THE "CONSERVATIVE" WASHINGTON
TIMES HAS BECOME A WILLING TOOL
OF THE UNITED NATIONS LOBBY.
HELP US MAKE SURE THE FOLLOWING LETTER AND ARTICLE ARE PUBLISHED IN THE TIMES.
EMAIL THEM TO:
HELLE BERING, EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR, AT:
OR PRINT AND FAX TO:
1-202-832-2982
OR CALL 202-636-8815
ASK THE TIMES TO CORRECT THE RECORD ABOUT KOFI ANNAN AND THE "COALITION FOR INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE"
"Read the Times' Pro-Kofi Annan Editorial for Yourself.
Click Here."
March 31, 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION
Letter to the Editor Of the Washington Times
To The Editor:
Your March 31 editorial, "Keep Annan On, for now," should have been dated April 1 because I thought it was an April Fool's Joke. For a "conservative" newspaper to run an editorial so flawed and inaccurate is a supreme embarrassment. Your claim that Annan's positions "have generally been supportive of many U.S. interests" is just plain wrong, if not dishonest. The facts show that Annan:
- Made a deal with dictator Saddam Hussein, leading to the expulsion of weapons inspectors and Iraq's re-emergence as an international security threat.
- Made a deal with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, giving him immunity from prosecution in the Pan Am 103 terrorism case.
- Supports the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was voted down by the U.S. Senate.
- Supports the global warming treaty, which would raise U.S. energy prices while benefiting Communist China and the Third World.
- Supports an International Criminal Court to arrest and imprison Americans.
- Supports the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, even though it was signed with a country that no longer exists and has been violated by the old Soviet Union and Russia.
- Supports the Biological Weapons Convention, even though China and Russia have violated it.
- Opposes a national missile defense system for the U.S.
- Collaborated with Hillary Clinton and Bella Abzug to promote abortion as an "international right."
- Smeared the U.S. as a greedy nation in a Notre Dame speech claiming Americans don't spend enough on foreign aid.
- Supports all "necessary revenues" for the U.N. (i.e. global taxes).
- Lent his support to the international campaign to abolish the death penalty in the U.S. and other nations.
- Berated the U.S. for not paying U.S. "dues" to the U.N. when America had contributed billions of dollars to peacekeeping operations that had not been reimbursed or credited to the U.S.
- Promotes "global debt relief," a cover for transfers of more U.S. wealth to deadbeat Socialist Third World dictatorships.
- Refused requests to authorize U.N. peacekeepers in Rwanda to seize weapons and prevent a genocide.
- Proceeded with an independence vote in East Timor that led to a bloodbath.
- Covered-up the fact that U.N. soldiers were spreading AIDS around the world.
Your claim that Annan "has championed some reforms that have helped make the United Nations more cost effective and transparent" is also false. U.N. whistleblower Linda Shenwick, a former budget analyst at the U.S. mission to the U.N., says no significant reforms have been carried out. No one has lost a job at the U.N. because of Annan's reforms. On the other hand, the U.N. pension fund has grown to $25 billion.
The Times is entitled to be pro-U.N. and pro-Annan, even though this stance is inconsistent with being "America's Newspaper," but you are not entitled to your own set of phony "facts."
I request that you immediately run this letter as a correction of the record.
Yours Truly,
Cliff Kincaid,
President
America's Survival, Inc.
Submitted as op-ed to the Washington Times.
The ABA Is Still Picking Judges
So the American Bar Association (ABA) has been cut out of the process of selecting our federal judges in advance. That's a good thing. Now let's cut them out of the process of selecting international judges and running our foreign policy.
The issue reemerged when the Washington Times ran an op-ed by someone named Eric A. Witte of the "Coalition for International Justice" (March 29, 2001). He urged the Bush Administration to keep our troops in Bosnia until the country's ethnic armies are disarmed, a new national army is formed, the central government is strengthened, and its constitution is rewritten by U.N. bureaucrats so nationalists can't win elections. What is the Coalition for International Justice? The Times didn't say. Turns out it's a front group of the ABA, which favors U.S. meddling in the affairs of other countries through U.N. courts, tribunals and international lawyers. It's run by a former counsel to Senator Joseph Lieberman and its board includes Cherif Bassiouni, a law professor who helped devise the International Criminal Court.
The Coalition for International Justice was created by the ABA's Central and East European Law Initiative. To make a long story short, the ABA is trying to run the legal systems of foreign countries in the name of "legal reform" and helping them evolve toward "democracy." I don't know if the ABA has a formal role in picking judges for foreign courts, but the impact is the same. Indeed, the ABA says it's building the "legal infrastructure" of other nations. And we're paying for it. The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) provides grants to the ABA's Central and East European Law Initiative. Therefore, hard-pressed taxpayers are subsidizing rich international lawyers. Not a bad racket.
Besides assisting the U.N. tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the ABA supports the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ABA opposes a bill, the American Servicemembers' Protection Act, which attempts to protect our military personnel from the jurisdiction of such a court. The ICC would put Americans in foreign prisons, violating our constitutional rights in the process. But this doesn't bother the ABA.
Those U.N. tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda are illegal even under the "international law" the ABA claims to respect. They were not formed through a treaty or even a vote by the U.N. General Assembly. There's no basis in the U.N. Charter for arresting or jailing anyone. Alleged war criminals wanted by these courts have been snatched off the streets by armed thugs, ambushed, and even killed. One suspect was taken into custody on U.S. soil by FBI agents. This was after a federal magistrate had determined that the case against him was full of holes. The U.N. courts issue secret indictments and prosecutors can use anonymous accusers. There is no trial by jury, and trials can be secret.
President Bush says he opposes an International Criminal Court that would prosecute Americans under such conditions. But he's just appointed a new ABA-approved Ambassador-at-Large for War-Crimes Issues. His name is Pierre-Richard Prosper, a former prosecutor in the U.N.'s Rwanda tribunal. Ominously, John Washburn, a prominent support of the ICC, agrees that Prosper is an "excellent choice."
We don't want or need the ABA picking our judges. So why inflict their dubious judgments on other countries? We are not helping these countries. We are interfering in their internal affairs. We are building resentment against the United States. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights should serve as a model for the rest of the world. Yet the ABA undermines our system at home and abroad.
We don't want an ICC going after us, so why should we finance criminal tribunals that go after the citizens of other countries? This is hypocritical and morally wrong. If we've got a problem with a foreign dictator who kills Americans or threatens our interests, our military should pursue or contain him or the Justice Department should indict him. Indeed, Attorney General John Ashcroft is being urged to indict Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi for his role in the Pan Am 103 bombing case. This should go forward with the encouragement of the ABA. We should not be threatening other countries, such as Yugoslavia, to hand over their citizens to a foreign tribunal for trial, even if it is someone as notorious as Slobodan Milosevic. That's their business, not ours. We've already done enough damage to Yugoslavia.
Rather than running rubbish from the so-called Coalition for International Justice, the media should subject these nice-sounding groups to the scrutiny they deserve. They give new meaning to the term "Ugly American." (30)
*
Cliff Kincaid is a veteran journalist who serves as president of America's Survival, a public policy group.
America's Survival, Inc, P.O. Box 146, Owing, MD. 20736 301-855-2679 FAX 301-855-3732 |
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