Richard Nixon: Shitbird Score 86

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Richard Nixon sabotaged the 1968 Paris peace talks through the Chennault back-channel to win an election — Haldeman's own notes record the instruction to "monkey wrench" the negotiations — extending a war that killed hundreds of thousands more before it finally ended in 1975. In office, he expanded that war into Cambodia and Laos with Operation Menu and its successors, secret bombing campaigns of staggering tonnage conducted without congressional approval, destabilizing Cambodia and helping open the door for the Khmer Rouge, who murdered roughly two million people.

Then the crime the previous version of this page missed entirely: Bangladesh, 1971. As Pakistan's army carried out a campaign of mass slaughter and rape against Bengalis — with conservative estimates of hundreds of thousands dead and Dhaka's own consul general, Archer Blood, cabling Washington the word "genocide" — Nixon and Kissinger tilted to their coup-maker Yahya Khan. They ignored the Blood Telegram, punished its author, kept arms flowing in violation of an embargo, and sent a carrier group to intimidate India. That is enabling a genocide, documented cable by cable.

He also greenlit the coup machinery in Chile — Allende overthrown in 1973, Pinochet's regime torturing, executing, or disappearing tens of thousands — and launched the War on Drugs, which his own aide John Ehrlichman later described as a tool built to criminalize Black Americans and the antiwar left.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Sabotage of 1968 peace talks + Vietnam continuation — ~500,000 deaths (direct)
• Bombing of Cambodia & Laos (1969–73) — ~150,000 direct deaths (scholarly range ~100–250k)
• Khmer Rouge rise — ~2,000,000 murdered; destabilization counted downstream (25%): ~500,000
• Bangladesh genocide (1971) — arms, cover, and the Blood Telegram ignored; enabling tier (50% of a conservative ~500,000): ~250,000 (new entry)
• CIA-backed coup in Chile (1973) — Pinochet dictatorship: ~10,000 (direct/enabling)
• War on Drugs (1971) — codified systemic racism; scored as ethics

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~1,410,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~1,500,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 66
• Ethics Penalty: +15 (peace sabotage, genocide enabling, coups, racist drug war)
• Systemic Oppression Bonus: +5
• Final Shitbird Score: 86

"If the President does it, that means it's not illegal."
The Constitution wept. Then bled. In two hemispheres at once.