This administration has enraged many people with it’s blatant….well, blatant everything really. And the reason, the excuse, the spin, for a great deal of the blatocracy seems to be “I’m the Commander-In-Chief in a time of war”.
At war with whom exactly?
One case I read today particularly enraged me. The case of Khaled el-Masri. This guy is a German citizen who went on holiday to Macedonia. Mistaken for someone else, he was picked up by the CIA, strapped face down to the metal floor of a plane with a bag over his head, flown to Afghanistan, imprisoned and interrogated for 5 months with no access to counsel, and finally dumped on a lonely Albanian hillside with no explanation and no charges.
He sued, asking for compensation and an apology. Sounds reasonable. Habeus corpus, false imprisonment, rule of law and all that, right?
The Virginia court threw the case out. Why? Because the administration said the court case might reveal state secrets and the security of the nation took precedence over any personal grievance.
The judge said; “Mr el-Masri's private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets".
What state secrets here are they preserving exactly? The fact they screwed up big time and screwed this guy and stole 5 months of his life? What? Please, tell me what?
The judge reasoned; "In times of war, our country, chiefly through the executive branch, must often take exceptional steps to thwart the enemy."
So this guy was who’s enemy exactly? Please, someone tell me.
President George W Bush has claimed and assumed many powers due to his status as a “War President”.
• Suspension of Habeus Corpus • Eavesdropping on American citizens • Breaking the Geneva Conventions • Breaking posse comitatus • Illegal, pre-emptive war on non-aggressor sovereign nations. • Torture • 751 Signing Statements indicating exemption from laws passed by Congress.
I don’t want to bore you so I’ll stop there.
To my point. Who has America declared war on? Afghanistan? I don’t think so. Currently, Karzhai is holed up in Kabul, propped up by US forces, while most of the country is run by either poppy czars or a resurgent Taliban, sporadically policed by various multinational forces and a corrupt local police force.
Iraq? You’ve got to be kidding. There’s only one way that the US can possibly be at war with Iraq. Read the PNAC. Ideal scenario – permanent, resource-independent, full-spectrum-dominant bases in the Middle East with secured pipelines direct to Houston. Hey, if the bases are surrounded by bloated starving children and a moonscape, so much the better. Easier to manage and a lot more profitable for KBR.
The only war they can claim to have declared is one against the Iraqi people. Politically, not an option right now. Build a little more xenophobia, maybe in a few years….?
Mark Lloyd is a working stiff in Minneapolis. He grew up in Yorkshire, England during the socialist 70's and Thatcher & Reagan's 80's and disliked both mobs. His fierce interest in politics, history and The Truth combined with the appalling start to the 21st century have finally convinced him to start writing again.
When the cold war ended and peace broke out it was a disaster for the corporaion policy makers. They carried out a lot of small battles in Central America, and Yugoslavia but were running out of wars. Now they have gotten so powerful militarily that there is no one left to fight and they are relying on the shaky proposition "the war on terrorism". Why do we need twelve air-craft carrier groups to fight terrorists? If they see one what will they do. . . nuke him?
As one who has lived through the great depression I am quite aware that overpopulation and under consumption caused it. In spite of the Kenesian remedies of Roosevelt it took World War II to unglut the marketplace. Keyens knew that war would perform this miracle and proposed public works projects; but while they alleviated the suffering of the people they did not do the job. When I got out of the army in 1945 I could not buy my wife a car or a washing machine. For four years the only things produced were war materials that could be blown up or rapidly become obsolete. Five years later the economy was glutted again and it was time for another war. Since then we have had the cold war, Korea, Vietnam and dozens of battles in South America over the war on drugs. Modern corporations cannot exist without war but this policy is bankrupting us. Depressions are not a natural catastrophe like a hurricane. There is no scarcity of consumer goods in a depression; there is only a scarcity of money. The desire for peace must be accompanied by a recognition that the corporation business form has to be replaced by cooperatives. Corporations glut the economy and can no longer survive without war.
by
gramps (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 107 comments)
on Sunday, May 21, 2006 at 7:00:32 PM
Hafta agree with everything you've said 100%, despite being only a spring chicken compared to you in age, however my condensed period of learning was in Vietnam, so I guess that'll qualify me a bit.
Actually I remember when the Berlin wall went down and as we were watching on TV, I said to the wife, "OH OH,That's the end of the Red Devil, I wonder how the U.S. will now cope without an enemy to wage all their greivances against."
Let's face, it must've been one hell of a shock to America, where were they to go from here after all their manufacturing base was geared to War materiel ?
All those stock piles of munitions and wonderful gadjets never to be utilised, never knowing how successful they would be in blowing innocent people into little bits and pieces, and the manufacturing corporations counting their pieces of silver they've managed to squeeze from a compliant Congress as a consequence.
Of course they had to find an enemy quickly, any enemy would do, and if they couldn't find one.... whay they'd manufacture one, and what a good one they eventually manufactured, this time round, one that is a will of the wisp, can never disappear and fail like them stupid Reds, thus ensuring the churning out of further war materiale ensuring profits for many years to come at the expense of innocent people's blood.
For my money, this will NEVER cease, unless Americans begin to be at the receiving end of what they dish out to others so readily, thus bringing home what they have been doing for so long, only then will they begin to realise what they've done.
I live in eternal hope.
by
Eddy Schmid (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 207 comments)
on Monday, May 22, 2006 at 2:54:30 AM
"When America invaded Iraq, there were no terrorists there, and no WMD’s. That is now proven."
Proven by whom? Your glorious fat bastard, Michael Moore who creates reality on the cutting room floor? I suppose that means that the Clintons, the Democrats in Congress, the U.N., our "allies", France, Russia, Germany, Egypt, Israel, Kuwait, etc.etc.etc. all lied, right?
Which is it? Either they were telling the truth or Iraq was full of rainbows, moonbeams, chocolate streams, champagne wishes and caviar dreams. Guess there was no reason for all those pesky U.N. resolutions or the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998.
This whole "America sucks, terrorists and dictators rule" BS is really tiresome. No, what HAS been proven is the whole neo-socialist liberal douchebag "war for oil/ PNAC conspiracy" mantra is tired, worn out BS that nobody but the kook left buys into. Come up with something new and get back to us.
Thanks a lot, team killing f***tards.
by
TGC (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 21 comments)
on Monday, May 22, 2006 at 7:09:28 AM
So who are we at war with? Be specific.
No WMD's and terrorists - your Lord and Fuehrer Bush has admitted this himself, idiot - read the papers,they are busy blaming the CIA for "Bad Intelligence".
Get a brain, dittohead.
by
Mark Lloyd (12 articles, 50 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 15 comments)
on Monday, May 22, 2006 at 9:00:21 PM
If you were intellectually honest, you'd look beyond the Bush smear machine to find out what's really going on. Why did we have legislation to remove Hussein from power, signed by Clinton in 1998, if he was such a great guy?
Seriously. You guys need to come up with better talking points and try supporting the home team for a change.
Get a real brain and a spine, DUmmy.
by
TGC (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 21 comments)
on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at 12:34:48 AM
Only Rove, Bush and their merry men could dream up the idea of declaring war against an improper noun. If I follow the reasoning correctly, we are at war until there are no more people out there who hate America. Judging by what I've seen and heard from the World, we can all expect to be in this "war" the rest of our lives, because the roll of people who hate us and our Go-it-alone policy seems to be growing. Maybe Bush can explain to us what we can look for on our day of Victory.
by
Terry Ballard (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 12 comments)
on Monday, May 22, 2006 at 1:36:11 PM
TGC: We're not at war, but as long as the big corps are happy, as long as Bush and his merry group of cohorts can claim we are warring in order to put all of our rights one by one into his own greedy pocket, then what does that "war" label matter anyway? And as long as you and your ilk continue to swallow all that you're told without any investigation at all (I get four newspapers, two from each side, every day online), then you'll continue giving up your rights that were given to you over 200 years ago. But I will not allow you to continue chipping away at my rights.
As in the days of our "war" in Viet Nam, everyone is quite satisifed except: the ones with a conscience, the ones who watched TV in horror, the families of those men and women who did not return (including my family), and the ones who value truth above all. And then to be hit many years later with McNamara's acknowledgement that he and Johnson lied, made up, the "story" of the Gulf of Tonkin incident so that they could keep the war going.
How dare the leaders of our country be doing this again! Party politics is not the clue here - truth is! I'm shaking in anger.
In this forum you have, still, the right to speak out as you wish. Unlike you, I won't even begin to think in terms of telling you to shut up or be incarcerated.
by
Marjean Wallace (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 12 comments)
on Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at 10:02:41 PM
"Terror. The War on Terror. I looked for it with my 6-year-old son on our globe but couldn’t find it."
We supposedly have had a War on Poverty for 42 years now. I checked my globe, maps Google Earth, Windows Live Local, National Geographic and even consulted a fuzzy caterpiller. Can't find anyplace called Poverty anywhere. We've been told many times before that we're winning the war on poverty. Must have just been liberal lies.
How many trillions have we spent on the war on poverty? How many people have died as a result? What's the exit strategy? How much freedom has been suppressed due to this war? Of course we can't ignore the fact that, as far as rights go, folks were taught that it was their right for the government to take care of them.
The war on poverty is a failure. Think of all the children who could have been helped if we had only funneled those trillions of dollars into education. Then again, we poured tons of money into education and all we have to show for it are kids who can't find Iraq, Louisiana, Mississippi etc. on a map, but they can recite the liberal kook talking points and tell you what their teacher taught them about Bush's SOTU speech.
But then using your logic, since there's no such place as Poverty, the War on Poverty is merely a fantasy of the liberal left.
by
TGC (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 21 comments)
on Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 2:43:47 AM
10 comments
How would you rate this?
You must be logged in (if signed up) to do ratings.
It's free to signup! And easy. And takes just a minute or two....
Must Read (
Well Said (
News (
Touching (
Funny (
Supported (
Interesting (
Inspiring (
Valuable (
