Abrams, Jerry Boykin, Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft (incidentally, before he resigned as attorney general, head torture facilitator Ashcroft resided at 22 3rd St., NE, Washington, DC—it would be surprising if he still maintained a security detail), and federal judicial nominee and Pentagon general counsel William Haynes. Foreign law enforcement units that specialize in "isolate, apprehend, and exfiltrate" techniques may want to make some notes.

Indicted American Nazi war criminals would have a tough time defending themselves. The prosecution could easily rely on the legal precedent established by Judge Robert Jackson, America's chief prosecutor at the first Nuremberg trial: "Let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law, if it is to serve a useful purpose, must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment. We are able to do away with domestic tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of their own people only when we make all men answerable to the law."

Because they do not wear monocles, Gestapo uniforms, Swastika armbands, or carry batons, America's Nazis are deceptive. Irreverently, our Nazis use Jesus and the American flag as their symbols. They are so ingrained in the Republican Party, the very legitimacy and legality of the political organization is questionable.

America's Nazis have forced the very un-American but very Teutonic term "homeland" upon us. They are planning to implement a national ID card—a standardized drivers' license—complete with radio frequency ID tags. No American will be able to travel anywhere, by plane, car, train, boat, or on foot, without Bush's Nazi functionaries knowing where he or she is located.

Political dissidents could very well find a new home at several mass detention centers established around the country and run by contractors like Wackenhut. Political prisoners will not like the weather conditions at these centers—they are mainly located in desert environments in California and Nevada.

Bush is scrapping the civil service reforms first enacted by President James Garfield—reforms that cost him his life. As they wish to do with the courts, Bush and his Nazi supporters, by bringing back the civil service spoils system, want to pack what will remain of the U.S. government work force with their political loyalists.

Bush's dismantling of FDR's New Deal, including Social Security, Teddy Roosevelt's conservation of wilderness lands, and the Founders' Bill of Rights are all aimed at establishing a permanent Nazi regime for the United States. Civil rights are only extended to those minorities who swear allegiance to the Bush Reich. In Bush's neo-apartheid America, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Kenneth Blackwell, Michael Steele, and Alberto Gonzales are granted rights not afforded to African Americans at polling places in Columbus, Ohio, or Hispanic Americans at polling places in New Mexico.

The abuses of Bush's Nazi regime are too long to list here. But may I be the first to offer to the International Criminal Court an amicus curia on the crimes against humanity committed by this dangerous regime?

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based journalist and columnist and the co-author of "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II."