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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
You're right -- I prematurely jumped to the conclusion that you were disingenuous. You caught me.
The truth is you are either disingenuous OR stupid. I guess I was giving you the benefit of the doubt on stupid with no real cause, but perhaps you really are just an ingenuous idiot. Because only an idiot or a disingenuous asshole would equate a truth commission with fascist government.
My concern with the Truth Commission or any organization sponsered by the government, is a agency that acts in secret to bring to justice those who have committed wrongs. Further when this agency only reports to one person and is created with political agenda in mind, where said crimes can take on a political and/or ideological slant, the slope becomes real slippery at that point.
I don't even have to Deconstruct the word truth and all the problems of using such a divisive and ideological word for a title of a political agency; let alone the implications of such a group digging up dirt on opposing politicians and political parties with the intent of prosecution. The Fool if you can't even at the most basic level see how that can be misused and yes turned into a Facist form of control, well then you should perhaps begin to question your own intelligence before looking at others.
He is just pandering to get some votes from suckers who want what he doesn't intend to deliver.
Talk is cheap.
That's easy: NO ONE. Already, excuses, political calulations and sheer, crawling fearfulness on the part of professional Democrats are making it obvious that nothing will be done. The media are complicit, the Congress is complicit and about half the population are supportingly complicit. Exactly nothing will be done.
That's the USA now. To the writer who told of his escape from the Nazis and his worship of freedom-bestowing, chocolate-gifting, benevolent and idealistic Americans: I'm sorry. We are no longer what we were. I'm truly, deeply sorry.
That we had such a great justice system that we didn't need to be a part of the ICC for the persecution of war crimes. Not that I'm a great fan of the ICC as it frequently will look like the victors using a "legal system" to punish the losers. On the other hand, there seems to be this collective blind spot in the American psyche that seems to think that the torture and/or murder of detainees by the American military and an unprovoked invasion of Iraq and deaths of hundreds of thousands innocent Iraqi's, the use of Argentinian/Chilean style "disappearances", and turning millions of innocent Iraqi's into refugees are an internal American issue. Most of the rest of the world thinks these things are war crimes, not a question of weather or not somebody committed perjury by being less than candid about his sexual peccidillos. Most of the world thinks that war crimes are a world issue, not an internal issue for the perpetrators.
It is likely that Bush will pardon everyone who worked for him, which is one of his powers as President. That does not preclude doing what Desmond Tutu did after the end of apartheid. The people who committed crimes in the former government were given the chance to testify as to what they had done. There may not need to be a commission independent of Congress. The new Congress can call the people who committed the crimes (Addington, Yoo, Goodling, Gonzales, even Cheney) and compel them to testify. Given that they have immunity to their crimes but not to perjury and contempt, they would have to testify or go to prison -- not for old crimes but for new ones. They can be held in contempt, I think, for a year of imprisonment. Perjury has a much longer sentence.
We need to know what these buzzards did when they were messing with the Constitution. We need to know what they did to the Justice Department, which the new President is going to have to totally clean up from top to bottom. And Justice needs to act as enforcer for the Congressional investigation. If we don't know, there is not going to be the safeguard against another fascist dictatorship should it arise.
It should by now, already, with the nomination actually not even sealed, be obvious, that the idea that Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet, and some of his employees, as well as several hundred Special Operations soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines will be prosecuted for war crimes is a wet dream. Obama has been tacking back and forth from the Left to the Center. He must move into the Center, and stay as far Left Of Center as he can in order to get the required moderate Republicans, Independents, and former Clintonites to vote for him. But there is no point in discussing such a thing.
The Republican minority, even if it in fact loses the potential House and Senate seats some are talking about ... would filibuster that notion. Joe Lieberman would object, and frankly, one or two other Democrats might, as well. That's not gonna happen. The millions of Republicans who vote would come out in DROVES like locusts on the first "off-year election," to punish any moderate Democrat who might win in a normally "red" district. They'd be crucified for supporting such a measure, and with that, the Republicans would begin moving back to a more substantial balance of power.
It should also be obvious that Obama is NOT the Ultra Liberal Elitist Leader he pretends to be.
Were he: he would have said, and voted, firmly, against the changes to FISA;
He would not suggest that if elected, he WILL, upon gaining actionable and credible intelligence, attack al-Qaeda or Taliban targets inside Pakistan, thereby risking an escalation of war with that Sunni NUCLEAR power. He would also risk having Pakistan sever all logistical outlets for American forces in Afghanistan, thereby stranding them in that nation.
He would have also said that he will aggressively push for a massive alternative energy bill which WILL mandate, at least, a $1.00 per gallon tax on gas and diesel. That money would be plowed immediately into some form of rebate for singles earning say, $30,000, and couples earning $60,000, or less. And, that one of the first things he'd recommend to Congress would be, in addition to that tax, all of which would be spent on alternative energy sources,
that the speed limits in the U.S., on highways, be PERMANENTLY changed to 55 mph east of the Mississippi; 65 west of the river.
He would also join with T. Boone Pickens, and a consortium of entrepreneurs who will form the largest building project in U.S. history to work on both wind, and solar. Natural gas and oil drilling would be put off limits for ANWAR, and only allowed with very stringent measures for off-shore in the lower 48.
By addressing, in an emergency manner, our process of coming out from under fossil fuels, he would push with the utmost speed, and priority, on any and all measures state by state, which would offer some relief based on local alternative resources. Water, gas, solar, geothermal, biodiesel, biomass, tidal, wind, passive solar gain. Coupled with a more even handed approach to Israeli and Palestinian issues, he would move quickly to get us out of the nightmarish problems of the Middle East.
He would propose a very comprehensive package of measures designed to combat terrorism WITHOUT massive and Orwellian measures to intrude into the average American's life.
He would also, and perhaps, in some ways, most significantly, suggest that he will be absolutely even handed with Israel and the Palestinians. And, that he will cut off financial aid for every new settlement or house built on former Palestinian or Arab soil since 1972, and, that he would also insist on a comprehensive governance of Jerusalem. He will also cease military aid to Israel if it continues to build new housing in Palestinian areas.
Obama is not the visionary he has suggested. He will bend too much to get those moderates, pretending that as he matures in office, and his congressional democrat support base increases, he will do these things. But not just right now.
Obama is a phony.
The ways he's been tacking back and forth in the last two months ought to tell everyone: he's too inexperienced to deal with a firm stand on lots of topics. He isn't experienced enough to do these things, much less, host war crimes trials for the Bush people. What a joke this is.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
