But wait a second! Then what were all these stories doing in the media in mid-April, that say Spain wasn't going to pursue a torture probe? I guess it was just "wishful thinking" by the media...AGAIN!!!
Condi Rice Pulls a Nixon: If the President Orders Torture, It Must be Legal
NEPA's KOOKY GOP Bishop Martino continues to attack Democrat Bobby Casey by threatening to withhold communion because he voted to confirm Kathleen Sebelius. No other bishop in America is doing this to anyone. The bishop remains silent on Republican TORTURE and WARS. Everyone should quit the Catholic church. Quit the Catholic church if you are: pro-choice, pro-death penalty, pro-war, pro-torture, use contraception, masturbate, if you violate any Catholic rule. Then, there won't be any Catholic church anymore. Martino want to have only a hardcore base left, just like the GOP is alienating everyone but their hardcore base. That would be fine by me, if both of them went away! And bishop: stop telling my senator to vote with only Catholic doctrine in mind. He represents ALL Pennsylvanians. YOU may represent only Catholics, but HE doesn't. You should be paying taxes, if you're not separating church and state. Or did you use up all your tax money paying off the pedofile priest settlements? I quit the Catholic church a long time ago. KOOKS in goofy hats and robes like Bishop Martino were the reason I quit. Bobby Casey seems to want to remain a Catholic and the bishop is playing games backing him into a corner. I hope he quits the Catholic church. Better yet, I hope he doesn't, and he walks up for communion and the bishop refuses, and the entire parish walks out and quits!
GOD, GAYS, & GUNS - The GOP is going apeshit over the gay hate crimes bill. Leading off the first video, KOOK Michele "one 'L' two 'N's" Bachmann says: "Someone might hold some hateful beliefs. But we're America. Shouldn't they be allowed to hold those beliefs?" Part of the GOP platform is to allow people to hold onto their hateful beliefs...like the GOP platform of torturing people. In the second video, the Republican congresswoman from N.C. says it's a "hoax" that Matthew Sheppard was killed because he was gay...despite the fact that a trooper testified that the killer said, when he killed him, “it’s Gay Awareness Week.” This is America! He should be allowed to hold onto those hateful beliefs!
Flight of the Conchords - Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros
Since last summer the GOP message has been that Obama, despite his widespread popularity, is some kind of radical Manchurian ideologue, far from the American mainstream. That message just got trumped once again. The poster-child for moderate Republicans has joined Team Socialism. This solidifies the narrative that the GOP is a party in steep decline and that the recent radicalism is serving to regionalize its significance. Specter wasn't going to survive his own primary but now stands a great chance of getting re-elected. If a bitter old conservative dude like Specter can't make it in today's GOP then all bets are off. The long term vitality of the party, as we've known it for decades, is in serious doubt.
When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.
National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said the NSA didn't wiretap congresswoman/traitor Jane Harman, but wouldn't say who did. Is our congress supposed to be wiretapped by someone besides the NSA? So, there's another entity wiretapping and blackmailing our U.S. government!
In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.
But there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus “intelligence” from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.
Last week Bush-Cheney defenders, true to form, dismissed the Senate Armed Services Committee report as “partisan.” But as the committee chairman, Carl Levin, told me, the report received unanimous support from its members — John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman included...
Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.
Levin suggests — and I agree — that as additional fact-finding plays out, it’s time for the Justice Department to enlist a panel of two or three apolitical outsiders, perhaps retired federal judges, “to review the mass of material” we already have. The fundamental truth is there, as it long has been. The panel can recommend a legal path that will insure accountability for this wholesale betrayal of American values.
The RNC wants to label the Democratic Party the "Democratic Socialist Party". They also have a talking point in the news media "Banana Republic", in reference to their party being outed for their platform of torturing people. They are saying that if we prosecute the Bush administration torturers, we'll be a "Banana Republic". John McCain, among other Republicans who are saying this, was actually tortured in Vietnam.
They are so dumb, that they don't realize a better party label can be done by the Democrats by using the GOP talking point "Banana Republic". Add "AN" to "Banana Republic", their own talking point, and you get: "BANANA REPUBLICAN"! How dumb can you be?
The Republican Party, who REALLY runs this country like a "Banana Republic" - TORTURE, state propaganda, death squads, disappearances, guerilla insurgencies, assassinations, stolen elections, coups, debt, rich-poor chasm, inability to meet citizen's needs in basic emergencies - ACCUSES THE OTHER PARTY OF RUNNING THIS COUNTRY LIKE A "BANANA REPUBLIC"!!!
Also, the GOP "TORTURERS" weren't "TORTURERS", they're "TERROR FIGHTERS"...according to the Banana Republicans!
The GOP platform:
Torture People
Cut Taxes On The Extremely Rich, during wars they start with lies and financial crises
Privatize the Public Sector (we see how well the "free market" is working
De-Regulate the Financial Sector (see "financial crisis")
Never EVER Do Anything Good For the Middle Class
Try And Outlaw Contraception
Blend Church and State
Stop Gay Marriage
Obstruct Progress
Secession
Don't allow black senators and congressmen
Spend but don't Tax to pay for it, creating huge deficits
Hire corporate cronies to head public agencies and ruin them
Pre-Emptive Wars
Play the GOP "Banana Republic" and "Terror Fighters" drinking game in the liberal TV media! If we investigate the Bush administration's breaking the law by torturing people, we might set the terrible precedent of having presidents follow the law! (according to the Banana Republicans) Oh, and btw, how do they get in the "liberal media" so much??? Being the minority party and all. Asked why Republicans were on TV so much more than Democrats (or any other party) since 2000, the "liberal media" said: "It's because the Republicans control the house, senate, and presidency - they are the majority party"...so what's the "liberal media's" excuse now? Maybe the media isn't "liberal", and it's just the Banana Republicans saying it is!!!
Why won't the GOP quote REAGAN on TORTURE???
"The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.
The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called 'universal jurisdiction.' Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."
"Torturing people is 'OK', if you think you're getting valuable information out of them." - Republican Jesus, the Republicans, Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, John McCain, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, FOX "news", and rightwing pundits
This is a defining moment for America.
(bd: Republicans and rightwing pundits in the "liberal media" are using the same old cliches as the Iraq War, not to hold anyone accountable for torture: "Now that we've done it, let's move forward", "It's a matter of national security, if we tell Americans what we did", "Banana Republic" - the new GOP talking point, Mr. McCain: "Banana Republics" torture people, and so do "Banana Republicans"!, "they were following orders - that's what the Nazi's said at the Nuremburg trials, and they wonder why we compare the Bush administration to the Nazi's! Why do they call America "evil"? Because we use medieval torture on them without charges and our courts rule that they are not "persons".. Can you believe that? Our courts ruled that detainees are not "persons"! Do you wonder why they hate us?)
The way we respond -- or fail to respond -- to the revelations about the Bush administration's use of torture will delineate -- for ourselves and for the world -- the kind of country we are.
It is a test of our courage and our convictions. A test of whether we are indeed a nation of laws -- or a nation that pays lip service to the notion of being a nation of laws.
And everyone engaged in our public conversation has a role to play.
So far, the media are not getting high marks. They can't seem to shake their addiction to looking at every issue -- even one that pivots on questions of morality, not politics -- through the archaic prism of right vs. left.
He kept us safe...except for the all time worst terrorist attack ever in history!
Vote for TORTURE! Vote Republican!
"Torture is not a sin, if you get valuable information." - Jesus
Did torture produce good intelligence? THAT'S NOT THE POINT! THIS IS AMERICA, AND WE DON'T TORTURE! The ends don't justify the means in America! Until the Bush administration.
There's more Republicans on TV than ever, even though they are the minority in every branch of government after they got tossed out on their asses during the last two elections. That tells you who controls the mainstream media, and it's not liberal. Dick Cheney is now on TV every day after saying "no comment" all the time during his secretive tenure as vice president, Karl Rove is always on TV, and now Liz Cheney is on CNN telling us that torture isn't torture, I guess because Republicans were the torturers. Philip Zelikow, Condoleeza Rice's confidante who whitewashed the 9/11 investigation, is also making the rounds on TV. It's a Republican onslaught in the "liberal media"!
But with all this Bush administration onslaught in the "liberal media", you never see George Bush! Where is George Bush? Remember him? He was the president!
$1,000 a second if Hannity gets waterboarded. Good idea! Let's waterboard everyone who's for waterboarding!
Let's waterboard these loudmouth assholes who are for waterboarding!!!
Below: the new Ed Shultz Show on MSNBC.
MSNBC's "The Ed Show" is a new show, but I've been listening to Big Ed for years on the radio. Big Ed, the big red head, had a radio show from North Dakota for many years. Ed joins the MSNBC lineup with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, the "anti-FOX" network. FOX "news" has Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and William Kristol.
Ed Shultz Show - Laura Flanders Explains Why Obama Must Prosecute Torture 4/23/09
FRAUDSTER Bishop Martino silent about torture revelations...
NEPA's Bishop Martino remains silent about the revelations that torturing people came from the top of the Bush administration. He's always in the news, concerned about condoms. I guess he's for torture...because a Republican administration was doing it. His silence exposes him as the FRAUD that he is. Who would Jesus torture? We know who REPUBLICAN JESUS would torture!
Vote Republican - Vote for Torture! Don't vote for the Democrats, because they use rubbers.... - the Bishop Let's be very clear on this: TORTURE IS A "REPUBLICAN THING"!!! Look who's defending it: CheneyFOX "news", Republican politicians, Limbaugh, Hannity Karl Rove, and rightwing pundits like William Kristol!!!
Another Conservative torture lawyer, Jay Bybee (below), is now a Federal Judge!!!I bet you can't wait for your kid or a friend or relative to go in front of him!
George Bush is SILENT, now that we know he LIED about torture, and it wasn't a "few bad apples"! Dick "no comment" Cheney is now part of CheneyFOX "news" blabbing his mouth off, now that he's out of office.
5 hours after the 9/11 attacks, Donald Rumsfeld said "my interest is to hit Saddam". He also said "Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
So, you thought I was crazy when I said in my "must read" post here that members of the U.S. government are being blackmailed via the domestic wiretaps by Israel and others. Ironically, this story just came out:
Congressional Quarterly: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC
Congressional Quarterly is reporting Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman of California was overheard in 2005 on an NSA wiretap speaking with a suspected Israeli agent. During the call, Harman reportedly said she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. In exchange for Harman’s help, the suspected Israeli agent reportedly pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections. The conversation is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA wiretap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington. Congressional Quarterly reports then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales decided to stop a probe of Harman, because he wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s secret domestic spy program that the New York Times was about to expose.
According to a little-noticed passage in the Starr Report (Ken Starr's report when he led the impeachment of Bill Clinton), during March 1997, President Clinton told Monica Lewinsky that he suspected a foreign embassy was tapping his telephone conversations.
Nothing more is said in the report about the incident, but according to information received by this news service, that reference could provide the key to the entire Lewinsky scandal and to the setting-up and entrapment of the President. Reportedly, the embassy involved was that of Israel, under the control of the right-wing Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
I have some good advice for you: bookmark my post and go through it thoroughly! Then it will make sense to you, when you see in the news all the time, the U.S. government's never-ending bias towards Israel.
AT&T whistleblower: AT&T serves Mossad to blackmail U.S. government; our phone calls go to two Israeli companies!
Few could help notice last week that the "Bird" omitted an opinion piece distributed by the Knight-Ridder news agency by a senior Pentagon Middle East specialist, Air Force Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith until her retirement in April.
"What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline," Kwiatkowski wrote. "If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam [Hussein] occupation [of Iraq] has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense [OSD]."
Kwiatkowski went on to charge that the operations she witnessed during her tenure in Feith's office, and particularly those of an ad hoc group known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP), constituted "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-option through deceit of a large segment of the Congress".
If "tea party's" aren't GOP/FOX astroturfing, and they're "grassroots" non-partisan protests against big govt spending, then why does this guy get shouted down and boo'd for saying that Bush took Clinton's surplus and squandered it? That's the truth, by the way. I guess at these grassroots anti-govt spending "tea party's", don't point out any Republicans that wasted taxpayer money.
How far off the constitution have we gotten, under the Bush administration's "war on terror"? The point was never whether you believe the govt's 9/11 story/farce, the point is: do you trash the constitution for protection from "the terrorists"? (that they fabricated?) It is most important to abide by the constitution and laws when times are the worst, not when things are going well, otherwise, what good is the contitution and laws? How come an American politician, from either party, was never killed by a "terrorist", if they're everywhere like they're telling us? Check out this video:
(h/t Doug)
* They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
+ Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
+ They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.
He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.
People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.
If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both.
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.
Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither.
Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.
The Bush administration took us down the path of Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union: torture people! Tea-Baggers and religious false prophets (who are worried about contraception) remain silent about this and Big Govt spying on American's phone calls. I'm not the least bit religious, and I have higher standards, I don't go for the 2nd grader defense of "He hit me first!". This is not what America stands for. It's what Bush, Cheney, the Bush administration, and Republicans stand for. And now Obama stands for by not prosecuting them. Un-American torturers. the "BUSH SIX" TORTURE TEAM re-wrote the torture laws because they knew they would be prosecuted! We turned into a 3rd world banana republic under the Bush administration. Everyone who remains silent and/or ignores this, is Un-American. This isn't the America I grew up in, torturing people. It's the America we have now, after 8 years of Bush/Cheney. Morally corrupt. I'm calling out everyone who remains silent on this as being morally corrupt. And that means YOU! The "good Germans".
Read the torture memos, and see the SICK minds that were running this country under the Bush administration. One of these guys is now a federal judge! Maybe one of your relatives or friends will stand trial under this sicko!
Just like the Nazi's: "We were only following orders" - that didn't fly at the Nuremberg trials. See my post from yesterday, maybe they got something on Obama with all these wiretaps:
Hitler/Stalin's Un-American FOX "news" defends the Bush administration's use of TORTURE!!! Apparently, the entire civilized world is against TORTURE...except for FOX "news", the Bush administration, and the Republicans. FOX makes the straw man argument, to defend "their guys", that torturing prisoners is the reason why we haven't been attacked since 9/11. First of all, as you know, I don't go for this argument anyway because I don't believe the govt's story on 9/11. Second, I believe we're not torturing the real culprits. Third, I think there could be another false flag staged, so they can say: "See? We need to torture people!" Let's really make sure, and re-investigate 9/11, how about it, FOX?
If you haven't seen them yet, here's the two best "must see" movies about U.S. torture under the Bush administration:
James Bamford: Israeli Wiretappers tapping Americans phones. Along with the mass surveillance being conducted on all U.S. users of AT&T and Verizon by Narus and Verint, (according to Bamford), two other Israeli-owned companies, Amdocs and NICE Systems, have their fingers in the wiretapping pie as well. If Ketcham and Bamford are correct, (so far, no lawsuits), then the National "Security" Agency has thrown the "National Security" of the United States under the bus.
FOX scrubbed their 4-part series about Israeli spies and their 9/11 connection, with the Orwellian replacement: "This story no longer exists"
The Bush administration's spying on Americans began before 9/11. Put together all the pieces of the puzzle, domestic spying is just one part of it. Below: putting it all together! Folks! Remember: the anthrax letters were mailed to media heads like Peter Jennings and two anti-war Democrats and blamed on Arabs! Was the domestic spying targeting journalists and the anthrax mailings to the heads of media to "shut up" the media? The anthrax letters said things like "Death To Israel" and "Allah Is Great", and then it turned out the anthrax letters (we're told) were sent by someone in our own government! Obviously, the writings on the anthrax letters were meant to blame Arabs! Who keeps blaming Arabs for everything, even though so much evidence points towards Israelis? Who can that be?
IF YOU BUY THE OFFICIAL STORY ON 9-11... ...the Next Thing you will be Buying will Likely be the Brooklyn Bridge.
(The below article is several years old, and some of the referenced links aren't there anymore, but he hardcopied them at the bottom, maybe anticipating that. Interestingly, this was written in 2003 and they said the anthrax letters were a frame-up of the Arabs, and several years after this was written, the FBI said someone from our own govt did the anthrax letters and committed suicide - so NOT Arabs! So, this guy was right years before the anthrax story came out!)
The "Five Dancing Israelis" said on Israeli TV: "Our purpose was to document the event". This means they knew about 9/11 ahead of time! Watch the "Five Dancing Israelis" on an Israeli talk show say it themselves below:
In the unfolding saga of stock-option fraud, few characters are more curious than an Israeli entrepreneur named Jacob “Kobi” Alexander.
The 54-year-old entrepreneur, who nurtured Comverse Technology from a penny-stock, high-tech wannabe to a leading producer of voice-mail software with 5,000 employees, fled the United States this month rather than face charges of scheming to manipulate stock options.
Alexander was born in Israel, the son of Zvi Alexander, who is considered the founder of that nation’s meager oil industry. The younger Alexander served in the Israeli military and intelligence services and has spent much of his adult life going back and forth between Israel and the United States.
By 1984, Alexander was back in the United States, helping launch Comverse on New York’s Long Island. The start-up took off in the 1990s, eventually selling its high-tech wares in more than 120 countries and seizing on niche opportunities, such as digital eavesdropping for law enforcement.
Indira Singh, an “IT consultant” who previously worked on a Defense Advanced Research Project, and who was employed by J.P. Morgan on 9/11, in risk management, pointed to MITRE’s role at the FAA during the 9/11 Citizens’ Commission hearings in New York last September.
“Ptech was with MITRE Corporation in the basement of the FAA for two years prior to 9/11,” Singh said. “Their specific job is to look at interoperability issues the FAA had with NORAD and the Air Force in the case of an emergency. If anyone was in a position to know that the FAA – that there was a window of opportunity or to insert software or to change anything – it would have been Ptech along with MITRE.”
The Mossad-run Guardium company is linked with Ptech through Goff Communications, the Holliston, Mass.-based public relations firm previously run by Michael S. Goff and his wife Marcia, which represents Guardium.
Amit Yoran was the Israeli “Cyber Security Czar” appointed by President George W. Bush in 2003. Yoran has held various positions since the 1990s in which he oversaw computer security for the Dept. of Defense computers.
“Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.”
- Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.
Bishop Martino intensifies message to Sen. Casey
