The Last War Crime

Ask Viacom why they won't take advertising from the filmmakers and Google why they pulled the waterboarding scene from Youtube:

http://www.lastwarcrime.com/

 

Wikileaks releases what could be evidence of the murder of Reuters journalists as well as civilians in Iraq

WWW--This is a very big deal and gives some more context to possible harassment of Wikileaks by American military and/or intelligence personnel as well as of anyone trying to report the reality on the ground in American occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.

I don't even know how to put this into words, but I do recall this incident from July 12th, 2007 where Iraqi Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh were killed by "friendly fire"...only now it appears that the fire was quite intentional and anything-but-friendly. There also seems to be an element of bloodlust and cowardice on the part of the crew of the Apaches. Did they know the two were journalists? This is unclear, but there is mention in the communications transcript from the copters that seems to connotate that they knew they were "civilians."Is this yet another "isolated" event?

Recall that in early April 2003, three Al-Jazeera journalists were killed by "friendly fire," and also calls to mind the "accidental" shooting of hostage and Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena who was fired on by American troops just outside of the Baghdad International Airport and nearly killed. One of her Italian intelligence agent rescuers--Nicola Calipari--died of his wounds. Sgrena worked for the Italian Communist paper, Il Manifesto. One might think you're life might be in danger as a correspondent if you're not towing the line for the Pentagon.

A separate site from the main Wikileaks home has been created for the release, possibly for security measures to prevent its hacking:

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded. (www.collateralmurder.com/index)

The military has been mostly silent on how the event occurred and how the slain died, but ruled in an inquiry that the rules of engagement at that time were observed. The whole story underscores the weakness of the FOIA as well, but whatever works, it's out now. Reuters demanded an inquiry and action in the aftermath in 2007, just as they've had to in obtaining the release of other Iraqi Reuters employees/journalists, from Iraqi prisons, and got very little from the Pentagon--at least not copies. They were shown the materials off-the-record. Criminals don't tend to indict themselves, especially when they're the ones in power.

There's no indication from any source of any combat or exchanges of fire immediately before the Apache helicopter gunner opened-fire on civilians and the two journalists, killing as many as eleven. One individual was viewed brandishing an RPG (soviet-designed rocket propelled grenade), but was seen after the event began and shots had already been fired. Two U.S. Army Apache helicopters were involved the 2007 incident with some ground forces nearby. Footage from one helicopter has been leaked to Wikileaks by a military whistleblower(s) and the activist site itself claims to have conducted interviews with other journalists, military personnel and other witnesses at the scene, including consulting with Reuters over the basic facts and timeline.

...WikiLeaks obtained this video as well as supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers. WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives. We have analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material. We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident.

WikiLeaks wants to ensure that all the leaked information it receives gets the attention it deserves. In this particular case, some of the people killed were journalists that were simply doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on war. Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work. (ibid)

Wikileaks makes a fine point that occurred to me almost immediately: if we're seeing what we think we're seeing (and hearing), the event could even be part of a pattern of violence, harassment, and intimidation against members of the press in American war zones, especially considering that Reuters has had other incidents of harassment directed against their personnel in Iraq. A few of these journalists were arrested under flimsy pretenses and ferried off to the palatial Abu-Ghraib prison where God knows how they were treated. Now is a time of scoundrels. It hasn't ended with the national elections of 2008.

Wikileaks appears to have done their homework and have even included photographs, a timeline, documents, and even the transcript of the communications between the helicopters, also very telling when taken with the rules of engagement at the time and the 38 minute video. This exchange is most galling and not honorable behavior for soldiers of any army, of any nation:

...17:46 Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.

17:48 That's right. ...

18:29 I think they just drove over a body.

18:31 Hey hey!

18:32 Yeah!

18:37 Maybe it was just a visual illusion, but it looked like it.

18:41 Well, they're dead, so. ...

(http://www.collateralmurder.com/en/transcript.html)

After these comments, there were more shots fired by the crew of the main Apache helicopter and a missile was fired into a building filled with armed civilians. There's no indication that any shots had been fired at the military personnel at any point in the roughly 38 minute event. It should be noted that many Iraqis carry AK-47s into dangerous areas, which one can assume, is when occupying troops and militias are present. Johnny got his gun, was instilled with fear and trained to kill, and imbued with a hair-trigger mentality. This isn't how soldiers are supposed to behave, not at all. Yet, the Pentagon says that this was part of the rules of engagement at the time. Are they sure they want to stand by that one?

Contrary to popular belief, life isn't a videogame.

"BREAKING NEWS-LEAKED VIDEO FOOTAGE EXPOSES PENTAGON MURDER COVER-UP," The Elf Wax Times, 04.05.2010: http://www.elfwax.com/news/breaking-news-video-footage-to-expose-pentagon-murder-cover-up/

Wikileak's page on the 2007 slaughter: http://collateralmurder.com/en/download.html

Tyler Bass's blog: http://spectaclemonopolized.blogspot.com/

NYTimes article on original Baghdad attack in July 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html

"The war on Wikileaks and why it matters," Salon.com, 03.27.2010: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/27/wikileaks?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+salon%252Fgreenwald+%2528Glenn+Greenwald%2529

http://www.collateralmurder.com/en/transcript.html

"U.S. Bombing Raid Kills Three Journalists in Bagdad," Fox News.com, 04.08.2003: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,83503,00.html

The Lay of the Land: The human face of the Afghani front

20100313 (Time Now)

Kandahar (second largest city after kabul): multiple EXP's & SAF (Taliban attack in progress)

PHASE I MARJAH (spring 2010)(operation moshtarak)

PHASE II KANDAHAR (summer 2010)

PHASE III HIMALAYAS (near Pakistan/China borders with Afghanistan)

MARCH 01-13 (((12 x U.S. KIA)))

3-11-2010	Gamble, Garrett W.	Lance Corporal	20	2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force	U.S. Marine	Texas	Sugarland	Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack	Helmand	Afghanistan
3-09-2010	Kropat, Jason M.	Private 1st Class	25	1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)	U.S. Army	New York	White Lake	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire, RPG	Khowst	Afghanistan
3-09-2010	Richardson, Jonathan J.	Sergeant	24	1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)	U.S. Army	Arkansas	Bald Knob	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire, RPG	Khowst	Afghanistan
3-07-2010	Cook, Nicholas S.	Private	19	2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team	U.S. Army	Montana	Hungry Horse	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire	Kunar	Afghanistan
3-05-2010	Dikcis, Alan N.	Specialist	21	630th Engineer Company (Clearance), 7th Engineer Battalion (Combat Effects), 20th Engineer Brigade (Combat) (Airborne)	U.S. Army	New York	Niagara Falls	Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack	Kandahar	Afghanistan
3-04-2010	Paci, Anthony A.	Specialist	30	1st Battalion, 17th Infantry, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division	U.S. Army	Maryland	Rockville	Non-hostile - vehicle accident (rollover)	Gereshk	Afghanistan
3-04-2010	Olsen, Nigel K.	Lance Corporal	21	4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve	U.S. Marine	Nevada	Orem	Hostile - hostile fire	Helmand	Afghanistan
3-01-2010	Owens, Vincent L.C.	Sergent	21	3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)	U.S. Army	Arkansas	Fort Smith	Hostile - hostile fire	Yosuf Khel (died at FOB Sharana)	Afghanistan
3-01-2010	Aragon, Carlos A.	Lance Corporal	19	4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve	U.S. Marine Reserve	Utah	Orem	Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack	Helmand	Afghanistan
3-01-2010	Gelig, Ian T.D.	Specialist	25	782nd Brigade Support Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division	U.S. Army	California	Stevenson Ranch	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire	Kandahar	Afghanistan
3-01-2010	Huston, Matthew D.	Specialist	24	1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division	U.S. Army	Georgia	Athens	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire, RPG	Bala Murghab	Afghanistan
3-01-2010	Crumpler, Josiah D.	Specialist	27	1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division	U.S. Army	North Carolina	Hillsborough	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire, RPG	Bala Murghab	Afghanistan

The time has come for a national strike and groundswell, the time is now...

For those of us on the progressive left (meaning the majority), the time has come to make ourselves heard. The majority of Americans want socialized medicine, a special commission to look into 9/11, a special prosecutor to investigate serious crimes committed by the Bush II administration, relief aid for the growing-ranks of the unemployed, deep and meaningful reforms in the financial sector and how it does business, and general restoration of New Deal controls and protections that have served the public well for over 75 years, like the Glass-Stegall Act. Who got rid of Glass-Stegall, a barrier that kept banks from running amuck? A Republican controlled Congress, blue dog Democrats, and the Clinton administration, that's who. It gave us much of the economic crisis we're inhabiting right now. The time has come to rollback these policies, the time is now to mobilize.

If those on the right really love their country as much as they say they do and wish to join us in a common cause, they need to drop their bizarre obsessions about race, immigration, and other ideological fetishes that are going nowhere fast and will never fix the problems we're facing right now. But don't think that disruption's going to be tolerated. Don't think that you're going to hijack anything, because we're wise to you and your games and your agenda. We can spot you in a moment. You won't be accepted and will be driven out, and quick. The time has come for all of us to realize that the common enemy is concentrated wealth and the abuse of it. The time has come for Americans to quit shopping at Wal-Mart (fine, get the cheap drugs there if you have to). The time has come for the return of the boycott, the general strike, and the shutting down of everything for a few days to send a political message to unaccountable power. We are that accounting, we are the government, and we are the answer to our nation's problems. Politicians cannot and will not do this, at least not without the application of incredible pressure to do so. The time has come, the time is now, and there are no more valid excuses.

Call in sick. Afraid of losing your job? When did that become a new thing? Don't buy anything for a week except the barest-of-necessities. For the love of God, quit using credit cards all the time, use cash. Don't even use checks. Make the banks scream for mercy. Keep writing, phoning, faxing, and haranguing your representatives. Educate yourself on their pasts. Give them hell, give them an earful like they've never had it before. But don't break the law and keep it as civil as possible and adhere to non-violent civil disobedience when the time comes, it's key.

The best part? For many of us, we won't have to do anything--that's actually the point: to stop engaging in negative behaviors that keep empowering the rich through what we eat, what and how we often we drive, work, and what our daily routine is comprised of. Grow a garden. Drive less, a lot less. Quit watching TV so much. Get your news from the Internet and read multiple-sources, including the foreign press. We have everything to gain by asserting ourselves in a civil manner and showing power that we're not kidding around at all.

On Colin Powell's "Terror-Industrial complex" video

Washington D.C.--So what? He covered his ass just like Eisenhower did with his "military-industrial" speech on his last day in office as president. Yet, both men can be credited as key in their creation. Now, why in the name of logic and reason would you believe them or value what they had to say when they not only did nothing to stop it, but actually did everything to encourage its creation to enrich themselves and their careers? That's correct, logic and the historical record dictate that you wouldn't, but mythologies are very hard to counter once they've taken root.

It's my guess that Powell and his associates and allies are trying very desperately to recast his role in the historical landscape that was his time as Secretary of State under George W. Bush. The fact is that he lied to the public during that time in a manner that got us into an unnecessary war that came directly out of his and the administration's grandstanding and exploitation of the terror attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Powell wasn't merely an enabler of the illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan, he expedited it with gusto and he is a co-conspirator. In fact, General Powell is a war criminal not only from these wars, but from the Gulf War (Bush War I) and Vietnam when he was part of the cover-up of the My Lai massacre in 1969. People from that time refer to Powell as a "team player." Well right, that's the kind of stupid asshole you bring on board, a moron who will follow any order so long as it's coming from a superior. The legality of those orders rarely ever crosses their minds, and when it does, it gets a backseat in the final judgment, theirs.

Yet, somehow, he's a "hero," which is an insult to the mentally handicapped everywhere. He's not a hero, he's a war criminal just like the Einsatzgruppen commanders who slaughtered entire villages of Slavs on the Eastern Front. Nobody made them do these things just as nobody forced Powell into doing it. They did it willingly to further themselves and their position in the hierarchy. To allow someone like Powell to even walk around free is an insult to the rules of war and the rule of law everywhere, and he's not alone in the American pantheon of the damned, not even remotely. Eisenhower was cut of the same cloth--burlap, the preferred material officers are made of, because it gives easy. Officers are political operatives expediting political orders, period. A 1932 example offers some insight into what kind of officers Powell and Eisenhower were and how they rose through the ranks.

In the last full year of the Republican Hoover administration, economic conditions had gotten so bad that WWI veterans were flooding the nation's capital demanding their military pensions ("bonuses" originally slated to be issued in 1945, though you could borrow against them) early. Collapse was in the air. By June, the Bonus March Force had come and many veterans were camping out on Capitol Hill in semi-permament "Hoovervilles," bitterly named for the president who did virtually nothing to alleviate the desperate conditions of the Great Depression. Rather than do that, Hoover allowed the situation to grow worse as a lack of proper hygienic facilities and public services in the makeshift camps--continued neglect--contributed to incidents of violence and an atmosphere of fear and dread. Fear mounted in governing circles since it was known that President Hoover had no intentions of giving the veterans any of their very minimal demands.

On July 28, 1932, when Treasury Dept. agents and Capitol police were unable to evict the marchers peacably, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur mobilized 600 regular troops under the command of Majs. George S. Patton, Jr. and Dwight D. Eisenhower and violently routed the Bonus Marchers with bayonets, bricks, tear-gas, truncheons, and fists. MacArthur was on the scene and actually disobeyed Hoover's orders to go about it as peacably as possible and not to push too hard. Hoover who instructed MacArthur that his men go in unarmed, but no shots were fired by federal troops. Three veterans died, many more were wounded, and an infant died in the scuffle. It all-but handed FDR the election in November of that year, something the Democratic candidate was heard to affirm in his own estimation of the mishap. Others weren't so pleased either.

Patton later went on to describe it all as "discgrace to the service," but it's not entirely clear how Eisenhower felt and seems to have simply followed orders and kept his mouth shut as MacArthur's assistant. How familiar, then, this all is with Powell who helped keep a lid on My Lai and numerous other war crimes we don't even know about. He kept his mouth shut as Eisenhower most certainly did on many occasions to advance upward in the ranks. For what? Money and the perks, of course, but what more was going to await him than just more illegal and unethical orders, more crimes to push events towards war? I won't even bore you with his actions surrounding Iran-Contra. Yes, he was even part of the arms-for-hostages deal, so he'd know about how not to deal with terrorists, a practice he adhered to until he finally, belatedly, left life as a public servant, the one constructive act of his time working for the public.

Now, he and others have released this dumb video of him warning about a "terrorist-industrial complex" because he's realized too late that he's been nothing but a stooge for bad people in high places. The timing is curious, so you have to wonder if charges are coming, possibly from Spanish courts. What an idiot to think that he can do anything to change how he's going to be portrayed in the history books. By even the most casual observation, he's viewed as the man who got us into Iraq with his "16 words" before the U.N. Security Council that were a panoply of lies. Were it not for Powell's 16 words in the early months of 2003, we wouldn't be in Iraq now, there would never have been the all the billions-upon-billions of military defense contracts going to the highest-bidders, meaning friends of the president and vice president.

You don't rise to the top in the military by bucking orders. Eventually, they shut you down, just as they did with Patton and MacArthur, albeit for the right reasons (one of the men Patton slapped is buried here in Michiana and my grandfather served under him). No, those who are rewarded make it to the "top," only to realize that it's really the bottom, and then it's too late. I have very little doubt that this stupid video surfacing is a last-ditch effort on the part of Powell and his associates and allies to repair the damage and to paper over the very dishonorable and criminal acts that General Powell has been party to, his involvement being either before or after the fact. It's not going work.

The other story--the truth--escaped out of the bottle long ago. No human being, no tyrant, has ever been able to escape the judgment of history. Colin Powell is no exception to this rule and should serve as a warning to those willing to follow illegal orders out of convenience and the yearnings of crass careerism that there really is no escape; not from the judgment of history, or that "sun that never sets," one's own mind, that harshest of judges. What most of these men did wasn't serving their country, it was serving criminals and themselves to the detriment of the nation. Shame. Dishonor.

Portions of suppressed detainee photos may have been online since February 15, 2006

Sydney, Australia--A section of the detainee abuse photos that President Obama is fighting the release of in federal court might have been posted as early as February 15th, 2006 on the Sydney Morning Herald's site by-way of an anonymous whistle-blower of unknown nationality. Some of these photos are as bad if not worse than the ones previously released in 2004 to a horrified world.

The president has stated that keeping the photographs from disclosure is to protect American troops and to limit any more damage to the reputation of the United States throughout the world, especially in Muslim nations. The security situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan have also been invoked.

All the president is pointing-out is that torture doesn't work and that he would prefer we don't know about...just like the last president. They honeymoon's over, believe it. It's even money that Rahm Emanuel weighed-in on this one in a very big way, but that's Dutch Schultz for ya'.

Below are a few photos I captured from the Australian site, just in case they're "yanked" (pun intended).

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/photos-us-doesnt-want-seen/2006/02/14/1139890737099.html

More change today: The Obama administration releases more Bush II torture memos

ACLU.org--Once again, I have to say that I'm impressed by this release of the internal record and that it's a hard day for cynics and the terminally jaded (if they can even fathom the meaning of it intellectually). This couldn't be kept in the dark any longer, and the new administration's actions today--while not going nearly as far as most of us would like--is a good step forward towards accountability for the architects of post-9/11 terror policy.

Looking at some of these memos, it's clear that the Bush II administration was in panic mode after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Torture? That's for the desperate.

But this release is not enough, and significantly more declassification is going to have to occur in the near future. The ACLU requested these documents over a year ago, and they only came to the rest of us through court filings:

In response to litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Justice Department today released four secret memos used by the Bush administration to justify torture. The memos, produced by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), provided the legal framework for the CIA's use of waterboarding and other illegal interrogation methods that violate domestic and international law.

The ACLU has called for the Justice Department to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate torture under the Bush administration.

"We have to look back before we can move forward as a nation. When crimes have been committed, the American legal system demands accountability. President Obama's assertion that there should not be prosecutions of government officials who may have committed crimes before a thorough investigation has been carried out is simply untenable. Enforcing the nation's laws should not be a political decision. These memos provide yet more incontrovertible evidence that Bush administration officials at the highest level of government authorized and gave legal blessings to acts of torture that violate domestic and international law," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. ("Justice Department Releases Bush Administration Torture Memos," ACLU, 04.16.2009)

The stakes in maintaining our liberties couldn't be higher regarding state secrets. Today, the Obama administration made a much bigger step forward than most administrations ever would --even under the current circumstances--but many more will have to come. However, there is now more than enough material to justify substantial investigations into crimes committed under the color of authority under the Bush II administration.

The ACLU's site has the most complete PDF collection of the four key torture memos, authored by the Justice Department's OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) under the direction of the White House to give illegal acts of torture a sheen of legality:

A 18-page memo, dated August 1, 2002, from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF]

A 46-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF]

A 20-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF]

A 40-page memo, dated May 30, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF] ("Abuse of Power: The Bush Administration's Secret Legal Memos," ACLU, 04.16.2009)

The New York Times is also offering an incomplete selection of the memos on its site. Accountability is coming.

"Abuse of Power: The Bush Administration's Secret Legal Memos," ACLU, 04.16.2009: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/olc_memos.html

The New GOP!

Now self-destructing faster than ever! Whoo-hah! Got you all in-check!

On the recent revelations surrounding profound torture and mistreatment at Guantanamo and around the globe by American authorities

The recent release of documents authorizing torture at Guantanamo and in prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other parts of the globe by American operatives has proven that torture was authorized by the hierarchy of the former Bush II administration. It's now irrefutable and part of the historical record.

This week, we're getting some more corroboration in the form of an oral testimony that was posted by CSHRA (The Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas) on their website of Spc. (Specialist) Brandon Neely, a former U.S. Army MP who served at the detention facility in its first months. Neely's story account is a short one, but it indicates a compartmentalized bevy of horror that would shock and stagger the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe.

Neely's story corroborates previously released documents that state medical doctors, psychiatrists, and nurses were utilized in torture sessions on Guantanamo inmates on numerous occasions, and at various locations around the world. The use of physicians by the CIA for these purposes is not unknown, however, and is nothing new. But the solid proof of authorization by the executive branch is, and it's going to open a Pandora's Box that could hamper such methods. The Obama administration's recent comments on the issue aren't reassuring.

It should be a foregone conclusion in our culture that these methods are a direct threat to the liberties and human rights of almost everyone, especially our children. Children? Yes, children.

While it's doubtful that many of these physicians are working in the outlying society (we can presume that many are military physicians and medics), they are committing not only grievous actions that deprive these internees of their basic human rights, they are violating their oaths as practitioners. Where is the AMA and the rest of the medical and mental health profession over this? The suicides of three Guantanamo detainees in 2006 prompted action on their part.

On July 3rd, 2006, along with the American Psychiactric Association (APA), the AMA ruled that physicians couldn't participate in interrogations in any way of war on terror detainees.

The CEJA opinion also says physicians have a duty to disclose how much access interrogators have to prisoners' medical information and to report any coercive interrogations to authorities. If action isn't taken after they raise awareness, the opinion says, doctors are ethically obligated to report the offenses to independent authorities empowered to investigate.

David Fassler, MD, an American Academy of Adolescent and Child Psychiatry delegate who proposed a resolution on interrogation at the 2005 Interim Meeting, applauded the CEJA report. "Physicians should not design, participate in or monitor the interrogation of prisoners or detainees," he said. "Such activities are incompatible with our primary obligation to do no harm. ... I'm glad to see that organized medicine will now be able to speak with one voice on this issue." ("AMA adopts policy on interrogations," AMNews, 07.03.2006)

But the Pentagon's rules around that time allowed for psychiatrists to intervene in some cases "to monitor questioning," and presumably still do. What if laws are broken? Who reports them then? The key appears keeping certain personnel under military authority and control, ignoring civilian professional rulings when it comes to psychiatrists. While I don't entirely agree with journalist Larisa Alexandrovna's recent take (see link at the bottom) that these people could be treating some of our loved ones now (we don't really know, as she points-out, but we definitely should know, and soon), some of them will be.

The CEJA's recommendations were picked-up, and follow that physicians:

• "Must neither conduct nor directly participate in an interrogation;"
• "Must not monitor interrogations with the intention of intervening in the process, because this constitutes direct participation in an interrogation;"
• And when physicians "have reason to believe that interrogations are coercive, they must report their observations to appropriate authorities. If authorities are aware of coercive interrogations but have not intervened, physicians are ethically obligated to report the offenses to independent authorities that have the power to investigate or adjudicate such allegations." ("AMA: Prisoner Interrogation Unethical for Physicians, Declares AMA Panel," Medpage Today, 06.12.2006)
  

I agree with Ms. Alexandrovna and others who contend that the physicians who violated their professional oaths should be stripped of their licensing--all of them, even military ones--for their participation in these activities that they agreed to engage in at Guantanamo and other locations. After that, they should be investigated for the commission of war crimes, human rights violations, and the violation of international and American law.

Spc. Neely's account offers some insights, and others who worked in these facilities are beginning to come forward. Additional details are emerging from documents that go as far as detainees being beaten to death, their genitals mutilated with a scalpel, and even the sexual abuse and the detention of the elderly and children, and there are more revelations to come. Authorizing torture techniques that result in death, even one, is a criminal act and a war crime.

No accountability means that these people--these psychopaths who broke their professional ethics and got involved in torturing human beings--are murders among us. Best to start prosecuting from the top, down. Ask yourself why the mainstream media isn't covering this. While you're at it, why not ask them directly some time? At the moment, the new administration isn't offering much change in this direction at all, but redress could be coming from certain quarters of Congress, two bills calling for looser state secrets rules have been proposed. The new president has a strange way of interpreting the constitution, being a scholar of it.

"AMA adopts policy on interrogations," AMNews, 07.03.2006: http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AMA/3530

"AMA: Prisoner Interrogation Unethical for Physicians, Declares AMA Panel," Medpage Today, 06.12.2006: http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AMA/3530

2002 Bush II administration memos authorizing torture (available since 2004): http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/

"Unspeakable Abuse at Gitmo--We Need the Names of These Medical Personnel," Huffington Post, 02.16.2009: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/we-need-the-names-of-thes_b_167247.html

"Newly Unredacted Torture Documents Reveal Deaths, Abuse," Blog.ACLU, 02.11.2009: http://blog.aclu.org/2009/02/11/newly-unredacted-torture-documents-reveal-deaths-abuse/

The ACLU's Page on National Security and Torture (lots of links): http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/index.html

"Two Bills in One Day-State Secrets Fix on the Horizon," Blog.ACLU, 02.13.2009: http://blog.aclu.org/2009/02/13/two-bills-in-one-day-state-secrets-fix-on-the-horizon/

Five days left in the eight year illegal occupation of the White House

Washington D.C.--And so, it's ending, and not with a whimper (except from Georgie boy). President-elect Barack Obama is going to do his darndest not to prosecute these bastards, trying to make us think that Congress can't do likewise. It's all just bait-and-switch, the oldest game there is aside from the shell game.

Demand, demand, demand the appointment of a Special Prosecutor armed with subpoena power and the immense resources that it's going to take to unravel the mess left by yet another criminally-inept Republican presidential administration and era.

This will happen again otherwise--if we're even able to emerge from this man-made economic crisis intact. Indeed, we all own our little part of this mess, but George W. Bush and his administration and a Republican Congress created the lion's share of the corporate crime wave we've been living under since 2000. Truth be known, it's been much longer in duration, stretching-back decades. That's how big this is, it's literally the end of an era and possibly of an order.

My hunch is that Obama and the rest of them in Washington are going to try to do things as they've always done, attempting to save a rotten barrel. When that doesn't work, they're going to keep fighting the reality that market capitalism is really and truly over, waste valuable time they could be finding constructive solutions, and drive us further down into a mess that's going to dwarf the Great Depression. Congress will also lend-a-hand in creating this catastrophe.

But there's a alternative: mount a massive and aggressive prosecution on the soon-to-be former Bush II administration's most obvious offenders. There must also be the formation of prosecution units to take-on Wall Street offenders, and there must be prosecutions, there must be accountability. No accountability means no renewal of faith in the financial and political system, and the evidence criminality will be found where it ran riot in government under the Republicans and in the private sector.

But we have to quit fooling ourselves. It's also going to be found in the ranks of Congress itself, the reason why there's no will to prosecute the outgoing Bush II administration. They were complicit with them, and they compromised themselves.

If President-elect Obama is the political hack that I suspect he is, he's in as much trouble as Alberto Gonzales already, which is saying a lot considering the fact that no law firm in North America will hire the disgraced former Attorney General. We don't need any repeats from the last eight years, America cannot survive it and remain America. Hope is great, but false hope is just cynicism by another name.

George W. Bush's final press conference as president

Washington D.C.--What did you expect? It was always going to be pathetic. George W. Bush has always been the kind of personality who wanted to be liked. Based on this fact, it was strange to put someone in there to use-up all of his political capital and the public's goodwill for the purposes of making the few richer, and he's feeling the heat like never before.

He should be after being the one who did as much deregulation of the economy as he humanly (and illegally) could. George W. Bush has presided over what can only be called the largest corporate crime wave in American history, the list is almost endless. What's more, it probably has no other human precedent just based on its own sheer scale. But he had help, and it was bipartisan: Congress.

That he's "feeling the love" these days is good, and President-elect Obama is also being confronted to create a special prosecution to investigate the crimes of the Bush II administration from many quarters that cross the artificial boundaries between "left" and "right." Welcome to the electronic frontier, Mr. President-elect, we're watching. The honeymoon has already ended, and it's time to deliver, and fast. Yes, the economy needs top priority, but we're going to have to be insistent on a special prosecutor to investigate the crimes of the Bush II administration. That's why he was throwing his little fit today--he's got that hunted look in his eyes again, and it's something to treasure for the rest of our lives.

The majority of Americans want justice and accountability from this outgoing administration and aren't going to accept Obama's mealy-mouthisms of "putting the past behind us."

As the president blurted today: "Pathetic." Yes, that sums-up his tragic time holding office in the White House. It also sums-up the GOP and those loyal to her. Fun's over GOP, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. You and your cronies had a weird sense of victimhood, because it was fictional and based on your queer sense of entitlement to do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted to. Game over.

If the Republican Party doesn't change with the tenor of this new era, they're done for. I have no problem with this, but then it's going to be time to dismantle the Democratic Party.

To all members of the Bush II administration, both former and present: We'll be watching you and pursuing you in the world's courts--all the co-conspirators under George W. Bush's watch--for the rest of your natural lives if necessary. Think about that the next time you purchase an airline ticket to another country, or when you enter specific counties, New England towns, and a growing number of cities within the territorial United States.

There are already warrants for your arrests patiently waiting to be served in many of these places. Now, I understand that your former-and-disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cannot find a job with any law firm. Welcome to reality, because when large law firms do this, it's because they know the long arm of the law is coming, soon. Time to feel the love. What a terrible president, the worst that I'll probably ever live to see, and I can remember Nixon. Both Republicans, both embarrassing, neither were men, but stupid people have to vote too. Sometimes, they steal elections and manage to fight their way into office. Bye-bye, asshole!

The WWII-era mass grave in Malbork could have been a specific historical statement

Malbork, Poland--Polish workers digging in a WWII bomb crater at the base of the Teutonic Knights fortress last October have found what appears to be a mass grave containing the bodies of 1,800 ethnic Germans of the town that was once called "Marienberg" under German rule, now Malbork under the Polish. The discovery is both shocking, and raises more questions so far than it answers.

The original inhabitants of Marienberg from that era have been missing since those murky last days of WWII when Red Army troops shelled the town in their push to Berlin. After the war, the town was repopulated with Poles driven-out of areas of Poland claimed as Russian territory by the Soviet regime. Until recently, nobody has had any idea what happened to them. Millions of civilians went missing in the chaos of WWII and have never been found. The discovery was made on the site of a proposed luxury hotel where there had been some exploratory digging before construction.

It's unknown whether the construction of the proposed hotel will proceed or not, but more official excavations by Polish authorities are planned to continue until there's more certainty that these are the missing inhabitants of Marienberg from over sixty-years-ago. By all accounts, they are. Since the end of WWII, 1,840 German citizens of the town have gone missing, so the numbers are very closely matched at this writing.

There is every reason to believe that the victims were slaughtered by Red Army troops. More than a few of the bodies had been shot in the back of the head in an execution-style that echoes the victims of the 1940 Katyn forest massacre of the Polish officer corps, begging the question of whether Soviet counterintelligence (SMERSH) or the NKVD also had a hand in the killings. After April 6, 1918, the Red Army was accompanied by "political commissars," generally appointed by the Communist Party's hierarchy, separate from the military's. After 1942, political commissars were referred to as a "politruk"(политру́к).

Until 1991, every military leader in the Red Army's hierarchy had a political counterpart. Both officers would have to agree on an order or action for it to be "legally"expedited by troops on the ground. In other words, the Communist Party had to be part of the decision to execute the surviving citizens of Marienberg after the initial shelling of the town. According to Der Spiegel, one-in-ten of the bodies recovered so far had been shot in the head; all the dead were then buried naked without any belongings, not even shoes or identification papers.

There is the possibility that Stalin was indirectly or directly part of this decision--and many others of its kind--as he was intimately familiar with the political commissar structure. Stalin had been a political commissar during the Russian Civil War. The phantom of Katyn and other massacres of that era haunt the Marienberg event, the vagaries of war aside.

In the final days of the Soviet Union, President Mikhail Gorbachev revealed in 1989 that the NKVD had in fact expedited the slaughter at Katyn under Stalin's orders and that there were three killing-and-disposal sites located in the forest outside of Smolensk. Numbers of the murdered in this one instance hover at around 25,000. While the numbers slaughtered by totalitarian regimes during the 20th century were unprecedented, there is a long history of this kind of activity in the Baltic region, and there are clues in the historical record that point to the possibility that the killings in the then-Marienberg were symbolic and meant to send a message to ethnic Germans.

The location of the mass grave was certainly convenient, but it's placement before a Teutonic Knights fortress could be very telling.

700 years before the slaughter in Marienberg, the Teutonic Knights had invaded Russia at Novgorod, then were defeated by Russian Prince Alexander Nevsky and his troops at the "Battle of the Ice" ( Ледовое побоище) on April 5, 1242 at Lake Peipus. The Teutonic Knights were part of a coalition of Swedish, German Livonian and Teutonic orders, and Danish forces sent under the auspicies of the Vatican (Pope Gregory the IX) to subdue pagans and Eastern Orthodox ruling structures throughout the Baltic region in the "Northern Crusades." Outside of the expected killing incurred during warfare, liquidations occurred in the name of spreading the Catholic faith and monarchial influence, while extinguishing the pagan and Eastern Orthodox ones. The Iron Cross comes from the Teutonic Knights.

Was the Red Army contingent sending a historically-tinged message to Germans? Perhaps. German resistance in Marienberg had been especially vicious, so any vengeance message pointing-out a historical-parallel might have been accidental on the part of the Red Army contingent: Marienberg had been founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1274 when it was part of conquered pagan Prussia, just a little over thirty years after the Battle of the Ice. After its founding the town was the seat of the Teutonic Order, and it controlled access to the Baltic, levying tolls on the merchant shipping of various nationalities. Similar ambitions arose during the 20th century.

It was well known during WWII that Himmler's SS had consciously patterned themselves after the Teutonic Knights, with their own racialist and anti-communist rhetoric of "godless" Slavic enemies being barely distinguishable from their Medieval Catholic counterparts. The parallels between the SS system and the Teutonic Knights' expansionist feudalism, enslavement, their network of castles, and their own purges of civilian populations, are eerily similar.

Stalin and his NKVD (later, the KGB, now the FSB) had similar aims and utilized the same terror tactics, and on a comparable scale. Soviet troops had plenty of reasons to want payback that had nothing to do with crimes committed 700 years earlier, but it might have been a factor in their actions. Soviet archives could answer most of these questions. The Teutonic Knights still exist, with their seat in Vienna since 1809. History has a way of repeating itself, negating the necessity for reincarnation.

"Katyn Forst Massacre-Polish Deaths at Soviet Hands": http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/1791/

"Malbork Massacre: World War II Mass Grave Unearthed in Poland," Der Spiegel, 01.08.2008: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,600216,00.html

Obama: "Obviously we're going to be looking at past practices and I don't believe that anybody is above the law."

Fox News Universe--Just moments ago, Fox News reported the opposite of the above statement with the byline, "Obama: 'We're not going to prosecute Bush administration officials.' "

Whenever I want my sci-fiction and fantasy needs met, I don't go to the Sci-Fi Network™--no, no. I go to Fox News for the fantastical, the bizarre, and the outright fictional. It's true, literature has a hard time competing with the scions of the right-wing.

That they're strange is a given. That they lie is a given. But to believe one's own lies means mental illness, which has become the only thing that makes sense about them. Yet, like in all propaganda, there's that tiny kernel of truth in there. President-elect Obama's voting behavior on constitutional issues really is unimpressive. This is troubling for someone who lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago for twelve years, off-and-on, someone considered a professor of it.

Obama knows full-well that if the laws broken by the Bush II aren't investigated and prosecuted, that they stand as precedents. For those who value their personal liberties, that's alarming, to put it mildly. But, as I wrote to Rawstory's Larisa Alexandrovna, we're seeing a system in crisis rather than a mere "coup" that she and Naomi Wolf, Michael Moore, and others suggested was taking-place with the Wall Street bailout. It was a belated observation. But this is all really beside the point: Congress should be doing most of the heavy-lifting here, and cries of partisanship from the Republicans isn't going to matter in-the-face of an independent truth commission and the economic crisis they midwifed.

As they did with the Church Commission in the 1970s, the Democrats are standing down and doing very little to hold anyone accountable.

Excuses, excuses. The GOP in Congress has no other option but to cooperate in reconstructing the economy along with Democrats and Independents because their very survival depends on it. Democrats can--and will continue to--enable them and make as many excuses for inaction as they want predicated on the straw man arguments for "bipartisanship," but the reality is that Republican incumbents are already greatly disempowered and back in their minority-status where they belong for good. They are extremely vulnerable.

It's true that the Obama administration and Congress are going to have their hands full for some time, but they won't have to do the work of an independent commission--that's why you form one in the first place. With a new majority in the judicial and executive branches, excuses are going to be all congressional Democrats have when they don't act substantially to hold the Bush II administration accountable for crimes we all know were committed, there's no mystery to it. Only the scope is unknown.

The Fox story is wishful thinking in a way, because they understand that while they cannot be pushed into recognizing the public will very often, the Democrats can. They also know that the charges will stick if things go far enough, making for a one-two punch to an already embattled and criminal GOP. This is exactly what should and can happen, but the missing-ingredient--once again--is the American public, their outrage, and their thoughtful action. The factors of anger and action are growing exponentially every day as once cherished values of the marketplace are shown to be the hollow theories they always were. This is because, "It doesn't affect me, so I don't care," is no longer a reality.

Both parties embraced these notions of the marketplace and force-fed them to the public for almost an entire generation. At least two generations have been ruined by this, their minds poisoned with the drivel of the Chamber of Commerce and all the rest of the right's literary output. Systems have a way of playing-out, it's an immutable fact of human history, yet they're still going to try to save their rotten barrel, repeating the actions of all tyrants in all eras. This is the reason behind the president-elect's seeming apathy in prosecuting George W. Bush and his fellow travelers.

This peculiar apathy towards holding the Bush II administration is only going to engender a well-earned cynicism in his direction, and he's going to feel tempted to abuse these new powers of the executive when the going gets tough. If he does utilize them, he's going to be letting not just Black Americans down, but the rest of the world and himself. There will be no transcendent or transformative moment except in the negative, and history will record he was just another ass holding power in another era.

We've already had enough of that, but the choice is his and Congress's to make, a choice between honor and ignominy, of being thought of warmly by future generations, or having one's name spat-out by them as George W. Bush is going to be (we haven't had to wait on that one). What Obama and Congress don't want to admit to the rest of us is that it's implicit to uncover as many of the crimes of the Bush II administration as humanly possible to fix the mess we're in right now, but they're busy trying to save the rotten barrel that produced that mess, all the ingredients for a failure that could grow into a catastrophe.

It was never about George W. Bush. Protecting him and his co-conspirators is protecting a bad system whose time has come. Again, that missing-ingredient is the public. Get angrier, get louder, and start demanding a truth commission, but be good. Let those in power break the law, as it's their wont to do; it makes them more vulnerable than you think.

The real exchange between George Stephanopoulas and Barack Obama: http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/01/obama-leaves-do.html

The U.S.S. George H.W. Bush: Obsolete before it ever leaves port

Norfolk, Virginia--Costing over $6 billion before all the other fittings and aircraft, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush was not applauded as it was commissioned today in the presence of its namesake, his mentally retarded son and his family, President Dick Cheney, and the largest gathering of Village People fans in human history.

The gathered dignitaries were applauding themselves and the fact that they were still bilking the American public for defense contractors and corporations everywhere, their latest contribution coming in the form of a now-obsolete weapons platform, the aircraft carrier.

Why is the aircraft carrier obsolete? The U.S.S. George H.W. Bush is the last of ten in the "Nimitz" "supercarrier" class, the kind of hulking behemoth that was rendered useless the moment the Enola Gay dropped its payload on Hiroshima to keep Soviet influence off of the Japanese mainland. Subsequent weapons platforms have made the obsolescence of the aircraft carrier a strange part of the arsenals of many nations, but it's good for the gander. Like the former president it's named after, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush is part of a dying order, a hangover left to us from the WWII generation.

What's so remarkable is that the ship isn't even finished, but far be it for the Bush dynasty not to have an occasion to cry for themselves, never mind their victims. All that said, naming a boat after just one more executive war criminal and systematic human rights violator doesn't seem such a bad idea, since it's emblematic of the dead-end of a militarized society and economy. War and the unleashing of violence by the Bush dynasty have been its hallmarks, it's history, and a big part of America's history in general. Naming it after a washed-up warmonger with his draft-dodging son present in his last days as president has all the airs of reality parodying itself. How Bush of them.

When the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush is finally torpedoed, sunk by a low-yield nuclear device, or simply destroyed when it's anchored in port, nobody's going to care. When there's no more money to help the American public in an unprecedented economic crisis, it's going to be because of the frivolous spending on worthless weapons systems like this one, and the wars in the Middle East.

It would behoove the incoming president-elect to shutter these types of programs that are currently in the developmental stage, such as the longstanding "Star Wars" (aka "Missile Defense Shield Part I") space defense program that scientists have told us "does not work, and will never work" for over twenty years. The Star Wars program has cost an estimated $107 billion since the 1980s, just one more gift from Ronald Reagan and his cohorts, many of whom will be leaving and entering the White House after January 20, 2009.

The Bush II administration increased spending on the Star Wars program by 20% during its tenure. It's unlikely that a President Barack Obama will end the program--or others like it--however, because nothing succeeds like failure. But, with money running as short as it's appearing to be, he and Congress might have no other alternative. The Senate can enable all it wants, and the GOP incumbents in it can obstruct all they want, but eventually that wall called reality is going to rear its ugly head. The horse and pony show will be over. That time is coming very soon.

"Opinion: The First Cut is the Deepest," The Harvard Crimson, Dylan R. Matthews, 12.03.2008:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=525673

"5 Reasons the Aircraft Carrier is Obsolete," NewWars.blogspot, Mike Burleson, 09.04.2007: http://newwars.blogspot.com/2007/09/5-reasons-aircraft-carrier-is-obsolete.html

The Bush II administration's time is finally ending, but...

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."--Abraham Lincoln

It's incumbent on all of us to demand a Truth Commission on every single crime committed by them from the 2000 elections until their final day in office. The involvement of the RNC and her operatives should also be thoroughly investigated. This Truth Commission should be hydra-headed because of the multifarious nature of the crimes due to their breadth and scope and the fact that they were ongoing.

Every single pertinent classified record of the Bush II years must be declassified and reviewed by a special non-partisan prosecution and investigation team and all records must be preserved. If key records are found to have been negligently destroyed or eliminated with a dark purpose, all federal laws applying punitive legal sanctions should be employed swiftly and aggressively.

Any loopholes found in procedural laws regarding the executive branch should be noted, legislative proposals made to seal them by the special prosecution, and Congress should act swiftly with enforceable legislation to heal the breach. The whole point of this is not to allow the policies that expanded executive power to stand, this being a system of precedents. Each expansion of power should be challenged at every turn.

It would behoove President-elect Barack Obama to renounce these policies in no uncertain terms and it should be part of his first 100 days in office, making the top of the list of Bush II executive orders that must be rolled back with his pen. This is where the wildcard factor comes into play with the new president: for a past constitutional law scholar he's shown peculiar voting behaviors, made especially obvious in his "yea" vote for retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies in the Bush II administration's warrantless surveillance program. This is just one of many troubling signs, but it begs-the-question of whether they were votes predicated on every occasion with a hint of a political calculus. He wanted to be president, after all.

But if ever there was a clear violation of the precepts of the Constitution of the United States, it was this NSA program whose entire scope we still don't know, but assuredly violated the Fourth amendment rights of tens of thousands of American citizens. What did the Bush II administration tell Obama and others in classified briefings about the program and the necessity for it? Did they lie to him and other members of Congress to intimidate them into an agreement to extend it and grant unprecedented legislative immunity? What is President-elect Obama's current knowledge of the program now that he's been given intelligence briefings?

With just 19 days left for the sordid Bush II administration, it's time to breathe a little easier. After taking those long, deep breaths, it's going to be time to roll-up our sleeves again and to begin demanding a Truth Commission. Democracy in North America depends on it. Our rights are non-negotiable and it's time to start acting like it for a chage.

President-elect Obama has said that Abraham Lincoln is his favorite American president, and as flawed as Lincoln was, I concur with him. He's always been my second favorite after FDR. But both men did things that caused significant damage to the rights of Americans at the same time they were adding to them. FDR and Lincoln began systematic extralegal surveillance through technological means of their perceived political enemies through the us of wiretaps.

So many presidents have engaged in this kind of behavior that it's a bipartisan tradition, and one that needed to die with the twentieth century, but has its convenient place when power feels threatened. It's the gun that all would-be presidents want to keep in the vest-pocket of the executive branch, as Noam Chomsky has pointed-out.

Time for some real gun control. The late President Lincoln's name is being bandied about a lot these days without much substance to it. We should change this, we should be sincere--we should say what we mean, and mean what we say. Without that, the future looks anything but bright.

The coming meeting at the White House of all living presidents, Dick Cheney...and Donald Rumsfeld

Washington D.C.--George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney...and Donald Rumsfeld are meeting at the White House in what's a very rare occasion indeed. The meeting is being announced as having the ostensible purpose of "helping President-elect Barack Obama in his transition" in extraordinary times. OK, I can buy that--but why Rummy?

The meeting is scheduled to take place on January 7th, 2009, with just thirteen days left in second presidential term of George W. Bush.

I think there's a very strong possibility that they're going to start talking about international law and the issue of war crimes and human rights abuses emanating from the Bush II administration's conduct in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the war on terror domestically and internationally. This would mean Donald Rumsfeld's role in abuses, as well as Dick Cheney's, and perhaps the roles of others in Bush II foreign policy.

Jimmy Carter is bound to have some comments ready on human rights, which he'll be sure to whisper so that he might be overheard. Bill Clinton? He'll smile a lot and slap a lot of backs. I'm sure he'll have some constructive advice for the president-elect.

Rumsfeld's role in creating a "smooth transition" for the incoming Obama administration has a hollow-ring to it, he's a wild card here in some way. The story is being put out there that Cheney and Rumsfeld are being brought in to advise the incoming administration--Rumsfeld was President Gerald Ford's (still dead, so he won't be able to make it) chief of staff, Cheney succeeded him.

Both are well-known friends and associates.

Certainly, they're going to acquaint the incoming President-elect with "the ropes" of running an administration, although considering the disastrous ones that they all led or served under cannot be good examples. But, nothing teaches better than failure so they should have a lot to offer. Still, it nags-the-question: why Rumsfeld? War crimes issues? Executive privilege and legal issues? Who to fire at the Pentagon? Surely, these are going to be some of the topics. It's a very curious meeting. Will it be a "Mad Hatter's Tea Party"?

With Henry Kissinger having advised the current-and-outgoing president in the last few years, it just looks like another indicator of a lack of leadership in the White House, a final collapse, the crashing of a facade. We've been leaderless for a very long time.

Man throws shoe at outgoing President George W. Bush at Iraq press conference

"This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog!"
--Muntadar al-Zedei, displaying more courage than the entire American public since the 2000 inauguration.

Baghdad, Iraq--Where was the Secret Service? Guarding the real president, Barack Obama back in the states.

Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi did what no American has had the moral courage to do since the 2000 inauguration when the public threw ice-balls, snowballs, and rocks at the then president-elect: throw things at George W. Bush out of a well-earned disrespect. The Al-Baghdadia television correspondent did what most of us have wanted to all along (if not much more), this time not throwing something at a television screen but the actual source of irritation.

Disappointingly, he almost connected, and didn't, but it sums-up the president's relationship with Iraq and the world. This must be some kind of hell for a man who has always prided himself on being liked.

Unfortunately, the president's intelligence on the shoe size and its trajectory were a little off. But his experience in baseball and his indefatigable ignorance saved the day--he ducked the spitball. Hey, they dragged Al-Zeidi away by force (authorized by Congress in 2002), so he's making sure everyone knows he's still "fearless leader," our great Generallisimo, until January 20th, 2009. Still, where's the blame for the CIA in this one? That leads us to...

Statistically, a mere sect (located somewhere in West Virginia-by-way-of Idaho), a cult, still supports the war in Iraq in the United States. They're overeager believers with a pinch of fear, paranoia, and desperation. That's because something should happen to people like them.

Throwing the full weight of the law on top of Bush would be more appropriate, or simply enforcing it, but that's inconvenient and could be messy.

As Bush stated so ineloquently but accurately, "So what if the guy threw a shoe at me?" Right, so what? He knows that he's done enough to warrant far worse and that at minimum he should be before the Hague, not a press conference in Baghdad for a bye-bye visitation with his victim, Iraq. From 2003 until now we went from Iraqis throwing shoes at toppled statues of a dictator, to an Iraqi throwing his shoes at the real deal, a strange kind of progress, but progress nonetheless.

Now Al-Zeidi's action is there for the ages, making him as immortal as Gavrilo Princip taking aim at the Archduke...and missing, but trying again until he hit his target. George W. Bush is going to have to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life, and eventually, the bill will come due. His nail-biting anticipation will be punishment enough, but these precedents must be rolled back.

Future generations will look at us as we look at past ones: "How did they put up with it? Why didn't they do something more? What were they waiting for?" Exactly. What were we waiting for all this time? The cavalry, of course, and it never came because life isn't a movie.

The lowest insult throughout the Middle East is to call someone a "dog," they're fighting words, and Al-Zeidi was echoing what nearly every single Iraqi feels. They will never give up, and they will never stop fighting to remove America or any foreign power from the region.

George W. Bush's lame duck rendition of "We Are the Champions"

I've paid my dues - [REDACTED]

Time after time -

I've tried forming a correct sentence

But committed no grammatical crime [REDACTED]

And bad mistakes ["The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess."]

I've made untold thousands ["I'm sorry about the economic crisis."]

I've had my share of Iraqi sand kicked in my face, but not nearly enough since Americans have no self-respect or balls. Why wouldn't you stop me? Please? Someone? Please?

But I've come through, with the help of a complicit Congress, press and business community
(And we mean to go on and on and on and on)

We are the [REDACTED]--my friends-

At least until the collapse and general strikes bring us to the end -

We are the champions -

You aren't the champions

No time for losers, not even the GOP

'Cause we are the champions - of the world - even if we aren't anymore.

I've taken my bows, and I'll drag you all straight to hell

And my curtain calls - they never rang my bell, or dingled my tingle.

You--my rich donors [NAMES REDACTED]--brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it, I thank you all - and now, so long suckers...

But it's been no bed of roses, 'cause roses gotts them thorns, I hear tell.

And it don't give me the same kicks as that "demon booze" -

I considered this administration a challenge against all the human race -

And I ain't gonna [REDACTED FOR NATIONAL SECURITY PURPOSES] -
(And we mean to go on and on and on and on, a boot in a human face for a thousand years...)

Neocons are the champions - my friends - until the real crash

And we'll keep on lying - till the end - even under oath

We are the champions -

You aren't the champions

No time for losers

'Cause we are the champions until someone with balls comes for us with the tar and the feathers we were born to be swathed in.

Please don't hurt me.

[Keep waiting for justice, we want you to.]