What More Evidence Do We Need?
Part I
Just recently Scott Horton, a professor at Columbia Law School, wrote in the March issue of Harper’s, “We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship.”
Horton’s article was based upon a series of nine previously secret legal opinions devised by Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel released by the Obama administration.
John Dean observed on Keith Olbermann’s program, ”… Reading these memos, you’ve gotta almost conclude we had an unconstitutional dictator. It’s pretty deadly and pretty serious, what’s in these materials.”
And now Seymour Hersh has revealed that the military was running an “executive assassination ring throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.”
Well … I can only respond to these latest Bush Bombshells like Claude Rains did as Captain Renault in Casablanca.
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Here’s what we know:
They lied us into a war, shredded The Constitution, sanctioned secret renditions, tortured, imprisoned people for years without being charged with any crime, killed over a million people, and looted the treasury. And Cheney ran this century’s version of Murder Incorporated.
And Scott Horton writes, ”We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship.”
Tonto replies, “Who’s we … white man?”
John Dean said, “…you’ve gotta almost conclude we had an unconstitutional dictator.”
Ya think?
Now I realize that there’s a big pile of stuporous Americans out there whose reaction times are a tad bit slower than your average flesh-eating zombie but for Christ’s sake … there were millions of Americans who did realize that we were living in a Dictatorship during the Bush Regime.
What the hell else would you call it?
Sure most of us could travel … as long as we weren’t on the “No Fly List.” We could hop on over to Canada, as long as we weren’t members of Code Pink. The Bush Regime would decide who deserved due process … and who wouldn’t. They decided who was an “enemy combatant” not The Rule of Law. The Rule of law was superceded by The Bush Crime Family.
My dictionary’s definition of dictatorship reads:
A country, government, or the form of government in which absolute power is exercised by a dictator.
As described by Wikipedia: Absolute Power (as in political power) typically refers to concepts of tyranny, corruption, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, and is associated largely with monarchy and non-democratic forms of government.
The Supreme Court illegally handed the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 and four years later the election was stolen from the American People again. Sounds like a non-democratic form of government to me.
No offense to John Dean or Scott Horton but I think a lot of us realized what kind of government we did have. Y’know … The non-democratic one. But MainStream Media and The Opposition Party collaborated with The Bush Regime and tried to keep that unsavory little item a secret. And even if we realized the truth … what were we going to do about it?
Protest? Write letters to … who? Congressmen? Senators? The Dark Overlord of The Universe? The Son of Sam dog? Who?
It didn’t do any good and the majority of Americans really didn’t care anyway.
Y’see as long as the majority of us aren’t herded up and ground up into cat food it’s pretty comfortable living in the belly of The Beast … if you don’t know any better. We’ve got crappy health care, our food and water isn’t completely poisoned, our jobs are hanging by a fraying thread, and by the end of the year 2.4 million homes will be in foreclosure. That’s over 46,000 every week.
The last time The Republican Crime Machine ran roughshod over the country they managed to pull off the biggest financial swindle in US history. The Savings and Loan Crime Spree. It’s possible that little scam will force taxpayers to pay interest on those bailout bonds to the tune of 13 billion dollars a year … forever. Just for fun you might want to read the definitive book about the looting of America’s Savings and Loans, Inside Job by Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker, and Paul Muolo.
After a respite during the Clinton years The Republican Crime Machine came roaring back to power. This time they weren’t even elected. Using 9/11 as a trigger they started a couple of wars, killed over a million people, and stole everyone’s money. And the next generation’s money. And the next. And we’re still not finished killing. We’ve got years of death waiting in the Iraq and Afghanistan pipelines.
I guess I should cheer up. We’ve got a brand new administration promising transparency and accountability. Senator Leahy has proposed a toothless Truth Commission to investigate the “misdeeds” of the Bush Regime.
When President Obama was asked if he agreed with such a proposal he responded,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/09/obama-on-investigating-bu_n_165455.html
“… My view is also that nobody’s above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen.
But that, generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards. ….
… So I will take a look at Senator Leahy’s proposal, but my general orientation is to say let’s get it right moving forward.”
I don’t think Barack Obama has seen enough horror films. Doesn’t he know that the monsters keep coming back? The only way to get it right moving forward is to recognize that there were monsters in the first place. You have to name them. Investigate them. Indict them. Put them on trial and tell the people what they’ve done. Let the jury decide if they are guilty or not. If they are found guilty … put them away. That’s how it’s done. Anything else leaves … options … for the monsters, and their zombie-like followers, to come back.
As the authors of Inside Job concluded:
“But perhaps most dangerous of all was the willingness of honest people to tolerate, rationalize, and even do business with the crooks … As a respected Nevada judge said, “It won’t be the bad people who destroy this country, it’ll be the good people who rationalize the bad people’s conduct.”
Part II
My Favorite Lie
The Center for Public Integrity lists on their website 935 lies told by Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld during the run up to the war in Iraq.
http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Default.aspx?src=project_home&context=overview&id=945
If I have to pick one lie out of that stinking pile as a “favorite” I’d pick the one I’m going to tell you about because it’s a lie that contained other lies. It’s the lie that proved to me that we were really going to do it. We were really going to make war against a country that didn’t do anything to us, and was incapable of defending itself. And regardless of the millions of people worldwide who protested against it … war, bloody war, would happen in Iraq.
On September 7th, 2002, Bush met with Tony Blair at Camp David. After a 3 hour meeting they came out to talk to the zombie news poodles.
Blair: “… The point that I would emphasize to you is that the threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability, that threat is real. We only need to look at the report from the International Atomic [Energy] Agency this morning showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapons sites to realize that.”
Then Bush called on a reporter.
Bush: “AP lady.”
Question: “Mr. President, can you tell us what conclusive evidence of any nuclear new evidence you have of nuclear weapons capabilities of Saddam Hussein?”
Bush: “We just heard the prime minister talk about the new report. I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.”
Here are the reasons why this … is my “favorite” lie
It’s a “twofer.” First Blair lied … and then Bush picked it up and tacked on more lies.
And Bush’s delivery was perfect. Later when he’d lie about Weapons of Mass Destruction, yellowcake from Niger, and smoking guns and mushroom clouds, his delivery was awful. He always read those lines like a high school drama student struggling through Hamlet. His pauses for dramatic effect … the emphasis on certain words … were stilted, forced, and fake. He’d obviously over-rehearsed and his delivery and timing fell flat.
But when he said, “I don’t know what more evidence we need.” He was in full-strut-Bush-mode. With a shrug of his shoulders, outstretched hands, and a smirk he said, “I don’t know what more evidence we need.” Like if we didn’t believe this … we were as dumb as a bag of hammers.
And the zombie news poodle corp went back to Zombie News Central and broadcast that load of crap to everybody who owned a television set. I watched it along with millions of other nervous Americans.
Two Days Later it was completely debunked all over The Internet.
The report wasn’t from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
From the Washington Post in 2003 almost one year later:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/12/AR2006061200932_pf.html
“There was no new IAEA report. Blair appeared to be referring to news reports describing curiosity at the nuclear agency about repairs at sites of Iraq’s former nuclear program.”
“… Bush cast as present evidence the contents of a report from 1996, updated in 1998 and 1999. In those accounts, the IAEA described the history of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program that arms inspectors had systematically destroyed. “
“A White House spokesman later acknowledged that Bush “was imprecise” on his source but stood by the crux of his charge. The spokesman said U.S. intelligence, not the IAEA, had given Bush his information. “
“That, too, was garbled at best. U.S. intelligence reports had only one scenario for an Iraqi bomb in six months to a year, premised on Iraq’s immediate acquisition of enough plutonium or enriched uranium from a foreign source. “
“That is just about the same thing as saying that if Iraq gets a bomb, it will have a bomb,” said a U.S. intelligence analyst who covers the subject. “We had no evidence for it.”
The IAEA did issue a report in 1998 but the report made no such assertion. Mark Gwozdecky, head of the group, told Reuters, “Based on all credible information to date, the IAEA has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material.”
Asked why Bush referred to an apparently imaginary document, the White House claimed he was really talking about a report from 1991. But Gwozdecky told Reuters no paper to that effect was issued by his agency in 1991, either.
So the real report said Iraq had been six months to 2 years away from nuclear capability before the 1991 Gulf War. And arms inspectors had destroyed the Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
George W. Bush made a completely uncorroborated case for preemptive war. The lie was debunked on the net two days later … but it took three weeks for a newspaper to refute it. Not the New York Times. Not the Washington Post. The Moonie-owned Washington Times buried the story on page 16.
Though the lie was spread on The Nightly News … it was never contested. Not one highly paid news anchor looked into the camera and told the American Public that the president’s evidence for preemptive war was bogus.
That’s when I knew we were going to have war, bloody war. Some have written that The American Media failed the country. No they didn’t. They collaborated with The Bush Regime.
Bush shrugged his shoulders, held out his hands, smirked, and said,” I don’t know what more evidence we need.”
That’s the question we now put to the Attorney General of the United States, the Attorney Generals from every state, to Federal Prosecutors, State’s Attorneys, and County Prosecutors … What more evidence do we need?
Bush lied.
When will any investigation begin? When will a Special Grand Jury be empaneled?
Stay tuned because this is America where anything can happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley
41 years ago William Calley, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army led the slaughter of 500 innocent Vietnamese.
Calley was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor.
79% of Americans polled disagreed with Calley’s verdict. One day after Calley was sentenced, Richard Nixon ordered him transferred from prison to house arrest at Fort Benning. The Secretary of the Army in a separate clemency action commuted confinement to ten years. Ultimately William Calley, a convicted American war criminal, served a sentence of 3 and a half years under house arrest.
Bernie Madoff On the other hand stole money … he could get 150 years.
We can only stand in awe in the face of American Justice.
Or shock.
Same thing.
What More Evidence Do We Need? March 14, and 26, 2009
