DEMOCRATS AS STATE-SPONSORS OF TERROR

"I expect to review our arms sales policy and to take it up with the other major arms sellers of the world as a part of a long-term effort to reduce the proliferation of weapons."
~ Bill Clinton, presidential candidate, lying through his teeth.

Here's what Howard Dean the Idiot and chairman of the Democratic National Convention had to say Sunday on Fox News:

The problem is the president had no idea what he was doing when he got us into it [Iraq] and therefore the consequences are going to be bad no matter what happens.

I mean, the worst thing that can happen — and this may well be the outcome — is that Turkish troops end up in Kurdistan, because the Kurds are fomenting terrorist violence in eastern Turkey. That is a real possibility. The PKK, which is the terrorist organization, the Kurdish terrorist organization, now is operating out of Kurdistan. That's a very serious problem.

If we hadn't gone into Iraq, that wouldn't be a serious problem. Turkey is one of our most important allies. There are all kinds of unforeseen consequences to this policy. Our problem is we've got to cut our losses and figure out how we're going to get our folks out and still defend the United States of America.

Kurds are fomenting violence in "eastern Turkey?" Kurds are fomenting violence? No, Mr. Dean, let me tell you who is formenting violence in Kurdistan--that's right Mr. Dean, "eastern Turkey," as you call it, IS Kurdistan. While your last dishonorable, oral-sex-crazed, Democratic president was getting himself serviced in the Oval Office, he had already made sure that the US fascist client state, Turkey, was getting plenty of weapons with which to genocide Kurds, from good old Mother Jones:

It was the early 1990s and then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton was on the campaign trail making promises: "I expect to review our arms sales policy and to take it up with the other major arms sellers of the world as a part of a long-term effort to reduce the proliferation of weapons."

[ . . . ]

. . . once elected, Bill Clinton did what he does best: He took advantage of the opportunity. Rather than insert human-rights concerns into the arms-sales equation, as did his Democratic predecessor President Carter, Clinton decided to aggressively continue the sales policies of President Bush, himself no slouch when it came to selling U.S. arms.

Early on, Clinton required our diplomats to shill for arms merchants to their host countries. The results were immediate: During Clinton's first year in office, U.S. arms sales more than doubled. From 1993 to 1997, the U.S. government sold, approved, or gave away $190 billion in weapons to virtually every nation on earth.

The arms industry, meanwhile, has greased the wheels. It filled the Democratic Party coffers to the tune of nearly $2 million in the 1998 election cycle.

Jump to another Mother Jones report:

American Weapons, Kurdish Blood

As the only traditionally Islamic member of NATO, Turkey is treated as a pivotal ally in the Middle East. In addition, for decades Turkey and Greece acted as barriers that effectively kept the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact from establishing a warm-water seaport in the Mediterranean. However, with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, one would think that the Turks would no longer merit Cold War-sized arms shipments.

Wrong. The U.S. continues to use Turkey as its unofficial envoy between the Western and Islamic worlds. Since 1993 President Clinton has approved $8.3 billion worth of weapon sales and giveaways to Turkey, including frigates, helicopters, M-85 machine guns, numerous replacement parts for F-16 fighters, and Lockheed Martin LANTIRNs, which allow Turkish pilots to find their targets at night.

[ . . . ]

Human Rights Watch reported several incidents in which American weapons were used by the Turkish government against its own civilians. For example, following the October 22, 1993, sweep of a village by Turkish troops, "Five witnesses said that [U.S.-supplied Cobra] helicopters and other aircraft pounded the village of Zengok.... Five civilians were found dead in the village two days later, captives left by the troops to be burned alive while bound and tied, linked together with electric cables and a chain. There reportedly were no guerillas in the village at the time of the raid." In another incident, "Troops used U.S.-supplied M-48 and M-60 tanks, 105 mm artillery, U.S.-supplied M-113 armored personnel carriers, U.S. designed M-16 rifles and LAWS antitank rockets to assault the town of Sirnak following an alleged PKK provocation. Twenty-two civilians died in the assault, 60 were wounded, and many of the town's 25,000 residents fled in panic. Much of the town was destroyed."

More on the Democratic Party's war crimes at Foreign Policy In Focus.

More on the Democratic Party's war crimes at Federation of American Scientists.

More on the Democratic Party's war crimes in a joint report of the World Policy Institute and the Federation of American Scientists.

More on the Democratic Party's war crimes, again at Mother Jones.

And I can go on and on and on and on.

We don't forget, Mr. Dean, that the current regime in Ankara was carried out by "the boys" (i.e. the pashas) of another Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, from John Tirman.

The U.S. officials of the period always denied foreknowledge or prompting of the coup, of course. Paul Henze, the former CIA station chief in Ankara who was responsible for Turkey on the White House national security staff during the Carter administration, stated flatly that there was no encouragement or prior approval of the coup. But he also said that "the Carter administration would not have discouraged the takeover if it had been informed in advance, but it preferred not to be. Given the fears that Turkey might go the way of Iran and that the entire Western security position in the Middle East would disintegrate, there was a great sense of relief throughout Washington when the change occurred." Carter signaled his approval by calling for generous increases in military aid in the next two years. Given how traumatic the arms embargo of 1975-78 had been for the Turkish military elite, it is unlikely they would have taken such a drastic step without some assurances from Washington that it would not earn retribution from the "human-rights president."

Let me be brutally frank, Mr. Dean, Turkish troops in Kurdistan is not the worst thing that could happen. On the contrary, it would be a great opportunity to help rid the world of fascists. Let them come! They've come before and every time they've come they've gone home with much more than a bloody nose. Let them come and they will die.

This is what happens when you support, for decades, an illegitimate, military ruling class over genuine democratic change, Mr. Dean, and that is what the US has done in Turkey. Looks to me, Mr. Dean, like there are a lot of Democrats who need to be tried for war crimes and genocide, right alongside your Republican colleagues.

In a just world, Mr. Apologist-for-State-Sponsorship-of-Terror, you'd be worried about swinging with Saddam as the worst thing that could happen.