VoteVets endorses General Sanchez for U.S. Senate, the same Sanchez who approved torture at Abu Ghraib

what is it with memory in my country...? either people don't remember, don't WANT to remember or never have bothered to find out in the first damn place...

here's my response to votevets and their execrable endorsement of ricardo sanchez for the u.s. senate seat in texas...

Dear Friends.

Ricardo Sanchez is the one who authorized the torture/enhanced interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib and then lied about it in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on 19 May 2004. He would like you to believe he's rehabilitated but, unless and until he is held accountable for his past actions, he has no business presenting himself as a serious candidate for the United States Senate. Furthermore, as a Vietnam Veteran and someone who is currently working in Afghanistan, i think it is an absolute disgrace that an organization like VoteVets would endorse such a candidate.

Before putting more of your organizational credibility on the line, I suggest you follow up on the following links.

Blog posts on General Sanchez

Copies of the documents authorizing torture techniques under General Sanchez' signature

Washington Post story on Sanchez' testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee

I know General Sanchez thinks all of this is behind him and, for most people who don't pay close attention, it probably is, but General Sanchez is just as guilty of war crimes as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and, more recently, Barack Obama.

Shame on you VoteVets for not properly vetting your endorsements.

Sincerely,

XXX XXXXX
U.S. Army 1968-1971
Vietnam Veteran

and here's the votevets endorsement...

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 8:10 AM, Ashwin Madia <info@votevets.org> wrote:

Dear XXXX,

Today I’m writing with some exciting news. We have a chance to send a veteran to the Senate, from Texas. Not only that, but this veteran also happens to be a retired Lieutenant General who commanded forces in Iraq. Today, we’re endorsing Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (USA, Ret.) for Senate. He needs your help.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO SANCHEZ FOR SENATE

General Sanchez has a compelling story and honorably served our country in uniform. He’ll make an outstanding Senator for the people of Texas. We're always happy to see veterans entering politics as a way to continue their public service, but it's especially encouraging to see one of our military's finest minds, General Sanchez, look to continue that service as a public servant. General Sanchez knows what this generation of warriors has gone through, and how Washington can best serve them. For the people of the state of Texas, they will have a Senator who is committed to America’s security, and just as committed to the state he loves

General Sanchez graduated from Texas A&I University in Kingsville, Texas, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1973. After decades of service, following nomination to Lieutenant General, he assumed command in Baghdad, Iraq, of the Army’s Fifth Corps and became the commander of one of the largest combat forces deployed in US military history. Upon the reorganization of command-and-control structures in Iraq, he commanded Headquarters, Multi-National Forces (Iraq) from 14 May 2004 to 1 July 2004. After 33 years of service, he retired in 2006.

CLICK HERE TO SEND RICARDO SANCHEZ TO THE SENATE

Texas is a huge state, and running for office there isn’t cheap. But any donation you can afford will go a long way towards sending Ric Sanchez to the Senate. This is an open seat, because Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson is stepping down, so it is an excellent opportunity for a candidate with strong credentials – like General Sanchez – to win. Please click the link above, and help get him to the finish line!

Sincerely,

Ashwin Madia

Iraq War Veteran
Interim Chairman, VoteVets.org

Paid for by VoteVets Political Action Committee
Not Authorized by Any Candidate or Candidate’s Committee

sad... accountability seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth...

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This is just plain disgusting and completely uncalled for

glenn...

Top Bush-era GITMO and Abu Ghraib psychologist is WH's newest appointment

what in the freakin' hell is obama thinking...? oh, never mind... he's has long since lost whatever scraps of confidence in him i might have been desperately clinging to...

p.s. in an update, glenn offers this...

"Dr. James has not been appointed to serve in any capacity with the White House."

maybe dr. james is a legend in his own mind...?

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The "Kill Team" photos are not unusual and are not the work of "rogue" U.S. soldiers

yes, i know that spiegel is trying to soften the story by blaming it on "rogue" individuals but that's simply not the case... photos are routinely taken by soldiers commemorating their work just as miscellaneous body parts - fingers, toes, etc. - and other "memorabilia" are taken from individuals killed "in the line of duty"...

i personally stood behind a soldier at the post office in a base near kabul who was asking the clerk if it was ok to mail body parts home... i was stunned to say the least... the clerk didn't appear surprised by the question but responded with a clear "no"... when i returned to the u.s., i told the story to my son and daughter-in-law who both work for the va hospital here... they asked around and were told by a va counselor that "harvesting" such "trophies" was fairly common...

i'm not saying that everybody does it or that there aren't a majority who would not only not consider such behavior but would find it morally and ethically repellent... however, it's certainly not the rare occurrence our leaders and the media would have us believe... and, despite the fact that this story was broken by a german publication about u.s. troops, you can be sure there are german soldiers in afghanistan who are doing exactly the same thing...

i am posting the photos that accompanied the spiegel article because i believe they need to be seen and we absolutely need to feel the full impact of what is happening in our collective names...



This image shows the body of Gul Mudin, the son of a farmer, who was killed on Jan. 15, 2010. A member of the "kill team" is posing behind him. SPIEGEL published just three photos out of the some 4,000 images and videos it has seen. Court martial proceedings against the soldiers involved in the killings are to begin soon.


In this image, a different soldier poses with the same corpse. The US Army on Monday apologized for the behavior of the soldiers involved in the "kill team."


Court martial proceedings are currently being prepared against 12 suspects. This image of two "kill team" victims comes from the collection of one of the suspects.

The United States and NATO are concerned that reactions could be intense to the publication of images documenting killings committed by US soldiers in Afghanistan. The images appeared in the most recent edition of SPIEGEL, which hit the newsstands on Monday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already telephoned with her Afghan counterpart to discuss the situation. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon has likewise made contact with officials in Kabul. The case threatens to strain already fragile US-Afghan relations at a time when the two countries are negotiating over the establishment of permanent US military bases in Afghanistan.

In a statement released by Colonel Thomas Collins, the US Army, which is currently preparing a court martial to try a total of 12 suspects in connection with the killings, apologized for the suffering the photos have caused. The actions depicted in the photos, the statement read, are "repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States."

The suspected perpetrators are part of a group of US soldiers accused of several killings. Their court martials are expected to start soon. The photos, the army statement said, stand "in stark contrast to the discipline, professionalism and respect that have characterized our soldiers' performance during nearly 10 years of sustained operations."

saying that these photos and the behavior connected with them "stand in stark contrast" is denial, pure and simple... yes, i understand that's what the military would LIKE to have us believe, but it's simply not true...

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Juan Cole: Walmart does better background checks on its store clerks than the CIA and Jordanian intelligence did on al-Balawi

i think professor cole, an individual not known for his pursuit of conspiracy theories, hits the nail on the head... the united states is being led by a very small group of people totally dedicated to the massive profit machine of endless war... they have everything to gain and nothing to lose by fostering terrorism, radicalization, and the vicious social injustice, death and destruction that sparks both...

Al-Qaeda is twisted and evil, and has committed mass murder. Neither the US nor Israel is responsible for violent crackpots being violent crackpots. Al-Qaeda or a Taliban affiliate turned al-Balawi to the dark side. Gandhi and Martin Luther King taught us the proper response to social injustice. But what we have to remember is that there can be a handful of al-Balawis, or there can be thousands or hundreds of thousands. It depends on how many Abu Ghraibs, Fallujahs, Lebanons and Gazas the United States initiates or supports to the hilt. Unjust wars and occupations radicalize people. The American Right wing secretly knows this, but likes the vicious circle it produces. Wars make profits for the military-industrial complex, and the resulting terrorism terrifies the clueless US public and helps hawks win elections, allowing them to pursue further wars. And so it goes, until the Republic is bankrupted and in ruins and its unemployed have to live in tent cities.

So, yes, this al-Balawi person was going to help Jordan and the US find al-Qaeda leaders Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Sure he was. Walmart does better background checks on its store clerks than the CIA and Jordanian intelligence did on this guy.

ya gotta ask yourself... if the background information was all there to be discovered, which it apparently was, why wasn't it pursued...? once again, we are being asked to believe the all-encompassing excuse of incompetence, a myth that has been diligently fostered since 9/11... 'scuse me, but i ain't buyin' it, not for a minute...

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Abu Ghraib - truth-telling and its consequences

courtesy of consortium news...

Editor’s Note: On Thursday night, former Army Sgt. Sam Provance received a letter of commendation from Common Cause – signed by former President Jimmy Carter and 15,000 others – for his “uncommon courage in defending the rule of law and standing up against torture.”

In 2004, Provance was the only uniformed military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib who broke the code of silence and challenged the Bush administration’s insistence that the grotesque prison abuses were simply the work of a few “bad apples.”

After military policeman Joseph Darby turned over the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs to investigators, Provance spoke out about the role of intelligence officers and other higher-ups in encouraging the humiliation and torture of prisoners. He gave statements to the Army’s internal investigation, at a congressional hearing and to the press.

For his brave integrity, Provance was punished, threatened with a court martial and pushed out of the military. Since then, Provance has faced severe financial and family pressures, struggling to find work that pays enough for him to meet child support obligations and other basic needs.

So, when Provance accepted Common Cause’s commendation, it was a bittersweet moment that illuminated the grim reality of trying to tell important truths in this American era:

I wish I could share with you a “success” story as a result of my being a “whistle-blower,” but the reality of things simply do not presently allow it.

I admit to you that at one time I did believe that my life would eventually turn for the better, in spite of it all, especially fighting under the banners of “doing right,” “standing up for others” and “speaking the truth.”

But it has been a very long and arduous path I have found myself upon with no end in sight. Rather than a karmic “good” winning in the end over “the forces of evil,” I have experienced what I feel like is a slow and intimate wrath in response to my actions.

However, I have sometimes thought perhaps it has been best. Perhaps I might have grown enthralled with the ensuing drama or seduced by the attention garnered. But I have been humbled many times and kept humble nonetheless.

Others I have seen in this and other scandals took the bribes of some media or gave in to others' insinuations that they embellish their testimony for a better “copy.” Still others got lost in drugs or, more tragically, had mental breakdowns under the unique stress.

Their efforts in this regard were effectively sabotaged, losing their credibility, if not their lives.

Perhaps I could have much to gain from indulging in the spotlight or kill a lot of the pain in the fantasies of inebriation, but I know that if what I have said or done is to maintain its meaning – what I have been sacrificing so much for – I have to stay true. I have to stay the course.

I realized that one cannot allow others to take away their credibility or the integrity of the act itself, otherwise, all will be for naught. Sometimes, as in my case, my credibility is all I have left.

i don't think it takes being a whistleblower to fully appreciate what provance is experiencing... a lot of us have been working for many years to tell the truth - at least the truth as we see it - and have felt like voices crying in the wilderness... all we can do is keep on keepin' on...

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I've never understood those who are so rabidly opposed to the ACLU

imho, they're doing most of the heavy lifting in the seemingly endless battle against our own government to uphold our civil liberties, accountability and the rule of law...

In the spring of 2003, long before Abu Ghraib or secret prisons became part of the American vocabulary, a pair of recently hired lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union noticed a handful of news reports about allegations of abuse of prisoners in American custody.

The lawyers, Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh, wondered: Was there a broader pattern of abuse, and could a Freedom of Information Act request uncover it? Some of their colleagues, more experienced with the frustrations of such document demands, were skeptical. One made a tongue-in-cheek offer of $1 for every page they turned up.

Six years later, the detention document request and subsequent lawsuit are among the most successful in the history of public disclosure, with 130,000 pages of previously secret documents released to date and the prospect of more.

The case has produced revelation after revelation: battles between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military over the treatment of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp; autopsy reports on prisoners who died in custody in Afghanistan and Iraq; the Justice Department’s long-secret memorandums justifying harsh interrogation methods; and day-by-day descriptions of what happened inside the Central Intelligence Agency’s overseas prisons.

it's not as if we needed the aclu to stoke our suspicions about what's been happening but we sure as hell have needed them to help us move beyond mere suspicions to real facts...

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Professor Cole reads my mind

and does an infinitely better job of articulating the matter than i would have done...

apologies to the fair use standard...

The US military has, understandably, condemned the coerced video of a US soldier taken hostage by Taliban in Afghanistan.

But I fear that the argument that the public humiliation of prisoners is against international law won't take the US very far after 8 years of Bush-Cheney.

After the evidence surfaced that the US military took all those humiliating pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to blackmail them by threatening to make them public, the US assertion of support for this principle of the Geneva Conventions will be met with, well, let us say substantial skepticism.

In fact, as I was reminded by a former ambassador, the Bush-Cheney- Yoo-Armitage gutting of US conformance with the Geneva Conventions really makes it difficult for Washington credibly to complain about the treatment of any of our captured soldiers. The Taliban could hold the soldier hostage forever if they follow the principle put forward by Sen. Lindsey Graham. They could (God forbid) put him in stress positions naked and threaten to release the pictures to his family, and they would have done nothing that Rumsfeld's Pentagon had not done routinely and on a vast scale.

The US refusal to so much as investigate American officials implicated in torture and breaking international law also does not help us gain credibility on seeing to it that those who mistreat our troops are tried on those charges. We even have Dick Cheney defending waterboarding, for which Japanese generals were tried and executed after WW II. It is disgusting.

And huffing and puffing that the Taliban are not a government won't get us very far either. They control 10 percent of the country.

You obey the Geneva Convention and the rest of international law on the treatment of captives because it gives you the moral high ground with regard to the treatment of our troops. Not doing so endangers every single one of our men and women in uniform.

What is really scary is that the shadowy set of secret military and intelligence teams charged by Cheney to break international law continuing to do so despite President Obama's orders to cease torture. Obama had better get a handle on this issue, because it could well blow up in his face, in fact, Cheney may intend it to do so. I think there are still people in the US government who take their cues from the latter rather than the former.

the other day when i saw the news item about the u.s. protest, it crossed my mind to put up a post about it with essentially the same views expressed... then i thought, well, there's certainly nothing new about the u.s. having lost the moral high ground and neither is there anything new about bald-faced u.s. hypocrisy, so why bother...

while i totally agree that the u.s. protest was warranted, unless and until we, as a country, can face up to our own shortcomings (shortcomings...! HA...! how's THAT for a euphemism?), any such protest is only going to generate the kind of derision it so richly deserves...

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Oh, yay... Learned helplessness...

a societal and organizational dynamic that i've observed for many years is what i have come to call "learned helplessness"... many of us develop that mindset when, over many, many years, we've come to believe that no matter what we do, our employer won't change a damn thing, our society will still be off the rails, and our government will still feel perfectly within its rights to do whatever it goddam well pleases no matter what we, the people, think about it...

now, i come to find out that very same dynamic, using the very same name underpins the oh-so-euphemistically labeled "enhanced interrogation techniques," known to you and me as torture, methods have been - and probably still are - so liberally applied at our < snark > club med-style < /snark > "detention" facilities, known to you and me as prisons and to our friends in russia as gulags...

well, at least panetta isn't sitting on his hands...

CIA Director Leon Panetta fired Mitchell, Jessen & Associates and all other contractors that aided the CIA in its interrogations of alleged terrorists, the New Yorker reported this weekend.

The firings took place in April, around the same time the Senate Armed Services Committee reported on the role played by James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in developing "countermeasures to defeat" the resistance of captured enemy detainees from whom intelligence was being sought.

Mitchell and Jessen, who run the firm, had worked on a Pentagon program that taught U.S. service members how to survive harsh enemy interrogation methods. They relied on elements of that training in proposing an interrogation program for the CIA. It included methods such as sleep deprivation and other actions based on "theories of 'learned helplessness,' " the New Yorker reported.

our minders have worked long and hard to instill in us the learned helplessness mindset... we're ever so much easier to control when we feel and think that way... nothing to see here, folks... just move along...

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The ongoing tragedy that is Afghanistan

brave new films via information clearing house...



and the reason that this is news you won't see on traditional news media is because it's truth that those who think they are in the best position to decide what we should and should not know have decided that we SHOULDN'T know about it...

glenn greenwald in salon, again via information clearing house...

The Bush-defending Right continues to insist, and huge numbers of Americans continue to believe, that the brutal abuses of Abu Ghraib were isolated and aberrational, the rogue crimes of a few low-level soldiers who were punished. These photos would prove that to be a lie. But no matter. For exactly that reason -- because they would expose the horrible truth of what we actually did -- these photos must be suppressed in the name of containing anti-American anger. Why should that reasoning be confined to suppression of the photos? Shouldn't it extend to information that is far more likely to inflame anti-American hatred, such as what we are really doing in Afghanistan? Isn't it best if the truth is just kept from us and the government suppresses it all so that we don't look bad in the eyes of the world? Isn't that obviously where this mentality leads -- and is already leading?

oh, and btw, evidently the worst revelations are yet to come...

raw story, AGAIN via information clearing house...

A crucial CIA Inspector General’s report from May 2004 is expected to reveal some long-hidden truths about the Bush administration’s use of torture.

[...]

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow [interviewed] Newsweek's Michael Isikoff . . .

[...]

“There are three key questions to look for,” Isikoff explained. “Were there harsh interrogations that began before the … legal authorizations? … Did they go beyond what was authorized? … Did it go beyond just finding out about possible plots against the United States to provide other information, such as supplying possible evidence that could be used to justify the war in Iraq?”

Isikoff noted that there are footnotes in the torture memos already released which “quote from the Inspector General’s report that what was actually done went beyond what was authorized — that how waterboarding was conducted, the frequency with which it was conducted, and the manner in which it was conducted was beyond what the CIA told the Justice Department it was going to do when the Justice Department authorized the technique.”

Isikoff emphasized, however, that almost none of this information is being released voluntarily. It’s being slowly pried out through Freedom of Information Act requests, most of them filed by the ACLU, and “it’s become trench warfare — document by document.”

“The CIA and the intelligence community has pushed back hard,” Isikoff stressed. “People in the intelligence community never wanted this stuff out to begin with.”

can't we get going on war crimes trials for the criminals who perpetrated this mess...? oh, i forgot... we now have NEW criminals continuing to perpetrate the same goddam mess...

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Obama v. Cheney on Guantanamo, Prosecutions, Torture

obama on 60 minutes last night...

Commenting on former Vice President Dick Cheney's recent assertion that the closure of Guantánamo will make America more vulnerable to attack, Obama said, "I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong lesson from history."

"The facts don't bear him out. I think he is, that attitude, that philosophy has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world. I mean, the fact of the matter is after all these years how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world."

juan cole...

It is worth asking how many US soldiers died or were wounded at the hands of ordinary Sunni Arabs who would have been at their day jobs if they hadn't been enraged by the Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo torture. In short, how many US soldiers did Cheney personally murder?

cheney is an evil man and the sooner he no longer has access to a public forum, the better off the world will be...

also, as i sit typing this in kabul, afghanistan, there are three afghans here with me in the office... not a single one of them have any use for the u.s. policies that have attempted to turn the world against islam, have murdered their countrymen on a wholesale basis, and that are keeping many innocent fellow citizens imprisoned in bagram airbase a mere 60 kilometers from here... they are smart people and realize that, in general, the u.s. people should not be confused with their leaders, and that folks like me have as much distaste for the criminal undertakings perpetrated by our government as they do... unlike us, however, afghans know THEIR government is worthless...

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In a parallel universe, Ramsey Clark would be called a hero for insisting on the impeachment of George Bush

why, in our society, in the world of today, is a man like this marginalized...?


Ramsey Clark
Photo courtesy of the BBC and AFP

William Ramsey Clark (born December 18, 1927) is a lawyer and former United States Attorney General. He worked for the U.S. Department of Justice, which included service as the 66th United States Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He is a left-wing activist and has been known for his continuing advocacy for civil and human rights political causes. He is also known for his role as defense attorney in the trials of Saddam Hussein. He was a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award and the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award.

[...]

Following his term as Attorney General he worked as a law professor and was active in the anti–Vietnam War movement. He visited North Vietnam in 1972 as a protest to the bombing of Hanoi. He was also associated with the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison before resigning to run for political office.

In 1974 he was the Democratic Party's candidate for the United States Senate from New York, losing to Jacob Javits. In 1976, Clark again sought the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, but was a distant third in the primary behind Daniel Patrick Moynihan, (the winner), and Congresswoman Bella Abzug.

More recently, Clark has become controversial for his political views and publications. While mildly denouncing the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. in 2001, he has also strongly opposed any retaliation against Afghanistan as well as against Al-Qaeda. He has been a strong opponent of the War on Terrorism in Afghanistan and the rest of the world from the very beginning.

In 1991, Clark accused the administration of President George H. W. Bush and "others to be named" of "crimes against peace, war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" for its conduct of the Gulf War against Iraq and the ensuing sanctions; in 1996, he added the charges of genocide and the "use of a weapon of mass destruction". Similarly, after the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Ramsey charged and "tried" NATO on 19 counts and issued calles for its dissolution.

[...]

Clark is affiliated with VoteToImpeach, an organization advocating the impeachment of George W. Bush. He has been an opponent of both 1991 and 2003 Persian Gulf War conflicts. "Impeachment is the most important issue facing Constitutional government in the United States. Impeachment will determine whether the American people will hold the Bush administration accountable for its High Crimes and Misdemeanors".

in the united states, as we near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, anyone who has the courage to say what so desperately needs to be said, should be accorded only the highest of accolades...

A message from Ramsey Clark
"Bush has no right to lecture about human rights"

A price the American people are paying for the failure of the House of Representatives to impeach Bush, Cheney and their cabal for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity -- the greatest assaults on peace and human rights of this century -- is the Bush Administration’s bellicose drum beat for war against a widening circle of chosen enemies.

Imagine George Bush with the blood of a million Afghans and Iraqis on his hands, the shame of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo hanging around his neck, having trashed the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, lecturing China for violating human rights at the World Olympics in Beijing, a hopeful symbol of international cooperation through the peaceful competition of athletes in friendship.

Imagine George Bush lecturing Russia on human rights after insisting on putting U.S. (not NATO) Star War missile sites on the Russian border in Poland and the Czech Republic despite the tragic lessons of the Cold War, all told the greatest crime in history. Among its costs are expenditures that could have provided food for all, vastly reduced poverty on the planet, progressed toward quality universal health care, education and housing for everyone. Instead it took more lives by military violence on five continents and greater military expenditures than World War II and released the genie of nuclear weapons to a status beyond control. Can the planet survive another arms race? And what was George Bush planning when he urged immediate admission of Georgia to NATO just months before Georgia invaded South Ossetia?

Imagine George Bush who committed wars of aggression, the “Supreme International Crime,” against Afghanistan and Iraq, invading and occupying both, judging Russia’s conduct as” unacceptable," and demanding withdrawal of Russian forces because it sent troops into Georgia to protect the population of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from an invasion by Georgia that killed citizens and peace keepers alike, destroyed property and had driven tens of thousands from their homes.

Nor was Georgia a stranger to Russia. It had been a part of Russia since 1801 for nearly all the last two centuries. It had great power within the USSR. Joseph Stalin was from Georgia, as were L. P. Beria, longtime head of the NKVD and many others, Edward Shevardnadze, the Soviet Union’s last Foreign Minister and the first President of the Government of the independent Georgia that separated from the Soviet Union in 1990.

George Bush took a keen interest in Georgia, which is on Russia’s southern border, but on the opposite side of the planet from the U.S., early in his Presidency and in Mikhail Saakashvili. Under Bush’s direction the U.S. provided major military arms and training for Georgia. It persuaded, or paid Georgia which had no interest in Iraq to send 2000 troops to there, a number exceeded only by the U.S. and U.K. It trained and supported the Georgian troops for duty in Iraq. Saakashvili, a U.S. law school graduate, to quote the New York Times “...positioned himself to become one of the world’s most strident critics of the Kremlin” and with the strong support from the U.S. he was elected President of Georgia.

The U.S. helped them militarize what had been a weak Georgian state. The Pentagon helped overhaul Georgia’s military forces, train its commanders and staff officers. U.S. marine strained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle. The forces were equipped with Israeli and U.S. firearms, reconnaissance drones and other sophisticated equipment, including anti-aircraft weaponry. That the U.S. trained and equipped Georgian forces fled in the face of Russian forces should have told us something about the U.S. training and equipping of foreign militaries.

All this U.S. support and manipulation was with the public goal, urged by George Bush, of making remote Georgia, though a thousand miles from Europe across the Black Sea and Russia, member of NATO and placing Abkhazia and South Ossetia under Georgian control by force.

As in most matters in which George Bush takes aggressive action, oil is a factor in some form. Georgia has made itself available for a pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan then across Georgia to the Black Sea, a major Bush goal, carrying oil from Azerbaijan and former Soviet Republics in Central Asia, produced in large part by U.S. oil companies, to Western markets by-passing Russia. Western Europe shared this U.S. interest.

President Bush visited Georgia in 2005, the first U.S. President to do so. Condoleeza Rice visited while National Security Advisor to Bush and since. Saakashvili has been a frequent guest at the White House and in the Washington corridors of power.

It is George Bush’s enticement and incitement of Georgia that created the present crisis. We have not been told what has been paid Georgia for it.

Suppose NATO had agreed to Georgia membership before Georgia invaded South Ossetia, as the U.S. urged. NATO would have been bound by mutual defense pact to defend Georgia as a Member. NATO, a Cold War creation, which includes all the former colonial powers, should be abolished. The U.S. persuaded NATO to share blame for its assaults that balkanized Yugoslavia which was created to end centuries of violence in the Balkans through unity. It tried to persuade NATO to join in its wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. It nearly succeeded in Georgia.

The U.S. has a major military airbase in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet Republic to Russia’s south and more than 1500 miles east of Georgia which is used to bomb Afghanistan. The U.S. has surrounded Russia with military bases from the Baltic states south across its western border with Europe then east for more than 2500 miles to its borders with Xinjiang Province in western China and Mongolia.

Now we can see the hypocrisy of the U.S. calling NATO into emergency session to address the Georgia crisis with false claims made repeatedly about the ceasefire and withdrawal terms negotiated by President Sarkozy of France, only to back down from all its threats and demands for action after fomenting international friction on false pretenses. The world cannot be made safe for hypocrisy, or mendacity.

It is noteworthy that Georgia is within one hundred miles of the border of Iran across Armenia. While George Bush vigorously protests Russian confrontation with Georgian troops which invaded South Ossetia, he has continued his threatening of Iran with a war of aggression for its alleged but unproven efforts to achieve nuclear weapons capability while he engages in a huge U.S. expenditure for new nuclear weapons. The U.S. now has its largest Naval presence in the Gulf region since the Gulf war, pointed toward Iran. The probability that President Bush will cause Israel and the U.S. to attack Iranian nuclear facilities plants during his remaining months in office remains high. Such an attack would violate the Nuremberg Charter and Article 56 of Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Convention 1979, which protects “Works and Installations Containing Dangerous Forces,” including nuclear facilities, from attack, because of the “consequent severe losses among the civilian population” from the blast and radiation.

As Bush's crimes grow, so does our responsibility to act. Please bring your friends and family members into the impeachment movement by sending them to ImpeachBush.org and make a donation today so that the movement to Impeach and Indict Bush and Cheney will keep growing. Click this link to make your donation.

Ramsey Clark
August 22, 2008

in a just, principled society, in a world not ruled by those thirsting for money and power, clark's message would never have to appear, and the criminals that hold sway over our lives would have never been able to do so...

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Priceless, Simply Priceless

I know this extends beyond the normal definition of 'fair use'; but I believe reprinting it in full IS fair use. And I'm certain that Pravda would agree.

From Pravda......Bush: Why don’t you shut up?

Taking the words of the illustrious King of Spain, in his imbecillic retort to President Hugo Chavez, we use them not as a response to a diatribe but rather, a just retort to an imbecile. President George W. Bush, why don’t you shut up?


President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? In your statement on Monday regarding the legitimate actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, you failed to mention once the war crimes perpetrated by Georgian military forces, which American advisors support, against Russian and Ossetian civilians. Kinda embarrassing, eh?

President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Your faithful ally, Mikhail Saakashvili, was announcing a ceasefire deal while his troops, with your advisors, were massing on Ossetia’s border, which they crossed under cover of night and destroyed Tskhinvali, targeting civilian structures just like your forces did in Iraq. Kinda humanitarian, eh?

President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? The military forces of your faithful ally, Georgia, supported by American advisors, while on a mission as peacekeepers in Ossetia, were ordered to open fire on Russian peacekeeping forces in the same team. Kinda noble, eh?

President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Your American transport aircraft gave a ride home to thousands of Georgian soldiers from Iraq directly into the combat zone. Did your boys wish them good luck as they stepped off the aircraft? I can almost hear it, “Give ‘em Hell!” Kinda friendly, eh?

President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? How do you account for the fact that among the Georgian soldiers fleeing the fighting yesterday you could clearly hear officers using American English giving orders to “Get back inside” and how do you account for the fact that there are reports of American soldiers among the Georgian casualties? Kinda odd, eh?

President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Do you really think anyone gives any importance whatsoever to your words after 8 years of your criminal and murderous regime and policies? Do you really believe you have any moral ground whatsoever and do you really imagine there is a single human being anywhere on this planet who does not stick up his middle finger every time you appear on a TV screen? Kinda makes ya’ll think, eh?


Do you really believe you have the right to give any opinion or advice after Abu Ghraib? After Guantanamo? After the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens? After the torture by CIA operatives? Kinda difficult, eh?

Do you really believe you have any right to make a statement on any point of international law after your trumped-up charges against Iraq and the subsequent criminal invasion? Like spittin’ into the wind, right?

President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Suppose Russia for instance declares that Georgia has weapons of mass destruction? And that Russia knows where these WMD are, namely in Tblisi and Poti and north, south, east and west of there? And that it must be true because there is “magnificent foreign intelligence” such as satellite photos of milk powder factories and baby cereals producing chemical weapons and which are currently being “driven around the country in vehicles”? Suppose Russia declares for instance that “Saakashvili stiffed the world” and it is “time for regime change”?


Nice and simple, isn’t it, President Bush?


So, why don’t you shut up? Oh and by the way, send some more of your military advisors to Georgia, they are doing a sterling job. And they look all funny down the night sight, all green. Hahaha!


Thank you, That would be all.

Bush, McCain, and the entire MSM, is turning America into the world's laughing stock.

Heckuva job, Chimpy, you hypocritical SOB.

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"The End of America" - 4th of July food for thought from Scott Ritter

points to ponder as you watch and listen to scott ritter...

• Iraq
• Afghanistan
• War on terror
• U.S. Constitution
• Bill of Rights
• 4th Amendment
• Geneva Convention
• U.N. Convention against Torture
• Guantánamo
• Abu Ghraib
• Bagram
• Extraordinary rendition
• Warrantless domestic wiretapping
• Patriot Act
• Military Commissions Act
• CIA black sites
• Presidential signing statements
• Executive privilege
• Unitary executive
• Telecom immunity

from brasscheck tv...

Spoken before the US invaded Iraq

"We can call ouselves Americans. We can fly the American flag, but unless we stand up and defend the values that define us as Americans, we will cease being Americans."

Scott Ritter gave this talk before the US invaded Iraq. As a former US Marine Corps officer, UN weapons inspector and expert on the armaments of Iraq, he very publicly disputed the Bush adminstration's claim that Iraq was a threat to the US.

Now the US is on the same path with regards to war against Iran.

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Certain things you can ALWAYS rely on with George Bush

contemptuousness, arrogance and condescension...

froomkin in the wapo...

President Bush's contempt for those who question him or doubt his accomplishments has been on full display lately.

That two thirds of Americans are now in that category apparently hasn't made him any more receptive to their concerns-- quite the opposite.

When British Sky News reporter Adam Boulton today challenged Bush on his dedication to freedom, suggesting that Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib represented "the complete opposite of freedom," Bush accused Boulton of "slander[ing] America."

Evidently still smarting about the Supreme Court's rejection of his detainee policies last week, Bush noted defensively that the lower courts had agreed with him -- as if that mattered.

While Americans increasingly blame him for record-high gas prices and the toll on their pocketbooks, Bush dismissively referred to domestic concerns about those high prices as "squawking."

And in an interview on Friday with Ned Temko of Britain's Observer, Bush actually joked that he was "still looking" for the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that were the main reason he gave to the public for going to war.

it's bizarrely comforting to know you can count on some things not to change...

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The U.S. prisons, prison ships and proxy prison sites - Guantánamo, Bagram, Diego Garcia, Camp Lemonier, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and, yes, Abu Ghraib

monday, 19 may, democracy now...

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewing Clive Stafford Smith, a British attorney who represents more than fifty of the prisoners at Guantanamo, legal director of the UK charity Reprieve and author of Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay. He is testifying on Tuesday before the House Committee on Foreign Relations about Guantanamo Bay.

[A]ccording to the most recent official figures, the United States is currently holding 27,000 secret prisoners around the world. So that means that 99 percent of these folk are not in Guantanamo Bay. Now they’re in other prisons elsewhere. And as you mentioned, Bagram has 680. But there’s a huge number of people being held in Iraq, and one of the intriguing aspects of this that doesn’t get much reporting is that the US is bringing people into Iraq from elsewhere to hold them there, simply because that keeps rather annoying people like you, Amy—I mean the media—and also annoying people like me, lawyers, away from the prisoners so they can’t get any sort of legal rights.

And when you look around the world, there’s a huge camp, Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, where a lot of people are being held. Diego Garcia, contrary to the past analysis of the British government, in the Indian Ocean has been used, in my belief, to hold people. And we’ve identified thirty-two prison ships, sort of prison hulks you used to read about in Victorian England, which have been converted to hold prisoners, and we’ve got pictures of them in Lisbon Harbor, for example. And these are holding prisoners around the world, as well. And there’s a bunch of proxy prisons—Morocco, Egypt and Jordan—where this stuff is going on. And this is a huge concern, because the world focus is on Guantanamo Bay, which really is a diversionary tactic in the whole war of terror or war on terror, whatever you’d like to call it. And actually, most of these people who have been severed from their legal rights are in these other secret prisons around the world.

it's becoming increasingly apparent that guantánamo is a diversionary tactic... i speculated the other day that the announcement of the new prison to be built at bagram in afghanistan is a signal that guantánamo will indeed be closed... this will precipitate a victory chant from human rights activists who will fail to note that all of these other sites are still out there, just much less visible and a whole lot easier to shield from prying eyes...

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Clive, did you say that you—that the US is taking prisoners to Iraq?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Oh, yes, they are. I mean, the US is taking an estimated forty to sixty, on average, prisoners a day around the world. And it doesn’t take a lot of arithmetic to tell you how many people that is each month. And people are being taken to Iraq to be held in Abu Ghraib, even today, and also in other camps in Iraq.

mark my words... we will see guantánamo closed about the time the new facility at bagram opens...

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Early Sunday a.m. WTF: HRC handing out "I'm not bitter" stickers and Iraqi boys dream of being U.S. soldiers???

for some reason, since i've arrived here in kabul, i've been getting up extra early, usually around 5:45... partly it's because the muezzin chanting prayers from the local mosque wakes me up at 4:35 a.m. and, after snoozing for another hour, i'm wide awake, but also i like to get on the 'puter and catch up on the day's goings-on on the other side of the world before i go to work...

i don't necessarily equate "catching up" with "getting pissed off," but that's been my experience this morning... after watching cnn eviscerate the small-minded and semi-hysterical attack on obama by hillary and mccain and obama's response (see previous post), reading ap's spin-enshrouded crap just grinds my ass...

A political tempest over Barack Obama's comments about bitter voters in small towns has given rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a new opening to court working class Democrats 10 days before Pennsylvanians hold a primary that she must win to keep her presidential campaign alive.

Obama tried to quell the furor Saturday, explaining his remarks while also conceding he had chosen his words poorly.

"If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that," Obama said in an interview with the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal.

But the Clinton campaign fueled the controversy in every place and every way it could, hoping charges that Obama is elitist and arrogant will resonate with the swing voters the candidates are vying for not only in Pennsylvania, but in upcoming primaries in Indiana and North Carolina as well.

Political insiders differed on whether Obama's comments, which came to light Friday, would become a full-blown political disaster that could prompt party leaders to try to steer the nomination to Clinton even though Obama has more pledged delegates. Clinton supporters were eagerly hoping so.

They handed out "I'm not bitter" stickers in North Carolina, and held a conference call of Pennsylvania mayors to denounce the Illinois senator. In Indiana, Clinton did the work herself, telling plant workers in Indianapolis that Obama's comments were "elitist and out of touch."

god-rotten-dammit... obama doesn't have ANYTHING to apologize for... "bitter" is an entirely accurate description... i don't live in pa. but i'm bitter... i'm bitter about a lot of things, not the least of which is that my government has totally abdicated its sworn obligation to defend and uphold the united states constitution... i'm bitter that my those running my country are enriching themselves and their cronies at my expense and at the expense of billions of poor saps like me around the world who are having their money, their livelihoods, and often their lives taken from them by brute force... tell me those aren't things to be bitter about...

then, to make it worse, i read the headline of this wsj opinion piece...

Let's 'Surge' Some More

followed by this jaw-dropping piece of journalistic shit...

I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war – and our part in it – at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous.

The change goes far beyond the statistical decline in casualties or incidents of violence. A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers. Yes, young Iraqi boys know about "GoArmy.com."

first of all, being the reporter who has been embedded with u.s. combat units in iraq the longest is absolutely NOT a claim to credibility... it is, rather, a claim to being the journalist who has been exposed to the side of the story that his handlers have decreed he should see for the longest... if there had been even the slightest mention of time spent in iraq as a NON-EMBEDDED journalist, i might be tempted to back off a little...

secondly, iraqi boys, like boys everywhere, are fascinated by action heroes... the guns, the equipment, the humvees, the swagger, the raw demonstration of power - all of that captures boys' attention like nothing else can... but seeing that and transforming it into a solid demonstration that u.s. soldiers are "winning hearts and minds" is nothing more than journalistic obscenity... (take a moment to re-visit two of my previous posts, "Just another day in Iraq," and "Scenes from an Iraki childhood," and then talk to me about "hearts and minds...") and if all that isn't obscene enough, check this next part out...

As the outrages of Abu Ghraib faded in memory – and paled in comparison to al Qaeda's brutalities – and our soldiers under the Petraeus strategy got off their big bases and out of their tanks and deeper into the neighborhoods, American values began to win the war.

Iraqis came to respect American soldiers as warriors who would protect them from terror gangs. But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic, school or a neighborhood. They learned that the American soldier is not only the most dangerous enemy in the world, but one of the best friends a neighborhood can have.

the outrages of abu ghraib "FADING" in memory and "PALING" in comparison to al qaeda brutalities...? is yon saying that we should be happy that "OUR OUTRAGES" aren't as bad as "THEIR OUTRAGES"...? even worse, he conveniently and totally ignores all the recent revelations that those abu ghraib "outrages" are linked directly to the orders given by the president of the united states and his criminal accomplices... reading yon's unadulterated crap, I'M OUTRAGED...

finally, if i ever again see u.s. soldiers called "warriors," i will have to puke... my country is not sparta... we don't nurture a "warrior" caste... we don't breed people to wage endless war... we don't live to honor those who fight and kill... and, moreover, i don't want to live in or be a citizen of a country that does those things...

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Torture starts at the top (as if we didn't know)

more "news" we've known all along...

U.S. President George W. Bush's most senior advisers approved "enhanced interrogation techniques" of top al Qaeda suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency, ABC News reported on Wednesday, citing sources it did not name.

ABC reported that the so-called "principals" discussed interrogation details in dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House.

Then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by a select group of senior officials or their deputies, ABC said.

"Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding," ABC reported.

In addition to Rice, the principals at the time included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the report said.

anybody who believed for a single minute that those poor low-level schmucks that took the rap for abu ghraib were acting on their own initiative has been smoking some truly powerful shit...

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Keith Olbermann talks with Johnathan Turley about torture and John Yoo

turley makes the case that bush ordered war crimes...

watch it...

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"We kind of joked about it as being the 'greatest show on earth'; everyone wanted to come and look at the 'terrorists.' "

I was kidnapped; abducted, forced imprisoned, tortured, threatened with further torture, without charge. Without trial.

Even many soldiers had said to me afterwards...if you weren't a terrorist when you came in here, by the time you leave, I'm sure you would be because of the way you've been treated.

--Bagram detainee Moazzam Begg

Flying in the face of statements members of the Bush Administration have made denying the use, and advocacy, of torture in their war effort, evidence of brutal treatment of captives continues to accumulate.

PBS' Bill Moyers delves into Oscar-nominated documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side," highlighting an Afghan taxi driver who was detained and beaten to death by American forces.

"Go see it," says Moyers. "Not in a while has the truth hit so hard."

In 2002, Dilawar, 22, and his passengers were stopped at Bagram Air Base and held under suspicion of involvement in a rocket attack. Five days later, his death from blunt force trauma would be ruled a homicide, as written on the death certificate, in English, given to Dilawar's family with his body.

Captain Carolyn Wood, overseeing interrogation at Bagram, would be awarded a Bronze Star for "valor" and tapped to begin similar operations at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

Prisoners were assigned numbers, which were written on sheets of paper hung outside the airlocks in which they were kept, and directly on their bodies.

"Detainees were actually chained with their hands above their heads in these airlocks," says Moazzam Begg. "His number, 421, was something that I could see often, because his back was towards me."

"There were always officers coming and going through the facility," says Eric Lahammer. "We kind of joked about it as being the 'greatest show on earth'; everyone wanted to come and look at the 'terrorists.'"

there is only one thing that can be done to restore the dignity of our country... the bush administration must be removed from office prior to the expiration of its term, and the key members of that administration must be prosecuted for war crimes... there is nothing else we could possibly do to demonstrate that we are serious about reclaiming the bright light that used to shine from our shores...

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"Removed" video restored - for a while, anyway

i had a post up the other day, a clip from a local newscast in ohio describing the kind of degrading and quite likely criminal behavior that was inflicted on a perfectly innocent woman by sheriff's deputies in stark county, ohio... the video was subsequently removed from youtube, citing "copyright violation..." it's now back up, at least for the time being...



meanwhile, i've continued to read posts at other weblogs screaming bloody murder about the strip search of a woman in saudi arabia who was "caught" at a starbucks, drinking coffee with a man... commenters to those posts have been quick to engage in islamophobia and to decry the heathen conduct of the "thugs" who live by the koran... my point is, we've got our own "thugs" right here...

i have the same visceral reaction to people in the u.s. attacking the behavior of people of other countries that i do to those who sanctimoniously drive around with bumper stickers reading "free tibet..." should the "thugs" in saudi arabia be stopped...? absolutely... should tibet be free...? no question... but, ferchrissake, people, wake up and smell the coffee, and, once you have, look out your kitchen window to see what's happening in your own backyard...

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