(10:00AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
The likely outcome of the Bush-led Republican raid on America astonishes me. As America’s national nightmare approaches the eight-year mark, the Bush administration is apparently going to escape unpunished. They are going to skate scot-free. They have brazenly committed major crimes against the people of the United States, not to mention the terrible things they have done to much of the rest of the world…and these bastards are going to skate scot-free.
They have implemented a systematic program of torture approved, directed and overseen by the White House. And it wasn’t just some schoolboy pranks and it wasn’t just the isolated waterboarding of a few really bad guys. It was systematic, it was widespread, and it was far worse than the elite media has admitted. Far worse. They have hidden the most shocking images from view. But as they say, the truth will out.
The hidden horrors of Abu Ghraib
Last Friday was the deadline set by a federal judge for the Pentagon to release a stash of photographs and videotapes showing graphic proof of the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The government ignored the deadline. Instead, in a secret brief filed with the court, it argued — as it has done ever since the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the photos last year — that it shouldn’t have to release the evidence.
Nobody knows what the government’s latest argument is, but it may have something to do with the hit President Bush’s flowery rhetoric may take if pictures of “freedom on the march” are shown to the world. As Editor & Publisher points out in a nice compilation of public comments about the secret images, we haven’t yet seen the worst of Abu Ghraib. Not by a long shot.
Donald Rumsfeld said last year that the images in question are “hard to believe,” and that what they show “can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane.” And here’s what Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, said of the pictures after they were screened for members of Congress last year: “The American public needs to understand we’re talking about rape and murder here. We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience… We’re talking about rape and murder — and some very serious charges.”
There are said to be videos of children being raped.
NOTE: I had claimed that former UN Human Rights Chief John Pace had said that the United States is torturing to death 500 to 1000 people a month in Iraq. I once had the link but lost it and have not been able to find it again, so I’m retracting the statement…which of course does not change one little bit the horror of what has taken place in all of our names.
United States forces have criminally abused and tortured large numbers of Iraqi prisoners. Hundreds of Iraqis have suffered from this inhuman treatment and some have died as a direct result. Torture has taken place in many sites across Iraq , including central prisons like Abu Ghraib, secret interrogation centers and dozens of local facilities. Torture increasingly takes place in Iraqi prisons, apparently with US awareness and complicity.
They have made the worst war crime there is our national policy. They call it pre-emptive war, the Geneva Conventions call it aggressive war…same-same if you ask me.
Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
And guess who intends to continue the Bush doctrine?
McCain Won’t Rule Out Pre-Emptive War
WESTPORT, Conn. – Republican Sen. John McCain refused Wednesday to rule out a pre-emptive war against another country, although he said one would be very unlikely.
The likely Republican presidential nominee was asked Wednesday at a town-hall style meeting if he would reject “the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war,” a reference to Bush’s decision to invade Iraq without it having attacked the United States.
“I don’t think you could make a blanket statement about pre-emptive war, because obviously, it depends on the threat that the United States of America faces,” McCain told his audience at Bridgewater Associates Inc., a global investment firm.
War crimes and torture aside, the looting, war profiteering, theft and corruption have also been absolutely unprecedented in scope. They have shamelessly stolen trillions of dollars from the American people. TRILLIONS!
INVESTIGATE & PROSECUTE THESE TREASONOUS THIEVES:
Exposing Bush Administration Corruption
People should demand accountability-who profits and who pays, and they need to address the consequences of militarism gone mad. [my emphasis – OPOL]by Stephen Lendman
(SNIP)
On May 16, 2008, Arrigo sent extensive government corruption and cover-up information to Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee-in 12 separate cases. This article covers four of them, or about one-third of what Congress got. The 12 are explosive and revealing, but just the tip of the iceberg. They contain evidence of:
– government corruption and war profiteering;
– sweetheart deals and kickbacks;
– high-level types on the take;
– trillions of missing dollars.On September 10, 2001, Rumsfeld admitted that, “according to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.” Imagine the current amount, and its corrosive effect on the nation.
As Mr. Lendman above suggests, many of these acts verge on the treasonous and many are outright treason. Take the Sibel Edmonds case as just one example.
For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets
A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.
Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.
Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.
However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”
She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.
“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.
Her story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.
Republican Denny Hestert, former Speaker of the House, is one of those who stand accused in the Sibel Edmonds case. Accused of what? Oh nothing really, just selling America’s nuclear secrets on the black market to the highest bidder.
The most disturbing part is that our whole government seems intent on covering for him. Sad. America is now owned by a bunch of cheap crooks who use the Department of Justice and the Congress to cover their crimes.
(If you want to read more about this explosive case, check out the very impressive work of my friend and fellow kossack, lukery.)
Mind you, as horrible as this is, it is only one example. There are many, many others – see Abramhoff, Libby/Plame, Halliburton or Blackwater USA.
Additionally, the Bush administration and the forces they represent have waged a brutal class war on the American people, exported millions of jobs, driven down wages, mangled our Constitutional rights, illegally spied on American citizens, needlessly killed over a million innocent people, undermined our democracy, destroyed our governmental institutions such as FEMA, alienated our allies and ruined our reputation worldwide by making us famous for illegal invasions, bombing innocent people’s babies and torturing helpless prisoners.
Taken as a whole, what they have done amounts to the worst assault on the United States of America in our 232-year history – one from which we may never recover.
And these bastards are going to skate scot-free.
Thank you Speaker Pelosi. May history remember you appropriately.
And thank you Dennis Kucinich. You’ll be remembered as a hero.
55 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
boys will be boys I guess.
And there are going to be lots of them. I don’t think we can even conjure up all of the revolting, awful things that were photographed. Why else would the government keep playing this game of noncompliance with the court order? They are trying to protect themselves even at the risk of being found in contempt from a release that will set off an worldwide avalanche of revulsion.
What surprises me to a degree is that the judge hasn’t yet brought down the hammer on the government’s non-production of the ordered photos. One can only hope that this last blown deadline will be the event that leads eventually to enforcement of the order and release of the photos.
Thanks for great diary.
the gatekeepers are part of their gang; ie, DOJ, the Congress, and the courts. and the majority of Democrats.
so who’s going to do anything? you and I, OPOL, have been agitating this for over a year now: it comes down to us. the people. citizens. either we let it pass or we rise up to stop it.
because there is no one else.
If, and as along as, Buschco skates, the country does not. Their legacy is a cancer that must be removed, not ignored. And until it is, the country will not get its health back.
But it has been right down the line.
The problem is that nothing was done to arrest the “cancer” from a way back and, of course, the tumor has grown to the size it has.
Impeachment and criminal indictments is the only means by which we can turn this country around, as far as I’m concerned.