History For Candidates …(w/apologies to the Moonbat!)

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I know, I know….they are a little busy today and might not make it by for their daily fix of Blue Goodness here at the Dharmafarm…but just in case….

When Saad Tawfiq watched Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations on February 5 2003 he shed bitter tears as he realised he had risked his life and those of his loved ones for nothing.

As one of Saddam Hussein’s most gifted engineers, Tawfiq knew that the Iraqi dictator had shut down his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes in 1995 — and he had told his handlers in US intelligence just that.

And yet here was the then US secretary of state — Tawfiq’s television was able to received international news through a link pirated from Saddam’s spies next door — waving a vial of white powder and telling the UN Security Council a story about Iraqi germ labs.

“When I saw Colin Powell I started crying. Immediately. I knew I had tried and lost,” Tawfiq told AFP five years later in the Jordanian capital. Amman

First, a little perspective: More than 770 men have been held at Guantánamo; the population is  now down to 275. That’s progress, of  course, but even as the numbers go down, the costs continue to skyrocket. During the military flight to the base this Saturday, I asked a Department of Defense official how many people are now  stationed there. He told me approximately 7,000: 2,500 are U.S. service personnel and the rest  include what he referred to as third-party nationals – mostly Filipinos and  Jamaicans – who provide the labor to keep the facilities going. How is it a wise policy choice to create an infrastructure that requires 7,000 people to imprison 275 men?

Of course, the costs to the United States are much more than financial: more significant are the moral, legal, diplomatic and political consequences of holding hundreds of prisoners in arbitrary and  indefinite detention. At the heart of American values is the principle of habeas corpus, which demands due process and fair trials before an  independent judiciary. The United States’ system of detention and trial at Guantánamo has, for the past six years, betrayed that principle and undermined this  country’s historical position as an international champion of human rights and  civil liberties.

Omar Khadr’s case is  a good illustration of how far the Bush administration has strayed from the  values most Americans share. One of the key issues in Khadr’s hearing, which is  likely to continue into tomorrow, is whether the administration will succeed in  becoming the first government in modern times to prosecute for war crimes  someone who was a child when the alleged crimes were committed.

– The United States used waterboarding in terrorism interrogations but no longer does, a former U.S. spy chief said in the Bush administration’s clearest confirmation of the technique’s use.

U.S. officials have been reluctant to acknowledge the CIA’s use of the simulated drowning technique, which human rights groups call an illegal form of torture.

snip

Asked by the magazine if debate over U.S. counterterrorism techniques was hampering its effort in a “war of ideas,” Negroponte said, “We’ve taken steps to address the issue of interrogations, for instance, and waterboarding has not been used in years.”

Yes, electing a Democrat as POTUS might mitigate the pitfalls of coming days, and if we’re extremely fortunate, electing a good Democrat may even grant us a reprieve in time to right this listing ship of state before its swallowed up by the roiling seas of authoritarianism.

But, significant damage is already done. Our current pResident and his soulless minions have seen to that. With all the diabolical subtlety of a serpent – and operating under the guise of incompetence — this administration has performed in seven years what no administration has ever attempted to do, or at least to this extreme. They’ve managed to eviscerate our cherished Bill of Rights right before our eyes. And, we did nothing.

To sum up, from Elizabeth Holzman’s latest piece on impeachment

There is more than ample justification for impeachment. The Constitution specifies the grounds as treason, bribery or “high crimes and misdemeanors,” a term that means “great and dangerous offenses that subvert the Constitution.” As the House Judiciary Committee determined during Watergate, impeachment is warranted when a president puts himself above the law and gravely abuses power.

   Have Bush and Cheney done that?

   Yes. With the vice president’s participation, President Bush repeatedly violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court approval for presidential wiretaps. Former President Richard Nixon’s illegal wiretapping was one of the offenses that led to his impeachment. FISA was enacted precisely to avoid such abuses by future presidents.

   Bush and Cheney were involved in detainee abuse, flouting federal criminal statutes (the War Crimes Act of 1996 and the anti-torture Act) and the Geneva Conventions. The president removed Geneva protections from al-Qaeda and the Taliban, setting the abuse in motion, and may have even personally authorized them.

   The president and vice president also used deception to drive us into the Iraq war, claiming Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were in cahoots, when they knew better. They invoked the specter of a nuclear attack on the United States, alleging Hussein purchased uranium in Niger and wanted aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment, when they had every reason to know these claims were phony or at least seriously questioned within the administration. Withholding and distorting facts usurps Congress’ constitutional powers to decide on going to war.

Some current events too…just in case they have been too busy to catch up..

The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.

The FBI wants to use eye scans, combined with other data, to help identify suspects.

But it’s an issue that raises major privacy concerns — what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans.

The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information — from palm prints to eye scans.

“It’s the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology and Liberty Project.

Thanks for stopping by Barack, good to see you, Hillary. Please keep these little snippets of ancient history in mind as you travel this great land of ours in your effort to gain the trust of The People to elect you to the highest office in the land. And when you are elected….maybe you could, ya know…..do something about them.

Good Luck!