Reuters: Austria's Haider says Bush is a war criminal

[unhappycamper]

Austria's Haider says Bush is a war criminal

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian right-wing populist Joerg Haider called President Bush a war criminal on Saturday, days before Austria's government hosts Bush and European leaders in Vienna.

Haider, whose group is part of Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel's government coalition, said Bush's meeting with his European peers on Wednesday was pointless as he did not expect the U.S. president to pay attention to what Europe had to tell him.

"He is a war criminal. He brought about the war against Iraq deliberately, with lies and falsehoods," Haider said in an interview with Austrian daily newspaper Die Presse.

"The Iraqi population is suffering terribly. Bush took the risk of an enormous number of victims," said Haider.

Maverick Haider is a personal friend of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and visited Iraq's former President
Saddam Hussein shortly before the U.S.-led invasion started in 2003.

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on edit: to correct word

[Zynx]

1. Haider is a sick man. I want better allies than him.

[global1]

2. * Is A Sicker Man - I Want A Better President Than Him......nt

[IndianaGreen]

9. Haider should know about Hitlers, since we have one in the White House

It is pretty bad when even the European fascists begin to call Bush a war criminal and a dangerous man.

[Zhade]

11. Exactly - so if even HE'S pointing out that fact...

...you KNOW the rest of the world is already there.

[struggle4progress]

12. This racist nationalist xenophobe is not our ally.

[IndianaGreen]

14. That's not the point

If a fascist like Haider can find fault with Bush, it points out to the American sheep that the entire world sees Bush as the world's greatest terrorist.

[struggle4progress]

15. It merely shows Haider can read Austrian opinion polls.

This doesn't demonstrate a sudden burst of insight that is available to us only from Austrian Nazi sympathesizers.

My ideas don't come from Haider -- in fact, I have absolutely no sympathy for him or his philosophy -- and I won't be quoting Haider to "point out" anything except that Haider is a complete jackass.

[Voltaire99]

22. When fascists are more honest than alleged centrists...

...as indeed the repulsive Haider is more honest about Bush than is, say, Hillary Clinton, who continues to support the Iraq war, then we have a problem.

It's all fine and good to denounce fascists. What about the putative progressive who knows better yet acquiesces?

[struggle4progress]

26. Apologists for the Third Reich don't qualify as "honest" in my book.

And I feel perfectly comfortable criticizing some of Senator Clinton's recent positions -- without claiming she's less attractive than an anti-semitic Nazi-apologist.

[Voltaire99]

27. But a Nazi is taking a better position on the war than Hillary. Ouch.

Yes, everybody knows he's a monster.

That's rather the point: unlike the leading Democratic presidential candidate, a monster has correctly declared Bush a war criminal. How embarrassing for Hillary and all who've helped the war criminal when right wing scum can speak more forthrightly than they on the Iraq war.

Bad to be outflanked by monsters on the truth. Bad to be complicit.

[Zynx]

23. The point is when there are unsavory characters like Haider criticizing

Bush, it undermines our own arguments because people say, "Well if that shitbag thinks Bush sucks he must be okay."

[IndianaGreen]

24. We can't help that Bush has made enemies everywhere

The fact that Iraqi insurgents, and even Al-Qaeda, have said that Bush is a war criminal for the phosphorus fire bombing of Fallujah does not undermine us making the same argument. The US did commit war crimes in Fallujah that put us on the same level as the Nazis.

[Voltaire99]

28. Really?

Which constituency for "our arguments" are you talking about? Certainly not progressives; we already despise Haider.

Bush voters, then? They're hardly going to prefer anti-Bush arguments coming from Democrats than from Austrians.

[Zynx]

30. Moderates.

We need them to win elections.

[KingFlorez]

3. He should love Bush

They mirror each other on several issues

[glitch]

25. Perhaps he meant it all as a compliment. nt

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. So..... is he proud that he is about 5 years late in noticing this fact??

[supernova]

5. Jorg Haider is making sense!

The world truely has gone mad!! :P

[progdonkey]

6. and this guy thinks Hitler WASN'T...

Does that maybe give us a hint about Bush? Even Nazis are saying, "Dude, that guy's evil!"

[otherlander]

17. Yeah.... Kissenger, too.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Balance of power. Even dictatorial types understand what a threat a

rogue U.S. is to the world. There has not been anything as dangerous to world peace as the Bush junta since the Third Reich. During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union at least balanced each other out. Luckily, neither of us had a leader during that era who was crazy enough to want nuclear war. Now there is no balance, except the good sense of the rest of the world, but that good sense is not terribly well organized or unified in its ability to counter the junta. There are some powerful alliances in the Far East and the EU, and transworld like China/Iran, and it's interesting to look at Bush junta policy in South America as having the goal of PREVENTING strong regional and continental economic, military and foreign policy cooperation among the new leftist governments. (The Chavistas' inspiration is the revolutionary hero Simon Bolivar, who sought a unified South America, on the order of the states of the U.S. The Bush junta's chief aim in its foaming-at-the-mouth opposition to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may be to prevent Bolivarianism, as much as it is to stop oil revenues from being used for social programs--a terribly bad precedent, from Bushites' point of view. Their other recent actions--besides bad-mouthing Chavez and pouring our taxpayer dollars into the tiny oil elite opposition--has been to try to bully Chile's new leftist president into denying Venezuela the temporary General Assembly seat on the Security Council, and to try to drive a "free trade" wedge between Bolivia and Venezuela. "Divide and conquer" of course is a Bush junta M.O. at home and abroad, but it may have this specific goal in South America: preventing unity.) The upshot: the Bush junta is incredibly destabilizing, and respects nothing and no one, as to international law and rules of behavior. It doesn't even respect our own Constitution or the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And it has fascist, unaccountable control of US federal revenue, the US military, the US secret government, and all US agencies and powers. THAT is dangerous.

How it achieved such power is by the RECENT (2002-2004) coup of installing electronic voting systems throughout the US, which are run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, controlled by a few large corporations with very close ties to the Bush junta--mainly Diebold and ES&S.

Our job, as the sovereign people of the U.S. of A., is to get vote counting back into the public venue. These criminals did not create a NON-TRANSPARENT vote counting system for no reason. And until we remedy it--which is still doable at the state/local level--we ourselves have no power to direct our government or hold it accountable. We owe it to the world and the human race to put maximum effort into this critically important, priority one matter. We MUST restore our right to vote. If even rightwingers and friends of dictators are seeing the problem, we ourselves had better address this lack of accountability of our government immediately, for our own safety if for no other reason.

[IndianaGreen]

10. You are absolutely correct in your analysis, Peace Patriot

The United States has long ceased to be a republic, and like Germany's Weimar Republic, it has been replaced by a new Reich that presents the greatest threat to the world's peace and stability since Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

[Dutch]

8. Birds of a feather sometimes turn on each other, I guess...

[Sadie5]

13. It is pretty bad when

One sick idiot is turning against another.

[Terran1212]

16. Why is it so few HONEST people are willing to call Bush out?

It seems only the baddies themselves will call Bush what he is. Everyone else is too "polite" or maybe scared to.

[Quantess]

19. A lot of people are saying it, not just the "baddies" n/t

but, it's as though we're all in space and no one can hear our screaming.

[Vidar]

18. It needs to be said.

[Kurovski]

20. Will he arrest him when he shows up?

Ship him to The Hague?

[autorank]

21. Politics makes strange bed fellows.

Can you imagine how bad you have to be to have THIS GUY call you a war criminal?

[Posteritatis]

29. Lookit the broken clock! (n/t)

[greenbriar]

31. Please take him and "LIBERATE" US WE need freedom

we need democracy

[bdamomma]

32. Hiader is calling it as he sees it

why does everyone see this in other countries, but some americans have no clue.

the dumbing down of americans continue.

[ButterflyBlood]

33. Haider is just looking for a Sistah Souljah moment

There's an election coming up and this way he can run with his merry band of fascists as the most anti-Bush party and bash the mainstream ones over his visit. Let's not get involved with scum like him.

[Rex]

34. Well if any country should know about war criminals, it would be Austria.

Maybe Haider is seeing a repeat or close copy of recent history.