Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero on Sunday, US president George Bush appologising on Arab television yesterday. (both pictures by Associated Press, Denis Doyle and Paul Richards)
Bush’s slippery slope: preemptive wars, violations of international law
Nipawin - Friday - May 7, 2004 - by: Mario deSantis
Definition of slippery slope: A tricky precarious situation, especially one that leads gradually but inexorably to disaster: "[Without] a clear boundary to confer personhood on a human being... we approach a slippery slope that ends in the disposal of inconvenient people" (Steven Pinker). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company
	This has been a catastrophic week for the Bush administration. The road map to peace in the Middle East is not working and the disclosure of the dehumanization of the Coalition’s prisoners in Iraq has created an abysmal fall on the credibility of President George Bush.
	We are engulfed in the fictional world of the Bushes: freedom and democracy, where freedom is ignorance and democracy is the Free Market. Bush is exporting freedom and democracy in Iraq with the guns of the American Army and with the guns of private contractors. With the ensuing fog of war we cannot distinguish anymore between the army and the contractors, between international laws and private contracts. Iraq is definitely open for business and according to Bush and his neo-uber-alles, Iraq will be the light, which will inflame additional democracies in the Arab world.
	In this fictional and incendiary world there is the common sense voice of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero:
	"The mission in Iraq, which is showing itself every day to be a failure, should serve as a lesson to the international community: preemptive wars, never again; violations of international law, never again."
	President George Bush’s policies of preemptive wars in violations of international law constitute the slippery slope to the destruction of Iraq and little by little to the destruction of the rest of us.
	Mario deSantis
References:
	Pertinent articles published in Ensign
1. ..	Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba US Army Report on Torture of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib Prison http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/taguba_report.htm
2. .	CBC News Report. Video: "He's wounded, Hit Him." US army helicopter killing three Iraqis, one of them wounded, May 4, 2004 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6147.htm
3. .	Von Hoffman, Nicholas Privatization in Iraq: ‘Contractors’ With Guns April 21, 2004 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6069.htm
4. .	Associated Press Spain's PM: Iraq Should Serve As Lesson (pdf) May 2, 2004 http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040502/ap_on_re_mi_ea/spain_zapatero_iraq
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