This the last posting here of requests to attend sham political theater protests gathering here in Washington or elsewhere along with calls to sign yet another letter or petition of protest. It is a waste of time and you, my readers, damn well known it. The call for “action: on Thursday sounds more like an invitation to picnic or a liberal political button and badge fair.
Enough is enough; this nation is in the midst of a managed depression attempting to build a new economic order having permitted, greed, deregulation, corporate criminality, congressional incompetence, collaboration and a good old fashioned sell-out of this nation to lead us to the ruins surrounding us. Today the stock market plunged once again on the news that the World Bank estimates of the destruction of the world’s economic wealth was near double its forecast and there is more and worse to come.
We have squandered, trashed the economic growth of the entire 20th century and now we are being massaged with the words “The New Normal”…a cute way of saying our way of life has been lost. We are mortgaging the future have squandered the past while right wing politicos want nothing of the necessary solution. Left to their devices they would fashion a new future of the world where labor would become near early Industrial Revolution sweat shop slaves to paper pushing corporations. They would do nothing to make healthcare a right for all people, nothing to lift the burden of educational costs in America, do nothing to rebuild the infra structure of this land, leaving repairs as necessary born of disasters.
Neither side of the aisle has any real interest in the enforcement of the highest laws of this land or the observance of any moral code. Patriotism and religion are but political buzz words to hammered on the anvils of hate in the service of misdirection driven by fear. The arming of America is driven by hate and fear, on the right the fear of being driven from power and held accountable by a gun toting pitch fork wielding mob of revolutionists, in the center the armed citizen fearful of his government and his neighbor, fearful of criminal attack of his/her person or invasion of his/her home in the face of ever overwhelmed policing powers of this nation; and on the left, those who have wrapped themselves in the flag of our forefathers prepared for the social disintegration of this nation and the onset of a Jefferson predicted Revolution.
Couple that with a large portion of this nation drugged with the political cool aid served up for so many years, cowering in personal fear and ass-bared denial “Ostrich Syndrome” retreat from the growing reality, and you have a nation staring at a growing Melanoma Cancer on its arm fully believing that miraculously it will stop bleeding at the margins and heal of its own accord. That is a picture of a nation of fools and cowards awaiting the destruction and/or diminution of their lives. The downward spiral of an eroding quality of life may not have slapped you in the face yet, but rest assure, that given a bit more time you too be swallowed up in the corrosion and collapse, buried in the debris of poverty and broken families, despair and suicides.
It can’t happen here? It is happening here! It is time to wake up, grow up and deal with reality in a manner appropriate, and yes some will die if anything we hold near and dear is to survive the world wide social disintegration with which we are confronted.
On an International scene as we wail over Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, genocide in Africa and Latin America, harbor the desire to smash North Korea; what we have are the ingredients of a conflagration that will be known as World War III, inevitable nuclear in content and from which a new world will emerge from the glowing ashes that remain.
The draft will come again, sides will be chosen and civilizations will be destroyed because we are simple not willing to put everything down and demand that this nation be returned to us on our terms and that the folly-filled business as usual politicians of DC go their merry childish ways because we will not occupy the streets of this nation’s capital willing to stay until justice is done, wrongs are righted, and legislation is enacted to correct the course of law and order, provide for essential societal services to citizens and bring the corporations of this world as contributing members of the family rather than tolerate them as criminal thieves, killers and rapists of the fabric of this nation. Forget the notion that they are too big to fail and embrace the truth that we are too big to be stopped! It has all gone too far; we have all been too compliant, passive, proper and pretentious.
We have permitted the Corporate Political Machine to become a monolithic behemoth able to withstand every complaint, ever accusation as it simply grinds forward and grinds the truth and justice into dust, and us with them. We are but a manipulated annoyance not taken seriously and certainly without the credentials of power. We are an annoying noise in the night that the Congress merely ignores by closing the doors and windows to silence us. The media considers us unimportant the public views us with hostility and the establishment fosters those perceptions. We find respect and validation only within our choir.
Sometimes you are encouraged about our country's future when you see something like this. Specifically, there is an annual contest at Texas A&M University calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term: This year's term was: "Political Correctness." The winner wrote:
"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."
R. J. Wiedemann LtCol. USMC Retired.
We all know that Bush and Cheney should stand trial, among others, at The Hague. We all may oppose the death penalty, but deep in our hearts we harbor the belief that those who live by the tools of war, must die by the rules of war. They live by exception; I would sentence them by exception.
We all know that there are members of Congress who should be sent to prison. We all know that there are Corporate/Finance Industry and Real Estate Executives who should be stripped of every cent they own and spend their remaining days in either orange jump suit or silly stripped pajamas in sleazy prisons.
We know that, and they are going to get away with every perverse, criminal act against the citizens of this world if we don’t simply stop the machinery that places them above the laws we are obligated to honor and observe. Enough is enough. What is coming may be to ones liking but you will have no one to blame but yourselves. I will no longer be a party to the sham.
What is it that sustains people in this great charade when they know the reality of the outcome and they know the reality of what must be done?
Is life so selectively precious that it is for others to risk their lives for us and we salve our consciences with having spoken out against evil while not risking anything by not lifting a finger against that evil? Are we then not assigning to ourselves the exalted status of intellectual leaders, warriors of words only, droning voices not true activists who would risk all for principle and integrity of belief, for if we are; we are mere hypocrites and demagogues of the left, no better than the right!
We honor not our forefathers by our speech; we dishonor them by our inaction, dishonor them in our failures, and dishonor them in our pretenses and political theater.
I am through with such people.
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Where have all the protesters gone?
http://www.opednews.com/index.php
by Suhail Shafi
Where have all the flowers gone
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone
Young girls picked them everyone
When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn
This popular rhyme from the 1960s penned by the legendary Pete Seeger may have a hauntingly familiar melody and spirit for many in the peace and antiwar movement. Within a few lines where flowers and young girls, young men and graveyards are conveniently interspersed, the song captured both the heart ache and the hope for change felt by millions of people yearning for a break from the Vietnam War. And throw in the antiwar protesters protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the footsteps of those protesting Vietnam and Indochina, and one can be forgiven for wondering when, if ever, they will ever learn.
To understand why the anti war movement, in its most conspicuous of manifestations may well be a dying breed, one need not look any further than a few hard statistics on the number of people protesting.
Seeger may have a hauntingly familiar melody and spirit for many in the peace and antiwar movement. Within a few lines where flowers and young girls, young men and graveyards are conveniently interspersed, the song captured both the heart ache and the hope for change felt by millions of people yearning for a break from the Vietnam war. And throw in the antiwar protesters protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the footsteps of those protesting Vietnam and Indochina, and one can be forgiven for wondering when, if ever, will they ever learn.
To understand why the anti war movement, in its most conspicuous of manifestations may well be a dying breed, one need not look any further than a few hard statistics on the number of people protesting. The first major antiwar rally outside the heart of power in Washington, on the National Mall was held two months prior to the invasion of Iraq, on January 16’th 2003. According to the respected online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the organizers of the first major march in Washington estimated the rally attracted some 200,000 protesters during the run up to the invasion, while a similar rally in San Francisco attracted anywhere between 150,000 to 200,000 protesters.
The culmination of the antiwar efforts came scarcely a month later, on February 15. On what was described by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest protest in human history, between six and ten million protesters took to the streets of some 800 cities in nearly sixty countries across the globe. The weekend of the 15’th and 16’th of February was, by all accounts, towering days in history when galvanizing world public opinion against the impending Iraq war manifested itself as people power on a scale and magnitude never seen before, possibly even during the Vietnam War era. The staggering level and depth of opposition to the war in Iraq was as much a testament to the skills and verve of the global antiwar movement as it was a reflection of deep seated worldwide opposition to the military plans of the Bush administration. New York Times writer Patrick Tyler had it right when he said the massive protests worldwide proved there were ''two superpowers on the planet – the United States, and worldwide public opinion’’.
The six years since the Iraq invasion have seen any number of things change, governments come and go, as well as a humanitarian and social crisis in Iraq precipitated in the aftermath of the invasion. Before the eyes of the world that protested the war vigorously, Iraq was invaded, its government overthrown, its dictator executed, its social fabric shredded by seemingly relentless sectarian strife, close to two million of its people internally and externally displaced, and, worst of all, up to a million Iraqis losing their lives in the ensuing mayhem. It has also witnessed eroding popular support for the Iraq war in the United States. For instance, a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted in March 2003 showed some three quarters of Americans supported US military action against Iraq.
By contrast, in December 2008, an ABC News/Washington Post poll interviewing about a thousand US adults nationwide indicated a significant majority – 64 percent - believed the war in Iraq was not worth fighting. The result of six years of chaos, widespread violence, declining American prestige, and perhaps most significant of all, the failure to account for Saddam Hussein’s much dreaded Weapons of Mass Destruction seems have led to a dramatic sea change in American public opinion towards the US led invasion. The election in 2008 of Barack Obama, who opposed the invasion from the very onset, the political risks associated with such a position during the run up to the war notwithstanding, seemed to personify this antiwar sentiment.
By stark contrast, the precipitous decline in fortunes of President Bush’s Republican party, and the defeat of its Presidential contender, war veteran John McCain, seemed to represent a blow as much to the gun ho military action of the Republican Party as it did to the neoconservative ideology of its intellectual elite. Most Europeans, Asians and Middle Easterners were dead set against the Iraq invasion, and in many cases were willing and determined to protest against it from day one. More Americans, it seems, have since followed suit.
In an environment where the moral and intellectual reasoning of the Iraq war seems to have largely become discredited in the eyes of US and global public opinion, the antiwar movement may benefit from reflecting on why this negative sentiment toward the Iraq foray has not led to an invigoration of the anti war movement. The ultimately discomforting paradox during the six years since the invasion, at least from the vantage point of the anti war movement, is that the more public opinion across the world turns against the Iraq war, the fewer the number of people willing to take to the streets to oppose it and call for an end to the occupation. On the sixth anniversary of the invasion, on March 2009, for instance, the number of people protesting on the footsteps of Capitol Hill measured a modest 10,000 – a far cry not just from the enormity of the prewar masses, but also from the 500,000 who chose to show up as recently as January 2007 at a Washington antiwar rally sponsored by United for Peace and Justice.
How does one account for this disturbing paradox? At a recent Washington protest against the continuing siege of Gaza, I asked an elderly protester what she thought of the declining numbers. ''Protest fatigue’’ – protest fatigue, catchy term coined by at least one antiwar campaigner. In other words, people getting sick and tired of protesting, gathering in the streets, waving placards, and shouting antiwar slogans. For at least some people, though, the whole experience of protesting and rallying can be an inherently exuberant and empowering one – standing shoulder to shoulder with any number of men, women and children – united in the pursuit of a single goal can be one of the most thrilling things one can be involved in, as any anti war protester can attest.
There may be another less comforting explanation; one psychologists refer to as learned helplessness. In an environment of relentless subjugation, people learn to be passive and train themselves to be helpless, even when opportunities exist for them to extricate themselves from pain and suffering. In other words, at least some anti protesters, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the suffering, death and destruction wrought on Iraqis and Allied forces alike, genuinely believe there is nothing they can do in their capacity as activists, nothing that can be done by ordinary people to end the war, so protesting in their minds is deemed ultimately futile.
Observers have pointed out that in the run up to the Iraq war, opposition and despair at the prospect of the US invasion was most marked in the Middle East. And yet, anti war protests comparable to those in the Western world were conspicuous by their near absence on the Arab street. One could easily create parallels between the American anti war protesters who feel protesting achieves nothing, and millions of Middle Easterners wary yet passive towards the excesses and injustices of US foreign policy with respect to their part of the world – parallels that transcend radical differences not only in culture and identity but also in ideology and worldview.
Why are the legions of antiwar activists growing smaller and smaller? Where have all the protesters gone? What explains their disappearance from the world’s cameras? Apathy? Vindication of their opposition to the war? Learned helplessness? Or is it hope, confidence, and a belief in the ability of human perseverance to end all wars?
Whatever the amalgam of factors that account for the smaller crowds opposing the Iraq war, whatever the success of the antiwar movement in building itself up from a scratch and mobilizing millions for peace in a remarkably short time, the movement will have to go through at least some element of introspection. The ultimate danger facing the antiwar movement is not just that it may disappear off the radar screen of the world’s headlines, but also that as worldwide public opinion, the touted second superpower becomes increasingly relevant, those advocating peace and justice may simply become irrelevant to the world’s policymakers and opinion makers alike.
THIS IS THE END OF THIS NONESENSE. IT IS TIME THAT THESE ORGANIZATIONS ACT OR GO OUT OF BUSINESS.
End Torture by Holding Those Responsible Accountable
The highest officials in our government have trampled on our traditional ideals of making America a nation of laws, not of men, by illegally narrowing the scope of torture and authorizing waterboarding, walling and other inhumane interrogation techniques. In doing so, they violated the Anti-Torture Act, the War Crimes Act, the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment.
In order to enforce our laws and restore the free society that our forefathers envisioned, citizens must demand accountability for abuses of the laws pertaining to torture. In the tradition of the Civil Rights movement, change will not occur unless citizens stand up for their rights under the law.
On June 25th join us for an international day of demonstration demanding accountability for torture, Torture Accountability Action Day, sponsored by:
Action Center for Justice
After Downing Street
Amnesty International
BuzzFlash
Coalition for Peace Action
Code Pink
Consumers for Peace
Democrats.com
Eldoradans Against Torture
Global Exchange
High Road for Human Rights
Historians Against the War
IndictBushNow
Individuals for Justice
Marcus Raskin
National Accountability Network
National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
NJ Peace Action
NJ People's Organization for Progress
Northern Virginians for Peace and Justice
Polygraph Radio
Peace Action
Peace and Justice Forums
Portland Peaceful Response Coalition
Progressive Democrats of America
Project Vote Count
School of the Americas Watch
Senior Action Network
The Torture Abolition Survivors Support Coalition
US Labor Against War
Veterans for Peace
War Criminals Watch
Washington Peace Center
We Are Change LA
Witness Against Torture
World Can't Wait
Join us for a day of demonstration in Washington, D.C. and across the country, to prosecute those responsible for torture.
In Washington D.C. we have tabling starting at 9, speakers and a rally from 11 to 12 in John Marshall Park, 501 Pennsylvania Ave NW, then a march to the Department of Justice. The closest metro stations to John Marshall Park are Judiciary Square(Red Line) and Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter (Green Line, Yellow Line).
(WHY DON’T YOU JUST CALL FOR PEOPLE TO BRING THEIR CHARCOAL GRILLS AND COOLERS AND HAVE A SWELL HOT DOG AND HAMBURGER COOK OUT WHILE YOU’RE AT IT?)
Would anyone like to forecast the turn out of the number of seconds the media will give this event on the evening news?
View Washington,DC Torture Accountability Rally 06-25-09 in a larger map
Thursday June 25, 2009 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
John Marshall Park, 501 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, D.C. (map)
Join us for a day of demonstration in Washington, D.C. and across the country, to prosecute those responsible for torture (download the flyer).
In Washington D.C. we have speakers and a rally from 11 to 12 in John Marshall Park, 501 Pennsylvania Ave NW, then a march to the Department of Justice. The closest metro stations to John Marshall Park are Judiciary Square (Red Line) andArchives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter (Green Line, Yellow Line).
View map of Washington, DC Torture Accountability Rally 06-25-09
List of speakers:
- Demissie Abebe, is Executive Director of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition
- Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law
- Njambi Good is Director of Counter Terror with Justice Campaign, Amnesty International USA
- Enver Masud is founder and CEO of The Wisdom Fund (est. 1995), and recipient of the 2002 Gold Award from the Human Rights Foundation for his book The War on Islam.
- Max Obuszewski of National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, is a peace activist from Baltimore, and was one of the people spied on and entered into a federally-supplied database as a "terrorist"
- Marcus Raskin is cofounder of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
- Kevin Zeese, director of VotersForPeace.US, is a board member of VelvetRevolution.US, and filed 12 complaints seeking Disbarment of Cheney/Bush Torture Lawyers
Tabling will start at 9 and go on all day (no selling of DVDs, T-shirts, etc - only buttons, bumper stickers, and reading material).
The artist Jordan Page will perform.
SOME PARTICIPANTS MAY ENGAGE IN NONVIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.
Other events across the country are happening on the same day in a nationwide call for accountability for torture.
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Janet Contreras Exposes Herself as Anti-GOP, Anti-Palin
Is Janet Contreras a Ron Paul Bot and an anti-GOP Extremist? Looks like she is! She is a stooge for Glenn Beck. I still think the letter was a plant, now I am even more sure of it. This is something she posted on a blog. What fascinates me is that she surfaced on a rather trashy gossip and show biz blog and not a serious political site. Interesting.
She wrote this about John McCain and Sarah Palin.
“…I think Obama took the election by storm because we had no candidate. I am so angry that John McCain was our pick, and then the whole shred Sarah thing. He won because we did not even believe in our own Republican ticket. It was an awful choice, and I think the Republican voters just laid down. I probably would have been just as miserable if the election had gone the other way. I feel the Party really blew it on picking our candidates….”
And she trashes GWB.
“…I don’t care what party did what. I want them to stop screwing around and take us seriously. It is no secret to anyone that Bush/Cheney had a terrible approval rating. No one here is singing their praises either….”
Freaks like Contreras and Glenn Beck are the ones who cost us the House in 2006 and basically handed the election to Barack Obama. They are third party losers who have this weird, narcissistic ego-driven nuts who think they are so important Republicans must PANDER to their personal requirements.
I have news for people like Ms Conteras, Grow Up and get over yourself. You and people like Glenn Beck and that horrific get rid of Congress bunch are bordering on – can I say it – treason. You want people in office who pander to your agenda and your desired. I really can’t see much different between your spoiled brat associates and liberals who go around with their hands out.
“…What are your views and issues? Would you like to join us? Many have asked, what next? What can I do to help? We are organizing to make things happen. We do very much all need each other to succeed. If so, please make sure that you and anyone you know who shares our views have:
1. Signed the petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/8/an-open-letter-to-our-nations-leadership
2. Joined the 912 project: http://site.the912coalition.org/
We are not terrorists. We are not hiding. We cannot fulfill our objectives by operating in numerous small cells. We need to centralize so our numbers are truly known. I suspect they are far greater than the signatures currently on the petition. Please act quickly. There is so much to do before the march on Washington on 9-12-09, the 2010 elections and the 2012 elections. Time is of the essence! Patriots unite!…”
Before getting into the whole argument about just who this woman is, my instincts on her are correct. We’re not dealing with just a “humble” little grandmother here, but rather one of those crazy Arizona anti-GOP activists.
She has finally surfaced. You might find the comments she is leaving on a specific blog rather interesting and rather revealing. She is EXTREMELY anti-John McCain, and does not like Sarah Palin.
The woman is very much involved with Beck’s completely over the top 912 Coalition and is very much a Glen Beck groupie or flunkie.. She is also active in the anti-Republican “Kick Them All Out Project“. And – ah yes – we’re dealing with RON PAUL BOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Read this that she writes to the Fire Congress Group. This woman is an activist. Forget the “humble” lie.
“…I have contacted your group through the Internet and have communicated with Bruce McDonald. Our goals and objectives are very compatible. We have asked groups to join the 912 coalition to be counted among the conservative voice of America. I am encouraging all groups and individuals to join the 912 project, because we need our numbers to be vast. I would love to see all of us together in one place where we can share our ideas and pool our efforts. There are so many really great groups out there. Can we bring them all together in one place, including yours? We are not suggesting that you would change your group to ours, only that your members would be counted in the totals.
Your group would remain in tact, but we could share in your efforts and you in so many others. There are 435 congressional coalition districts that need populating. Your members would be able to talk with the 912 project members in the districts you are targeting, help us vet new candidates, join events and have them join your events….”
This sure reads to me like Contreras has been working with Glenn Beck and is quite familiar with his ding-bat organizations. I told you the letter was a plant. I still think it is.
Trackposted to Nuke Gingrich, Woman Honor Thyself, CORSARI D’ITALIA, , and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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By Jeff Stein, CQ SpyTalk Columnist
One of the more striking items on the wall of Rep. Mike Rogers , the Michigan Republican, is a framed, gleaming steel hatchet. It was fashioned from the hulk of a Soviet tank destroyed by U.S.-backed mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan 20 years ago.
Today the hatchet seems less the fierce symbol of a U.S. military triumph than a melancholy reminder of how much more complicated things have gotten in Afghanistan the second time around.
In May, Rogers inadvertently made just that point when he returned from Afghanistan with a charge that American interrogators were regularly reading terrorist detainees their rights, including the right to a lawyer.
“I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it,” said the congressman, a former FBI agent himself.
“We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative,” he said, referring to the Obama administration’s effort to extricate the United States from the legal mess created by its predecessor’s detention policies.
Needless to say, Rogers’ complaints were wafers and wine for fellow Hill Republicans, conservative cable yackers and editorialists.
Message: Obama, soft. Liberals, beyond the pale.
“A Mirandized terrorism detainee cannot even be interrogated,” went a typical screed, in Investors Daily. “A hostile combatant who might have information that can save lives on a foreign battlefield or in an American city has the option, one he is sure to take, to just remain silent — that is, until he begins to taunt his interrogators while his lawyer is present.”
Well, no.
It should hardly need saying that a detainee can always refuse to talk, whether he’s denied a lawyer or a walk in the woods. But let’s say it anyway.
“Whether a person is Mirandized or not, he can remain silent,” Marion “Spike” Bowman, a former senior legal counsel to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III , pointed out for me.
“Interestingly, with a good interrogator, most do not,” added Bowman, who was also at one time a legal adviser to the Navy’s elite counterterrorism unit, SEAL Team Six.
“A Mirandized person may be interrogated — whether he responds is a different matter,” Bowman said. “Some, in fact, related details that ratted out relatives. The Arab culture is not like ours and the ‘right to remain silent’ is not a part of their culture.”
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YOUR QUOTE OF THE DAY: Comes from another Conservative icon, George Will:
The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient, rhetorical support for what’s going on over there (Iran). It seems to me foolish criticism. The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward the regime is. And they don’t need that reinforced.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/21/will-iran-foolish-criticism/
YOUR BONUS QUOTE OF THE DAY: Comes from yet another Conservative icon, former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan:
To insist the American president, in the first days of the rebellion, insert the American government into the drama was shortsighted and mischievous. The ayatollahs were only too eager to demonize the demonstrators as mindless lackeys of the Great Satan Cowboy Uncle Sam, or whatever they call us this week. John McCain and others went quite crazy insisting President Obama declare whose side America was on, as if the world doesn't know whose side America is on. "In the cause of freedom, America cannot be neutral," said Rep. Mike Pence. Who says it's neutral?
This was Aggressive Political Solipsism at work: Always exploit events to show you love freedom more than the other guy, always make someone else's delicate drama your excuse for a thumping curtain speech.
Mr. Obama was restrained, balanced and helpful in the crucial first days, keeping the government out of it but having his State Department ask a primary conduit of information, Twitter, to delay planned maintenance and keep reports from the streets coming.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124535660563828707.html
From: smith90981 [mailto:ssmith90981@roadrunner.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 1:32 PM
Subject: YOUR QUOTE OF THE DAY
Watch Pat lay it out (this is a brief yet great discussion):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/31433726#31433726
YOUR QUOTE OF THE DAY: Comes from that Conservative lion, PAT BUCHANAN:
PRESIDENT OBAMA IS RIGHT not to declare that the United States is on the side of the demonstrators in Tehran or the other cities -- and against the regime.
It is impossible to believe a denunciation of the regime by Obama will cause it to stay its hand if it believes its power is imperiled. But it is certain that if Obama denounces Tehran, those demonstrators will be portrayed as dupes and agents of America before and after they meet their fate.
If standing up and denouncing the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad from 7,000 miles away is moral heroism, it is moral heroism at other people's expense.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32370
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31445078/ns/msnbc_tv-msnbc_tv_commentary/ns/msnbc_tv-msnbc_tv_commentary
BONUS QUOTE: RICHARD LUGER, Republican Senator from Indiana, former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee (so he should know a lot more than guys like Mike Pence, who is leading the anti-Obama on Iran charge):
“For President Obama and us to become heavily involved in the election is to give the clergy who run Iran an opportunity to have an enemy and to use us to blame for the protests and retain their power.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHU_yWAbKOJM
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Jamie Doward, Gaby Hinsliff and Mark Townsend
The Observer, Sunday 21 June 2009
A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.
The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.
Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.
The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be "brought out" to give a public presentation on Saddam's WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the president".
The five-page document, written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, and copied to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK ambassador to the UN, Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, and the UK's ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, outlines how Bush told Blair he had decided on a start date for the war.
Paraphrasing Bush's comments at the meeting, Manning, noted: "The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled in for 10 March. This was when the bombing would begin."
Last night an expert on international law who is familar with the memo's contents said it provided vital evidence into the two men's frames of mind as they considered the invasion and its aftermath and must be presented to the Chilcott inquiry established by Gordon Brown to examine the causes, conduct and consequences of the Iraq war.
Philippe Sands, QC, a professor of law at University College London who is expected to give evidence to the inquiry, said confidential material such as the memo was of national importance, making it vital that the inquiry is not held in private, as Brown originally envisioned.
In today's Observer, Sands writes: "Documents like this raise issues of national embarrassment, not national security. The restoration of public confidence requires this new inquiry to be transparent. Contentious matters should not be kept out of the public domain, even in the run-up to an election."
The memo notes there had been a shift in the two men's thinking on Iraq by late January 2003 and that preparing for war was now their priority. "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," Manning writes. This was despite the fact Blair that had yet to receive advice on the legality of the war from the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, which did not arrive until 7 March 2003 - 13 days before the bombing campaign started.
In his article today, Sands says the memo raises questions about the selection of the chair of the inquiry. Sir John Chilcott sat on the 2004 Butler inquiry, which examined the reliability of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, and would have been privy to the document's contents - and the doubts about WMD running to the highest levels of the US and UK governments.
Many senior legal experts have expressed dismay that Chilcott has been selected to chair the inquiry as he is considered to be close to the security services after his time spent as a civil servant in Northern Ireland.
Brown had believed that allowing the Chilcott inquiry to hold private hearings would allow witnesses to be candid. But after bereaved families and antiwar campaigners expressed outrage, the prime minister wrote to Chilcott to say that if the panel can show witnesses and national security issues will not be compromised by public hearings, he will change his stance.
Lord Guthrie, a former chief of the defence staff under Blair, described the memo as "quite shocking". He said that it underscored why the Chilcott inquiry must be seen to be a robust investigation: "It's important that the inquiry is not a whitewash as these inquiries often are."
This year, the Dutch government launched its own inquiry into its support for the war. Significantly, the inquiry will see all the intelligence shared with the Dutch intelligence services by MI5 and MI6. The inquiry intends to publish its report in November - suggesting that confidential information about the role played by the UK and the US could become public before Chilcott's inquiry reports next year.
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