Can we finally get a War Crimes Tribunal?

CIA torture appears to have broken spy agency rule on human experimentation.  We knew this then, we know this now.  What is so awful is the inability to admit we went full-Dr. Mengele on the people in Gitmo.  We tortured.  Admit it.

And then send the people responsible for this horrible moral and ethical failure to jail.

They would like to have us forget they made the mess in Iraq.

As much as they want to rewrite history, we won't let them.

Wednesday wobbles

Paris time capsule.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Moyers.

Excellent article on the addiction of money and what it does to our society.

Never forget that George Bush's administration was both dangerous and incompetent.

War over women's rights and the whinyness of those denied.  And many have noticed the similarities between the Taliban and the far right's attitudes about women and life in general.

What caused the 10 year winter back in 536AD?

Talking back to the makers of The Wolf of Wall Street.

Do not touch the Gympie Gympie tree.

We're gonna need Geiger counters to go shopping or to the beach.  And if you want to not eat anything ever again, here's Dr. Helen Caldicott.  At least we have UC scientists watching our kelp.

And with all that... sitting too much is gonna kill you.

We were close to war with Iran during President Cheney's reign

But I didn't realize how close.  If this is true, it was going to happen.

Susie Madrak introduces us: This is Gwyneth Todd, former member of President Clinton’s National Security Council and top Middle East advisor. (articles date from 2012.)

Military command of this invasion, to be done without consultation of congress or the United Nations was left to Vice Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff and Admiral Will J. Fallon, both career opportunists with extremist political views, willing to do anything for promotion and the curry favor from the powerful criminal figures in US government. 

Their “cover story” was to sale a frigate up the Shatt al Arab, a disputed waterway between Iraq and Iran, hoping to stimulate a “response” from Iran. 

Their real plan was to create the response themselves, as was done by the Navy during the Tonkin Gulf Incident in 1964 when America “invented” an attack by North Vietnam as a prelude to a 10 year war America eventually lost. 

Their plans were to create phony radio traffic simulating an Iranian attack in order to push America into authorizing hostilities that they, themselves, had perpetrated in as part of a conspiracy.

Apparently there were attempts to follow Gwyneth Todd to Australia.  Juan Cole discusses events.

Memories...

An old post:

Res ipsa loquitur at Rising Hegemon lays it out for us: 

September 11th. Iraq. Katrina. FEMA. The DOJ. The deficit. Walter Reed. Surging rates of teenage pregnancy, soldier suicides, and income disparity. Lurita Ding Dong Doan and the GSA. Bernie Bada Bing Kerik and the DHS. Heckuva Job Brownie and FEMA. Wolfowitz. Rumsfeld. Condi Ferragamo. Megan O'Sullivan. We scream, "Incompetence!" Still think incompetence across virtually every spectrum of government is an accident? 

You're missing the overall. This is incompetence by design. Disdain as a philosophy. Contempt as a core value. You want the bridge to fail? Let me design it. You want the government to fail? Send a twenty-one-year old whose most meaningful job experience has been driving an ice cream truck to Iraq to rebuild Iraq's interior ministry. Let "The Fucking Stupidest Guy on the Face of the Earth" formulate defense policy. Put a schmuck with no disaster management experience in charge of FEMA. 

I've said before that we're going to have to fire virtually every person hired into federal government after January 20, 2001. But we need to go farther. Every time a Republican runs, voters need to be reminded that Republicans should never be permitted to run government again. Ever. They don't believe in it.

And today looking back.

Dechision points

Bring 'em on...

Bush ends “Decision Points” with the sanguine thought that history’s verdict on his Presidency will come only after his death. During his years in office, two wars turned into needless disasters, and the freedom agenda created such deep cynicism around the world that the word itself was spoiled. In America, the gap between the rich few and the vast majority widened dramatically, contributing to a historic financial crisis and an ongoing recession; the poisoning of the atmosphere continued unabated; and the Constitution had less and less say over the exercise of executive power. Whatever the judgments of historians, these will remain foregone conclusions.

Talk about a book critique!

Bullshit

Bush: 'I Was A Dissenting Voice' On Iraq War

We knew this from the very beginning.

From the moment Bush was selected to be president, some of us bet we'd be at war with Iraq in two years. The neocons had been begging Clinton for years to take out Saddam, and now they had the power and ability to do so themselves.

The Bush administration was obviously prepping for war while theatrically pretending to be weighing the decision until the last minute. It was so very clear to us what they intended to do but the media just bizarrely ate up each declaration from Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush as the truth and asked no questions. It's what made me give up on the mainstream media in disgust and go hunting for those who actually reported the truth.

I really think the neocons felt they had all bases covered. The churches had been bought off with the 'faith-based initiatives', the allies were ready to get the oil, the military brass got a new shiny war with really big bombs, the media had been seduced with quail eggs and special interviews.... The Bush administration just didn't plan on those pesky bloggers with their damned facts and discomforting questions.

The truth refuses to die even though you thought you put out a hit, Mr. Cheney. And now the facts are slowly working back to the surface. Even though we knew what the truth was, it's nice to prove it.

Newly Declassified Documents Show Bush Administration Looked For Excuse To Start War In Iraq In Nov. 2001

Bush's Legacy

We will never forget.

Good.

Have at it.

In a move that will put Britain's relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies under intense and possibly damaging scrutiny, British Prime Minister David Cameron has launched an unprecedented inquiry into whether security services were involved in the torture of terrorism suspects.

Americans don't 'torture', remember? (Nudge nudge wink wink) We just do necessary enhanced interrogations!



Renaming a war crime doesn't change the fact it's a crime, Georgie. Semantics won't save your prezidenting legacy.

Steve Benen clarifies it all

The reason why incoherence is a deliberate strategy to deal with Obama:

I've been trying to think of a way to explain this in a way Mitch McConnell would understand. As 2009 got underway, Republicans had left two huge messes related to the economy: 1) a nearly-catastrophic recession and unemployment crisis; 2) a budget mess, including a $1.3 trillion deficit and $10 trillion debt. Both problems were simply left for the Obama administration to clean up.

The economic question of 2009 was which problem would be addressed first, but there was a catch that went largely unstated. Whichever mess policymakers chose to clean up first would necessarily make the other mess worse. It was simply unavoidable -- investing in a recovery would increase the deficit; lowering the deficit would take money out of the economy and exacerbate the recession.

Questions of sincerity notwithstanding, it was the main difference between the Democratic and Republican approaches to the economy -- Dems wanted to focus on one of the messes Republicans created (growth and jobs); the GOP wanted to focus on the other (deficit and debt).

That is, it would be the difference if lawmakers like McConnell approached governing with even the slightest bit of seriousness. Notice in his response that there's nothing even approach coherence -- he wants Obama to spend less, and more. He wants the administration to take on a larger role, and smaller. He wants the White House to care more about debt reduction, and less. He wants the president to prioritize investing in job creation, and to stop prioritizing investing in job creation.

Why anyone could take such policy gibberish seriously is a mystery to me.

They do it because it works. We are now celebrating the Era of Stupid and the stupids vote.

If you had only been listening to us...

We could have told you that in the beginning.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.

[snip]

He also claimed that one reason Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld did not want the innocent detainees released was because “the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were”. This was “not acceptable to the Administration and would have been severely detrimental to the leadership at DoD [Mr Rumsfeld at the Defence Department]”.

Referring to Mr Cheney, Colonel Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the US Army, asserted: “He had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent ... If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.”

He alleged that for Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld “innocent people languishing in Guantánamo for years was justified by the broader War on Terror and the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks”.

He added: “I discussed the issue of the Guantánamo detainees with Secretary Powell. I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice-President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.”

Shows how empathic Bush and his cronies were, doesn't it? How deeply concerned they were that they were torturing innocent people...





How soon they forget that they are NOT lords of the earth and sky, but elected officials who were asked to actually do something good for the people.

Pictures to remind you:



Or this one?

Lacking in empathy and feelings of concern for their fellow man doesn't even begin to describe the Bush administration.



But remember this revelation is only one of hundreds of actions the Bush administration did that harmed not only Iraq and Afghanistan, but the world.



Never forget the fact we did not need to attack Iraq.



Those innocent people did not need to end up in Gitmo.

Karl, remember what your administration did to protesters?

Cages and arrests and stuff?

How does it feel now that they're loose, angry, and in your face?

NOW we can get him for war crimes!!

Right? Right? You heard him, he confessed right there!

Former Bush Adviser Karl Rove says he's "proud" the Bush administration used techniques like waterboarding "that broke the will of these terrorists, and gave us valuable information that allowed us to foil plots."

In an interview with the BBC, Rove was asked about the Bush administration's interrogation techniques, and whether he is "proud" of its use of waterboarding.

"I'm proud that we kept the world safer," he replied. These techniques are "appropriate, they're in conformity with our international requirements and with U.S. law."

Keep us safe? Really? Your actions were the greatest recruitment tool al-Qaeda ever had. Safe? You activated the worst planned vanity war in American history and broke our military. Safe? Historians will look back on the Bush era as the point where the USA finally stepped over the line and ceased to be a superpower. Safe? I don't fucking think so.

Rove says Bush is smart

Oh really?









Ok... I've just nauseated myself looking through all these videos. God, it really feels like we suffered through decades with this man rather than only EIGHT horrible fucking years. Rove is trying to rewrite history, has been since the beginning of his reign of terror. Question is, will we let him?

How really very odd....

John Yoo's emails are missing. Who could have predicted....?

Insidious evil plan to warp your mind

Do you feel it? The weakness in your knees? The sudden desire to look at the Koran? To march helplessly out of your house waving an Obama poster?

Oh the nefariousness of the perfidy!

Or do I mean the perfidiousness of Obama's nefariousness?

They could have done so much with their evil plans!!! But THIS is the LAST straw!!!!11! So subtle, so sneaky, so evil!!! A design that looks like Obama's campaign poster and the Islamic crescent all in ONE!!!!111!......

Wut? You say this logo was designed three years ago under the Bush administration.... Well then...

Look at how patriotic the design is! How clever to employ the US flag's colors....

Because the president is God.

Yoo: 'Sure,' The President Could Order A Village Of Civilians Massacred

Tell us again why Yoo is teaching at UC Berkeley? That he is even allowed to have access to students? That he won't be prosecuted for aiding and abetting war crimes?

That was close....

Too close.

A President McCain, following obediently in Bush's footsteps and standing by the country of Georgia would have put us straight into yet another war...

Book: Cheney pushed for military conflict with Russia.

A new book suggests Vice President Dick Cheney pushed for the US to engage militarily with Russia when Russia invaded the US-allied Georgian republic in 2008. A Little War that Shook the World, published last month, says that in August 2008, as the South Ossetia War between Russia and Georgia was raging, the White House looked at the possibility of taking military action to prevent Georgian forces from being routed by Russian troops.

Georgia's leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, was seen as an ally of Washington and had pushed for NATO membership for his country. "The sheer scale of the Russian attack did lead several senior White House staffers to push for at least some consideration of limited military options to stem the Russian advance," Asmus wrote. "The menu of options under discussion foresaw the possibility of bombardment and sealing of the Roki Tunnel as well as other surgical strikes to reduce Russian military pressure on the Georgian government."

Is total war all these guys understand? They are still talking about attacking Iran fer gawd's sake!

And in the distance, we can still hear the shrill voices of the neocons....

Bomb Iran!

Bolton seems to believe that everything in the world can be fixed by nuking Iran .... economy, environment, jobs, acne, .....

Really, why on earth did we develop the A bomb if we weren't going to use it and show the world we're total badasses?

Because that was their intent all along... Iraq was supposed to be easy. They were going to pop out Hussein and pop in Chalabi and then be sitting pretty to start a real war with Iran.

And they're making sure the next crop of neocons gets the message:

And even some non-neocons seem to think nuking Iran would fix everything.

They're already planning to blame Obama for everything that goes wrong because he DIDN'T nuke Iran when he had the chance.