Vincent Bugliosi has expressed recent exasperation over the issue of torture being mentioned currently with greater frequency over what the former L.A. County prosecutor believes to be the key issue over which George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should face trial -- murder.

Bugliosi's concern, through which he urges action from an American prosecutorial body to bring Bush and Cheney to trial, could be directly addressed through the international tribunal of the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

A reputable source of keeping up to date about the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the initial "shock and awe" attacks on Baghdad ordered by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld prior to occupying that city and the nation of Iraq is Just Foreign Policy.  This informative site provides international detailed analysis of significant events throughout the world.

Just Foreign Policy publishes numbers based on the highly respected international medical journal The Lancet.  According to The Lancet's detailed continuing study, supportive evidence of which is supplied by Just Foreign Policy, the current death figure is much higher than that reported by America's mainstream media on those rare occasions when any such information is presented.

(Note: This is the last column in the series.)

Pope Benedict XVI said in 2005, "Absolutizing what is not absolute but relative is called totalitarianism." To conclude this series of papers, I will say that Sean Hannity's political ideology unconsciously demonstrates a new form of totalitarianism which defines right and wrong in an artificially narrow sense; regards national security as the greatest good, elevating it above human rights and the law of God; accepts the coexistence of American big government, big business, and a swollen military to achieve the objective of national security; blends sin and sinners into a single homogeneous mass that must be defeated to preserve our national security; and intolerantly refuses to admit into its framework any clear facts that contradict its methods or call into question its objectives.

Mr. Hannity: In the age of international "Islamic" terrorism, preemptive war can sometimes be justified and even necessary to protect our country. (pp. 154-55)

My response: In fact, the Catholic Church imposes very strict conditions even for normal defensive war, including the danger of a certain, imminent attack with lasting and grave consequences. The Church's just war doctrine is based on a presumption against the use of force. Despite the fact that the Church has no definitive teaching on the morality of preemptive war, it does not admit that such a war could ever be necessary. A large majority of Church leaders around the world have condemned preemptive war as in their view unjust and immoral. When talk of a preemptive strike on Iraq was flying around some years ago, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stated several times: "The concept of a 'preventive war' does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church."

(NOTE: I apologize for my recent extended delay in publishing this weekly column series. I was on Easter break the 25th and was busy with other matters on the 11th and 18th. I can assure you this lengthy delay was unintentional.)

Mr. Hannity: America's strength does not intimidate other nations. (p. 142)

My response: The United States is the most powerful nation on earth. Since we attained that status in the twentieth century, the rulers of this country have had the capacity to use that strength for good or for evil. In the 1900s we used our military might and economic prowess a number of times to defend weaker countries and assist poorer countries. World War II saved Europe from Nazi aggression, while the Korean and Vietnam Wars attempted to halt Communist advances. Our Marshall Plan helped Europe rebuild its economy after World War II; our Berlin airlift prevented tens of thousands of East Germans from starving to death.

Mr. Hannity: The new appeasers claim that UN (United Nations) authorization is needed for war. (pp. 139-140)

Mr. Hannity: The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were "...unmistakable act[s] of war and crime[s] against humanity." (p. 1)

My response: Yes, the attacks of September 11, 2001 were terrible crimes against humanity which killed thousands of innocent people. They were unequivocally condemned as such by all the nations of the world.

A crime of immense proportions that will now see more blowback. That is, unless people of conscience stand up to this terrorism on all sides, and soon.

Doctors Without Borders In Southern Lebanon

July 25, 2006

Christopher Stokes, MSF Director of Operations:

Relief materials needed in south Lebanon, but supplying is almost impossible

Listen to full report [mp3 - Running time 3:06]

Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Director of Operations, Christopher Stokes, describes over the phone from Beirut what he has seen traveling to the south of Lebanon and back.

The much-belated, poll-prompted outcry of a few American elected officials against the widespread use of torture by the Bush Administration – following years of silent acquiescence in the face of incontrovertible evidence of deliberate atrocity – is a welcome development, of course. But it has left an even more sinister aspect of Bushist policy untouched, one that likewise has been hidden in plain sight for years.

On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of "lethal measures" against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated an "enemy combatant." This order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field carte blanche to designate "enemies" on their own initiative and kill them as they see fit.