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Vincent Bugliosi is absolutely right and on target.
Let me say so right up front first and foremost!
Prosecution for murder needs to include Bush, Cheney and Rice at the bare minimum.
The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder is not a polemic against the last 8 years of betrayal politics.
Only the most naive or mindless among us refuse to believe that America tortures human beings; that such an act is a direct repudiation of the Geneva Convention Agreement of which this country was the dominant driving moral force.
The World - including any thoughtful American citizen - knows that our government lied to us to get support for [or better said avoid justifiable rejection and resistance to] what they wanted to do.
Americans are a people who by action demonstrate their belief in and support of law and order; of the bad guys getting theirs, of liars, swindlers and murderers paying the penalty.
Law & Order, CSI, Cold Case, Criminal Minds, NCIS ... the list of what we genuinely appreciate and believe goes on and on.
Impeachment should be the least of Bush worries. Prosecution of Mr. Bush and his accomplices is the very least we should be willing to do.
Do you really believe that Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were feeling any regrets in the moments before Bush gave the order to bomb Baghdad which would make murder victims of innocent civilians what happens when American TV heroes smack down TV villains?
When McCoy and the other enforcement heroes bring justice to TV criminals are you always be pulling for the bad guys? Of course not.
If we raise a national cry for prosecution, we send a most significant message to the rest of the world about what democracy and freedom really mean in America.
We also send a strong message to shallow, rigid and non-gifted military politicians who think they can cower America into voting for the wrong candidate for president.
You need to read and watch this entire article. Please do!
Remember the Romney sons who patriotically did not serve, but patriotically campaigned for their father while their father considered patriotism a political tactic and voiced support for Bush.?
Well, this kid makes the Romney sons look like GI-Joes.
I'm a vet and if one of my kids pulled this stunt I'd kick his ass all the way to the recruiter and make him sign up or initiate eunuch surgery.
Vet Voice.com
Young Chickenhawk Tries the Swiftboat Smear Again
[Excerpt]
One day, when Jason Mattera has his own son, I'm sure the boy will come to him--in a living room filled with portraits of Real American War Heroes like George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld--and ask, "Daddy, what did you do during the Great Global War on Terror?"
And at this point, Jason will most likely lie. Because if he told the truth, he would be forced to say, "Son, I certainly believed in the Great Global War on Terror, but I was too afraid to go myself--even when many soldiers had to serve four and five separate tours, for 15 months at a time. I just couldn't bring myself to step in and help them out. Instead, my job was to act as a lackey for cowards more powerful than myself--because they gave me a sense of purpose I didn't otherwise have. In fact, son, once during that time, I even harassed a man who'd been highly decorated and wounded in Vietnam. I did it because I wanted to feel useful. I wanted to feel important. And I wanted people to like me. Because inside, I knew I was a coward."
This week--while Jason Mattera spent his time trying to smear a Vietnam veteran in the halls of Congress--12 Americans, all of whom were around Mattera's age, died in Iraq.
This clown is not serving his country well in any way.
This is not what he was elected to do even for the dumbest who voted for him.
The New York Times writes today
Bush’s Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms His Legacy
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.
"Fighting for strong executive powers?" This Cheney-driven obsession has deteriorated into unjustifiable silliness in logic and constitutional wisdom.
What we have now is a president and vice-president who have fumbled their way into a corner and who have a created a pathetic argument -not for strong exectuive powers - but in reality a tragic and shameful argument for "strongman" executive powers.
How much greater authority and moral power could have been asserted by a presidency with more depth to it? These two clowns could have had what they wanted, a presidency that could have utilized a massive demonstration of unity six and a half years ago by rallying a populace to the insistence of America as a beacon democracy.
Instead, they exploited that unity, began preaching fear and proceeded to a Cheney-imagined restoration of authority that should not be. It's an authority that has proven to harm the country more than aided. They need not have preached fear as a means to more power.
A refusal to go to tactics of cowards as what we could have done. Buttressed by appeal to national fear rather than national resolve is what they did in a shifty seizure of disputed power and authority.
The bottom line is that the more expansive power and authority of moral honor that defines so-called noble causes would have come. The presidency would have remained the leading edge of America's global integrity.
That's all gone right now. Bush and Cheney in no way can bring it back.
Larry Johnson at NoQuarter makes an excellent point.
We were the a major player in the drama at Nuremberg. One of our future Suprem Court Justices managed the prosecution of German and Japanese war criminals after World War II. The crimes included waterboarding as part of Nazi and Japanese crimes of torture.
Two weeks ago I celebrated the birth of my 16th grandchild. As I've done many times before, I'll continue to be asked about events in this country's history as well as to explain some of the things that go on here. The questions began of course with my own children
Dad (Grandpa), what does it mean "American a baseball and apple pie?" How easy those were to explain.
Dad (Grandpa), how come our soldiers were so shocked when they found the prisoners in the concentration camps back then?
Don't we do all that now?
The End of the Road for George W. Bush
By Chris Hedges
The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency.
Bush stood in Jerusalem, uncomfortable and palpably bored. He mouthed platitudes about a peace settlement that mocked the humanitarian crisis he aided and abetted in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel in the West Bank and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The diminished George Bush, increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading into insignificance. A year from now one half expects to see him stand up at the next president's inauguration and screech "I'm melting! I'm melting!" as he sinks into a puddle of slime. He will return, I expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend the rest of his life doing the only task for which he has shown any aptitude-cutting down brush with a chain saw.
He may yet rise again to torment us with an attack on Iran, condemning more innocents to slaughter. He and his cigar-smoking soul mate Ehud Olmert would like to go out with one more flash of mayhem and violence. But even this will not ultimately save him. Bush will soon be reduced to the cipher he once was, left to spend the rest of his life trying to salvage a legacy of shame and deceit. In a just world he would be put on trial, if not by the International Criminal Court of Justice then by the U.S. Congress. He would be forced to face up to his lies and wars of aggression. But the moral rot that infects the nation has seeped into the bowels of the legislative as well as the executive branch.
World leaders, including those whom Bush desperately wants to intimidate, now dismiss him. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a few days ago that relations with the United States are of "no benefit to the Iranian nation. The day such relations are of benefit, I will be the first one to approve of that."
Bush will have flown from Israel to Palestine to Kuwait to Bahrain to the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia to Egypt in search of a legacy, one that he hopes will lift up his name in history. But, isolated and deluded, he has yet to grasp that he and the United States are reviled and detested for our violence, arrogance and greed. The bands played on the tarmac. He was toasted at state dinners. But even our allies, including Kuwait and Egypt, know Bush is a danger to himself and others.
He publicly displayed his inability to connect rhetoric with reality. He promised peace and cooperation, a new era, a Palestinian homeland. He promised solutions that will arise from negotiations that do not exist. Negotiations, in his eyes, are always about to begin. They were about to begin a year ago. They were about to begin with Annapolis. They are about to begin now. The messy issues between the Israelis and Palestinians that he and his administration have never attempted to address-the borders, the expanding Jewish settlements and outposts, the plight of Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem-will all be seamlessly solved ... one day. But the brutal reality of the Israeli occupation barrels forward. The Jewish settlements and outposts continue to be expanded. The crisis in Gaza, with the cuts in fuel and electricity, the deadly army incursions and airstrikes, has turned the world's largest walled prison into a swamp of human misery. And huge new settlements, like Har Homa, continue to rise up on Palestinian soil.
When Bush met with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah he blithely defended the patchwork of Israeli roadblocks that have turned the West Bank into a series of ringed Palestinian ghettos. The roadblocks, he told Abbas, are necessary for Israeli security. He announced that the 1949 Green Line, the borders established by the United Nations, would never be restored. There would be no discussion, he said, of the status of Jerusalem. And the plight of Palestinian refugees would be solved by setting up an international fund, meaning, of course, that none would ever return. In short, he offered an unequivocal endorsement of right-wing Israeli policy with not a murmur of dissent. And the Palestinians can either have it rammed down their throat or rot. Bush will be back, he has promised, in May to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. Olmert, no doubt, will again be fulsome in his praise, which is probably what Bush's trip to the Middle East is, at its core, really about. Bush desperately wants someone to pretend with him that he is an agent for peace and statesmanship. Olmert, who knows the callow American leader will give him everything he desires, is happy to oblige.
But as Bush basks in the glow of his own fantasy, the suffering in Gaza, one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters, along with the savage occupation of Iraq, continues to fuel widespread anger and rage. Bush has spent his time in office bolstering the Middle East's most despotic regimes, including that of Gen. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. He approved a $20-billion arms package for these states. He has backed efforts to crush mainstream Islamic groups that have electoral legitimacy and popular support. He has stood by as these regimes have stifled democratic dissent, and he has, with Israeli encouragement, isolated governments, even friendly governments, in the Middle East that raised feeble protests. But his day is past. There is open revolt. Opinion polls show that two-thirds of Palestinians, and three-fourths of Israelis, do not believe Bush can affect events in the Palestinian territories.
The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.
"As long as they [Iran] have no nuclear program ... why should we isolate Iran? Why punish Iran now?" Arab League Secretary-General Abu Moussa told The Washington Post.
The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, is in Iran for talks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended December's Gulf Cooperation Council summit. The Iranian president attended the just-completed hajj in Mecca at the invitation of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah. Tehran is exploring the resumption of diplomatic ties with Egypt, cut since the 1979 revolution, and has offered to cooperate with Cairo in the production of nuclear energy. And the Syrian and Lebanese governments have ignored Washington's warnings to sever ties with Hezbollah and Hamas.
It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that stand as stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem his time in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.
Chris Hedges, the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author most recently of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America," can be found every other Monday on Truthdig.
"The entire burden of today’s wars has been carried by a voluntary military force and its families. The larger public has not faced a draft, paid higher taxes or been asked to make any other sacrifice."
So how can a society that get's all tearful and weepy-eyed when somebody's house gets made-over remain silent, casual and disinterested unless the makeover team is working the house of a veteran?
How is it the the point of this editorial remains abstract so long as a draft doesn't drag the consumer-obsessed weepy-eyed who-rah flat-screen crowd into the same arena?
If you pay attention, you'll notice that those who publicly take stands supporting the troops by supporting the invasion and occupation as well as the wisdom-challenged foolish who started it are fewer and fewer every day.
You'll also notice that silence is where they hide their shame.
It's a silent majority apparently too shamed to do anything but sit, click and munch on Doritos.
The Plight of American Veterans
Published: November 12, 2007
As an unpopular, ill-planned war in Iraq grinds on inconclusively, it can be a bleak time to be a veteran.
There is little outright hostility toward returning military personnel these days; few Americans are reviling them as “baby killers” or blaming them for a botched war of choice launched by the White House. Indeed, both Congress and the White House have been hymning their praises in the run-up to Veterans Day.
But all too often, soldiers who return from Iraq or Afghanistan — and those who served in Vietnam or Korea — have been left to fend for themselves with little help from the government.Recent surveys have painted an appalling picture. Almost half a million of the nation’s 24 million veterans were homeless at some point during 2006, and while only a few hundred from Iraq or Afghanistan have turned up homeless so far, aid groups are bracing themselves for a tsunamilike upsurge in coming years.
Tens of thousands of reservists and National Guard troops, whose jobs were supposedly protected while they were at war, were denied prompt re-employment upon their return or else lost seniority, pay and other benefits. Some 1.8 million veterans were unable to get care in veterans’ facilities in 2004 and lacked health insurance to pay for care elsewhere.
Meanwhile, veterans seeking disability payments faced huge backlogs and inordinate delays in getting claims and appeals processed.
The biggest stain this year was the scandalous neglect of outpatients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and a sluggish response to the needs of wounded soldiers at veterans clinics and hospitals.
Much of this neglect stemmed from the Bush administration’s failure to plan for a long war with mounting casualties and over-long tours of duty to compensate for a shortage of troops.
Thus far, more than 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, many more than died in the almost-bloodless Persian Gulf war, but only a fraction of the body counts in Vietnam (58,000) or Korea (36,000). A higher percentage of wounded soldiers are surviving the current conflicts with grievous injuries, their lives saved by body armor, advances in battlefield medicine and prompt evacuation.
A study issued last week estimated that the long-term costs of their medical care and disability benefits could exceed the amount spent so far in prosecuting the war in Iraq.
To their credit, Congress and the administration have poured billions of added dollars into veterans’ programs and streamlined procedures in a scramble to catch up with the need. That is only appropriate.
The entire burden of today’s wars has been carried by a voluntary military force and its families. The larger public has not faced a draft, paid higher taxes or been asked to make any other sacrifice. The least a grateful nation should do is support the troops upon their return.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Willapa Magazine has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article.
Cartoonist Ben Sargent via GI SPecial
Give me a break!
The President of Columbia, a citizen of the most predatory corporate imperialism the world has ever seen, taking a junior high whack at the President of Iran?
If I were going to seriously try to engender trust and confidence in America as a force for global well being, I would not send a single representative of any of our corporate capitalists.
People like this guy and Hugo Chavez stick up for their country and we go batshit in the most immature indignation you could imagine.
We sound like granddaughters of plantation owners who bemoan the ruination of their lives because the family no longer owns slaves.
No grandkid of mine will ever get my recommend to attend Columbia. I can be as stubbornly either/or as the next jingoistic asshole.
Iraq tells Blackwater to Get out
September 18, 2007 - 4:09am.Tells security firm to leave country and stay out
The Iraqi government announced Monday it was ordering Blackwater USA, the security firm that protects U.S. diplomats, to leave the country after what it said was the fatal shooting of eight Iraqi civilians following a car bomb attack against a State Department convoy.
Blackwater's Legalized Terrorists in Iraq.
Doing what they love and getting paid for it in New Orleans
The ultimate irony is that Blackwater proudly declares itself a faith enterprise, a Christian Company, born again ....
Kind of like the Catholic Crusader Corporation of the middle ages. We blow them away in the name of the Lord.
Find me a grandfather of a draftable-aged son or daughter who says what this clown says and I'll personally stuff his in the toilet and flush it.
Excerpt from Greenspan Misses Cheney’s Memo: Spills the Beans on Oil
Why Are Americans Silent?
Could it be that most of us Americans remain “good Germans” because we are unwilling to recognize the moral implications of starting what is likely to be the first of the resource wars of the 21st century?; because we continue to be comfortable hogging far more than our share of the world’s natural resources?; and because we prefer to look the other way when our leaders tell us that aggressive war is necessary to protect that siren-call, “our way of life,” from attack by those who are just plain “jealous?”
Perhaps a clue can be found in the remarkable reaction I received after a lecture I gave two and a half years ago in a very affluent suburb of Milwaukee. I had devoted much of my talk to the implications of what I consider the most important factoid of this century: the world is running out of oil.
Afterwards some twenty folks lingered in a small circle to ask follow-up questions. A persistent, elegantly dressed man, who just would not let go, dominated the questioning:
“Surely you agree that we need the oil. Then what’s your problem? Some 1,450 killed thus far are far fewer than the toll in Vietnam where we lost 58,000; it’s a small price to pay… a sustainable rate to bear. What IS your problem?”
I asked the man if he would feel differently if one of the (then) 1,450 already killed were his own son. Judging from his abrupt, incredulous reaction, the suggestion struck him as so farfetched as to be beyond his ken. “It wouldn’t be my son,” he said.
And that, I believe, is a HUGE part of the problem.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A former CIA analyst, he is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Shoephone at Evergreen politics writes about how this incredible Republican/Conservative hypocrisy continues. Long after Katrina is a weather note in historical chronicles, the real story about how a political party in charge abandoned an entire city and surrounding area will continue.
Ask yourselves again readers, why would you want the people or party that did this by doing very little to stay in charge of our well-being when the need comes to our street?
So tell me, how is it that we need the bodies of undocumented Latinos to sustain American Imperialism at the same time we need them as debate subjects based on pretended American political hatred?
Why are we debating the ejection of illegal aliens at the same time we desperately need them to body-up the supposed mighty military arm of American freedom?
While Mr. Bush, Mr. Romney, Mr. Tancredo as well as all the rest of those Republican and Democratic candidates preening for nominations rap piously on and on about our illegal immigrants, this nation continues to mine deeply among undocumented immigrant families for young sacrificial victims to murder on the alter of American Imperialism.
In the spirit of Mel Gibson's villains in his Apocalypto, the Bushco priesthood is sending out mind raiders to kidnap young Latinos and spirit them into another world beyond imagining. It will be a world where the taking of their lives continues in ever-increasing numbers.
While doing so, the Republican incumbent hypocrites - with the tacit silent cooperation of Democratic weak sisters - incite the national crowd by then tearing out the hearts - not of the young soldiers who have already been sacrificed - but the hearts of thier grieving Latino families;
... in a grandstand play worthy of any self-serving demagocracy, proudly hold up those torn and bleeding family hearts solemnly for all to see
... and all American cowards to shout praises in one mighty self-serving patriotic war cry.
We are, or should be the grownups in this country.
Right here and right now we should forget our leisure leanings and start shouting, start the cascading exploding righteous and overdue indignation.
If you are too busy or too lazy to speak out, to join a rally or to surround and disrupt a network TV station, then by God take ten minutes to send someone you voted for (or voted against) the message of a mature and grown-up American citizen.
In the meantime, while you and I make up our minds, there are more dying - warriors and civilians - for no legitimately noble reason.
... not for broken pottery barns and certainly not to support inappropriate surges rationalized as supposed prevention of unavoidable chaos
... a chaos supposedly delayed at a cost way to high for this nation to keep paying.
The shame is ours too ...
although I am not a Latino, my children - all born in this country - are. Latinos then I consider partly my own people. Although viewing their lives from my primarily inadequate "gringo perspective," I do speak their language and work with these families in my profession. What they are told by the American government that simultaneously needs and despises them is our shame.
Reference the following chronicle of national shame:
The whole article is worth reading unless you are a moral coward turned off by reality or convinced that we can justifiably limit ourselves to small and token political steps now - letting more people die - while telling yourself how we'll fix it all in late 2008 - when it will be of course too late for many.
[Short excerpt]
Latino teenagers, including illegal immigrants are being recruited into the military with false promises.By Deborah Davis
Jesus had been an easy mark for the recruiter-a boy who fantasized that by joining the powerful, heroic U.S. Marines, he could help his own country fight drug lords.
He gave the recruiter his address and phone number in Mexico, and the recruiter called him twice a week for the next two years, until he had talked Jesus into convincing his parents to move to California.
Fernando and Rose Suarez sold their home and their laundry business and immigrated with their children to Escondido, where Jesus enrolled at a high school known for academic achievement. But the recruiter wanted him to transfer to a school for problem teenagers, since its requirements for graduation were lower and Jesus would be able to finish sooner. He was 17 and a half when he graduated from that school, still too young to enlist on his own, so his father co-signed the enlistment form, as the military requires for underage recruits.
Three years later, at the age of 20, his body was torn apart in Iraq by an American-made fragmentation grenade during the first week of the invasion. In the Pentagon's official Iraq casualty database, his death is number 74.
Don't wimp out on me now! Click and read it all
Guys ... if you are the type who think Bowflex bodies and $400-haircuts are where it's at for a man,
... who think drinking liberally and bragging about it are signs of long-term coolness that make you every babe's dream
... and who think that every babe has to stay a babe in order to meet your bowflex/haircut standards of character
... and who could dismiss your wife or partner's loyalty because of your own lack of character ...
we don't need you any more than we need the Vitters. 
Olbermann: Bush, Cheney should resign
‘I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job.'
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
MSNBC"I didn't vote for him," an American once said, "But he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."
That-on this eve of the 4th of July-is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The man who said those 17 words-improbably enough-was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair's-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.
"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."
The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier, but there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne's voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.
We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president's partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world-but merely that we may function.
But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne, is an implicit trust-a sacred trust: That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.
Our generation's willingness to state "we didn't vote for him, but he's our president, and we hope he does a good job," was tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.
And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we did that with which history tasked us.
We enveloped our President in 2001.And those who did not believe he should have been elected-indeed those who did not believe he had been elected-willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.
And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.
Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.
Did so even before the appeals process was complete; did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice; did so despite what James Madison-at the Constitutional Convention-said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes "advised by" that president; did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish-the President will keep you out of prison?
In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental com-pact between yourself and the majority of this nation's citizens-the ones who did not cast votes for you. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party. And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander-in-chief who puts party over nation.
This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics. The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of "a permanent Republican majority," as if such a thing-or a permanent Democratic majority-is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.
Yet our Democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government. But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.
The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment. The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.
The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.
And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.
I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.
I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.
I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.
I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.
I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.
I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.
I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.
And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.
When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.
"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people."
President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.
It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party's headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.
And in one night, Nixon transformed it.
Watergate-instantaneously-became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law of insisting-in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood - that he was the law.
Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts. Just him.
Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.
The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the "referee" of Prosecutor Fitzgerald's analogy. These are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.
But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush-and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal-the average citizen understands that, Sir.
It's the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one-and it stinks. And they know it.
Nixon's mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment.
It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to "base," but to country, echoes loudly into history. Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign
Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.
But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.
It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them-or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them-we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.
We of this time-and our leaders in Congress, of both parties-must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach-get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.
For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.
Resign.
And give us someone-anyone-about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say,"I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
In the tradition of Twain's War Prayer, Ramzy Baroud writes powerfully.
War Foretold: Mark Twain and the Sins of Our Race
Monday, 18 June 2007
By Ramzy Baroud
When I resorted to Mark Twain's writings I attempted to escape, at least temporarily from my often distressing readings on war, politics and terror. But his "The Mysterious Stranger", although published 1916, still left me with an eerie feel. The imaginative story calls into question beliefs that we hold as a "matter of course" - a favorite phrase of his. It summons the awful tendencies of "our race": our irrational drive for violence, be it burning 'witches' at the stake or engaging in wars that only serve the "little monarchs and the nobilities."
0-6/17/07 " ICH" -- -- As the Iraq war rages on, Twain's words ring truer by the day.
"The loud little handful will shout for war. Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have hearing and be applauded;
but it will not last long;
those others will out shout them and presently the anti-war audiences will thin and lose popularity. Before long you will see the most curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men.
And now the whole nation will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open.
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after the process of grotesque self-deception."
Twain, whose genius undoubtedly surpasses time and space, wrote the above passages nine decades before the world's leading statesmen, President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair forged their case for war, based on falsities and refused to examine any refutations;
they rallied millions, investing on their ignorance and blind patriotism to carry out a war whose outcome is akin to genocide. The text was also written long before the thousands who stood for human rights, rallied and organized against the war, defended the constitution and civil liberties were "shouted out" and "stoned from the platform";
thousands of those "fair men" and women have endured such a fate, the latest being Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved American mother who lost her son, Casey, in Bush's war for oil, strategic repositioning of the empire and the neoconservatives' ceaseless hunt for Israel's illusive 'security'.
She too was shouted out, and in a heart-wrenching letter, she reached the conclusion, most difficult for any mother to reach, that her son, Casey died for nothing.
But Bush is adamant to carry on with his costly endeavor that has espoused so many new chasms within his country, and in the world at large: religious contentions and political turmoil, damage that neither Mr. Bush, nor his most luminous advisors have the will nor the brains to remedy.
"But what does it amount to?" says Twain, using one of his story's characters, an angel to convey the idea: "nothing at all. You gain nothing. You always come out where you went in.
For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously re-performing this dull nonsense - to what end?
No wisdom can guess!
Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them;
would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call;
whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not shamed of it, but proud."
Sheehan couldn't get an answer for why Casey was killed;
many more might want to live with the illusion that their loss didn't go in vain; but dead American bodies continue to arrive back to US soil only at night; the wounded are maltreated and hidden from the public eye, only occasional courageous reports manage to break the silence and the perfected propaganda.
In Iraq, the sheer number of dead and dying defies belief; the entire country is now gripped in an endless strife that shall define the cultural and social disposition of future generations; it's often easy to comprehend and come to terms with a total number of deaths when they are presented in a neatly packaged chart or a website, no matter how harrowing;
but once you learn of the individual stories, you wonder whether the days of burning witches at the stake were better times: a young girl raped before her own family and later killed with her own baby; entire families massacred in broad daylight;
militants chopping off limbs and ears and noses under the watchful eye of the Iraqi police, for their victims belonged to the wrong sect and stood on the wrong side of the war.
"The Mysterious Stranger" ended up being a figment of a little boy's imagination - or was it? - its meaning is overreaching and very much real.
The war is real and frightening and hurtful; it's not an intellectual argument; it cannot be reduced to a few images and captions and editorials;
nothing can ever capture a moment where a mother receives the corpse of a son or the scene of a father kneeling before the shattered body of a daughter.
It's all real, and it's all our own doing, whether by supporting, financing and fighting the war, or by staying silent as it rages on.
-Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian author and journalist. His latest volume: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press: London) is available at Amazon.com. He is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com and can be contacted at editor@palestinechronicle.com
Jimmy Carter should not have taken back a word of what he said about the Bush administration. And he could have thrown treason in there also. Read below.
But first, let's let Bill Maher weigh in on Jimmy's High Noon showdown with Oil Can Bush:
What is strange about this is how such a greedy political/corporate machine could have missed out on profiteering with outrageous overcharges the manufacture and distribution of these vehicles.
Impeach them for high crimes for certain. And ... any good CEO with stakeholders demanding results would fire them for the missed profit opportunity. That's something even the Trumper would do.
CBS Exposes Bush Admin’s ‘Outrageous Delay’ In Providing Marines With Bomb-Resistant Vehicle
While President Bush has been busy politically demagoging funding for the troops, CBS Evening News highlighted a disturbing report tonight that the administration waited over a year before acting on a “priority 1 urgent” request to send blast-resistant vehicles to Iraq, the so-called Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles.
Calling it “an outrageous delay,” CBS noted, “The Marines in the field asked for 1,200 MRAPs in February 2005 — but so far, they’ve received less than 100.” The report also noted that the problem is widespread and systemic:
A Marine Corps document obtained by the Associated Press says that of 100 requests for critical gear sent in last year, less than 10 have been filled. It blames red tape and the failure of bureaucrats to take risks.
“Unnecessary delays cause … deaths and injuries,” the document says — and nowhere is it more true than with MRAP.
Watch it: here
For American troops in Iraq, the heavy-duty armored vehicle has proven to be a life-saver. As a testament to MRAP’s effectiveness, top Marine commander Gen. James Conway said recently, “We have yet to have a Marine killed in the al Anbar Province who is riding inside an MRAP.” He added, “How do you not see it as a moral imperative to get as many of those vehicles to theater as rapidly as you can?”
As AmericaBlog noted, the Marine Corps lied about why it had failed to fulfill the urgent request for the priority equipment, claiming it was not “a budgetary decision” when internal documents prove that it was.
In an open letter to President Bush, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) urged the administration to publicly make MRAP production a national priority. He wrote, “How is it possible that with our nation at war, with more than 130,000 Americans in danger, with roadside bombs destroying a growing number of lives and limbs, we were so slow to act to protect our troops? … We need to know how and why this happened so that it does not happen again.”
By electing the wrong baby-boomer president, we have truly opened the gate and let the wolves tend the sheep.
The bilking is the illegal act of crime.
The "there's-no-law-against-it-so-anything-goes" assumption is a deed upon which we build our national memorials.
Based on successful corporate lobbying on behalf of a corporate entity that by definition is not altruistic and in fact socio-pathic is the equally terrible legal "crime."
Bilking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist
by Charles DuhiggThe thieves operated from small offices in Toronto and hangar-size rooms in India. Every night, working from lists of names and phone numbers, they called World War II veterans, retired schoolteachers and thousands of other elderly Americans and posed as government and insurance workers updating their files.
hen, the criminals emptied their victims’ bank accounts.
Richard Guthrie, a 92-year-old Army veteran, was one of those victims. He ended up on scam artists’ lists because his name, like millions of others, was sold by large companies to telemarketing criminals, who then turned to major banks to steal his life’s savings.
Mr. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on scores of other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers, regulators say.
InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,” and “Suffering Seniors,” 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “Oldies but Goodies” contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: “These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.”
As Mr. Guthrie sat home alone - surrounded by his Purple Heart medal, photos of eight children and mementos of a wife who was buried nine years earlier - the telephone rang day and night. After criminals tricked him into revealing his banking information, they went to Wachovia, the nation’s fourth-largest bank, and raided his account, according to banking records.
“I loved getting those calls,” Mr. Guthrie said in an interview. “Since my wife passed away, I don’t have many people to talk with. I didn’t even know they were stealing from me until everything was gone.”
Telemarketing fraud, once limited to small-time thieves, has become a global criminal enterprise preying upon millions of elderly and other Americans every year, authorities say. Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers. And major banks have made it possible for criminals to dip into victims’ accounts without their authorization, according to court records.
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