Grandpa McCain's Psychotic Fairy Tale

Grandpa John McCain, on the stump in Columbus, Ohio, shared a little fairy tale about his vision of “victory” in Iraq.

Papa John calmly intoned the following:

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom.”

Ah, ain’t that sweet?

We can all rest better knowing that America will “be secure in her freedom” at some time in the future if we only have the iron-willed determination to offer the youth of our nation in bloody sacrifice on the altar of corporate greed and rapaciousness by invading, destroying and subjugating each and every nation which has exploitable resources and a government, democratic or totalitarian, that does not explicitly do the bidding of the State Department or the White House.

One may ask, however, what Papa John means by ‘freedom’, so I will.

What restraints on our freedom had Saddam’s regime ever placed on the American people?

None.

What condition of slavery, detention or oppression has been rectified in the US by the destruction of Iraq?

None.

Have the people of the US attained further political independence, possession of additional civil rights or been liberated from unlawful authority as a result of this war?

No.

Are the US people now exempt from such onerous conditions as hunger or disease because Saddam has been over-thrown?

No.

In point of fact, the American people are less ‘Free’ now than we were before the attacks on September 11^th or the wars in Southwest Asia and whatever further restraints to personal freedom the people of the US are currently subject to have been placed on us by the hysterical railroading of legislation in the wake of the 2001 attacks - such as the cynically misnamed ‘Patriot Act’- which have been calamitous to civil liberties and the general good.

So much for the 'freedom' side of this fairy tale but Papa John’s pathetic little fantasy continued:

“The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension.”

Now, one may ask, “The Iraq war was fought and won for whom?”

The Iraqis? Hardly.

Has any serious commentator or observer of the invasion or its aftermath claimed the Iraqis better off now than under Saddam’s brutal dictatorship when, with callous disregard for the well-being of the Iraqi people, the Bush administration dismantled and debilitated all of the institutions of national stability, disbanding the armed forces, designating all Baathists as anathema and resulting in the on-going chaos of violence and depravity which is observed today and which in all likelihood will dominate Iraq for a generation?

By what measure, in 2013 or any year, could any rational person claim a victory, Johnny Mac?

With more than 4,000 American forces killed and an estimated Iraqi death toll well over a million during the first 5 years of the war, what will the body count be after another half decade of this insanity? Will all of the spirits of the dead assemble to bestow blessings on what you and Dubya’s complicitous cohorts proclaim as ‘democracy’ in Iraq?

Thanks but no thanks, Grandpa John. Keep your absurd and contemptible fantasy about Iraq to yourself. It offers nothing but an eerie insight to your very warped and disturbed mind.

End the War Now!

Impeach Bush!

Impeach Cheney!

Impeach Scalia!

Indict and prosecute the war profiteers and war criminals to the fullest extent of the law. Make them all pay the price for their greed, their arrogance, their disdain for the rule of law and their disregard for humanity.

The rest of us already have.

A Vision Thing

The Bush-ster is in Jerusalem to join the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel. On the Palestinian side of the security walls, meanwhile, they’re observing the sixtieth anniversary of what Palestinians call the Nakba or “catastrophe” that resulted in the expulsion and dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians from their cities and villages.

Perhaps with the US annihilation of the indigenous American population and South African apartheid in mind, Dubya praised Israel as a model for Middle East democracies. A model that is, despite its being Jewish and Zionist when all the rest of the Middle-east is Muslim or Christian. And in spite of the fact that more than 50% of Israelis want a peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue and favor the recognition of a formal Palestinian state but they ain’t getting it from their government.

Sound familiar?

So, Dubya starts to blather in front of the cameras…

President Bush: "You know, here…, you know, here…, here we are in the heart of a thriving democracy and yet that democracy as are other democracies are being challenged by extremists and terrorists–people who use violence, who try to advance their dark vision of the world."

Like… by invading sovereign countries to over-throw governments in order to control exploitable natural resources, bomb strafe and brutalize innocent men, women and children, destroy the country’s infrastructure, precipitating millions of refugees and millions more homeless and impoverished, torturing prisoners held without habeas corpus in contravention to the Geneva Accords, the United Nations Charter and the US Constitution?

Do you mean that kind of violence in service to a dark vision, Mr Bush?

Doug Feith and Obfuscation

Doug Feith served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Bush administration from July 2001 until he resigned from his position effective August 8, 2005.

Currently, he is hawking his book, ‘War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism’ a polemic refuting the generally accepted opinion that the Bush administration lied to the American people about the necessity of invading Iraq.

On the Daily Show, Feith stated that “I think the Administration had an honest belief in the things that it said. Some of the things that it said about the war that were part of the rationale for the war were wrong, but errors are not lies.”

True enough, Dougie, but the transmission of errors which are known to be errors is, most definitely, lying.

It has been shown and documented repeatedly that much of what Rummy, Cheney and other members of the administration were telling the Congress, the American people and the world to justify the invasion were known by them at the time to be falsehoods, deceptions and unsubstantiated conclusions.

Call it ‘cherry-picking’ or ‘stove-piping’ if you wish but what was offered as justification for war, my friend, was bald-faced obfuscation.

Lies.

One of the lies that Mr Feith continues to espouse is that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the region, to the United States and to Israel. This is malarkey. After the devastating Iraq/Iran war, Desert Storm and 10 years of crippling UN sanctions, Saddam was a threat to no one but his own people.

Lies.

Impeach Bush.

Impeach Cheney.

Indict and prosecute the war criminals and war profiteers.

Defend our Constitution from the onslaught of the neo-con fascists.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=168543

1984, 17 Years On

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/13/fmr_military_intelligence_officer_reveals_us

In this broadcast exclusive on Democracy Now!, Army Sgt. Adrienne Kinne (Ret.) reveals that as an Intelligence officer and Arabic language specialist, she was assigned the mission to illegally monitor and intercept cell phone calls of journalists, humanitarian aid organizations and non-governmental organizations including the International Red Cross, Red Crescent and Doctors Without Borders. Ms Kinne also discloses that she was personally ordered to eavesdrop on Americans working for news organizations and NGOs in Iraq. She monitored cell phone transmissions from Iraq and Afghanistan between December of 2001 and August of 2003 while stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia.

This is 1984, folks, 17 years on. It just showed up a little behind Orwell’s schedule.

FYI, United States Signals Intelligence Directive [USSID] 18 prohibits eavesdropping on Americans except in very limited cases when the Attorney General is allowed to grant permission. This little detail – upholding the Constitution and the 4^th Amendment right to privacy - was discarded in the wake of the panic and hysteria which followed 9-11.

During an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! (which primarily focused on the shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad in 2003) Ms Kinne revealed that her unit’s mission changed after the September, 2001 attacks. She was given a verbal waiver on the Constitution. She and the other members of her unit were told they could listen to Americans and citizens of allied countries from humanitarian aid organizations, journalists and NGOs. Two reasons for this gross violation of the Constitution were given.

First, they were told that US citizens and allies were ‘eyes on the ground’ and if they stumbled upon the location of WMDs, and if they then pass the location of the WMDs over the phone to others, the military would be able to pass that location of the WMDs directly on to military superiors more expeditiously.

Well, there you go, then. We can’t let a little piece of paper like the Constitution stand in the way of efficient military intelligence gathering, can we?

The second rationale to justify spying on Americans is even more preposterous than the first. Sgt Kinne and her fellow eavesdroppers were told that if an American or ally lost their satellite phone, a terrorist could pick it up and start using it. If that happened, Sgt Kinne’s unit would then have to monitor all the phones to make sure that if such a loss (or theft) took place, they would be able to monitor the terrorists.

Huh!? How many hypotheticals can you pile one on top the other?

So, to recap: during Sgt Kinne’s mission, the justification for spying on Americans was that terrorists might steal or find our cell phones and begin using them for evil-doing.

Please, go to Democracy Now! to hear this interview for yourself. Our republic, our Constitution and our rights as citizens are in gravest danger.

Impeach Bush!

Impeach Cheney!

Impeach Scalia!

Prosecute the war criminals and the defilers of our Constitution.

China's Quake, Dubya's Shame

Less than 24 hours after the earthquake in Central China wrought devastation, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was flying to Chengdu Province, the epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude quake. Wen stated in mid-flight that it was the duty of Central Committee members to stand on the front lines of the relief and rescue efforts.

The Xinhua news agency reported that, upon arrival at the scene of a collapsed three-storey school building where about 900 teenagers were buried, Wen bowed three times in grief before some of the 50 bodies already pulled out from the wreckage.

"Not one minute can be wasted," Wen said. "One minute, one second could mean a child's life."

China's leadership announced that coping with the devastating quake, and ensuring that it did not threaten social stability, was now the government's top priority.

Compare this response to that of George W. Bush and his administration in the wake of Katrina: in 2005, with Katrina, rated as a category 4 storm, heading for the Gulf coast of the US, Dubya chose to continue his golf vacation. He then went to John McCain’s birthday party and lingered an extra day in Crawford (clearing brush?)before heading to Washington. He didn’t make his photo-op in New Orleans until September 2^nd, a full week after Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco declared a state of emergency.

Shame on you, Dubya. The totalitarian communist government officials of the PRC are taking you to school to teach you compassion. Or at least, the statesmanlike feigning of same.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/05/13/2243183.htm?site=science&topic=latest

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007060.php

http://dkosopedia.com/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_Chronology

Bart & Brett

Since when did the word ‘maverick’ come to denote ‘right-wing, reactionary old men’ – as in ‘Judge Scalia and John McCain are mavericks’?

Scalia's Thumb on the Scales

The best fake news program ever, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, alerted me to Lesley Stahl’s interview of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on 60 Minutes. I watched the first half of the interview and have not the stomach to watch the second half. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/24/60minutes/main4040290_page3.shtml

What I saw and heard has haunted me; my dreams have been pervaded with rebuttals, retorts and reproaches. I have been stricken with nausea brought on not only by Ms Stahl’s fawning, gushing school-girl act but the pompous arrogance of Justice Scalia and his school-boy debate team games of rhetoric.

I’ll leave the legalistic punditry to others to parse but I will posit that El Nino’s description of himself as a ‘Constitutional originalist’- someone who insists the US Constitution be viewed through the same myopic, racist, theocratic lens as was used by most of the Founding Fathers and the framers of the constitution - is just another word-game (of which Scales is quite fond as was shown in the interview).

Now, I’m all for the Founding Fathers. Please consider, however, that with few exceptions, they were all wealthy, educated, white male Protestants of western European decent. Not exactly what anyone would call a democratic cross-section of society, then or now. They were visionary, progressive, brave men but they were also men of their own times. Times have changed. Not many politicians and statesmen in modern America could own slaves, for instance.

Scalia is a firmly out-spoken opponent of what is called the ‘Living Constitution’ whereby the modern connotations of terms such as liberty, freedom, and cruel and unusual punishment are the accepted norm when reading the document. The term ‘originalist’ serves to obfuscate the fact that Scalia is a ‘literalist’ and a fundamentalist who claims to have the only correct interpretation of the fundamentals much like the Bible-belt preachers that insist the world was created in 7 days, 5 to 10,000 years ago.

It must be remembered that ‘Scales’ was appointed by Ronnie the Communicator at the height of the Iran-Contra era, a time when Nicaragua was the devil at our door, when selling drugs to buy arms for a private army was a ‘cool idea’, when Grenada and Panama loomed threateningly and Ronnie, Ollie, Bush the Elder, Schultz and Henry the K were hell-bent on destroying the ‘Evil Empire’ along with our economy. This context must be kept in mind so that the absurdities which ‘Scales’ so charmingly espouses might be clearly seen as balderdash in high resolution. That he is a fundamentalist and a reductionist should place him under the same heading as most other fundamentalists – a nutter to be carefully monitored. (To be quite honest, I have had my fill of fundamentalists. I can only hope that there is a growing number of people who feel the same.) It is a shame and a travesty that he is a senior member if the Supreme Court.

He offers arguments that are both specious and facetious while posturing as a playful wise-guy dismissive of his inferiors. He claims his own position of authority as support for his arguments; i.e. ‘I am Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, therefore, ipso facto, I am right.’ I can’t help but ask how this guy made it onto the Supreme Court or even on a high school debate team. My friends would pick him apart if he tried to pull any of his malarkey without the smoke and mirrors of his lofty position. Too bad Ms Stahl was so ga-ga over meeting him that she left her journalistic cred and her ‘Baloney Detection Kit’ in her other suit.

Here’s in an extended excerpt from Ms Stahl’s interview with Justice Scalia. El Nino’s own words during the interview reveal the flaws in his arguments regarding the 2000 election scandal and the current controversy regarding torture. The interview opens with an appearance by Justice Scalia at the Oxford University Union and a very cleverly worded question from an Oxford student regarding the 2000 US presidential election.

“Of all the cases that have come before him on the court, Bush v. Gore may have been the most controversial. It has been reported that he played a pivotal role in urging the other justices to end the Florida recount, thereby handing the 2000 election to George Bush. The subject came up at the Oxford Union.”

"Supposing yourself as a Supreme Court justice were granted the power to appoint the next president of the United States, who would you pick and why? And would he or she be better than your last choice?" a student asked Scalia.

"You wanna talk about Bush versus Gore. I perceive that," he replied. "I and my court owe no apology whatever for Bush versus Gore. We did the right thing. So there!"

“So there!”

‘I’m right and that’s all that needs to be said.’ A very fitting rebuttal for a Supreme Court Justice to make at one of the world’s most prestigious institutions of learning, don’t you think? Then, Ms Stahl’s interview begins.

"People say that that decision was not based on judicial philosophy but on politics," Stahl asks.

"I say nonsense," Scalia says.

Was it political?

"Gee, I really don’t wanna get into - I mean this is - get over it. It's so old by now. The principal issue in the case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn't even close. The vote was seven to two," Scalia says.

Moreover, he says it was not the court that made this a judicial question.

"It was Al Gore who made it a judicial question. It was he who brought it into the Florida courts. We didn't go looking for trouble. It was he who said, 'I want this to be decided by the courts.' What are we supposed to say? 'Oh, not important enough,'" Scalia jokes.

Here, El Nino jokes to cover the simple, obvious truth while blaming the victim. What else is one expected to do when confronted with a matter of legality except to take the matter to court? It is as if Scalia would deride Al Gore’s right and the rights of the American people to a court hearing to insure that is justice done. (In this instance, injustice to our republic was done, IMHO.)

Scalia’s position is preposterous. To determine legal matters, to render judicial decisions, such matters are precisely what our courts are for. The courts were the only proper place for Gore to go to rectify such an important legal matter as the sanctity of votes and an honest, accurate count thereof. Does ‘Scales’ think Al should have just slunk away with so much riding on an accurate count? Whatever his answer, he places the onus of the infamous decision in Gore’s lap.

Now back to the interview:

"It ended up being a political decision" Stahl points out.

"Well you say that. I don't say that," Scalia replies.

"You don’t think it handed the election to George Bush?" Stahl asks.

"Well, how does that make it a political decision?" Scalia asks.

Duh!

"It decided the election," Stahl says.

"If that’s all you mean by it, yes," Scalia says.

"That’s all I mean by it," Stahl says.

"Oh, ok. I suppose it did. Although you should add to that that it would have come out the same way, no matter what," Scalia says.

‘No matter what?’

Does ‘Scales’ actually believe that there was no other outcome to consider in the 2000 election? Bush won and that was that; foregone conclusion at that point in the game? No bit of lingering uncertainty regarding the thousands of uncounted, mis-counted and ultimately discounted votes by the citizens of Florida who were in effect, dis-enfranchised in a presidential election?

How is it that this man made it through law school? Or even through a basic course in logic?

The interview now enters El Nino’s views on the matter of torture.

"I don't like torture," Scalia says. "Although defining it is going to be a nice trick.”

Well, Nino, one attempt was made in 1948, by the General Assembly of the United Nations following the horrific abuses of World War II in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 5 states: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." This ban on torture and other ill-treatment has subsequently been incorporated into the extensive network of international and regional human rights treaties. It is contained in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by 153 countries, including the United States in 1992, and in the Convention against Torture or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the Convention against Torture), ratified by 136 countries, including the United States in 1994. It is also codified in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and the American Convention on Human Rights.

(For information regarding laws defining and prohibiting torture please visit the Human Rights Watch web site. http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/11/TortureQandA.htm#What )

Evidently, these declarations, conventions, covenants, and codes are deficient in the view of Scales Scalia. Perhaps he prefers the views of Alberto Gonzalez and John Yoo as expressed in the infamous ‘Torture Memo’. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256&page=1

“But who's in favor of it?” Scalia continues. “Nobody. And we have a law against torture. But if the - everything that is hateful and odious is not covered by some provision of the Constitution," he says.

"If someone's in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized by a law enforcement person, if you listen to the expression 'cruel and unusual punishment,' doesn't that apply?" Stahl asks.

"No, No," Scalia replies.

"Cruel and unusual punishment?" Stahl asks.

"To the contrary," Scalia says. "Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don't think so."

This beggars the imagination. Scalia tries to equate ‘punishment’ to ‘torture’ in the attempt, as a literalist, to undermine the implied Constitutional ban on torture. A quick look at a decent dictionary will reveal that punishment has the additional meaning of ‘rough handling or mistreatment’ as well as penalty for infraction. Torture is used as punishment and punishment, generally speaking, is a form of torture. (Punishment is never intended to be pleasant, after all.) Once again, Scalia’s attempted resort to tricks of rhetoric is feeble, hollow and even devoid of the lexical grounding necessary for such a cheap trick to pass logically.

Fortunately for the charming El Nino, the formulation of logical discourse is not Ms Stahl’s forte. She continues moony-eyed.

"Well, I think if you are in custody, and you have a policeman who's taken you into custody…," Stahl says.

"And you say he's punishing you?" Scalia asks.

"Sure," Stahl replies.

"What's he punishing you for? You punish somebody…," Scalia says.

"Well because he assumes you, one, either committed a crime…or that you know something that he wants to know," Stahl says.

"It's the latter. And when he's hurting you in order to get information from you…you don’t say he's punishing you. What’s he punishing you for? He's trying to extract…," Scalia says.

"Because he thinks you are a terrorist and he's going to beat the ‘you-know-what’ out of you…," Stahl replies.

"Anyway, that’s my view," Scalia says. "And it happens to be correct."

What view? He only obstructed discourse in this segment of the interview. His bludgeon of choice is to laughingly pooh-pooh the half-hearted challenges offered by Ms Stahl. He gave no credible argument on either topic, the 2000 election debacle or the torture scandal highlighted by Abu Ghraib. Since he was stammering and painting himself into a corner on this one, he sought his last refuge and fell back on his status of authority.

What a major Dick!

If Scales is “one of the most prominent legal thinkers of his generation” , it’s easy to see why the Constitution has been gutted and why the US is in such deep doo-doo.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/24/60minutes/main4040290.shtml

http://users.tpg.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html