Hat tip to the always wonderful balloon-juice:
Posts Tagged ‘Bush Bullshit’
Onion News: So frightfully close to accurate
August 27th, 2009Rant: We Are Such a Burden
July 1st, 2009
Secretary Robert Gates
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is trying to figure out how to make DADT more humane until the democratic leadership in Congress gets around to changing the law. But here is what really frustrated me in the story:
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff and others have cautioned that repeal of the law must be done carefully so as not to disrupt military cohesion in wartime or to place an additional burden on an already overstretched uniformed force.
Gee. We wouldn´t want to burden you by dying for our country or anything. Perhaps what really burdened the military was the illegal invasion of another country on false grounds (later proved to be active lies) and all the subsequent cycle into a country of torture, occupation, and war crimes. All of that, we are told, is also to burdensome for us to investigate and dwell in the past.
Why did we elect these leaders?
Just Yikes
June 18th, 2009
Zzzzz
I was out for most of the day running errands and getting ready for my trip to San Francisco tomorrow and enjoying another (really hot) day in Madrid. It was wonderful. I signed the lease for my new apartment, which is located a stone’s throw from the Royal Palace (the biggest in Europe – the Palace, not my apartment) and came home to walk the dog and clean the house.
I quickly fired up the ol’ Mac and took a swing around the intertubes and I gotta tell ya, sometimes you just need to take a break. In fifteen minutes I read:
- Barney Franks doesn’t think the DOJ DOMA brief was so bad
- Bush’s NSA spied (accidently) on Bill Clinton
- Holder will not prosecute domestic spying violations
- Bush spoke out against Obama on Gitmo
- There now appears that a pro-choice nominee for a sub-cabinet position was successfully filibustered (not really, just threatened – nowadays you just need to say there might be a filibuster) by the Republicans because she is pro-choice
- There is now a permanent 60 vote supermajority needed for EVERYTHING in the US Senate/snark
- The public health care option is hanging by a thread because it doesn’t have 60 votes
- The Republicans are going to carry out their own Iran policy
- North Korea is planning on firing a missile towards Hawaii
- Convicts have no right to DNA tests
- and PETA is very upset that the president killed a fly.
Had enough? I’m going for a walk and taking a break. Sometimes you just have to disconnect.
See you from SF.
The Real Reason Torture Photos Withheld? The Iraqis?
June 3rd, 2009Today McClatchy reports that the real reason that President Obam had an immediate about face on the release of torture photos was at the bequest of the Maliki government in Iraq. According to the report:
President Obama
When U.S. officials told Maliki, “he went pale in the face,” said a U.S. military official, who along with others requested anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The official said Maliki warned that releasing the photos would lead to more violence that could delay the scheduled U.S. withdrawal from cities by June 30 and that Iraqis wouldn’t make a distinction between old and new photos. The public outrage and increase in violence could lead Iraqis to demand a referendum on the security agreement and refuse to permit U.S. forces to stay until the end of 2011.
One wonders just how terrible these photos are. This is the struggle of a democracy. When faced with the horrific crimes of its own government, crimes so terrible as to inflame an entire area of the world if openly discussed, what does a democracy do? We know what the Bush and Obama governments have decided. But has democracy, or at the least, transparency become obsolete in a world so well connected technologically as to make open government impossible? Surely the president can find another solution than to permanently block their access. Surely the mere knowledge of the acts allows us to be separate from them, and is insufficient on its own. For pictures truly are more powerful. Knowledge alone doesn’t always bring action. Sometimes you have to see with your own eyes.
In an article from El Temp in Switzerland, the point is well-made:
But photos have an immediate power of persuasion that text doesn’t have. Before April 2004, articles described the torture practiced in American prisons. Nobody reacted. But when the images were published, indignation was as sudden as it was total. It’s a question of language: that of the photographer is immediately comprehensible. It hits hard and is memorized well. Barack Obama, the most photographed person in the world, knows that. A photo is sometimes like a ticking time bomb. To show or not to show the unspeakable: a difficult dilemma for a president enamored of freedom, including that of informing.
Senate Approves Bill to Hide Evidence of Torture
June 1st, 2009
in our name
Well, to borrow an overly-used cliche, this is not the change I voted for: This comes from Glenn Greenwald of Salon (a constant warrior on access to the truth): (h/t: andrew sullivan)
The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman — called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 – that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any “photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States.” As long as the Defense Secretary certifies — with no review possible — that disclosure would “endanger” American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.
Just imagine if any other country did this. Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse. Further imagine that the country’s judiciary — applying decades-old transparency laws — ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public. But in response, that country’s President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence. What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill; it doesn’t even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes.
I can not understand why a president with so much popularity continues to hide the truth about the absolute war crimes committed in the name of each and everyone of us. Obama is building a record of skirting both progressive values (LGBT rights, public health option) and support of the Bush policies of war. Recently the president discussed his faith in the ability of the justice system to prosecute crimes if indeed there were crimes. This was the basis of his lack of support for a “truth commission.” But how is that such a justice system will function if all evidence continues to be hidden. The Bush/ Cheney administration broke the law with abandon. There will never appear to be an accounting for these actions. And it is a Democratic president that continues to support the extra-constitutional activities of his predecessor’s. Isn’t it also a war crime to hide war crime evidence?
Read the entire article, it is well worth your time.
Gonzo, but not forgotten (10/25/2007)
May 28th, 2009
The Terrible Torture Twosome
The New York Times reported today that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote secret memos in 2005 authorizing extreme methods of interrogation, giving cover for use by the CIA, and in apparent contradiction to public statements by the administration.
Methods such as head-slapping, simulated drowning, and use of freezing water were specifically approved. The White House is denying that the 2005 memos usurped an earlier finding by the Justice Department in 2004. Congress had specifically banned these methods in a law pushed very publicly by John McCain.
There is absolutely no doubt that Gonzales and his superiors at the White House are guilty of violating American law and committing war crimes. In an almost Orwellian manner, Dana Perino explains that every country decides for itself how the Geneva Conventions should be interpreted.
It may be 50 years or more until we truly get a picture of what this administration has done to this country. That is assuming we can ever gain any of it back. John McCain says that he was personally assured by the president that we did not torture. Is there really any one else left who would believe the personal assurances of George Bush?
I’m not so hopeful.
Aznar to Bush: I’m worried about your optimism (9/27/2007)
May 28th, 2009
Prime Minister Aznar and President Bush
This is fascinating. I see on Talking Points Memo that El Pais has posted transcripts of conversations between Bush and former President of the Government Jose Maria Aznar.
The paper is reporting, among other things, that Bush told the Spanish PM that he was going to war in Iraq no matter what happened in the UN. He said this four weeks before the invasion started.
Aznar, who was committed to bringing Spain into a special relationship with the US, in the manner of the US relationship with the United Kingdom, asked for help with public opinion in Spain. More than 3 million people marched in protest against the war just seven days before the attack. Bush clearly tells Aznar that the second resolution to the UN was specifically designed to help Aznar and Blair.
These conversations took place at the Crawford Ranch on February 20 and 21 of 2003. During that trip, Aznar also tried to persuade President Vincente Fox of Mexico to support Bush in his call for invading Iraq.
The notes from the meeting were kept from the Spanish Ambassador to Washington, Javier Ruperez, who also acted as a translator.
The story goes on to tell of how the meeting in the Azores was arranged and how the US, UK, and Spain went around the UN Security Council to justify the war.
While there is nothing here that we don’t already know, it is still pretty shocking to hear it so plainly spoken and so obviously dishonest.
Support them my way…or else! (9/26/2007)
May 28th, 2009I swear to God, if I hear one more person go on about our lack of support for the troops, I’ll run off and join the Texas National Air Guard. It’s hard to believe that this sort of rhetorical assault is working, yet the Republicans have certainly attached themselves to a call for purity of thought.
Now enter Duncan Hunter, crazed warrior of freedom. Armed with a firm intention, he will cut off freedom of speech in order to save it. On Monday, his campaign (he is running for president) released the following statement:
“If President Lee Bollinger follows through with this hosting of the leader of Iran, I will move in Congress to cut off every single type of Federal Funding to Columbia University. If the left-wing leaders of academia will not support our troops, they, in the very least, should not support our adversaries.”
I need a score card. Here are the known actions by which one can demonstrate a desire to bring harm to our troops:
- Invite an Iranian to your school
- Oppose funding an illegal occupation
- Disagree publicly with the president, or his policies, or anyone he designates to carry out those policies, or anyone who was ever associated with his policies
- Suggest we aren’t winning
- Suggest we can’t win
- Suggest this was a mistake
- Suggest that maybe a course correction is in need
- Buy an ad in the New York Times
- Read the ad
- Defend the ad-maker’s right to make the ad
- Buy Dixie Chicks CDs
- (add your own).
I’m starting to think this is all written by Jeff Foxworthy. If you blah blah blah, then you must be redneck terrorist lover.
The scariest part of Duncan’s threat is that this is now the norm in American politics. It no longer sounds unthinkable. We are numb to the irony and absurdity of it all.
Good God this can’t be true (published 7/27/2007
May 27th, 2009
Pat Tillman
Several blogs are reporting on an AP story about new findings in the ongoing mystery of the death of former football hero and soldier Pat Tillman. And it ain’t good. Was he murdered?
You may remember that the Army originally reported that the death had been by enemy fire. A large and very public memorial service was held featuring, among others, John McCain. Yet the family found it impossible to find information regarding the death. It soon came out that the death was by friendly fire and that there had been some level of coverup. The administration had been using his death as a way to whip up support for the war. Jessica Lynch is another example.
Now, the news comes out that Tillman, who was an opponent of the war and of the administration (he served to serve his country, not the war), may have been murdered.
As John Cole at Balloon-juice.com says:
This is one of those stories that you read and say to yourself- please don’t let this be true. And Bush should release the damned documents so we can prove it isn’t true, or deal with it if it is and move on as a nation.
Key quotes from the article, which can be read in full here:
The medical examiners’ suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Among other information contained in the documents:
_ In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop “sniveling.”
_ Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.
_ The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman’s death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn’t recall details of his actions.
_ No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene – no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.
The Pentagon and the Bush administration have been criticized in recent months for lying about the circumstances of Tillman’s death. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers.
With questions lingering about how high in the Bush administration the deception reached, Congress is preparing for yet another hearing next week.
