|
|
|
Aberdeen Daily World Chinook Observer Montesano Vidette Pacific County Press Willapa Harbor Herald KXRO 1320 AM |
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.
Newer | Latest | Older
What does it mean to be Christian in America?
Arthur's blog on religion & Spirituality
I'm glad you asked that question.
