By Liane Casten

"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear-kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it." – General Douglas MacArthur, 1957

Together, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell are ruling the world by fist. Look at Bush's directions to the United Nations representatives. At its 2001 session, the UN General Assembly voted 12 times on issues related to nuclear disarmament. The US led all nuclear weapons states in voting against the nuclear disarmament position on 10 of the 12 votes, abstained once and only voted in favor of a procedural resolution concerning the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. The US was the only country in the world to vote "no" on placing a resolution on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on the agenda of next year's UN General Assembly.

In one other important UN Resolution on Preventing an Arms Race in Outer Space, the General Assembly voted 156 in favor with none opposed. Only four countries abstained; the US is one of them. The US seems to have other plans for outer space, as the motto of the US Space Command suggests: "Masters of Space."

Let's check out the list of those now working in government who could be called criminals in another era.

Bush's ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, served as ambassador to Honduras under Reagan. He is known for his role in the cover-up of human rights abuses by CIA-trained forces in South America from 1981-1985.

Bush squeezed Otto Reich through during a Congressional recess, knowing there would be a fight. Reich, now Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, is a right-wing Cuban American who was ambassador to Venezuela. He will now oversee US foreign policy toward Latin America and Canada.

In 1987, Reich was accused by Congress of engaging in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities" in his efforts to promote the Reagan terrorist policies toward Nicaragua. As head of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy in 1987, Reich maintained a private network of groups and individuals whose activities were coordinated and sometimes directed by Col. Oliver North and others in the National Security Council.

Reich ran smear campaigns against US journalists and activists perceived as being pro-Sandinista. Since then, Reich has been a lobbyist for Bacardi and has represented tobacco and arms industries, including Lockheed Martin, a major player in the Star Wars plans.

The appointment of career covert operative and Annapolis graduate Richard Armitage as Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell only underscores the clear message that the Bush administration is sending to the world.

Armitage-better known as "Armitage The Executioner"-was denied a 1989 appointment as Assistant Secretary of State because of his links to Iran-Contra and other scandals. He served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Reagan years. US government stipulations in the Oliver North trial specifically named Armitage as one of the officials responsible for illegal transfers of weapons to Iran and the Contras.

Activist group Voices from the Wilderness notes: "Armitage has also been routinely exposed as a Bush-era covert functionary who has been linked to covert operations, drug smuggling and the expansion of organized crime operations in Russia, Central Asia and the Far East."

Clearly, the Iran-Contra team is coming back to power with a vengeance. Elliot Abrams was appointed to the National Security Council as director of its office for democracy, human rights and international relations. In 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding evidence from Congress regarding his role in the Iran-Contra affair. He was pardoned by former President Bush.

He appointed John Bolton-who opposes nonproliferation treaties and the UN-to Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

Then there is the oil man, Zalmay Khalilzad, United States special envoy to Afghanistan. His appointment was announced on December 31, 2001, only nine days after the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul.

Khalilzad is a Afghanistan-born American with extensive knowledge of the region. In the mid-1990s, while working for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, he conducted risk analyses for Unocal for a proposed 890-mile, $2 billion natural gas pipeline project. The pipeline would have extended from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to growing natural gas markets in Pakistan and, potentially, India. In December 1999, Khalilzad joined Unocal officials at a reception for an invited Taliban delegation to Texas. When Afghanistan interim leader Hamid Karzai met with Pakistan's General Musharraf recently, they discussed the proposed Central Asian gas pipeline project and agreed that it was in the interest of both countries.

Military Build-up

From Bulgaria and Uzbekistan to Turkey, Kuwait and beyond, more than 60,000 US military personnel are stationed in these forward bases. While they make it easier for the US to project its power, they may also increase prospects for renewed terrorist attacks on Americans.

The build-up, which is taking place with almost no public discussion, has passed virtually unnoticed outside the region-partly for reasons of operational security in Afghanistan, but also because Washington and host governments have agreed not to discuss the bases in public. Though Washington has obtained the support of the ruling regimes, including some inside the former Soviet Union, most of the bases are in countries where an American military presence stirs great resentment among Islamic extremists.

House Bill HR 19, introduced by Bob Barr (R-Ga.) on January 3, 2001, would legislatively repeal sections of three Executive Orders. These orders prohibited political assassination and renewed the ban on assassinations, or conspiracy to commit assassinations. Entitled the "Terrorist Elimination Act of 2001," the bill was submitted to the House International Relations Committee. This bold move to repeal the orders was completely ignored by the major media, suggesting that there may be a list of people the Bush administration want eliminated.

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