Submitted by Pachamama
The Bush, number two, Administration produced some of the most ‘interesting’ characters of any administration in the history of the United States of America. Amongst them was the great Donald Rumsfeld. We don’t care that he has some claim to being a prodigy. He is interesting to us for having a rare ability to mouth things few, in public life, would every say.
It was the mercurial genius of Rumsfeld which gave us ‘known knowns’, ‘known unknows’ and ‘unknown unknowns’. It must take supreme confidence for a political figure to posit, amid extreme laughter from an audience of journalist, at a time of illegal wars, this theory of the knowns.
Rumsfeld saw the ‘known knowns’ as things which we know with certainty. The ‘known unknowns’ as things we know we do not know. And the ‘unknown unknowns’ as information we do not know we don’t known. What manner of man could have the fortitude to conduct this thought experiment in public? Maybe it takes a little bit more than courage!
We had assigned this ‘theory’ of the knowns to the scrapbook of history when low and behold this very supposition about the ‘unknowables’ reemerged in a news conference by current Director of the CIA, John Brennan. For the chief spook to reach back to a time when historic crimes of torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity on a global scale, were committed by the administration he served, to find language from the Rumsfeldian guide book, there has to be a coordinated defense. An attempt to avoid an international war crimes tribunal, that will come, sooner or later. To mislead history.
Not only Rummy! We have Dick Cheney, trotted out on all the networks telling old lies to counter settled known knowns about their illegal wars of aggression. Dickey is trying to make known knowns into unknown unknowns but the philosophy on which he rests will work against him for there are few known unknowns about their war crimes.
We known that African leaders and other ‘enemies’ of empire are marched before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. We know that this United Nations court acts as the enforcement arm for the empire. We known that Rummy, Dickie, Georgie, Condi, Brennan, Gonzales, Bibby, Tony Blair et al are all more and more afraid to travel outside the USA.
We know that the same Geneva Conventions, which 70 years after World War Two sees the Zionist state still hunting down nonagenarians, is as valid today as it was when first brought against the Nazis. We know that George Monbiot and an army of civil society forces around the world hold the power to have these war criminals arrested and brought before a competent court.
We know that every citizen of the world holds the power of prosecutor under the Geneva Conventions and can, in so acting, petition any court to have American war criminals arrested should they be outside the USA and the US fails to act. We know that most readers will say that this will not happen. But we also know that the geo-political environments have changed considerably and American can ill-afford to pay the cost in terms of national prestige to save Rummy and his cabal of criminals.
Given the recent US Senate passage of exerts of the executive summary of the torture report it maybe a known unknown that the country is signaling it wants to turn a page. Never mind industrial torture by the Republicans, with the collusion of Democrats, has been replaced by open mass murder of civilians by the Obama Administration drone warfare, there seems to be a feeling emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that the country needs to ‘restore its image in the world. As though the known knowns of torture being as American as apple pie, does not exist. As though the known known that slavery was torture was a known unknown. As though the known known that genocide against the indigenous peoples of North America and Palestine was indeed torture, was a known unknown.
Now it is a known known that the war criminal Tony Blair travels to Barbados. On occasions he has been seen hobnobbing with Owen Arthur and Hilary Beckles. It is also a known known that nobody in Barbados will exercise the relevant articles in the Geneva Conventions should he be spotted. What is an unknown unknown is whether international sanctions will we levied on Barbados for sheltering a known war criminal?
The torture of prisoners of war at Abu Graib, Guantanamo, Bahgram and scores of other known black sites around the world is no longer in the province of the unknown unknowns. Despite centuries of public relations propaganda the world is starting to see that the projection of American criminal activity abroad is no less than that inflicted at home.
Muted calls for international investigations to confirm known knowns, make known unknown knowable and convert unknown unknowns into known knowns will soon grow to a point where even a deaf empire would have to respond. Justice demands this Rumsfeldian accounting!
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