Showing posts with label Cheney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cheney. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Sly like a fox
Darth Vader outfoxed Kucinich today. He played the doctor trick(remember the fuss about Nixon's knee at the time of his incoming impeachment?), gaining sympathy, so Kucinich had to cancel the formal announcement at noon today submitting Cheney to an impeachment investigation.
George McGovern: "I Expect To See Cheney And Bush Forced To Resign"
George McGovern: Cheney is wrong about me, wrong about war
The 1972 presidential nominee strikes back at the vice president for comparing today's Democrats to the McGovern platform.
By George S. McGovernGEORGE S. MCGOVERN, a former U.S. senator from South Dakota, was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972.
April 24, 2007
VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential platform and contended that today's Democratic Party has reverted to the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment. Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party beyond recognition. The city where the vice president spoke, Chicago, is sometimes dubbed "the Windy City." Cheney converted the chilly wind of Chicago into hot air.
Cheney said that today's Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.
He also said that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq and leave the U.S. exposed to new dangers. The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.
In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat — a record matched by President Bush.
Cheney charged that today's Democrats don't appreciate the terrorist danger when they move to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. That was the work of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda team. Cheney and Bush blew the effort to trap Bin Laden in Afghanistan by their sluggish and inept response after the 9/11 attacks.
They then foolishly sent U.S. forces into Iraq against the advice and experience of such knowledgeable men as former President George H.W. Bush, his secretary of State, James A. Baker III, and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft.
Just as the Bush administration mistakenly asserted Iraq's involvement in the 9/11 attacks, it also falsely contended that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When former Ambassador Joseph Wilson exploded the myth that Iraq attempted to obtain nuclear materials from Niger, Cheney's top aide and other Bush officials leaked to the media that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent (knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent is illegal).
In attacking my positions in 1972 as representative of "that old party of the early 1970s," Cheney seems oblivious to the realities of that time. Does he remember that the Democratic Party, with me in the lead, reformed the presidential nomination process to ensure that women, young people and minorities would be represented fairly? The so-called McGovern reform rules are still in effect and, indeed, have been largely copied by the Republicans.
The Democrats' 1972 platform was also in the forefront in pushing for affordable healthcare, full employment with better wages, a stronger environmental and energy effort, support for education at every level and a foreign policy with less confrontation and belligerence and more cooperation and conciliation.
Cheney also still has his eyes closed to the folly of the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 young Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese died. Vietnam was no threat to the United States.
On one point I do agree with Cheney: Today's Democrats are taking positions on the Iraq war similar to the views I held toward the Vietnam War. But that is all to the good.
The war in Iraq has greatly increased the terrorist danger. There was little or no terrorism, insurgency or civil war in Iraq before Bush and Cheney took us into war there five years ago. Now Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism, a bloody insurgency against our troops and a civil war.
Beyond the deaths of more than 3,100 young Americans and an estimated 600,000 Iraqis, we have spent nearly $500 billion on the war, which has dragged on longer than World War II.
The Democrats are right. Let's bring our troops home from this hopeless war.
There is one more point about 1972 for Cheney's consideration. After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.
Who was the real loser of '72?
THE VICE PRESIDENT spoke with contempt of my '72 campaign, but he might do well to recall that I began that effort with these words: "I make one pledge above all others — to seek and speak the truth." We made some costly tactical errors after winning the nomination, but I never broke my pledge to speak the truth. That is why I have never felt like a loser since 1972. In contrast, Cheney and Bush have repeatedly lied to the American people.
It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.
Aside from a growing list of impeachable offenses, the vice president has demonstrated his ignorance of foreign policy by attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria. Apparently he thinks it is wrong to visit important Middle East states that sometimes disagree with us. Isn't it generally agreed that Nixon's greatest achievement was talking to the Chinese Communist leaders, which opened the door to that nation? And wasn't President Reagan's greatest achievement talking with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev until the two men worked out an end to the Cold War? Does Cheney believe that it's better to go to war rather than talk with countries with which we have differences?
We, of course, already know that when Cheney endorses a war, he exempts himself from participation. On second thought, maybe it's wise to keep Cheney off the battlefield — he might end up shooting his comrades rather than the enemy.
On a more serious note, instead of listening to the foolishness of the neoconservative ideologues, the Cheney-Bush team might better heed the words of a real conservative, Edmund Burke: "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."
Kucinich plans to pursue Cheney impeachment
By JOE MILICIA
Associated Press Writer
8 hours, 2 minutes ago
CLEVELAND – U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a vocal critic of the Bush administration's war in Iraq, plans to introduce articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday.
Associated Press Writer
8 hours, 2 minutes ago
CLEVELAND – U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a vocal critic of the Bush administration's war in Iraq, plans to introduce articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday.
Kucinich, a Cleveland Democrat who is again running for president, announced Monday that he will hold a news conference in Washington to discuss his bid to oust Cheney. Kucinich spokeswoman Natalie Laber declined further comment.
Under the House impeachment process, Kucinich's articles would be reviewed by the House Judiciary Committee, which would decide whether to conduct an impeachment inquiry. The committee would seek authority from the entire House before beginning an inquiry.
Cheney spokeswoman Megan McGinn responded to Kucinich's announcement by saying that the vice president has served the nation honorably for almost 40 years.
"The vice president is focused on the serious issues facing our nation," McGinn said Monday.
Kucinich raises the issue of impeachment in a video on his campaign Web site in which he discusses the potential for a U.S. attack against Iran.
Kucinich, whose campaign initiatives in 2004 included opening a department of peace, questions whether the Bush administration's aggressive actions toward Iran already have raised concerns over impeachment.
"So I'm asking you, what do you think? Do you think it's time?" Kucinich says in a video on his Web site.
Lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled Vermont state senate voted Friday to call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, saying their actions in Iraq and abroad have raised "serious questions of constitutionality."
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, a Democrat, last month called for President Bush's impeachment, saying his administration had lied about the reasons for invading Iraq.
A message seeking comment from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., was not immediately returned.
On the Net:
Friday, April 13, 2007
Finding the Courage to Negotiate: Pelosi, AIPAC and Foreign Policy
The Berkeley Daily Planet
Editorial
By Becky O’Malley
So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
—President John F. Kennedy
These words are from Kennedy’s first inaugural address. That speech marked a generation, my generation. Nancy Pelosi, a politically aware woman of my own age, like me a college student in 1961, cannot have escaped hearing that speech and being influenced by it all of her adult life, as we all were. The attitude it embodied ultimately resulted in the end of a repressive regime in the former Soviet Union, without the atomic war that many in 1961 thought was inevitable. Kennedy described the belief system he hoped to counter: “[B]oth sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.” Kennedy and his successors made many mistakes along the way, but his assertion that negotiation was the only way to end the balance of terror and avoid the atomic Armageddon which threatened to destroy the planet paid off in the end.
Pelosi, now a grandmother like me, is continuing to follow Kennedy’s advice by visiting leaders of potentially warring nations in the Mideast and urging negotiations. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, is going along. Her credentials as a supporter of Israel, like his, are rock-solid, but no matter, the twerps are nipping at their heels.
Dick Cheney, briefly emerging from his undisclosed hidey-hole, led the attack, which has now trickled down to lesser-con luminaries like columnist Debra Saunders. The most foolish version of all this was Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s suggestion that Pelosi shouldn’t have worn a headscarf when she visited a mosque. “I just don’t know what got into her head, to be completely honest with you,” he said. “Her going to a state which is, without question, a sponsor of terror, and having her picture taken with Assad and being seen in a head scarf and so forth is sending the wrong signal to the people of Syria and to the people of the Middle East.”
Perhaps Romney, who is a Mormon, doesn’t knew that when Nancy and I were growing up Catholic women were always required to cover their heads in church, and that even Protestant princesses (there were no women Speakers in those days) donned veils when calling on the Pope. As a mayor’s daughter she’s undoubtedly grown up seeing politicians of all faiths bobby-pin yarmulkes to their heads when courting Jewish voters. Wearing a scarf is no big deal.
Lantos has even suggested that a trip to Iran should be the next item on the agenda, a proposal which Pelosi’s political staff quickly rejected, but don’t bet against it nevertheless. The time for talking to all parties is now, as sensible Israelis and Americans, even some Republicans, are starting to admit. Pelosi carried what she thought was a peace message to Syria from Israel, only to have clueless Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert deny that he’d intended any such thing, probably under pressure from the Bush White House.
But the time has come to talk. George Soros, international financier, philanthropist and determined advocate of what he believes to be human rights imperatives, came out of the political closet with a piece in the April 12 New York Review of Books.
He said that “The Bush administration is once again in the process of committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East, one that is liable to have disastrous consequences and is not receiving the attention it should. This time it concerns the Israeli–Palestinian relationship. The Bush administration is actively supporting the Israeli government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas, which the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization. This precludes any progress toward a peace settlement at a time when progress on the Palestinian problem could help avert a conflagration in the greater Middle East.” His statement was dated March 15, before Pelosi’s trip, but its endorsement of the necessity of negotiation certainly applies to talking to Syria as well.
With a great deal of trepidation, remarkable in someone with as much influence and even power as Soros has, he zeroed in on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as one of the principal obstacles to peace:
“I am not sufficiently engaged in Jewish affairs to be involved in the reform of AIPAC; but I must speak out in favor of the critical process that is at the heart of our open society. I believe that a much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can’t make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Some leaders of the Democratic Party have promised to bring about a change of direction but they cannot deliver on that promise until they are able to resist the dictates of AIPAC.” Even though Soros is himself Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel, he knows that he is exposing himself to personal attacks for taking this position.
Pelosi, like many Democratic politicians in the Bay Area including Lantos, Assemblymember Hancock and Mayor Bates among others, has in the past been a vocal and visible supporter of AIPAC. That puts her in a good position to jump boldly into the negotiating process, just as Nixon’s history of anti-Communism put him in a good position to open negotiations with China. Even so, it has taken a considerable amount of courage for her to do so, and for Lantos and Congressman Henry Waxman to get her back as she does. It’s not too much to ask that other Democratic political leaders, especially those in safer-than-safe Northern California seats, should now demonstrate similar courage in resisting AIPAC’s undue influence on American and Israeli policy and speaking out in favor of open negotiations with all parties in the Middle East.
Editorial
By Becky O’Malley
So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
—President John F. Kennedy
These words are from Kennedy’s first inaugural address. That speech marked a generation, my generation. Nancy Pelosi, a politically aware woman of my own age, like me a college student in 1961, cannot have escaped hearing that speech and being influenced by it all of her adult life, as we all were. The attitude it embodied ultimately resulted in the end of a repressive regime in the former Soviet Union, without the atomic war that many in 1961 thought was inevitable. Kennedy described the belief system he hoped to counter: “[B]oth sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.” Kennedy and his successors made many mistakes along the way, but his assertion that negotiation was the only way to end the balance of terror and avoid the atomic Armageddon which threatened to destroy the planet paid off in the end.
Pelosi, now a grandmother like me, is continuing to follow Kennedy’s advice by visiting leaders of potentially warring nations in the Mideast and urging negotiations. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, is going along. Her credentials as a supporter of Israel, like his, are rock-solid, but no matter, the twerps are nipping at their heels.
Dick Cheney, briefly emerging from his undisclosed hidey-hole, led the attack, which has now trickled down to lesser-con luminaries like columnist Debra Saunders. The most foolish version of all this was Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s suggestion that Pelosi shouldn’t have worn a headscarf when she visited a mosque. “I just don’t know what got into her head, to be completely honest with you,” he said. “Her going to a state which is, without question, a sponsor of terror, and having her picture taken with Assad and being seen in a head scarf and so forth is sending the wrong signal to the people of Syria and to the people of the Middle East.”
Perhaps Romney, who is a Mormon, doesn’t knew that when Nancy and I were growing up Catholic women were always required to cover their heads in church, and that even Protestant princesses (there were no women Speakers in those days) donned veils when calling on the Pope. As a mayor’s daughter she’s undoubtedly grown up seeing politicians of all faiths bobby-pin yarmulkes to their heads when courting Jewish voters. Wearing a scarf is no big deal.
Lantos has even suggested that a trip to Iran should be the next item on the agenda, a proposal which Pelosi’s political staff quickly rejected, but don’t bet against it nevertheless. The time for talking to all parties is now, as sensible Israelis and Americans, even some Republicans, are starting to admit. Pelosi carried what she thought was a peace message to Syria from Israel, only to have clueless Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert deny that he’d intended any such thing, probably under pressure from the Bush White House.
But the time has come to talk. George Soros, international financier, philanthropist and determined advocate of what he believes to be human rights imperatives, came out of the political closet with a piece in the April 12 New York Review of Books.
He said that “The Bush administration is once again in the process of committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East, one that is liable to have disastrous consequences and is not receiving the attention it should. This time it concerns the Israeli–Palestinian relationship. The Bush administration is actively supporting the Israeli government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas, which the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization. This precludes any progress toward a peace settlement at a time when progress on the Palestinian problem could help avert a conflagration in the greater Middle East.” His statement was dated March 15, before Pelosi’s trip, but its endorsement of the necessity of negotiation certainly applies to talking to Syria as well.
With a great deal of trepidation, remarkable in someone with as much influence and even power as Soros has, he zeroed in on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as one of the principal obstacles to peace:
“I am not sufficiently engaged in Jewish affairs to be involved in the reform of AIPAC; but I must speak out in favor of the critical process that is at the heart of our open society. I believe that a much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can’t make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Some leaders of the Democratic Party have promised to bring about a change of direction but they cannot deliver on that promise until they are able to resist the dictates of AIPAC.” Even though Soros is himself Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel, he knows that he is exposing himself to personal attacks for taking this position.
Pelosi, like many Democratic politicians in the Bay Area including Lantos, Assemblymember Hancock and Mayor Bates among others, has in the past been a vocal and visible supporter of AIPAC. That puts her in a good position to jump boldly into the negotiating process, just as Nixon’s history of anti-Communism put him in a good position to open negotiations with China. Even so, it has taken a considerable amount of courage for her to do so, and for Lantos and Congressman Henry Waxman to get her back as she does. It’s not too much to ask that other Democratic political leaders, especially those in safer-than-safe Northern California seats, should now demonstrate similar courage in resisting AIPAC’s undue influence on American and Israeli policy and speaking out in favor of open negotiations with all parties in the Middle East.
War on Terror looks like a fraud
April 13, 2007
It's becoming pretty clear that Iraq has been "pacified" solely for the purpose of economic aggression
By JOHN GLEESON
Contrary to the "patriots" who try to use the deaths of our soldiers in Afghanistan to stifle debate on Canada's involvement in the War on Terror, I would say that as new evidence presents itself, we would indeed be cowards to ignore it simply because we've lost troops in the field and are therefore blindly committed to the mission.
It's becoming pretty clear that Iraq has been "pacified" solely for the purpose of economic aggression
By JOHN GLEESON
Contrary to the "patriots" who try to use the deaths of our soldiers in Afghanistan to stifle debate on Canada's involvement in the War on Terror, I would say that as new evidence presents itself, we would indeed be cowards to ignore it simply because we've lost troops in the field and are therefore blindly committed to the mission.
And new evidence is piling up around us, arguably strong enough to declare the whole War on Terror an undeniable fraud.
Virtually ignored by mainstream media, the Americans showed their hand this year with the new Iraqi oil law, now making its way through Iraq's parliament.
The law -- which tens of thousands of Iraqis marched peacefully against on Monday when they called for the immediate expulsion of U.S. forces -- would transfer control of one of the largest oil reserves on the planet from Baghdad to Big Oil, delivering "the prize" at last that Vice-President Dick Cheney famously talked about in 1999 when he was CEO of Halliburton.
"The key point of the law," wrote Mother Jones' Washington correspondent James Ridgeway on March 1, "is that Iraq's immense oil wealth (115 billion barrels of proven reserves, third in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran) will be under the iron rule of a fuzzy 'Federal Oil and Gas Council' boasting 'a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq.' That is, nothing less than predominantly U.S. Big Oil executives.
'Savage privatization'
"The law represents no less than institutionalized raping and pillaging of Iraq's oil wealth. It represents the death knell of nationalized Iraqi resources, now replaced by production sharing agreements, which translate into savage privatization and monster profit rates of up to 75% for (basically U.S.) Big Oil. Sixty-five of Iraq's roughly 80 oilfields already known will be offered for Big Oil to exploit."
While the U.S. argues that the oil deal will give Iraqis their shot at "freedom and stability," the International Committee of the Red Cross reported this week that millions of Iraqis are in a "disastrous" situation that continues to deteriorate, with "mothers appealing for someone to pick up the bodies littering the street so their children will be spared the horror of looking at them on their way to school."
Four years after the invasion, it's becoming pretty clear that Iraq has been "pacified" solely for the purpose of economic aggression. Humanitarian considerations are moot. The awful plight of Iraq's one million Christians, who have no place in the new Iraq, underscores this ugly truth.
Afghanistan, meanwhile, has given the U.S. a strategic military beachhead in Central Asia (which "American primacy" advocates called for in the '90s) and it was quietly reported in November that plans are being accelerated for a $3.3-billion natural gas pipeline "to help Afghanistan become an energy bridge in the region."
With many Americans (including academics and former top U.S. government officials) now questioning even the physical facts of 9/11 and seriously disputing the "militant Islam" spin, with the media more brain-dead than it's been in our lifetimes, now is not the time for jingoism and blind faith in the likes of Cheney, George W. Bush and Robert Gates.
Our young men are worth more than that -- aren't they, Mr. Harper?
Thursday, March 29, 2007
The War of Terror and the US “National Interest”
by Kim Petersen
March 28, 2007
Why is it that US politicians feel compelled to appear before a small, delimited section of the United States and pronounce unwavering support for Israel -- which is de facto support for ethnic cleansing and slow motion genocide? Why is it the administration of a superpower feels forced to address this small segment of the US population? Is this in the US “national interest”?
US vice president Dick Cheney, a major figure in the drive to invade and occupy Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, claims that it is in the interest of US security. He shirks responsibility for the massive devastation wreaked by the occupiers in Iraq and denounces critics of the destruction for exercising 20/20 hindsight. But many progressive commentators were opposed prior to the invasion-occupation of Iraq. They had attacked the nugatory evidence for Iraq’s possession of outlawed weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) as propagandistic.
While eschewing hindsight, Cheney has the audacity to claim foresight. This past 24 March, Cheney spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition leadership in Florida. He said, “But the biggest mistake of all can be seen in advance: A sudden withdrawal of our coalition [in Iraq] would dissipate much of the effort that has gone into fighting the global war on terror, and result in chaos and mounting danger.”
Cheney declaimed, “We must consider . . . just what a precipitous withdrawal would mean to our other efforts in the war on terror, to our interests in the broader Middle East, and to Israel.”
Let’s consider this. First, besides exposing the fraudulent casus belli of possessing WMD, the aggression of Iraq adduced that it was no threat by quickly toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. The aggression has given rise to a vigorous resistance that has dented the notion of an invincible US military. Second, as Cheney noted, it was not US interests in Israel, but US interests to Israel! Why does the US vice president genuflect to Jewish-Israeli interests? Certainly Palestinian-Israeli interests are not considered.
Twice this month in the build-up to an attack on Iran, Cheney has spoken publicly to Jewish groups but not publicly to Arab or Muslim groups. But that is not surprising, as the enemy is identified as being among Arabs and Muslims, and there is no talking to that “enemy.” Cheney stated, “An enemy with fantasies of martyrdom is not going to sit down at a table for negotiations. . . . The only option for our security and survival is to go on the offensive -- facing the threat directly, patiently, and systematically, until the enemy is destroyed.”
The Bush-Cheney regime’s focus is on violence. “The first priority is to remember that we are a nation at war . . .” So in Iraq, there is a push for a troop build-up, and in Afghanistan the US and NATO forces prepare for further violence.
Cheney undermined his raison d’être for the invasion-occupation of Iraq when he stated the mission’s focus is based on the “attacks of September 11th, 2001, and the loss that morning of nearly 3,000 innocent people here in the United States.” Iraq’s involvement in those attacks has never been demonstrated. None of the 9-11 suspects were Iraqi. No connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda has been demonstrated. Yet, Cheney asserted ex cathedra that Iraq’s non-involvement is a myth.
Cheney concluded, “If you support the war on terror, then it only makes sense to support it where the terrorists are fighting us.”
It is easy to demonize the “enemy” with language, but what is clear is that the killing of one million Iraqis is a genocidal campaign. Americans and citizens of the world do have a choice: support US terrorism and the continued destruction of the cradle of civilization or stand for peace.
Kim Petersen, Co-Editor of Dissident Voice, can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org.
March 28, 2007
Why is it that US politicians feel compelled to appear before a small, delimited section of the United States and pronounce unwavering support for Israel -- which is de facto support for ethnic cleansing and slow motion genocide? Why is it the administration of a superpower feels forced to address this small segment of the US population? Is this in the US “national interest”?
US vice president Dick Cheney, a major figure in the drive to invade and occupy Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, claims that it is in the interest of US security. He shirks responsibility for the massive devastation wreaked by the occupiers in Iraq and denounces critics of the destruction for exercising 20/20 hindsight. But many progressive commentators were opposed prior to the invasion-occupation of Iraq. They had attacked the nugatory evidence for Iraq’s possession of outlawed weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) as propagandistic.
While eschewing hindsight, Cheney has the audacity to claim foresight. This past 24 March, Cheney spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition leadership in Florida. He said, “But the biggest mistake of all can be seen in advance: A sudden withdrawal of our coalition [in Iraq] would dissipate much of the effort that has gone into fighting the global war on terror, and result in chaos and mounting danger.”
Cheney declaimed, “We must consider . . . just what a precipitous withdrawal would mean to our other efforts in the war on terror, to our interests in the broader Middle East, and to Israel.”
Let’s consider this. First, besides exposing the fraudulent casus belli of possessing WMD, the aggression of Iraq adduced that it was no threat by quickly toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. The aggression has given rise to a vigorous resistance that has dented the notion of an invincible US military. Second, as Cheney noted, it was not US interests in Israel, but US interests to Israel! Why does the US vice president genuflect to Jewish-Israeli interests? Certainly Palestinian-Israeli interests are not considered.
Twice this month in the build-up to an attack on Iran, Cheney has spoken publicly to Jewish groups but not publicly to Arab or Muslim groups. But that is not surprising, as the enemy is identified as being among Arabs and Muslims, and there is no talking to that “enemy.” Cheney stated, “An enemy with fantasies of martyrdom is not going to sit down at a table for negotiations. . . . The only option for our security and survival is to go on the offensive -- facing the threat directly, patiently, and systematically, until the enemy is destroyed.”
The Bush-Cheney regime’s focus is on violence. “The first priority is to remember that we are a nation at war . . .” So in Iraq, there is a push for a troop build-up, and in Afghanistan the US and NATO forces prepare for further violence.
Cheney undermined his raison d’être for the invasion-occupation of Iraq when he stated the mission’s focus is based on the “attacks of September 11th, 2001, and the loss that morning of nearly 3,000 innocent people here in the United States.” Iraq’s involvement in those attacks has never been demonstrated. None of the 9-11 suspects were Iraqi. No connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda has been demonstrated. Yet, Cheney asserted ex cathedra that Iraq’s non-involvement is a myth.
Cheney concluded, “If you support the war on terror, then it only makes sense to support it where the terrorists are fighting us.”
It is easy to demonize the “enemy” with language, but what is clear is that the killing of one million Iraqis is a genocidal campaign. Americans and citizens of the world do have a choice: support US terrorism and the continued destruction of the cradle of civilization or stand for peace.
Kim Petersen, Co-Editor of Dissident Voice, can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Gonzales, Cheney Blocked Call For Guantanamo Closing
New to Job, Gates Argued for Closing Guantánamo
WASHINGTON, March 22 — In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.
Mr. Gates’s appeal was an effort to turn Mr. Bush’s publicly stated desire to close Guantánamo into a specific plan for action, the officials said. In particular, Mr. Gates urged that trials of terrorism suspects be moved to the United States, both to make them more credible and because Guantánamo’s continued existence hampered the broader war effort, administration officials said.
Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.
As Mr. Gates was making his case, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined him in urging that the detention facility be shut down, administration officials said. But the high-level discussions about closing Guantánamo came to a halt after Mr. Bush rejected the approach, although officials at the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the State Department continue to analyze options for the detention of terrorism suspects.
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Impeachment: 'The Only Remedy That Remains
[Opinion] Thoughts occasioned by a peace march in Minneapolis
Mikael Jonathan Rudolph (MikaelMN)
The Minneapolis (Minnesota) Star Tribune accurately portrayed the local peace march and rally that took place this past Sunday and appropriately featured it as Monday morning's number one story "above the fold" on its front page along with a large photograph of the marchers similar to this one taken nearly simultaneously.
This is yet another sign of steadily growing citizen opposition to the disastrous, failed policies of President Bush, along with Saturday's march on the Pentagon and similar protests around the nation and the world. The effectiveness of citizen protest and calls for peace, however, is certainly questionable as peace advocates marched once again in what is becoming an Iraq invasion anniversary tradition.
President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have made it abundantly clear that no matter what the new majority of Democrats in Congress pass as legislation in opposition to the war, it will be vetoed, ignored or otherwise circumvented. This war will continue. Innocent Iraqis will continue to suffer terribly -- caught in the middle between their American occupiers, the "insurgent" resistance and the battling opposing forces of the burgeoning Sunni-Shiite civil war.
By this time next year another thousand American families will have flag-draped caskets come home instead of sons, daughters, fathers, or mothers. The number of horrendously damaged souls doomed to be relegated to holding cardboard signs on our street corners over the next couple of decades goes up every day.
No amount of protesting, no amount of candle-wax burned, no amount of letter writing, calls or e-mails of complaint to our Representatives and Senators will end this war.
The war was illegal from the start as a preemptive war of aggression banned by the Geneva Accords. The Bush administration clearly knew Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States and yet ordered the attack and occupation anyway of the sovereign nation whose only real crime was having the audacity to live on top of one of the world's largest oil fields.
We American citizens were lied to. The world was lied to. Most critically, Congress was lied to. The "intelligence was fixed to justify the policy" as made clear by the Downing Street Memo.
The plans to invade Iraq were clarified in 1998 according to the "Project for a New American Century" a Neo-Conservative think tank. All that was needed was a "new Pearl Harbor" to justify it. This was made clear in an article published as: Rebuilding America's Defenses (page 51).
Participants in PNAC included:
The authors of the PNAC document got their "New Pearl Harbor" wish on Sept. 11, 2001 and the Bush administration has failed to thoroughly investigate the financing, planning, execution and cover up of the crimes of 9/11 ever since.
Despite there not being an iota of truth to the administration's claims of Saddam's connections to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or 9/11, they are still talking about them all in the same breath repeatedly to manipulate the uninformed. Even so, America's patience with this war is plummeting, yet public opinion holds no sway with these war criminals the Hague is considering prosecuting along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The "War on Terror" is an eternal commitment to imperialism, it isn't a conflict that can be won because the declared enemy isn't a nation state nor is it a people group. It is a quasi-military tactic. We might as well declare war against bullets.
The Iraq War is not ending, it is escalating. The next escalation is already assured. According to some media sources covert pre-op military action is allegedly already taking place across the border in Iran. (New Yorker, RAW STORY.) Iran is almost certain to be attacked by the U.S. and/or Israel within the next few months. National Democratic Party leadership pressure and American Citizen pressure may have delayed this, but it is still in the works. There is a fourth aircraft carrier group heading to the Gulf as a "replacement" to arrive very soon. The likely timing for an attack is while all four carrier groups are there and before one group is rotated out.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) had the courage, the integrity and basic common sense to recognize that there is only one way to pull the plug on this American war-for-profit machine last Thursday when he spoke to the House of Representatives:
"This House cannot avoid its constitutionally authorized responsibility to restrain the abuse of executive power.
"The administration has been preparing for an aggressive war against Iran. There is no solid, direct evidence that Iran has the intention of attacking the United States or its allies.
"The U.S. is a signatory to the U.N. Charter, a constituent treaty among the nations of the world. Article II, Section 4 of the U.N. Charter states, 'all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state...' Even the threat of a war of aggression is illegal.
"Article VI of the U.S. constitution makes such treaties the supreme law of the land. This administration, has openly threatened aggression against Iran in violation of the U.S. constitution and the U.N. charter.
"This week the House appropriations committee removed language from the Iraq war funding bill requiring the administration, under article 1, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution, to seek permission before it launched an attack against Iran.
"Since war with Iran is an option of this administration and since such war is patently illegal, then impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran."
If we American citizens are not working for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney and the removal from office of their entire administration we are not working for peace. Other efforts are noble, well-intended and honorable but absolutely impotent in the face of this voraciously bloodthirsty evil.
Martin Luther King had to take his legion across the bridge into a bloodbath provoked by a racist police force in Selma, Alabama, and Mahatma Ghandi marched his followers to the sea in resistance to the British military in order for true change to occur. It is long past time for the citizens of this nation, so many of whom call themselves Christians, to "storm the temple" as Jesus of Nazareth did and evict the moneychangers in the White House, utilizing the authority granted us in our constitution. That authority and mechanism for accountability and justice is called impeachment.
Who is ready to march with a petition of memorial to their Representative insisting on justice through impeachment for war crimes? We've been asking nicely for peace for four years (much longer for many, I know). It is time that we demand the justice that is the only way through which peace will come:
DIY Impeachment
Parents, when "asking nice" accomplishes absolutely nothing, know the next method of healthy discipline for their children is to be more authoritative. It is time to take away their toys.
Time out Mr. Bush.
Time out Mr. Cheney.
Time out.
Peaceful marchers: See you at next year's rally or are you ready to realize "the only remedy that remains" to secure the peace you seek is impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney?
2007/03/20
Mikael Jonathan Rudolph (MikaelMN)
The Minneapolis (Minnesota) Star Tribune accurately portrayed the local peace march and rally that took place this past Sunday and appropriately featured it as Monday morning's number one story "above the fold" on its front page along with a large photograph of the marchers similar to this one taken nearly simultaneously.
 |
| ⓒ2007 Kayakbiker |
This is yet another sign of steadily growing citizen opposition to the disastrous, failed policies of President Bush, along with Saturday's march on the Pentagon and similar protests around the nation and the world. The effectiveness of citizen protest and calls for peace, however, is certainly questionable as peace advocates marched once again in what is becoming an Iraq invasion anniversary tradition.
President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have made it abundantly clear that no matter what the new majority of Democrats in Congress pass as legislation in opposition to the war, it will be vetoed, ignored or otherwise circumvented. This war will continue. Innocent Iraqis will continue to suffer terribly -- caught in the middle between their American occupiers, the "insurgent" resistance and the battling opposing forces of the burgeoning Sunni-Shiite civil war.
By this time next year another thousand American families will have flag-draped caskets come home instead of sons, daughters, fathers, or mothers. The number of horrendously damaged souls doomed to be relegated to holding cardboard signs on our street corners over the next couple of decades goes up every day.
No amount of protesting, no amount of candle-wax burned, no amount of letter writing, calls or e-mails of complaint to our Representatives and Senators will end this war.
The war was illegal from the start as a preemptive war of aggression banned by the Geneva Accords. The Bush administration clearly knew Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States and yet ordered the attack and occupation anyway of the sovereign nation whose only real crime was having the audacity to live on top of one of the world's largest oil fields.
We American citizens were lied to. The world was lied to. Most critically, Congress was lied to. The "intelligence was fixed to justify the policy" as made clear by the Downing Street Memo.
The plans to invade Iraq were clarified in 1998 according to the "Project for a New American Century" a Neo-Conservative think tank. All that was needed was a "new Pearl Harbor" to justify it. This was made clear in an article published as: Rebuilding America's Defenses (page 51).
Participants in PNAC included:
- Vice President Dick Cheney
- Cheney's recently convicted former top aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby CIA leaker
- World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz
- U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad
- Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld Not Gone?
- Former Florida Governor and George W. Bush's brother Jeb Bush
- Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton
- Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage CIA leaker
- Former "Drug Czar" William Bennett
- Former Vice President Dan Quayle
- Fellow high profile conservatives Richard Perle, William Kristol and others.
The authors of the PNAC document got their "New Pearl Harbor" wish on Sept. 11, 2001 and the Bush administration has failed to thoroughly investigate the financing, planning, execution and cover up of the crimes of 9/11 ever since.
Despite there not being an iota of truth to the administration's claims of Saddam's connections to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or 9/11, they are still talking about them all in the same breath repeatedly to manipulate the uninformed. Even so, America's patience with this war is plummeting, yet public opinion holds no sway with these war criminals the Hague is considering prosecuting along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The "War on Terror" is an eternal commitment to imperialism, it isn't a conflict that can be won because the declared enemy isn't a nation state nor is it a people group. It is a quasi-military tactic. We might as well declare war against bullets.
The Iraq War is not ending, it is escalating. The next escalation is already assured. According to some media sources covert pre-op military action is allegedly already taking place across the border in Iran. (New Yorker, RAW STORY.) Iran is almost certain to be attacked by the U.S. and/or Israel within the next few months. National Democratic Party leadership pressure and American Citizen pressure may have delayed this, but it is still in the works. There is a fourth aircraft carrier group heading to the Gulf as a "replacement" to arrive very soon. The likely timing for an attack is while all four carrier groups are there and before one group is rotated out.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) had the courage, the integrity and basic common sense to recognize that there is only one way to pull the plug on this American war-for-profit machine last Thursday when he spoke to the House of Representatives:
"This House cannot avoid its constitutionally authorized responsibility to restrain the abuse of executive power.
"The administration has been preparing for an aggressive war against Iran. There is no solid, direct evidence that Iran has the intention of attacking the United States or its allies.
"The U.S. is a signatory to the U.N. Charter, a constituent treaty among the nations of the world. Article II, Section 4 of the U.N. Charter states, 'all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state...' Even the threat of a war of aggression is illegal.
"Article VI of the U.S. constitution makes such treaties the supreme law of the land. This administration, has openly threatened aggression against Iran in violation of the U.S. constitution and the U.N. charter.
"This week the House appropriations committee removed language from the Iraq war funding bill requiring the administration, under article 1, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution, to seek permission before it launched an attack against Iran.
"Since war with Iran is an option of this administration and since such war is patently illegal, then impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran."
| "Impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran." -- Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) |
If we American citizens are not working for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney and the removal from office of their entire administration we are not working for peace. Other efforts are noble, well-intended and honorable but absolutely impotent in the face of this voraciously bloodthirsty evil.
Martin Luther King had to take his legion across the bridge into a bloodbath provoked by a racist police force in Selma, Alabama, and Mahatma Ghandi marched his followers to the sea in resistance to the British military in order for true change to occur. It is long past time for the citizens of this nation, so many of whom call themselves Christians, to "storm the temple" as Jesus of Nazareth did and evict the moneychangers in the White House, utilizing the authority granted us in our constitution. That authority and mechanism for accountability and justice is called impeachment.
Who is ready to march with a petition of memorial to their Representative insisting on justice through impeachment for war crimes? We've been asking nicely for peace for four years (much longer for many, I know). It is time that we demand the justice that is the only way through which peace will come:
DIY Impeachment
Parents, when "asking nice" accomplishes absolutely nothing, know the next method of healthy discipline for their children is to be more authoritative. It is time to take away their toys.
Time out Mr. Bush.
Time out Mr. Cheney.
Time out.
Peaceful marchers: See you at next year's rally or are you ready to realize "the only remedy that remains" to secure the peace you seek is impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney?
| A version of this article also appeared on www.ImpeachforPeace.org |
2007/03/20
Follow the Cunningham $140,000 Yacht Bribe Money to Cheney's Office
Was Carol Lam Targeting The White House Prior To Her Firing?
Referring to the Bush administration’s purge of former San Diego-based U.S. attorney Carol Lam, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) questioned recently on the Senate floor whether she was let go because she was “about to investigate other people who were politically powerful.”
The media reports this morning that among Lam’s politically powerful targets were former CIA official Kyle “Dusty” Foggo and then-House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA). But there is evidence to believe that the White House may also have been on Lam’s target list. Here are the connections:
– Washington D.C. defense contractor Mitchell Wade pled guilty last February to paying then-California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham more than $1 million in bribes.
– Wade’s company MZM Inc. received its first federal contract from the White House. The contract, which ran from July 15 to August 15, 2002, stipulated that Wade be paid $140,000 to “provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Dick Cheney.”
– Two weeks later, on August 30, 2002, Wade purchased a yacht for $140,000 for Duke Cunningham. The boat’s name was later changed to the “Duke-Stir.” Said one party to the sale: “I knew then that somebody was going to go to jail for that…Duke looked at the boat, and Wade bought it — all in one day. Then they got on the boat and floated away.”
– According to Cunningham’s sentencing memorandum, the purchase price of the boat had been negotiated through a third-party earlier that summer, around the same time the White House contract was signed.
To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated.
That should raise questions about the White House’s involvement.
UPDATE: Perhaps this was the “real problem” Sampson was referring to:
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