19.12.2012 Views

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

Convention he cannot be held criminally responsible in a United States court for actions<br />

that antedate the opening of hostilities between the United States and Panama. <strong>The</strong>se<br />

overarching considerations set the stage for a series of scandalous abuses within the<br />

framework of the trial itself. As a result of the <strong>Bush</strong> regime's "mind war" conducted in<br />

cooperation with the controlled news media, it is clear that Noriega cannot receive a fair<br />

trial anywhere in the United States, because of the impossibility of finding an impartial<br />

jury. During the time that Noriega was preparing his defense, the US Department of<br />

Justice and the FBI violated the rights of the defendant under the Sixth Amendment by<br />

tapping and taping his conversations with his defense lawyers. Attorney Raymond Takiff<br />

had been retained by Noriega as a lawyer at the same time that he was working for the<br />

US Department of Justice as a secret informant in undercover sting operations. In his<br />

outrageously political pre-trial opinions, US District Judge William Hoeveler barred all<br />

references to Noriega's dealings with CIA Director and Vice President <strong>George</strong> <strong>Bush</strong>,<br />

ruling that the Noriega-<strong>Bush</strong> relation was irrelevant to the US government's charge that<br />

Noriega was part of drug smuggling into the United States. Hoeveler's pre-trial ruling<br />

amounts to a ban on discussion of wrongdoing by the US government. This guts<br />

Noriega's defense, which is that US agencies, and not Noriega, were responsible for the<br />

importation of illegal narcotics into the United States as an integral part of the US<br />

government's policy of supporting the Nicaraguan contras, and that the US government<br />

fabricated the February, 1988 indictments against Noriega as part of a political strategy to<br />

overthrow him because he refused to join the US in supporting the contras.<br />

<strong>The</strong> parade of government witnesses against Noriega includes the usual rogue's gallery of<br />

professional perjurers from the Federal Witness Protection Program. Those testifying<br />

against Noriega are, almost without exception, felons at the mercy of the US government,<br />

many of whom have concluded plea bargains with federal prosecutors in which they have<br />

been treated more leniently in exchange for their willingness to testify against Noriega.<br />

<strong>The</strong>se professional witnesses constitute a phalanx of CIA stringers and other mercenaries<br />

of the perjury wars who have received total payments of US taxpayers' money estimated<br />

anywhere between $1.5 million and $6 million. <strong>The</strong> upkeep of this stable of witnesses<br />

and other exorbitant court costs are not being defrayed by the <strong>Bush</strong> presidential campaign<br />

nor by <strong>Bush</strong> personally, despite the fact that the main purpose of the proceedings is to<br />

retroactively validate <strong>Bush</strong>'s atrocity of December, 1989, and to contribute to his efforts<br />

at self-glorification for re-election in 1992. Judge Hoeveler has abrogated the usual rules<br />

of evidence, admitting hearsay reports on Noriega's activities from celebrity felons like<br />

Carlos Lehder who have never met nor spoken with Noriega. Despite this unprecedented<br />

mobilization of the police state apparatus, news media like US News and World Report of<br />

September 23, 1991 have conceded that the Justice Department case against Noriega is<br />

"shockingly weak," and legal experts not friendly to Noriega have asserted that the first<br />

month of the prosecution case had utterly failed to provide convincing evidence of any<br />

violations of US law by Noriega.<br />

<strong>Bush</strong>'s performance during the Panama crisis was especially ominous because of the<br />

president's clearly emerging mental imbalance. Several outbursts during the Noriega<br />

press conferences had resembled genuine public fits. Racist and sexual obsessions were<br />

reaching critical mass in <strong>Bush</strong>'s subconscious. <strong>The</strong>se gross phenomena did not receive the

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!