July 10, 2008
Even Sen. Charles Schumer, whose vote last year ensured Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General, was left sputtering as Mukasey returned the favor by rebuffing Schumer’s concerns about the Bush administration’s political prosecutions.
At the end of his round of Senate Judiciary Committee questions, Schumer referred to allegations that White House political adviser Karl Rove had pressed for the selective prosecution of Alabama’s Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman, who was viewed as a threat to Republican dominance of the South.
2 comments:
You might remind the Senate Judiciary Committee and Mr Mukasey that covering-up a crime is a crime in itself, perversion of the course of justice.
Evan Whitton,
Sydney, Australia
A vote for McCain for President is a vote for Bush IF he could serve a third term. Visit a veteran's hospital to see the price that fellow Americans have paid and will pay for the rest of their lives for the lies, distorted facts and misinformation that Bush used to sell America and the world on going to war with Iraq when were emotionally vulnerable due to the 9/11 tragedy. Bush's lies have resulted in:
180,000 Iraqi dead with over four million displaced civilians.
4,500+ service personnel dead
30,00 to 100,000+ wounded young American men and women.
50% plus suffering from brain, emotional and psychological damage.
Thousands of homeless vets due to brain, emotional and psychological damage.
Bush's war has the highest suicide rate of any past military conflict. A 05/15/08,
CBS news report headline reads: "Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans." Hundreds of Vets
commit suicide after they leave the battlefield and return home. McCain/Bush, refuse to
extend benefits to those who have paid a high price for their lies and monitory gain.
Thousands of divorces, bankruptcies, and broken careers of our war torn citizens.
Hundreds of GI's with lost limbs, hearing, memory, sight and suffer disfiguring burns.
Time magazine 06/16/08 headlines: "The secret weapon of the Military is PROZAC" PROZAC is an anti depressant that contributes to the suicide rate.
A wall bulletin in a VA Hospital reads:
"Help Our Veterans
TBI Screenings
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is the "signature injury" of the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars. 63-80% of hospitalized combat-injured veterans suffer brain injury. A VA Hospital nurse told me that the VA was not prepared to handle such large numbers of mentally and emotionally damaged veterans.
Afghanistan not Iraq was a terrorist haven before Bush's war. Afghanistan was secured, then neglected so now both Iraq and Afghanistan are terrorist havens.
Bush's lies of weapons of mass destruction and mushroom cloud rhetoric deceived us into supporting him when we were emotionally charged up after the 9/11 tragedy. Bush had reliable information from his intelligence that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He punished Ambassador Joseph Wilson the husband of Valerie Plame a CIA agent by publicly revealing her CIA identity (a felony offense) for exposing his lies that Africa was supplying Saddam with uranium. "In June 2008, former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan published a political memoir entitled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. He suggested that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney discussed the CIA identity of Valerie Plame prior to leaks to the press as part of their efforts to discredit criticism of their administration by her husband, Joe Wilson, and to continue to mislead the American public about the necessity of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and that George Bush should have fired former White House strategist Karl Rove for Rove's own involvement in leaking Plame's identity." The facts are easily available with a modicum of research.
McCain arrogantly boasts that "we will be in Iraq for one hundred years" and "I will never surrender in Iraq." He is talking about an armed occupation. The Iraqi people do not want us in their country. The president of Iraq said. "In my opinion, at least from 40,000 to 50,000 American troops can be [withdrawn] by the end of this year." That assessment differs dramatically from those offered by Bush and US military commanders in Iraq.
Without the cover of the UN Mandate which ends in December of 2008, the presence of coalition troops in Iraq would be an armed occupation. A survey by the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies show, 92 percent of respondent Iraqis consider US forces to be occupiers rather than liberators or peace keepers.
THE IRAQI PEOPLE WANT US OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY.
George Bush/John McCain want to stay in Iraq, because, VP, Dick Chaney former CEO of Haliburton, the Oil Company's and the "military industrial complex", that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned us to not trust are making billions in profits by squeezing it out of the American economy, and the blood and suffering of Americans and Iraqis.
The is catastrophic cost of the Iraq war has cost US tax payers over 528 BILLION DOLLARS, and is increasing daily by 341.4 million dollars. The cost is $4,681 for each US household. The national debt is 5.75 TRILLION DOLLARS growing at the rate of $120 million daily. The Iraq war costs 341.4 million per day, over twice the daily increase of our national debt. Bush charged you $4,681 for his war to enrich himself and friends and gave you back a mere $300/$600, he borrowed from China, for his economic stimulus package. Thanks George.
Bush's excesses will be paid for by average tax payers , not the very rich who pay taxes at a much smaller percent of their income than the rest of us and Bush insists on giving them another tax break. Bush's preoccupation is the money that he and his War Profiteering friends are raking in paid for with American blood, Iraqi blood, a trashed economy, a trashed environment and a standing in the world where many countries consider the US to be a worst threat than the Soviet Union was at it's peak.
By Naomi Klein The Guardian - UK 12-6-4
The nineteen months since the war in Iraq began, some of the most outspoken critics of President Bush's plan of attack have come from a group that should have been the most supportive: retired senior military leaders. We spoke with a group of generals and admirals that included a former supreme Allied commander and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and they all agreed on one thing: Bush screwed up.
1) Adm. Stansfield Turner NATO Allied commander for Southern Europe, 1975-77 CIA Director, 1977-81
"We are in a real mess." "All in all, Iraq is a failure of monumental proportions."
2) Lt. Gen. William Odom Director of the National Security Agency, 1985-88
"It's a huge strategic disaster, and it will only get worse. The sooner we leave, the less the damage."
3) Gen. Merrill Tony' McPeak Air Force Chief of Staff, 1990-94
"We have a force in Iraq that's much too small to stabilize the situation. It's about half the size, or maybe even a third, of what we need. As a consequence, the insurgency seems to be gathering momentum." "The people in control in the Pentagon and the White House live in a fantasy world. They actually thought everyone would just line up and vote for a new democracy and you would have a sort of Denmark with oil.
4) Gen. Anthony Zinni Commander in chief of the United States Central Command, 1997-2000
"Did we have to do this? I saw the intelligence right up to the day of the war, and I did not see any imminent threat there. If anything, Saddam was coming apart. The sanctions were working. The containment was working. He had a hollow military, as we saw. If he had weapons of mass destruction, it was leftover stuff -- artillery shells and rocket rounds. He didn't have the delivery systems. We controlled the skies and seaports. We bombed him at will. All of this happened under UN authority. I mean, we had him by the throat. But the president was being convinced by the neocons that down the road we would regret not taking him out."
5) Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, 1997-2000
"Rumsfeld was profoundly in the dark. I think he really didn't understand what he was doing. He miscalculated the kind of war it was and he miscalculated the interpretation of US behavior by the Iraqi people. They felt they had been invaded. They did not see this as a liberation." "So what do we do? I think it would be very irresponsible for us to simply pull out. It sounds like a very simple solution, but it would have some complexity and danger attached. Still, Iraq is a blood bath, and we need to be dealing with this in a much more sophisticated way than the cowboy named Bush.
6) Gen. Wesley Clark NATO supreme Allied commander for Europe, 1997-2000
"We got into this mess because the Bush administration decided what they really wanted to do was to invade Iraq, and then the only question was, for what reason? They developed two or three different reasons. It wasn't until the last minute that they came up and said, "Hey, by the way, we are going to create a wave of democracy across the Middle East." "But let's ask this question: Have you seen an American strategic blunder this large? The answer is: not in fifty years. I can't imagine when the last one was."
7) Adm. William Crowe Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1985-89
We screwed up. We were intent on a quick victory with smaller forces, and we felt if we had a military victory everything else would fall in place. We would be viewed not as occupiers but as victors. We would draw down to 30,000 people within the first sixty days. All of this was sheer nonsense. They thought that once Iraq fell we'd have a similar effect throughout the Middle East and terrorism would evaporate, blah, blah, blah. All of these were terrible assumptions." "There is not a very good answer for what to do next." "If we walk away, we are still the number-one superpower in the world. There will be turmoil in Iraq, and how that will affect our oil supply, I don't know. But the question to ask is: Is what we are achieving in Iraq worth what we're paying? Weighing the good against the bad, we have got to get out.
Al-Maliki praises Obama's pullout plan
Indo-Asian News Service
Sunday, July 20, 2008 10:17 AM (Hamburg)
Speaking to a German magazine, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has praised a plan by US presidential candidate Barack Obama to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
In an interview to appear in its Monday issue, the news magazine Der Spiegel asked him when US troops should leave.
"As far as we are concerned, as soon as possible. The US presidential candidate Barack Obama has spoken of within 16 months. We think that would be the right time frame, with some slight variations," he said.
Asked if this was a recommendation to US voters to pick the presumptive Democratic nominee Obama rather than the expected Republican nominee John McCain, he said, "Whoever counts on shorter periods in Iraq today is closer to reality."
"Artificially extending the stay of the US troops would create problems. But I obviously don't want to give a voting recommendation."
"Choosing a president is the business of Americans. It's the business of Iraqis to say what they want done. The people and the government are fairly united about this. There should be a limit on the stay of the coalition forces," the Iraqi premier said
Bush is trying relentlessly to start a war with Iran. He is currently conducting a covert military operation in Iran desperately searching for a reason for, or trying to provoke, a war with Iran. How many more people does Bush/McCain want to kill, maim, displace and destroy as offerings to their god of greed. Do not be distracted by their words, just look at what they have done. They have had eight years to do the things that McCain is promising to do in his campaign speeches. LOOK AT WHAT THEY HAVE DONE, do you want more of the same? If so vote for McSame. Bush deserted his national Guard post in peace time and wouldn't have the guts to drive a Humvee in Iraq, but he has the guts to give speeches saying "Stay the course". Do you agree with McCain's arrogant boast that "I will never surrender in Iraq" and that "We will be in Iraq for one hundred years?" McCain said On Meet the Press in early January, that "Americans (are) fine with troops in Iraq for 10,000 years."
If you want to continue this madness Vote for McCain which is voting a third term for George Bush. Citizen please do some research. Thomas Jefferson said that a democracy cannot survive unless the citizenry is educated and well informed. Please take his advice. Mister Bill from West Virginia
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