Thursday, July 31, 2008

Forget the Surge




















Obama Realism in Iraq
HuffPost
In response, Scowcroft [McCain advisor] said: "I wouldn't use that as a benchmark. ... Iran would be crazy if it weren't trying to influence the situation in Iraq. That's one of the things eventually we need to talk about. ... I don't think we can stay long enough so that there's no Iranian influence. Because of their religion, for one thing. The Shia holy sites are in Iraq. Many of the Iraqi clergy spent decades in Iran during the Saddam period. So it's more complicated than that."
Given a previous instance of rhetorical overlap between Scowcroft and Obama, it's worth noting that the Illinois Democrat advanced a similarly "realist" analysis regarding Iran's influence in Iraq earlier this year, when he said: "We are not going to kill every Al Qaeda sympathizer, eliminate every trace of Iranian influence, or stand up a flawless democracy before we leave."

Monday, July 28, 2008

Albert Anastasia and George Bush















America prefers a rich murderer to a rich adulterer. The Congress should have impeached GWB three years ago. The president got away with torture and murder after Clinton went down on oral sex in the oval office. This affair cost Al Gore votes and possibly the election.

The Republican hate machine will try to link Barack Obama to his fellow Democrat John Edwards. As heterosexuals, they incur the special wrath of unforgiving doodads.

In future Democratic literature should link political figures with their crimes i.e. cluster bomber Rice, mad bomber McCain and Torture Cheney.

Bush,

Citizen Arrest for Condi

New Zealand: Citizen Arrest for
Condi


In addition to talks with the New Zealand Government, US Secretary of

State Condoleezza Rice was in for a surprise when the Auckland University
Students' Association (AUSA) announced a $5,000 reward for any student who
makes a citizen's arrest on the visiting official. The reward has since been
withdrawn and according to Press reports, AUSA had said the arrest would be for
Dr Rice's role in “overseeing the illegal invasion and continued occupation” of
Iraq, and crimes under the Geneva Conventions Act 1958, and the Crimes of
Torture Act 1989."

How Obama Became Acting President

How Obama Became Acting President
Frank Rich, NYTimes

IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.
He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.
The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”
Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq’s $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That’s the high-rolling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The “change” that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality — sometimes through Mr. Obama’s instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it’s change you happen to believe in or not.
Looking back now, we can see that the fortnight preceding the candidate’s flight to Kuwait was like a sequence in an old movie where wind blows away calendar pages to announce an epochal plot turn. First, on July 7, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, dissed Bush dogma by raising the prospect of a withdrawal timetable for our troops. Then, on July 15, Mr. McCain suddenly noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan than Iraq and called for more American forces to be sent there. It was a long-overdue recognition of the obvious that he could no longer avoid: both Robert Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already called for more American troops to battle the resurgent Taliban, echoing the policy proposed by Mr. Obama a year ago.
On July 17 we learned that President Bush, who had labeled direct talks with Iran “appeasement,” would send the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama’s, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page: “Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.”
Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled a “general time horizon.” In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar of his own that, like Mr. Obama’s, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation’s troops by early 2009.
But it’s not merely the foreign policy consensus that is shifting Obama-ward. The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has now joined another high-profile McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in knocking the McCain nostrum that America can drill its way out of its energy crisis. Mr. Pickens, who financed the Swift-boat campaign smearing John Kerry in 2004, was thought to be a sugar daddy for similar assaults against the Democrats this year. Instead, he is underwriting nonpartisan ads promoting wind power and speaks of how he would welcome Al Gore as energy czar if there’s an Obama administration.
The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts. After the Democrat ran ads in 14 states berating chief executives who are “making more in 10 minutes” than many workers do in a year, a newly populist Mr. McCain began railing against “corporate greed” — much as he also followed Mr. Obama’s example and belatedly endorsed a homeowners’ bailout he had at first opposed. Given that Mr. McCain has already used a refitted, hand-me-down Obama campaign slogan (“A Leader You Can Believe In”), it can’t be long before he takes up fist bumps. They’ve become the rage among young (nonterrorist) American businessmen, according to USA Today.
“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.
Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.
Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.
The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.
When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.
Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.
During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.
The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.

Oppression of Children

Oppression of Children

"The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to debate two bills that could give the federal government unprecedented control over the way parents raise their children – even providing funds for state workers to come into homes and screen babies for emotional and developmental problems.

"The Pre-K Act (HR 3289) and the Education Begins at Home Act (HR 2343) are two bills geared toward military and families who fall below state poverty lines. The measures are said to be a way to prevent child abuse, close the achievement gap in education between poor and minority infants versus middle-class children and evaluate babies younger than 5 for medical conditions."

Countdown to Crawford Amuses Me

Bush needs to be held accountable for his crimes. I'm Registered Republican,
It doesn't matter wether you're Democrat or Republican, It's all a lie anyways.
They all sing the same tune. We're all American no matter what our choice of
party. As American's it's our duty to hold our officials accountable for their
actions. George Bush has brought us into a war that we didn't want based on
lies and acts of false flag terror. He and his friends made a fortune off the
lives of our sons and daughters. He prayed on our fears to gain control over
our lives via the Patriot Act. He announced himself above the law. Will you all
allow him to be above the law? It's not too late. It's never too late. Yes his
term is almost over, but it's not over yet. Impeach him now before he decides
to send us into Iran
on his way out. If that happens this economy will crash and bring the whole
world down with it. If nothing is done, every president after him will know
that he/she can also be a dictator "above the law" and that the
American public wll lay down, take it, and do nothing about it.


You say it's too late? Our forefathers gave their lives to see to it that
tyrants like this were not in power. All you have to do is pick up a phone and
call Congress.




The Thousand Thousand Bush Murders


WE THE PEOPLE demand the Impeachment of G.W.Bush and Slick Dick Cheney!
They have committed crimes against us, WE THE PEOPLE, and crimes against the
People of Iraq, and are about to do the same to Iran.


Did you not find it strange NO ONE at that hearing could call Bush what he
is..A cold blooded killer, nor could they say he is a bold faced liar?


Where was their freedom of speech? What happened to their rights given to
them under the Constitution?


If our rights are taken away kiss FREEDOM OF THE PRESS goodbye as it walks
out the door.




Impeachment or Anger Management?


The ONLY reason Pelosi let this go to judiciary is because Cindy Sheehan
announced running against her. The problem with this country is we have a
choice between who they tell us to vote for. The Republican and Democratic
parties are just funnels for special interest money that answer to the
contributor and not to the electorate.Look at who voted to allow wiretapping
BEFORE a court order was issued -CLEARLY against the Bill of Rights they've
sworn to uphold-and whatever ELSE VOTE THESE PEOPLE OUT. We need to force
legislators to pass a law that ANY public official that purposely subverts the
constitution can be IMMEDIATELY prosecuted. Not like Rove who will laugh and
laugh until even if he IS convicted Bush will pardon. We have a MORAL
imperative to do everything within our power to prosecute people like
Bush/Cheney who seek to undermine our national ideals.Get rid of the Democratic
and Republican parties, the Federal Reserve, prosecute Bush/Cheney for treason,
rescind ALL presidential directives and "secret" laws passed by Bush,
prosecute Nancy Pelosi for complicity in treason.


Campaign Content

Campaign Content
Television is the opiate for children and newspapers wrap fish bones superbly. The concept of content only emerges during FCC license renewal hearings.
Republicans know that quantity trumps quality.
Nobody cares about content. The candidate can say anything so long as he appears Presidential AND down-to-earth, as he is saying it.
If the voters wanted a civics lesson, they would have paid attention in the tenth grade.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Racism and Bigotry Trump Liberty

During 300 years of slavery black people were well aware of how white folks felt about them. The relatives of the 1,000,000 Muslims slain in Iraq and the 4,000,000 made homeless know the hatred of whites first hand.

Everyone is aware of the mountain of abuse that has been heaped upon the Obama family.

The last three generations of white Americans too many have chosen racism and bigotry over liberty. They are the last ones entitled to complain about the USA collapse.

by jbpaz

Monday, July 21, 2008

A Critic Responds to My Article "Statesman Obama"

A Critic Responds

[Writings such as yours are] “the reason the world sees an ugly distortion of American reality. Drooling proagandists like yourself, Leftist media, educators, and politicians all work diligently at spreading these distortions. Or maybe I'm wrong and you are just a dupe who's been sucked into the mirage like **** who, I believe, is authentic in playing his role of useful idiot.”

July 21, 2008 5:41 PM (Israel Standard Time)


You confuse me with Bill O’Reilly. He leads public opinion and shapes it to his own devices.
On the other hand, I report on other peoples opinions from all over the world. What they think depends on how the USA has treated them. If the USA puts boots on the ground and helicopter gunships in the air, the people become frightened. When US companies triple the prices of basic food commodities, mothers worry how to feed their children. Nobody enjoys hearing threats that he will be annihilated.
America may be the best country in history, but foreigners do not attend US public schools. They receive many more US programs than you get foreign coverage.
The US media, educators, and politicians know next to nothing about the world outside the USA. They may discuss foreign issues, but only insofar as they effect Americans.

WYSIWYG As a result, Americans base policy decisions on misinformation and disinformation in the dark like mushrooms. For full information worldwide, I depend on Global Voices, Voices without Votes and Rising Voices.

Cruel Leaders I Have Known

Having foolishly raised expectations to justify their invasion of Iraq, Bush and McCain have their reputations at stake. Which is why they cannot define success there as Barack Obama has defined it and why they have neither a strategy for success nor strategy for leaving Iraq. All they have is the surge (a mere tactic) and hope for a miracle. - Walter Uhler

Talking about a death wish, Bush and McCain are two prime examples. After several unfruitful adventures in Asia, they attacked a nation of 27 millions who had done them no wrong. This is the classic case of paranoia. Convinced that Iraq was plotting to destroy them, Bush and McCain manufactured a string of lies aimed at justifying a preemptive war.

Many murderers construct an elaborate fantasy to convince themselves they are under the threat of the intended victim.

Bush, McCain and many others executed the killing plan. Many of these people face eventual disgrace, imprisonment and execution events few paranoids anticipate.

If we Israelis were as paranoid as Bush and McCain, we would have annihilated every Arab between the Tigris River and Morocco years ago. We retain this capability, but refuse to use it until necessary.

The difference between cultures: Most Israelis respect human life while few Americans do.

Informing Americanized Jews

Informing Americanized Jews

"Israel chooses conflict over peace." This is a peculiar mindset typical of many Americans and some American Jews. They are willing to fight to the last drop of Israeli blood. They wonder why our region rejects their brand of democracy.

The intellectuals among them believe that peace is possible through negotiation and compromise. How sad they are when they discover these paths closed by Arabs!

So, the 'peace talks' become one-sided: Jews communicating with Jews. Sixty years of conversing with ourselves are quite enough, thank you.

Ari Sharon was right to grant them self-rule and to build high walls. Now, if everyone shuts his mouth and tends his garden, we may have calm.

There are not two sides to every story. You can't always get what you want. Being an Israeli is a lot more than being in Israel.

by jbpaz

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Statesman Obama

Statesman Obama

The world sees America bumbling about as a rogue nation with no discipline. In a moment the behemoth can set whole continents aflame, or crush all hope for an economically secure future with justice.
Barack Obama offers hope to the world. Even before he set a foot in Asia he had come to an agreement to propose a 16-month systematic withdrawal from Iraq.

The lunatic right howls at the loss of their chances for continued war profiteering. They accuse Obama of consorting with the enemy. The common people wanting to stop the bloodshed, I remember them as the folks we invaded to help.

Throughout the conflict McCain looks like a Handi-Wipe gone wrong. He has the lost look of the last of his Party to run for President.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Never Give the Rascals a Free Ride

Never Give the Rascals a Free Ride

President Bush has been a "total failure" in everything from the economy to the war to energy policy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. Is she surprised at this?

Until I see evidence to the contrary, my working hypothesis is the current regime has evidence of criminality against many Congressmen. Blackmail and bribery lie at the bottom of this. The FBI must have much of the information involved in this. The FBI presented Bush with 423,000 pages of evidence, which he turned over to McCain. Can we find one patriot who will publish these pages?

Any Congressman who voted for torture, preemptive war, the Military Commissions Act etc is guilty of crimes against humanity. Can we find a judicial system willing to prosecute them?

Impeachment is fine and dandy with me. Putting Rove in prison for contempt would tickle me pink. The point is to let everyone know that someday some way he will be brought to book for his crimes.

by jbpaz

Friday, July 18, 2008

McCain Fingers Obama for Assassins

McCain Locates Obama for Assassins

Reuters

Reuters reports that McCain shared details of Obama's trip to Iraq at a fundraiser:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday that his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, is likely to be in Iraq over the weekend.

The Obama campaign has tried to cloak the Illinois senator's trip in some measure of secrecy for security reasons. The White House, State Department and Pentagon do not announce senior officials' visits to Iraq in advance.

"I believe that either today or tomorrow -- and I'm not privy to his schedule -- Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators" who make up a congressional delegation, McCain told a campaign fund-raising luncheon.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Make Your Life Count for Something

Make Your Life Count for Something: Resist Tyrants

We all pretty much know the problems, or at least a part of them. The villains have overrun our system and have established control of it. They have taken sixty years to accomplish this.

At every juncture along the way we citizens had the opportunity and the duty to derail them, but we did not. Could they speak the founding fathers would express shame at our cowardly behavior.

Our Creator endowed us with inalienable rights. Even in WWII Germany some people in the jaws of death stood for human dignity, justice and mercy. Slaughtered by the millions, they maintained their humanity until the rest of the world rescued the survivors.

Never...never ...never...never...never...surrender.

by jbpaz

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Cops Mug George Bush and Colin Powell Actors

'W' ACTORS ARREST REPORT: TASERS PEPPER SPRAY AND THE N WORD


TMZ, HuffPost


Saturday in Shreveport, LA actors from Oliver Stone's Bush biopic
"W" were
arrested
around 2 am in what has been billed a bar brawl, and Wednesday
night new details about repeated tasering, pepper spray and use of racial slurs
emerged. If the reports of cell phone video existing are true, the story won't
end here.


The altercation involved Josh Brolin (who plays President Bush), Jeffrey
Wright (Colin Powell) and five others.


Late Wednesday TMZ reported the following:


Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright, who were arrested this past
weekend at a Shreveport, La. bar, were pepper sprayed and tased by
cops. And, we're told, police went on a vulgar rant -- and portions were caught
on cell phone video.



The incident occurred during a wrap party for Oliver Stone's movie
"W" about the Prez. Local station KTBS reports and TMZ sources say
Wright, who plays Colin Powell, was repeatedly tasered and pepper sprayed as he
lay prone on his stomach in the street. We know witnesses heard the officers
using extremely foul language, including the "N" word, directed at
Wright.


Our sources say Brolin was observed by witnesses attempting to make peace
and standing still as he was repeatedly sprayed in the eyes by cops.


Brolin is know for roles in films like "No Country For Old Men"
and "In the Valley of Elah" while Wright won a Tony and Golden Globe
for the same role in "Angels in America" and costarred in
"Syriana" and Bond flick "Casino Royale."

Controlling the Oil Supply

Controlling the Oil Supply

Years ago the auto companies bought streetcar outfits and tore up the tracks.In a similar fashion the oil firms have secured alternative energy patents and have accumulated great numbers of oil leases.They are not increasing refinery capacity or oil exploration.

The President has suggested offshore leasing and opening the Alaskan Wildlife reserves. He doesn't mention that fruition of these projects is eight to ten years away. Also, he fails to say the oil companies do not intend to start drilling in these areas.

The oil company's tactic is to administer gas prices by having a lock on the supply side. There is no legal way to accomplish this. They need the complicity of corrupt officials and mis-informed consumers.

The US Iraq war effort aimed to extort 71% of existing oil well revenues. The oil companies wanted a 49% hunk of new oil finds.

After Iraq resisted this effort for several years, the President threw a candy to the companies: leases offshore and in Alaska.

Through NAFTA the US has first option to buy Canadian tar oil extractions.

For years now most OPEC nations have nationalized oil production. Thanks to this the Norwegians have the highest per capita income.

Controlling the Oil Supply

Years ago the auto companies bought streetcar outfits and
tore up the tracks.In a similar fashion the oil firms have secured alternative
energy patents and have accumulated great numbers of oil leases.They are not
increasing refinery capacity or oil exploration.


The President has suggested offshore leasing and opening the
Alaskan Wildlife reserves. He doesn't mention that fruition of these projects
is eight to ten years away. Also, he fails to say the oil companies do not
intend to start drilling in these areas.


The oil company's tactic is to administer gas prices by
having a lock on the supply side. There is no legal way to accomplish this.
They need the complicity of corrupt officials and mis-informed consumers.


The US Iraq war effort aimed to extort 71% of existing oil
well revenues. The oil companies wanted a 49% hunk of new oil finds.


After Iraq
resisted this effort for several years, the President threw a candy to the
companies: leases offshore and in Alaska.


Through NAFTA the US has first option to buy Canadian
tar oil extractions.


For years now most OPEC nations have nationalized oil
production. Thanks to this the Norwegians have the highest per capita income.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

I Dare McCain to Ape His President

On the same day, President Bush and Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke gave two very different assessments of where the US economy is going. Bush was Mr. Positive while Chairman Bernanke's testimony forewarned of the pain to come. Read excerpts from the two takes below.


Bush:

President Bush said Tuesday the nation's troubled financial system is "basically sound" and urged lawmakers to quickly enact legislation to prop up mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He also called on the Democratic-run Congress to follow his example and lift a ban on offshore drilling to help increase domestic oil production.

Amid soaring gas prices, the toughest real estate market in decades, falling home prices and financing that's harder to come by, Bush said: "It's been a difficult time for many American families." But he also said that the nation's economy continues to grow, if slowly.

Bush said that despite the woes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the recent government takeover of California bank IndyMac, U.S. depositors should not worry because their deposits are insured by the government up to $100,000


HuffPost

Monday, July 14, 2008

The Arrogance of Losers

The Arrogance of Losers

How many times do we bankrupt ourselves for a WWII defense only to lose to Third World nations? Our military has floundered in three Asian land wars without a clear vision of the mission.

Our leaders are hard put to find the enemy on a road map. They showered Vietnam with Agent Orange that returned home with our troops. We gave toxic agents to Saddam only to have the prevailing winds blow them back to our bases. We handed out 500,000 small arms to Iraqis without any record.

We put Osama on the map as an Afghan resistance leader fighting the Russians.

To finance our wars, we borrowed from the Chinese. Now, they can buy a number of US States, proclaim them as colonies to employ slave labor and sell trinkets to the white people.

In the coming election the Republicans could lose every office up for grabs.

Street corner bums could do better.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

US/Iraq Long Term Security Deal Collapses

US Iraq Long Term Security Deal Collapses
HuffPost
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. and Iraq have abandoned attempts to forge a long-term security agreement. The focus is now on a "bridge document" that would provide for basic military operations after the UN mandate expires at the end of this year, and it would fall to the next administration to deal with any extended security agreement:
U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.
In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had hoped to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a "bridge" document, more limited in both time and scope, that would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year.
The failure of months of negotiations over the more detailed accord -- blamed on both the Iraqi refusal to accept U.S. terms and the complexity of the task -- deals a blow to the Bush administration's plans to leave in place a formal military architecture in Iraq that could last for years.
Although President Bush has repeatedly rejected calls for a troop withdrawal timeline, "we are talking about dates," acknowledged one U.S. official close to the negotiations. Iraqi political leaders "are all telling us the same thing. They need something like this in there. . . . Iraqis want to know that foreign troops are not going to be here forever."
The increasing need for more troops in Afghanistan to combat a resurgent Taliban may force the Bush Administration to accelerate the rate of troop withdrawal from Iraq:
The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007.
One factor in the consideration is the pressing need for additional American troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and other fighters have intensified their insurgency and inflicted a growing number of casualties on Afghans and American-led forces there.
More American and allied troops died in Afghanistan than in Iraq in May and June, a trend that has continued this month...
...The desire to move more quickly reflects the view of many in the Pentagon who want to ease the strain on the military but also to free more troops for Afghanistan and potentially other missions.

Pentagon Urges Israel to Destroy Iran

Bush Approves Israel Strike on Iran

HuffPost

Note: This ‘Okay’ is an American propaganda ploy. It would get the Republicans off the hook with Israelis replacing them.

We have no need to wage a preemptive war. It is illegal, immoral and considered murder by our religious sages. Serving long years in hell to ease the neocon burden and to fill up SUV’s is not a Jewish ambition.

Last month Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker reported that the Bush Administration has stepped up covert operations inside Iran. Now the Times of London, citing information from a senior Pentagon official, says that Bush backs an Israeli plan for a strike on that country's nuclear facilities:

President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.


Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an "amber light" to an Israeli plan to attack Iran's main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.

"Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you're ready," the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.

Nor is it certain that Bush's amber light would ever turn to green without irrefutable evidence of lethal Iranian hostility. Tehran's test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets.

"It's really all down to the Israelis," the Pentagon official added. "This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided. But the president is really preoccupied with the nuclear threat against Israel and I know he doesn't believe that anything but force will deter Iran."

Congress is a Bunch of Wusses" - John Dean:

John Dean: Congress is "a bunch of wusses"

by JC Garrett, http://www.opednews.com

When John Dean, author and former White House Counsel to President Richard Nixon, appeared Wednesday on Rob Kall's radio show (mp3), he seemed willing to go further in his condemnations of current government than he has when appearing on Olberman or any of the mainstream shows on which he is a regular guest.

In fact, Rob's very first question about Dean's take on Congress immunizing telecoms with the passage of FISA amendments drew a refreshingly, honestly coarse answer from Dean, who bluntly said, "Well, it looks like we have a bunch of wusses up there on Capitol Hill, not much interested in civil liberties and very interested in C.Y.A."

Dean contends that the immunity given to telecoms by the bill is "merely civil immunity" which does not immunize anyone from criminal prosecution, including telecoms. But he says, "Whether a Democratic administration would have the guts to ever prosecute anybody for any of this is another story."

Mr. Dean said he also questions whether Congress' immunization of telecoms for past crimes is even Constitutionally permissable. He says, "It's possible that a court could rule that Congress doesn't have the power, in the middle of a case that's being litigated to take away jurisdiction from the federal courts." Which makes a lot of sense. I can envision a judge having some objection to Congress changing the rules in the middle of the game and telling him that the judicial branch has no say in a case that he is currently hearing. That just might piss a federal judge plum off.

When Rob Kall asked about Dean's thoughts on law professor Johnathan Turley's statement on Olberman that President Bush has committed felonies 30 times by reauthorizing the illegal surveillance programs, Dean said he hadn't heard of Turley's remarks, but he made it very clear where he stands on Turley's judgement compared to George W. Bush's:

"If he says that Bush has violated the law 30 times, I'd put my money on Turley."

Rob then asked a question that I had suggested for Mr. Dean: What about the illegal wiretapping that occured before 9/11? Dean said he didn't know whether there was evidence of that. "Who knows if we'll ever know what they were doing?" Dean asked rhetorically.

But there is evidence. And lots of it.

Since the spineless Congress has decided to betray everything that was ever held sacred to American justice by waving its hand and making the felonies of criminal telecoms after 9/11 disappear, we now have to concentrate on what everyone already knows but hasn't talked much about.

A January 2006 article on Truthout, Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11, states:

The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.

The document says that in its 2001 report entitled "Transition 2001," the NSA said, ""Make no mistake, NSA can and will perform its missions consistent with the Fourth Amendment and all applicable laws."

Then adds that "senior leadership must understand that the NSA's mission will demand a 'powerful, permanent presence' on global telecommunications networks that host both 'protected' communications of Americans and the communications of adversaries the agency wants to target." [more]

Mutually Assured Destruction May not Deter USA

There is no MAD for America

As reflected in their entertainments and actions, Americans are bullies. Their choice of weapon is the cluster bomb, which maims and kills from a great height. God forbid we face the enemy.

Our leaders prize defenseless children and willing slaves as sexual partners. They prey on helpless employees such as the young women in the military. The CIA buys children to brain wash them for use as Agents, sex slaves and newscasters. They torture prisoners to make them submit.

Bullies can not tolerate the slightest resistance. Whistle blowers must be crushed. Borrowing a library book can earn big punishment.

A punch in the nose [such as 911] can send a bully into a tailspin. Fearful, he will submit to any authority to prevent another attack.

MAD worked with the Warsaw Pact nations because they could deliver a punch in the nose and much more.

by jbpaz, comment for OpEdNews.com

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Ron Paul is Right

Invading Iran puts everything at risk.

Over the past sixty years we Americans have betrayed the founding fathers and their hopes for us. Maybe, we will take back the country, but it will require a lot of time.

Nothing good will come from those in power or the
people we elect to replace them. We may learn from our mistakes. In time our
creditors may insist on repayment. Certainly, our economy and the military are
doomed. As the unemployment roles swell and the hungry homeless roam the
countryside, some might decide to rock the boat.


One day we may discover our boat has departed for
distant shores. If we had ended our aggressions and had jailed our government
leaders, we might have qualified for membership in the British Commonwealth of
Nations. If we had behaved with a trace of humanity, the other nations might
have been kinder to the latest member of the Third World.

The Belt way Myth

The Beltway Myth

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

The truth is exactly the opposite of what Liasson said. Americans want to withdraw from Iraq in accordance with Obama's timetable (if not faster) regardless of circumstances "on the ground" -- not conditioned on those circumstances. But because that's not the view Liasson and her establishment colleagues embrace, they just lie and claim that the majority view is the one held only by the "left-wing" fringe, while their own actually fringe view is the one embraced by "the American people" and thus defines the "Center."

This is the standard propaganda tactic of establishment media stars like Liasson, and she's hardly unique -- in this way or in any other. This is how they manipulate public opinion and coerce political officials to disregard the views of most Americans in favor of the fringe, establishment view. The views of the establishment pundit class are automatically labeled "the Center" even when they're rejected by majorities of "the American people." By contrast, views that are actually held by majorities but which the pundit class dislikes are demonized as those of "the Left." Thus, they argue, political candidates, in order to win elections, must embrace the views of the establishment and reject the view of most Americans. That's how a candidate "moves to the Center."

This is the central deceit that causes the war in Iraq to continue despite most Americans' wanting it to end for quite some time (because "only the Left" wants an end to war while "the Center" wants to say until we win). It's why crimes committed by the Washington elite go uninvestigated and unpunished (due to the lie that only "the Left" favors investigations and punishment while the Center" opposes investigations). It's how radical Bush policies such as warrantless eavesdropping, telecom amnesty and torture become the "Center" even when they're no such thing. This is the central premise of the Beltway class -- that any policies they dislike, any attempts to hold them accountable, are necessarily the rantings of "the Left."

The fact that Mara Liasson feels perfectly comfortable going on television and baldly uttering a clear-cut falsehood -- that only "the left-wing base" favors unconditional withdrawal while "the American people" only want to leave Iraq when "facts on the ground" allow it -- demonstrates how pervasive this deceit is. She likely isn't even aware that what she's saying is false. The establishment class is so self-absorbed, so inculcated with faith in their own wisdom, that they automatically think that whatever they and their comrades believe is, by definition, what "the American people" believe, even when all empirical data proves that the opposite is true.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Arrest Karl Rove

The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Karl Rove to testify on July 10, but on July 1 Rove announced he would defy the subpoena.
Could you or I get away with defying a Congressional subpoena? Of course not. So why can Karl Rove? Like George Bush and Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, believes he is simply above the law.
It's time for Congress to prove them wrong by using its power of "inherent contempt" to send the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest Karl Rove (as imagined in photoshop at left) and bring him before the full House to answer to the charge of Contempt of Congress, and to punish him to the maximum extent allowed by law, including prison.
Before Democrats won Congress in 2006, Nancy Pelosi said the most important reason to put Democrats in control of Congress was "subpoena power." But now Pelosi is quietly blocking the use of inherent contempt.
Tell your Representatives to Arrest Karl Rove:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/106

Thursday, July 3, 2008

We Don't Deserve to Celebrate the Fourth of July

Our preemptive war in Vietnam violated our Constitution and the UN Charter. The UN nations should have declared war on the US. At the first opportunity, our Congress should have impeached, tried and executed everyone in the Lyndon Johnson Administration.
We had this duty to honor our Constitution. When we failed to execute Johnson, we stamped our flag into the dirt.
GWB was our collective punishment from God. Bush persisted in preemptive wars and did Johnson one better. He has enslaved us.
We don't deserve the Fourth of July. We are not Independent.
We dance on the graves of our ancestors who have fallen in the battle to be free.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Bush Adopts Terrorist Fist Jab

TERRORIST: Bush greets young supporter with the terrorist fist jab. Is the President conveying a secret message to his pal Osama bin Laden?

FASCIST: Suddenly, his surrogate McCain is touting the Fascist New World Order concept of free trade NAFTA. Do the Republicans believe they can win by pandering to Fascists?

OR COMMUNIST: The Republicans have instructed the torturers at Guantanamo to adopt Communist Chinese torture techniques developed against Americans during the Korean Conflict. Is this a Republican ploy to gain favor with their Chinese creditors?

John Yoo Lies for Limitless Government Power

John Yoo Lies for Limitless Government Power

Glenn Greenwald, Salon

One of the most reliable methods for knowing that a position is unsustainable is that its advocates must employ outright falsehoods in order to support it. In a Wall St. Journal Op-Ed today, John Yoo defends the right of the Bush administration to imprison people at Guantanamo indefinitely with no judicial review and condemns last week's Supreme Court habeas corpus ruling as "judicial imperialism of the highest order." To do so, Yoo asserts what have become the now-standard though still-blatant falsehoods on this issue.

Yoo, for instance, claims that the Supreme Court in Boumediene allows "an alien who was captured fighting against the U.S. to use our courts to challenge his detention." But huge numbers of detainees in U.S. custody weren't "captured fighting against the U.S." at all. Many were taken from their homes. Others were just snatched off the street while engaged in the most mundane activities. Still others were abducted while in airports or at work.

Sami al-Haj, the Al Jazeera camerman who was encaged at Guantanamo for years until being recently released, was simply traveling with an Al Jazeera reporter from Pakistan into Afghanistan to cover the U.S. invasion for his news network when he was stopped by a Pakistani immigration officer, turned over to the U.S., kept in an underground Afghan prison for six months, and then basically disappeared off to Guantanamo, where he remained for years, interrogated not about Al Qaeda, but largely about the operations of Al Jazeera:

Asma al-haj didnt know what had happened to her husband until late 2002, when she received a letter from him explaining that he was in Guantánamo. Around the same time, Al Jazeera issued a press release announcing that an employee was being held at the camp. The Committee to Protect Journalists wrote to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld requesting information, but received no reply. For the next three years, little was known about the circumstances of al-Haj's detention, until early 2005 when he obtained the services of Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer based in Britain. . . .

Al-Haj was detained at a moment when distrust of Al Jazeera was accumulating rapidly at the highest levels of the American government. Before 9/11, Al Jazeera was hailed as a rare independent voice in the Middle East. But after the attacks, while Middle East specialists in the government continued to advocate that the U.S. engage with the network, others in the administration developed an intense hostility toward it. According to numerous former senior administration officials, the major hubs of animosity were the Office of the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense, particularly the offices run by Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy, and Stephen Cambone, the former undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Many of the highest-profile "War on Terror" detainees who have been held for years with no charges have been similarly "captured," while unarmed, in the most mundane of circumstances, far away from any "battlefield" -- not "captured fighting against the U.S.," as Yoo misleadingly put it today. U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, for instance, was detained at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri -- the computer science graduate student at Bradley University, in the U.S. on a student visa -- was arrested at his home in Peoria, Illinois where he lived with his wife and five children, charged with credit card fraud, only to then have his trial canceled at the last minute by George Bush, who declared him an "enemy combatant" and ordered him into military custody, where he remained for years with no charges.

Canadian citizen Maher Arar was also detained at the airport -- on a stop-over at JFK Airport on his way back from a family vacation to his Ottawa home -- and then sent to Syria to be tortured for 10 months, only for it to be discovered thereafter that he was completely innocent, that U.S. officials apprehended the wrong man. German citizen Khaled El-Masri was snatched up while on vacation in Macedonia, accused of being a Terrorist, shipped around to multiple countries, denied access to the outside world, tortured by the CIA for months, only to be released once they realized it was a case of "mistaken identity." And the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case, Lakhdar Boumediene, was a Bosnia citizen, living in Bosnia, who was arrested by Bosnian authorities at the request of the Bush administration, investigated, and determined by the Bosnian Supreme Court to be innocent. But upon his being released, U.S. forces inside Bosnia immediately seized him and shipped him to Guantanamo.

Contrary to one of the core falsehoods spouted by people like John Yoo, a huge bulk of our "War on Terror" prisoners, including those at Guantanamo, were not "captured fighting against the U.S." at all. While supporters of unlimited executive power incessantly claim that the War on Terror can't be waged based on the premise that Terrorists are like criminals, many of the detainee apprehensions are identical to how accused criminals are captured, since -- unlike actual wars of the past -- they involve snatching people up while engaged in completely innocent activities and in civilian settings, not on battlefields while engaged in combat.

Yoo purposely uses falsehoods here because the way so many of these detainees are captured by the U.S. is what distinguishes them from detainees in past wars captured on actual battlefields. That's precisely what makes the risk of erroneous detentions (or more malignantly-motivated detentions, such as that of Sami al-Haj) so high. And it's that fact -- along with the fact that, by the administration's own claims, this is a "completely different war" that will last decades, not merely years -- that makes the very idea of empowering our Government to imprison such people indefinitely, with no real process, so dangerous and tyrannical.

The other deeply misleading claim in Yoo's Op-Ed is even more transparent. He characterizes the Court's decision as "grant[ing] captured al Qaeda terrorists the exact same rights as American citizens to a day in civilian court." What minimally self-respecting law professor would be willing to make this claim with a straight face?

The whole point of the habeas corpus right is that without a meaningful hearing, we don't know if the individuals our Government is imprisoning are really "al Qaeda terrorists" or something else. That ought to be too basic even to require pointing out. As this recent superb McClatchy article documents, scores of individuals detained at Guantanamo for years weren't "Al Qaeda terrorists" -- or any other kind of terrorists -- at all. Rather, there were at least:

dozens of men -- and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds -- whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials -- primarily in Afghanistan -- and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.

This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.

It takes an indescribably authoritarian mind to believe that one's own Government should have the power to put people in cages for life without having to provide them any meaningful opportunity to prove that they did not do what they are accused of. And it takes a deeply dishonest advocate to claim that the Supreme Court's ruling was designed to protect "Al Qaeda terrorists" who were "captured fighting against the U.S," given that large numbers of our detainees are not "Al Qaeda terrorists" and were not "captured fighting against the U.S."

With his attack on the Supreme Court, John Yoo has proven himself -- yet again -- to be both authoritarian and incomparably dishonest. But the two glaring falsehoods in today's Op-Ed -- that habeas protections protect "Al Qaeda terrorists" and that Guantanamo detainees were captured on the battlefield -- are precisely the ones that have been used for so long to obscure the real dangers of vesting our Government with the power of lawless imprisonment.

UPDATE: Just as George Will did in his rather well-written column today defending habeas corpus, conservative Steven Taylor articulates very well why the type of lawless detention advocated by the Right is so dangerous, destructive and tyrannical. His post adds some important facts to those set forth here and is well worth reading.

Michelle Obama Target of Religious Right

The Religious Right’s Uppity Woman Strategy
Christine Wicker, HuffPost

A core 5 percent to 7 percent of Religious Righters are Republican theocrats, heart and soul. They will vote for McCain, even though they can hardly stomach him; they have no one else to vote for this year. For the McCain campaign the challenge is how to rouse them.
Republicans have been playing the race card every presidential election since Nixon made it his Southern Strategy. It worked then and it has worked ever since. Usually they pair it with fear of crime. They'll do it again.
But this election, the theocrats have a twofer. Michelle Obama. Racism and sexism. What a combination. Although fundamentalists once did a good job of using the Bible to support racism (children of Cain and all), they can't use God to support that kind of bias anymore. Too much backlash.
But they can make a case that God hates uppity women.
They're already working on it.
A professor of Christian theology from Louisville's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the Southern Baptist Convention's flagship seminaries, showed the way at a Texas Bible Church a week ago. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the country and a powerful voice for evangelicals.
One reason men abuse their wives is that women rebel against their husband's God-given authority, said Professor Bruce Ware. Women are sinners who want their own way instead of desiring to submit to their husbands..
"And husbands on their parts, because they're sinners, now respond to that threat to their authority either by being abusive, which is of course one of the ways men can respond when their authority is challenged--or, more commonly, to become passive, acquiescent, and simply not asserting the leadership they ought to as men in their homes and in churches," Ware said from the pulpit of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas," wrote Rob Allen.
Here is a summation of Professor Ware's 10 reasons that God gave men power over women from Denny R. Burk, an assistant professor of New Testament at Criswell College in Dallas.
1. The order of creation, with the man created first, indicates God's design of male headship in the male/female relationship (Gen 2; 1 Tim 2:13).
2. The means of the woman's creation as "out of" or "from" the man bears testimony also to the headship of the male in the relationship (Gen 2:23; 1 Cor 11:8).
3. While both man and woman are fully the image of God (Gen 1:26-28), yet the woman's humanity as "image of God" is established as she comes from the man. Adam names her "isha" (woman) because she was "taken out of ish (man)" (Gen 2:23; cf. 5:3).
4. The woman was created for the man's sake or to be Adam's helper (Gen 2:18, 20).
5. Man (not woman) was given God's moral commandment in the garden; and woman learned God's moral command from the man (Gen 2:16-17).
6. Man named the woman both before and after the entrance of sin (Gen 2:19-20, 23; 3:20).
7. Satan approached the woman (not the man) in the temptation, usurping God's design of male-headship (Gen 3; 1 Tim 2:14).
8. Although the woman sinned first, God comes to the man first, holding him (not her) primarily responsible for their sin (Gen 3:8-9; Rom 5:12-19; 1 Cor 15:22).
9. The curses on the man and woman indicate the fundamental purposes for which each was created, respectively (Gen 3:16-19).
10. The Trinity's equality and distinction of Persons is mirrored in male-female equality and distinction (1 Cor 11:3).
To anyone not indoctrinated into fundamentalist thinking, Ware's reasoning may seem laughable. But not to Professor Burk. He's impressed that Professor Ware used verses from Genesis and the New Testament.
Sure Jesus brought Good News, but women didn't get released from the curse. No, sir. Not them. Professor Ware showed good Biblical grounding in making that point clear.
Ware's reasoning is weak gruel, but the many quotations from the Bible floating around in it make it good, solid food to a lot of Religious Right evangelicals. Remember Ware isn't some yahoo pontificating during coffee break. He's a respected Biblical scholar, an expert in Christian theology, standing in a pulpit. He'll have plenty of yahoos ready to repeat his reasoning.
You can see how it will play out.
Michelle Obama is nobody's little woman, keeping quiet, searching her husband's face to know what she ought to say, as God intended her to be. So she can't be a godly woman..
As for Barack Obama, there are only two options for a man who doesn't control his wife.
Even the fundamentalists aren't likely to say that Obama beats her. So he must be a wimp.
Who wants a wimp for president?

The Hunting of the Snark

The Hunting of the Snark
Evidence Faulted in Detainee Case
William Glaberson, HuffPost

In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that accusations against a Muslim from western China held for more than six years were based on bare and unverifiable claims. The unclassified parts of the decision were released on Monday.
With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.
The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”
Gitmo ‘justice’ is common in Fascist and Communist countries. It is typical in the Middle East including Israel.