George H. Bush calls Dick Cheney "Arrogant" and "Iron ass." Oh now it's on!

Courtesy of The Guardian: 

Former US president George HW Bush has hit out at Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, two of the most senior figures in his son’s administration, labelling them too “hardline” and “arrogant” in their handling of the 11 September attacks. 

A new biography of the 41st president – Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey Of George Herbert Walker Bush – reveals that Bush Sr held Cheney and Rumsfeld responsible for the hawkish stance that “hurt” his son’s administration, Fox News reported on Wednesday. 

“The reaction [to 9/11], what to do about the Middle East. Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys who want to fight about everything, use force to get our way in the Middle East,” Bush told Meacham in the book, which is due to be published next week.

Of course Papa Bush does not extend the same criticism to his son:  

“He’s my son, he did his best and I’m for him. It’s that simple an equation.”

Well what did you expect?

Still Bush senior coming out against Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the response to 9-11 is huge.

And it comes at a rather inopportune time for Darth Cheney as there is a resolution about to be introduced to the Senate to honor the former VP and war criminal:  

Starting in December, the likeness of former Vice President Dick Cheney will grace the U.S. Capitol, in accordance with a Senate tradition honoring former vice presidents. 

The Huffington Post was tipped off by a Senate resolution "authorizing the use of Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center for the unveiling of the marble bust of Vice President Richard Cheney on December 3, 2015."

Yeah well they better plan on having around the clock security because I CANNOT imagine a more likely target for vandalism than a bust of Dick Cheney.

Personally my all time favorite fantasy is seeing Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rove, and Wolfowitz all marched off in chains to serve out the rest of their lives on a federal penitentiary as war criminals.

Donald Rumsfeld says that he never thought forcing democracy on Iraq was a good idea. Now he tells us.

Courtesy of MSNBC:

In an interview with British newspaper The Times, Rumsfeld said that efforts to oust Saddam Hussein and replace his tyrannical regime with democracy were unworkable, and that he had concerns about the plan from the beginning. 

“I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories,” Rumsfeld told The Times. “The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.”

WTF?

Rumsfeld has just as much blood on his hands as do Bush, Cheney, and Wolfowitz, among others. And there is nothing he can say now that will wash them clean.

Remember this is the guy who once said:

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

Sounds to me as if there were more knowns than unknowns, but this asshole didn't have the balls to say them out loud when it could have prevented the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis.

I wonder how many more rats will jump ship in the months to come?

Today is the day that they are releasing the CIA torture report. About damn time!

Courtesy of USA Today: 

"There are some indications that the release of the report could lead to a greater risk that is posed to U.S. facilities and individuals all around the world," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday. "So the administration has taken the prudent steps to ensure that the proper security precautions are in place at U.S. facilities around the globe." 

The report's release by the Senate Intelligence Committee sparked a fierce debate in Congress. 

Some lawmakers said it's important for the report to be released so the U.S. government will never again use torture as a method of interrogation. Others said it will inflame extremist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere and threaten the lives of U.S. diplomats, military members and other Americans overseas. 

The Intelligence Committee is expected to release Tuesday a 500-page summary of a 6,200-page report on the the CIA's use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" against al-Qaeda prisoners during the George W. Bush administration. 

While the revelations of torture are not new, the report will detail the broad scope of the controversial practices, which took place at secret detention centers in the Middle East and Asia. It also will allege that the CIA tried to hide what they were doing from Congress and the White House. Perhaps most controversial of all, it will conclude that the CIA's tactics failed to gather any useful information to save American lives. 

"The president believes that, on principle, it's important to release that report, so that people around the world and people here at home understand exactly what transpired," Earnest said. He added that "something like this should never happen again."

There are of course dire warnings that the release of this report will result in attacks on American soldiers overseas, of course many of those are coming from folks who are about to look really bad when this thing comes out, but in the end I think it is important that Americans come to terms with what we did.

We mistreated people for no other reason than somebody somewhere did not like them and told the CIA that they were a terrorists. Based on such slim evidence we captured and tortured some of these people for many years.

These techniques created far more terrorists than we have ever captured or killed, and it has inspired the formation of groups like ISIS which are now terrorizing people all over the Middle East. 

And because we were afraid we turned a blind eye to what was being done in the name of protecting the homeland.

Which by the ways sounds uncomfortably like something that was said in Nazi Germany in the 1940's.

New report by the Senate Intelligence Committee finds that CIA misled the government about the benefits of enhanced interrogation techniques, or what is commonly known as torture.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques. 

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document. 

“The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.” 

Current and former U.S. officials who described the report spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and because the document remains classified. The 6,300-page report includes what officials described as damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention facilities, or “black sites,” that was dismantled by President Obama in 2009.

Classified files reviewed by committee investigators reveal internal divisions over the interrogation program, officials said, including one case in which CIA employees left the agency’s secret prison in Thailand after becoming disturbed by the brutal measures being employed there. The report also cites cases in which officials at CIA headquarters demanded the continued use of harsh interrogation techniques even after analysts were convinced that prisoners had no more information to give.

Yeah someone tell me again how the Obama administration is the most criminal administration in history, or how President Obama is destroying the reputation of this country.

These techniques were implemented, supported, and defended by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

And every time anybody tried to call them out on using torture they were attacked, undermined, and essentially accused of giving comfort to the terrorists.

Fuck the Bush administration.

Fuck the Republicans who provided them cover.

And fuck anybody who even suggests that we vote another Republican President into office.

Florida Republican candidate suggested that President Obama should be arrested and hanged. Seriously? Update!

Courtesy of Tampa Bay Times:  

As Americans honored the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, a Republican candidate for Florida House District 68 said President Barack Obama should be hanged for war crimes. 

"I'm past impeachment," Joshua Black wrote on Twitter. "It's time to arrest and hang him high." 

The tweet caught the attention of Chris Latvala, a Republican candidate for House District 67. 

"You aren't seriously calling for the killing of Obama are you?" Latvala replied. "I know you are crazy but good heavens. U R an embarrassment." 

Latvala added: "I make it my business when so called GOP candidates become an embarrassment to my beloved party." 

Black, 31, of Pinellas Park moved to Florida in 2007 after practicing street evangelism in St. Louis and works as a taxi driver. According to his campaign website, Black entered politics in 2012 when he tried influencing the presidential primary. 

The website says: "Republicans have a serious communication problem. Everything we say sounds like spears." 

Hours after the tweet, Black defended his comment. Obama should be held responsible for ordering a drone strike that killed a U.S. citizen overseas, he said. 

"He should be executed for treason," Black said. "I think the appropriate punishment is death. They killed Benedict Arnold. (Obama) shouldn't be allowed to kill Americans without a trial."

So in the eyes of this wingnut President Obama is comparable to Benedict Arnold, the most famous traitor in US history. Oh yeah, nothing exaggerated about that!

Hey look I am also uncomfortable with the idea of drones killing American citizens (And by the way there have been four.), but I am also aware that police officers shoot and kill suspects all over the country in what are considered life and death circumstances, without benefit of a trial, and as a rule we do not suggest that they be put to death.

And let me point out just how incredibly hypocritical it is to demand that this President be tried of war crimes, when the entire fucking reason we were over in Afghanistan and Iraq is due to the policies of George W. Bush, a man that we KNOW started the wars based on fabricated intelligence.

After we have arrested and imprisoned George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, THEN somebody can start talking about arresting President Obama.

And on that note the radical fringe falls silent. 

Update: Well guess who got a visit from the Secret Service. 

Deaprtment of Justice to grant Bush Administration immunity from prosecution over the Iraq War. Seriously, WTF Obama Administration?

Courtesy of War is Crime:  

In court papers filed today (PDF), the United States Department of Justice requested that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz be granted procedural immunity in a case alleging that they planned and waged the Iraq War in violation of international law. 

Plaintiff Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, filed a complaint in March 2013 in San Francisco federal court alleging that the planning and waging of the war constituted a “crime of aggression” against Iraq, a legal theory that was used by the Nuremberg Tribunal to convict Nazi war criminals after World War II. 

"The DOJ claims that in planning and waging the Iraq War, ex-President Bush and key members of his Administration were acting within the legitimate scope of their employment and are thus immune from suit,” chief counsel Inder Comar of Comar Law said. 

The “Westfall Act certification,” submitted pursuant to the Westfall Act of 1988, permits the Attorney General, at his or her discretion, to substitute the United States as the defendant and essentially grant absolute immunity to government employees for actions taken within the scope of their employment.

Okay I have defended this administration through thick and thin, and often have taken buckets of crap for doing so.

But I simply CANNOT defend this action.

Iraqi woman files class action lawsuit against President Bush over his "war of aggression." Oh PLEASE let this be successful!

Courtesy of Yes magazine:  

George W. Bush keeps a low profile these days, making the rounds on the public speaking circuit, engaging in a bit of philanthropy here and there, occasionally sharing his dog paintings or offering an unsolicited opinion on the immigration debate or national security. 

Given his role in the current media landscape, it may be easy to forget that just 10 years ago he led an invasion of a foreign country that many in the international community saw as criminal. 

Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother of three, has not forgotten. The violence and chaos that engulfed Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 had tragic consequences for her family and ultimately forced her to flee her homeland for an uncertain future. She has left Iraq, but she is determined to make sure the world hears her story and that someone is held accountable. 

Saleh is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit targeting six key members of the Bush Administration: George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz. In Saleh v. Bush, she alleges that the Iraq War was not conducted in self-defense, did not have the appropriate authorization by the United Nations, and therefore constituted a “crime of aggression” under international law—a designation first set down in the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. The aim of the suit is simple: to achieve justice for Iraqis, and to show that no one, not even the president of the United States, is above the law.

I don't have muhc faith in this actually going anywhere, but an anti-war liberal can dream can't he?

Nonpartisan group finds that, without a doubt, the Bush administration is guilty of torture. Somebody organize a jury while I get some rope.

"Yeah, so we broke the law and used torture, What are ya gonna do about it?" 

Courtesy of Raw Story:

A nonpartisan group led by a former top Bush administration official concluded a two-year review on Tuesday that finds the former president and his top advisers knowingly ordered interrogation techniques that U.S. officials have previously referred to as torture. 

“After conducting our own two-year investigation, weighing the credibility of all sources and studying the current public record, we have come to the regrettable, but unavoidable, conclusion that the United States did indeed engage in conduct that is clearly torture,” former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), who served as undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration, said in an advisory. 

The 577-page review, put together by the advocacy group The Constitution Project, includes interviews with dozens of people who have first-hand knowledge of the discussions about interrogation techniques and their implementation. Although Bush administration loyalists said at the time that “enhanced interrogation tactics” like stress positions, waterboarding, mock executions, sensory deprivation and prolonged diapering were not torture, this report aims to specifically and finally emphasize that these activities meet the clinical definition of “torture.” 

“As long as the debate continues, so too does the possibility that the United States could again engage in torture,” the report says, according to The New York Times, which received an advance copy. 

“What sets the United States apart as a world leader, in addition to our military might, are our values and respect for the rule of law. All the available evidence led us to conclude that, for many of these detainees, the U.S. violated both international law and treaties and our own laws, greatly diminishing America’s ability to forge important alliances around the world,” former Rep. James R. Jones (D-OK) added in the group’s advisory. 

The report also notes dozens of instances in which U.S. officials and U.S courts treated similar tactics as torture when applied to U.S. persons, and urges the Obama administration to declassify a 6,000-page Senate report on the extent of torture’s use during the Bush years. 

“This has not been an easy inquiry for me, because I know many of the players,” Hutchinson told The New York Times. “But I just think we learn from history. It’s incredibly important to have an accurate account not just of what happened but of how decisions were made.” 

Okay so now that this report is finished and it leaves NO doubt that the Bush administration engaged in criminal activities. let's have the whole slimy bunch of them arrested for treason.

All criminal investigations into the Bush torture program have been called off by the Obama administration.

Fuck!

So nothing. These bastards destroy our reputation, lie us into two unnecessary wars, spy on our citizens, and damn near near bankrupt the country, and nothing happens to them?

No of course not. But just let President Obama fail to leave a tip after eating lunch and the impeachment hearings will commence posthaste.

Fucking Republicans!

In case you missed it here is "Hubris: The Selling of the Iraq War" narrated by Rachel Maddow

If you did not get the chance to watch this last night I urge you to take the time to watch it here, It is too important to miss in my opinion.

One of my strongest reactions while watching this last night, was to the sheer hypocrisy of the Republican party. Many of who DARE to criticize  President Obama's decisions to end the Iraq War, after supporting the start of it so aggressively while ignoring the fact that the reasons given for going in were based on shaky, if not false, information.

If they had any sense of honor they would have all stepped down from their political positions years ago.

And speaking of shameful we have the insanity of John McCain DEMANDING more information about the four American deaths in Benghazi, while the blood of 4,486 dead United States military members drips from his old arthritic hands.

If ANY member of the Senate should have seen what was happening and put a stop to it, it was ex POW John McCain. But what did he do? He continued to push for an extension of the war well past the point where virtually everybody else had deemed it unnecessary, and wrong.

In a perfect world I would see George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz, executed for treason after being tried for war crimes. But I would also like to see John McCain stripped of his office and thrown into jail as well, for supporting a criminal war and ignoring information that he knew to be false.