Tag: George Bush

Just One Soldier . . . . . . as related to Chris Hedges!

Chris Hedges visited a soldier in his home.

I flew to Kansas City last week to see Tomas Young. Young was paralyzed in Iraq in 2004. He is now receiving hospice care at his home. I knew him by reputation and the movie documentary “Body of War.”  He was one of the first veterans to publicly oppose the war in Iraq.  He fought as long and as hard as he could against the war that crippled him, until his physical deterioration caught up with him. . . .

This “telling of a soldier” is very sensitive and I think should simply be read without “pieces” so to speak.

Here, then is his (Chris’) article:  “One of First Iraq Veterans to Publicly Oppose War Will Die for Our Sins” Monday, 11 March 2013 09:44  By Chris Hedges, Truthdig | Op-Ed

Chris’ article so gripped author, William River Pitts, that he responded in

“Waking From My Moral Coma,”
Wednesday, 13 March 2013 09:07, Truthout | Op-Ed

In this article, Pitts questions his own moral fibre:

I’ve been having trouble with mirrors lately. When I look these days, I see a bastard staring back, a stranger, a guy who should be ashamed of himself.

He is.

A long, long time ago, I wrote this: “America is an idea, a dream. You can take away our cities, our roads, our crops, our armies, you can take all of that away, and the idea that is America will still be there, as pure and great as anything conceived by the human mind.”

I still believe that, and therein lies the problem. I am a sucker for that dream, that idea, and for the last few years I allowed it to seduce me. . .. .

But Pitts takes it much further from there:

and when I look in the mirror, I cannot meet my own eyes. I spent all those years fighting against everything that is ending Tomas Young’s life, I made documenting their serial crimes my life’s work…and then I let it slide, because Bush was gone, and I couldn’t summon the necessary energy to remain outraged over the fact that they all got away with the crime of the millennium scot-free.

It is enough.

I am finished with the moral geometry that says this is better than that, which makes this good. This is not good; this is, in fact, intolerable. Allowing the perpetrators of war crimes – widely televised ones at that – to retain their good name and go on Sunday talk shows as if they had anything to offer besides their ideology of murder and carnage is intolerable. Entertaining the idea that the billions we spend preparing for war cannot be touched, and so the elderly and the infirm and the young and the weak and the voiceless must pay the freight instead, is intolerable.

Read the rest of Pitts’ article ‘here’!

Every single American should be compelled to read the foregoing article by Chris Hedges, as well as William Rivers Pitt commenting on the article and himself.  

Lawrence Wilkerson on 9/11: The Culpability and Negligence of the Bush Administration

Former Chief of Staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson is now adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. Wilkerson is also Professorial Lecturer in the Honors Program of the “National Security Decision Making” senior seminar at George Washington University.

His last positions in government were as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff (2002-05), Associate Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff under the directorship of Ambassador Richard N. Haass, and member of that staff responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, political-military and legislative affairs (2001-02).

Before serving at the State Department, Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army, including as Deputy Executive Officer to then-General Colin Powell when he commanded the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989), Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93), and as Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia (1993-97). Wilkerson retired from active service in 1997.

Here Wilkerson discusses with Real News Network’s Paul Jay what he terms “the culpability, the negligence of the [Bush] administration” over what happened at the World Trade Center on 9/11.



…about 30 minutes…

Real News Network – September 12, 2010

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff, on Bush Admin 9/11 responsibility

UPDATED II: Major Announcement w/Mike Gravel

Please post this on the Front Page, as this announcement could create a critical “tipping point” in public opinion.

UPDATED: 09/11/2010

UPDATED: 09/09/2010

Sen. Gravel, who said in a press release that “critically important evidence has come forward after the original government building reports were completed.” Gravel has been concerned with the events of September 11, 2001, for some time now. He has called for an independent investigation into 9/11.

“Unlike the first investigation, this commission should be granted subpoena power and full access to all governmental files and personnel,” Gravel wrote. “George Bush should be forced to testify ALONE.”

San Francisco Architect Richard Gage said the way the towers collapsed was consistent with a controlled demolition, not a chaotic structural collapse.

“The official FEMA and NIST reports provide insufficient, contradictory, and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction,” Gage said. “We are therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials.”

But Gage added that “government investigators at the NIST have been forced to acknowledge the free-fall descent, an indicting fact, after being presented with analysis by AE911Truth petition signers.”

On its Web site, the architects’ and engineers’ group lists facts that suggest explosives were used to take down the towers.

— Rapid onset of “collapse”

— Sounds of explosions at ground floor – a second before the building’s destruction

— Symmetrical “structural failure” — through the path of greatest resistance — at free-fall acceleration

— Massive volume of expanding pyroclastic dust clouds

— Expert corroboration from the top European Controlled Demolition professional

— FEMA finds rapid oxidation and intergranular melting on structural steel samples

WTC7 exhibited none of the characteristics of destruction by fire, i.e.

— Slow onset with large visible deformations

— Asymmetrical collapse which follows the path of least resistance (laws of conservation of momentum would cause a falling, to the side most damaged by the fires)

— High-rise buildings with much larger, hotter, and longer lasting fires have never “collapsed”.

From: www.rawstory.com



Clear Evidence Of Explosions.

Photobucket

Pyroclastic Dust Clouds From Pulverized Concrete

Originial Press Release:

National Press Club, Washington DC, 2:00 pm, Thursday, September 9, 2010

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 PRNewswire-USNewswire — On Thursday September 9, 2010, Mike Gravel and Richard Gage will host a central press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, presenting hard evidence that all three WTC skyscrapers on September 11, 2001, in NYC were destroyed by explosive controlled demolition.

Senator Gravel notes, “Critically important evidence has come forward after the original government building reports were completed.”

This press conference will be webcast at AE911Truth.org and hosted concurrently in cities throughout the world.*  Following the conference, there will be a mock debate during which public statements made by government investigators and other defenders of the official account will be presented and responded to in multimedia format.  “They refuse to debate us in person,” says Gage, “so we will let their public statements represent them.”

Gage will release a media-friendly summary of his organization’s findings, which are based on forensic evidence as well as video and eyewitness testimony that were omitted from official reports.  

He will show evidence that the WTC Twin Towers were not destroyed by jet plane impacts or fires, but by pre-set explosives and incendiaries.  The non-profit organization, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, will also call for a grand jury investigation of government report lead engineers Shyam Sunder and John Gross of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “They were in a position to know the evidence we have been presenting,” says Gage.

Also speaking will be Florida State Professor Lance deHaven-Smith, who coined the academic term State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD).  Prof. deHaven-Smith has appeared on Good Morning America, the Today Show, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, CBS Nightly News with Dan Rather, and other national TV/radio shows.  

The DC press conference will be accessible via webcast AE911Truth.org, 2:00 pm September 9, 2010.

* For information on satellite press conferences in your area, contact CongressionalOutreachTeam [at] ae911truth.org.

To arrange print/broadcast interviews, with Richard Gage, AIA, contact Tania at 510-292-4710, or via email at 1000 [at] ae911truth.org.  

CONTACT: David Slesinger  410-499-5403

SOURCE Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

George Bush on “all my sins”

Former Presidential Senior Advisor turned Fox News Political Analyst Karl Rove interviews former President George W. Bush six months from today at his Crawford Texas ranch, and finds a broken, pathetic ex-president who’s reverted to his former days of booze and cocaine since leaving the brightly lit world stage he inhabited for eight years.

Rove finds the venerable ex-president who sacrificed so much and made it his life’s mission to protect America from the hordes of evil terrorists world wide swimming across the oceans with knives in their teeth to kill American babies in their beds has sunk into a paranoid hallucinatory state in which he’s broken all the mirrors in his house out of fear that they are “looking at me” every time he passes one, and who lives in the sad, pathetic delusion that President Obama and the Democrats fully intend to have him arrested, charged, and finally held accountable for what he terms “all my sins” – his war crimes.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

  Perhaps the worst insult you can hurl at a politician these days is to give him the middle name of “Hoover”.

  Such as George Hoover Bush and Barack Hoover Obama. 80 years later Herbert Hoover is still the standard for the “do-nothing” president in the face of economic collapse.

 Like most easy comparisons, these examples lack details. That’s because the names are there for the purpose of accusation, rather than enlightenment.

 However, if you dig down into the individual economic policies of Hoover, Bush, and Obama, the story gets much more interesting.

 As Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” I’m not going to try and find direct connections in this essay, just broad picture comparisons. If the reader confuses the two, then that will only mean I was justified in writing this.

Wife of Famous Politician To Be Banned From Large Blog For Promoting CT

Berkeley, CA

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

(DDT) The moderator of the world’s best known blog for policing impure political thoughts, [redacted], today finally banned the wife of the world’s most famous retired politician for promoting and distributing an unproven Conspiracy Theory.  

In a move sure to create controversy in [redacted] and other sites around the blogosphere, an anonymous, off the record spokesperson for [redacted] confirmed that



The FAQ says no conspiracy theories, no exceptions.
Certainly this poster was aware of the rule, he or she chose to ignore it, and we decided to ban this person immediately. Any other remaining posters using this website, caught uprating other users who uprated the banned user, will be warned once and their posting ability suspended for the next 2,666 years until a bipartisan tribunal can be assembled to judge the purity of their thoughts and the intent of their actions.

Anyone caught discussing  this particular conspiracy theory in any diary, comment, or cat picture with caption, on this website, or any other website we had a FPer, administrator, or grandma click on deliberately or accidentally in the past 48 hours, or the next century, will also be warned once and then banned.  

Extraordinary claims, such as being made by this poster,  require extraordinary evidence.

We have reviewed the evidence, and have found no proof that anything untoward or unusual was consumed by the poster in question, or her husband.  

Further scrutiny reveals that the source of the rumors were obviously not Americans, and therefore never to be trusted.  You can’t trust those pesky Irish musicians. Never.  Everybody knows the Irish are a bunch of overimbibing, socialist Celtic Pagans, or maybe Druids, who knows, they all look alike, they who hate this country, and plot its downfall or at least plan to inflict their wretched European commie ginger haired marxist worker’s rights universal healthcare on us, which would destroy the delicate, negotiated detente we’ve negotiated with Kent Conrad and his very special donors.  Anyone caught posting youtubes of any music of the above, or posting recipes containing potato or cabbage ingredients, will also be banned.    

We here at [redacted] take election integrity very seriously.   We’ve banned thousands of people for far more, and we’ll ban as many people as possible for far less, for even having these impure thoughts.  

You have all been warned. Henceforth, by the Power Invested in Me, as Commander in Chief of the [redacted], this topic will not be discussed anymore on this website. Forever. Until the end of time.  

We have an election to win.  Look forwards, not back.

Example of Irish people being subversive and undermining the American pragmatic progressive agenda. Note upraised arms and dancing in audience, outside the white castle walls, clear indications of wanting a unicorn.

This is Amerika, Damnit !  We don’t DO unicorns!  We do Hope Nobody Notices!



The heart is a bloom

Shoots up through the stony ground

There’s no room

No space to rent in this town

You’re out of luck

And the reason that you had to care

The traffic is stuck

And you’re not moving anywhere

You thought you’d found a friend

To take you out of this place

Someone you could lend a hand

In return for grace

It’s a beautiful day

Sky falls, you feel like

It’s a beautiful day

Don’t let it get away

You’re on the road

But you’ve got no destination

You’re in the mud

In the maze of her imagination

You love this town

Even if that doesn’t ring true

You’ve been all over

And it’s been all over you

It’s a beautiful day

Don’t let it get away

It’s a beautiful day

Touch me

Take me to that other place

Teach me

I know I’m not a hopeless case



See the world in green and blue

See China right in front of you

See the canyons broken by cloud

See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out

See the Bedouin fires at night

See the oil fields at first light

And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth

After the flood all the colors came out

It was a beautiful day

Don’t let it get away

Beautiful day

Touch me

Take me to that other place

Reach me

I know I’m not a hopeless case

What you don’t have you don’t need it now

What you don’t know you can feel it somehow

What you don’t have you don’t need it now

Don’t need it now

Was a beautiful day




http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyri…

B*stards.  Never could trust ’em in the first place.  They ought to be wiretapped or something.

 

Friday:Torture Enablers Yoo & Bybee Only Showed “Poor Judgement”

Today is Friday, January 29, the year 2010.  Remember this full moon evening.  

According to Newsweek’s Declassified Blog, http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs…

two Department of Justice anonymous sources said that a Senior DOJ official who finalized an Office of Professional Responsibility report, changed the assessment of the torture memo’s creator’s  Jay Bybee and John Yoo’s behavior to “poor judgement.”


But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.)  The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action-which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.  

/snip

Two of the most controversial sections of the 2002 memo-including one contending that the president, as commander in chief, can override a federal law banning torture-were not in the original draft of the memo, say the sources. But when Michael Chertoff, then-chief of Justice’s criminal division, refused the CIA’s request for a blanket pledge not to prosecute its officers for torture, Yoo met at the White House with David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief counsel, and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. After that, Yoo inserted a section about the commander in chief’s wartime powers and another saying that agency officers accused of torturing Qaeda suspects could claim they were acting in “self-defense” to prevent future terror attacks, the sources say. Both legal claims have long since been rejected by Justice officials as overly broad and unsupported by legal precedent.

John Yoo, a graduate of Harvard and Yale law school, who clerked for SC Justice Clarence Thomas, and served as a torture enabler in the Bush administration at the Dept of Justice from 2001 to 2003, is currently a law professor at the University of CA at Berkeley. http://www.law.berkeley.edu/ph…

Jay Bybee, a graduate of Brigham Young University and BYU’s J Reuben Clark Law School, helped John Yoo write the torture rationalization memos for President Bush during his Dept of Justice Office of Legal Counsel tenure from 2001 to 2003.  Bybee currently serves on the US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit. http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGe…

It is not known at the current time when they will be displaying “poor judgement” again, nor how many fatalities might result.

 

U.S. Senate Report: Bin Laden was ‘within our grasp’

Like everything else the Bush administration touched the capture or attempted capture of Osama Bin Laden was a complete failure. As the world watched the U.S. military had pursued Bin Laden and his deputies to the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan. Trapped in the caves there  Donald Rumsfeld then U.S. Defense Secretary decides that Bin Landen’s capture should be handled by the Afghan army while the U.S. army watched. Osama Bin Laden and his deputies escaped into Pakistan where they are still believed to be.  Think about the consequences of that decision. Al Qaida though weakened at that moment would not only continue to exist but draw recruits as extremists saw Osama Bin Laden’s escape as a victory over America and its allies in the so called War on Terror.

Even if they had captured Bin Laden would that have destroyed Al Qaida of course not but they wouldn’t be the potent symbol they are today thanks to the complete incompetence of George Bush and his advisors.  

Get Your Team Torture Cards! Collect and Prosecute Them All!

Lets talk about torture for a few minutes, shall we? The Dog hears the groans out there, and yeah, he gets that this is an icky subject, but even in our digital age where it is easy to find content you like and ignore the stuff you don’t, there are some things you should not look away from. Torture is one of them. However just because torture is horrible does not mean there is not a place for mockery in our pursuit of accountability to the rule of law! Follow the Dog below the flip for more details.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

Afghan vote called “mockery”

So you can bet this will be completely underreported in the United States, or not at all.

I find it almost humorously ironic that a man who stole an election in the United States then invaded a country where he set up a faux Democracy, and the puppet that he installed has now proceeded to steal his own election.

All the while we spend $133 million dollars a day — $5.5 million bucks an HOUR, 24/7 to have our military in said puppet’s country, loading taxpayer money into Big Corporate’s pockets.  

It’s almost a perfect perpetual-motion machine of corruption.

This from The Toronto Star:


Afghan vote called ‘mockery’

On the videotape, a couple of mooks are shown blithely filling out a slew of ballots for President Hamid Karzai. Tick-mark. Tick-mark. Tick-mark.

Says one to the other: “We should at least include a few for Dr. Abdullah, don’t you think?”

The man in question, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, can’t prevent a bemused chortle from escaping his lips as he watches the video clips, surreptitiously shot, that purport to show brazen vote-rigging by Karzai boosters of both minnow and barracuda variety – from anonymous foot soldiers to the head of the Independent Election Commission in Ghazni province.

It is, indeed, to laugh. It is, perchance, to cry. It might become a matter of vocal citizen demonstration, too, beyond the formal complaints – some 100 – that Team Abdullah has already registered with authorities over alleged fraud in Afghanistan’s national elections.

This presidential vote, the second-ever democratic poll in Afghanistan, but the first organized and mounted by Afghans themselves, is rapidly turning into a wreck.

Weekly Torture Action Letter 21 – History and AG Holder.

Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog’s ongoing letter writing campaign for accountability to the rule of law for the apparent Bush Administration State Sponsored Torture program. For those playing our home game, the way this works is every Monday the Dog writes a letter to decision makers urging them to take action under our legal obligations, both Federal and International, to investigate and where evidence of criminality exists prosecute those who ordered, those who justified and those who carried out torture in the name of the United States of America. You get involved by either cut and pasting the letter to the links the Dog provides, or writing your own letter based on this weeks ideas.  

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

Weekly Torture Action Letter 18 – AG Holder, The Time Is Now!

Happy Monday and welcome the Dog’s ongoing letter writing campaign in support of accountability for the Bush Administrations apparent State Sponsored Torture program. The basic idea of this campaign is to keep the issue of torture accountability in the minds of the decision makers. To do this the Dog writes a letter every week that you the reader can then either use as the jumping off point for your own letter or can cut and paste and send it to the links provided.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

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