Guest B.D. Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 As you read what follows below, compare each of these serious treasonous scandals to the impeachment of Bill Clinton for denying that he had a 21 year old girlfriend and his reluctance to detail what they did when they were alone... If Democracy still existed in America, each of these 5 scandals would be headline news, and the news media would be demanding answers every single day. Instead, the news media will spend the week gushing over Bush's "vision" for America, including a mission to Mars that most Americans think is absurd at a time of record deficits. So without further ado, here are the top 5 Bush scandals of 2003. 1. Iraq - Much has been written about the lies that led to our invasion of Iraq. The lies about WMD, the effort to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11, etc. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has revealed that the invasion was in the works right after Bush's inauguration. The implication is clear - the Bush White House criminally exploited the aftermath of September 11 for their march to War on Iraq. The scandal cannot be called "Iraqgate", that name is already taken - by the Reagan-Bush scandal involving the covert arming and financing of Saddam's military right up to the Kuwaiti invasion. Originally exposed back in 1992, Iraqgate was eventually sent down the memory hole - until last year. As Bush made his case for a new Gulf War, the Iraqgate scandal was resurrected by a few courageous journalists and Democrats, especially Sen. Robert Byrd. In an especially notorious episode, an Iraq TV film clip was unearthed showing Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983. As Ronald Reagan's Iraq envoy, Rumsfeld delivered a letter from the President to Hussein offering US support in their war with Iran - "to expand military and business ties with Baghdad" [see Alan Friedman's 'Spider's Web']. Nothing pierced the speciousness of Bush's rhetoric about the battle of Good vs. Evil more than the image of the Rumsfeld handshake. While the "liberal media" largely ignored the handshake scandal, we can only imagine the media firestorm that would have blazed had a top Clinton official been photographed shaking Saddam Hussein's hand! Last week, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq passed 500. David Kay has abandoned his search for WMD's, because there are none to be found. Today, Iraqis marched for direct democracy, not the rigged kind favored by Bush. Bush thinks his overthrow of Saddam Hussein is the key to his victory in 2004, but it is more likely that his illegal invasion, conquest, and occupation will follow him to his grave. 2. Treasongate: The Valerie Plame Affair - The Treasonous 'Outing' of Valerie Plame must be near the top of any list of Iraq scandals. But even if it were unrelated to the lies about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, this scandal in-and-of-itself would rank as perhaps the single greatest criminal act by an American administration. So while Iraq (which includes this scandal) is #1, the Plame Affair still deserves its own spot on our master list. So here it is at #2 - with a bullet. Simply put, it was an act of treason for White House officials to blow the cover of a CIA operative, whatever the circumstances. How serious is this to have happened under Bush's watch? It's right there in the Constitution - "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors." What's more, the Plame leak was done in vengeance - for Joseph Wilson's blowing the whistle on the Bush Administration's use of the Niger Uranium forgery. This speaks volumes about the "character" of this White House. But it's even worse than that - Ms. Plame headed a covert network of CIA operatives whose specific mission was to track the distribution of Weapons of Mass Destruction through the global market. That Bush officials would chose to "burn" Valerie Plame and her team - for the sake of a vendetta - shows that they think nothing of endangering the lives of Plame and her colleagues - not to mention those of the American people. Think about it: an intelligence network that was tracking real WMD's was sacrificed for the sake of paying back a whistleblower of Bush's key WMD lie. And that lie was used to deceive America into an unnecessary war. A war that has drastically diverted the military and the intelligence community from the pursuit of Al Qaeda. A war that has since turned the WMD-less and non-threatening Iraq into a terrorist magnet. And because of Bush's War and the failure of Bush's war planners to adequately secure hazardous materials in Iraq, dirty bomb material looted from Iraq's nuclear facility at Tuwaitha may be in the hands of terrorists - material that could be used for WMD's! Think Bush is the "National Security President"? Think he is the one to protect us? Think again. 3. Ground Zero Lies - Shortly after 9/11, the Bush White House pressured the EPA to lie to New Yorkers that it was safe to return to work in lower Manhattan. EPA statements were changed to mislead New Yorkers that the air met OSHA standards, and cleanup guidelines were suppressed from the public. This was done, despite the fact that the EPA knew that high levels of toxic substances, including asbestos, had been released in the fallout. The reason? The Bush administration wanted the Stock Market to open as soon as possible. Ultimately, this information was kept from the public for two years, until an Inspector General's report finally exposed the public health danger - and the cover-up. For the third time in 2003, the Bush White House was responsible for one of the greatest scandals in American history! In most any other year - this scandal would be #1. This is such a criminal act against the health of Americans - that it bears comparison with the Tuskegee experiments, the US military's spraying of San Francisco with bio-agents, and nuclear radiation testing on US soldiers. While Hillary Clinton, Jerrold Nadler and other New York politicians have raised holy hell about this, the media silence has been deafening (with the heroic exception of Juan Gonzalez of the NY Daily News, Marie Cocco and Jimmy Breslin of Newsday, and a handful of others). Why hasn't this scandal been front-and-center on the networks and plastered repeatedly on the front pages of the New York newspapers? After all, there are editors, publishers and network executives, who work and/or live in Manhattan. They also have friends and loved ones whose very health has been seriously compromised by the reckless endangerment and incredible bad faith of the Bush Administration. How utterly corrupt must the Media elite be to consider the health of their loved ones - and even themselves - subservient to protecting the Bush White House? And for former EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman to have caved in to White House pressure, just proves that she is "not much of a human being", as Breslin wrote. The same can be said of her former boss. But we already knew that. 4. 9/11 Cover-up - The 9/11 cover-up continued, as the Bush administration threw every roadblock it could in the way of the 9/11 commission. While various agencies delayed releasing documents to the 9/11 Commission, the White House itself proved to be the most uncooperative. First the White House dragged out the release of the entire 800-page congressional report on 9/11. Then they redacted the key 28 pages about Saudi financing of the 9/11 attacks. What deeply damaging information is in these 28 pages? Are there details of business relationships between the Carlyle Group (with James Baker as a board member and George Bush Sr. as an advisor), and the Saudi Royals -- not to mention the bin Laden family itself? Do these 28 pages establish if Saudi Princess Al-Faisal, wife of longtime Bush family friend Prince Bandar, did in fact fund two of the hijackers? Do they reveal if those funds came from her Riggs Bank account where Bush's uncle Jonathan is a director? At this point, we can only guess. Interestingly, when the Saudi Embassy got wind of the FBI investigation into the princess' finances, they sent over employees to review the checks issued from her bank account. Did Riggs officials help the Saudis scrub the records? Do these 28 pages follow the money trail back from those same two hijackers - Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq al-Hazmi - to Omar al-Bayoumi? Al-Bayoumi is the Saudi "student" who received $3000 per month from Hamid al-Rashid, a top official of the Saudi Civil Aviation authority, whose son is linked to Al Qaeda. Did al-Rashid develop the sophisticated plan for the hijackings in collaboration with Al Qaeda? Do these 28 pages expose pre-9/11 orders from the White House to stop FBI investigations into Saudi ties to Al Qaeda? This was reported by investigative journalist Greg Palast for BBC Newsnight. But it wasn't just the 28 pages that the White House tried to redact, they also tried to contain information about the Bush Administration's own part in the events surrounding 9/11. Eventually, the White House reached a compromise with the 9/11 commission, in which the White House could selectively edit documents, especially the President's Daily Briefings. Of course, the main document that they sought to withhold from the commission was the August 6, 2001 briefing of Bush by the CIA, in which he was warned that Al Qaeda was planning a major terrorist attack inside the United States. How detailed was the August 6 briefing? Does it expose Condi Rice and Ari Fleischer as bald-faced liars when they asserted that there were no warnings, and no one could have imagined hijackers using airplanes as missiles? And what was Bush's reaction to the August 6 briefing? Did Bush take it seriously and order immediate actions to prevent hijackings of U.S. airplanes? Or did Bush ignore the warnings so he could spend the month on vacation in Crawford? Did Bush brush off his top counter-intelligence official, Richard Clarke, and order him to stop issuing warnings about Al Qaeda, as has been reported? As for the CIA, Director George Tenet still has not released the names of the CIA officials who failed to put al-Midhar and al-Hazmi on the federal watch list. As a consequence, these two hijackers roamed the country freely for 20 months before 9/11. And the FBI under Robert Mueller concluded that there was no stock profiteering on 9/11, in the case of those mysterious put options on airline stocks. This reeked of a whitewash, especially considering that Mueller has a history as a cover-up artist. It was Mueller who, as the 'prosecutor' - swept under the carpet Bush Sr. and CIA crimes in Contra-Cocaine trafficking, Iraqgate and BCCI. Who might Mueller be protecting? Here's a clue: $2.5 million of the pre-9/11 put options were placed with AB Brown Bank. What's so special about AB Brown? The number three man at the CIA, Buzzy Krongard, managed AB Brown in the 90's. There were some interesting dynamics that occurred within the 9/11 Commission itself. It was curious that Commission member Max Cleland was recruited by Bush to the Export-Import Bank, so that he had to leave the Commission. Why was Cleland removed from the Commission? Was it because he had been especially vocal about the lack of cooperation by the White House and Bush's allies in Congress, since he was determined not to let the Commission engage in a coverup? But the big bombshell at the end of the year landed when Chairman Thomas Kean announced that the attacks could have been prevented - with the blame resting squarely on the White House itself. After the White House engineered a counterassault, Kean backtracked and denied there was any evidence to suggest that senior White House officials might have been responsible. What pressure did the White House place on Kean to make him change his tune? This week's news is that the White House adamantly refuses to extend the Commission's May 26 deadline. The Commission was forced to request an extension because of White House delays in turning over crucial information, and their haggling over the terms of testimony by George Bush and **ear** Cheney. Bill Clinton testified under oath about Monica - isn't September 11 just a little more important? 5. Big Brother - Back in February a whistleblower leaked a copy of Ashcroft's Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (dubbed the "Patriot Act II") to the Center for Public Integrity. With the first Patriot Act as its starting point, this monstrosity went even further in empowering law enforcement officials to wiretap and collect records on all US residents - including law-abiding citizens. Specifically, it would allow the courts to be bypassed, so that surveillance could be conducted without a judge's order. What's more, it would permit certain arrests to be kept secret, until an indictment was found. It would also give the government the ability to strip any American of his or her citizenship, if it was determined he or she were part of an organization that the Executive Branch deemed to be "terrorist." This person could then be "expatriated." But to where? If he or she were no longer a citizen of this country (or any other) then where would that person be sent? To Bush's concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay? To a foreign prison? To be interrogated by one of the CIA's brutal proxies in a place like Egypt? This is one of the scarier aspects of the Patriot Acts: the ability of an administration to label any organization "terrorist." Obviously, the potential for abuse is terrifying, even if we didn't have the likes of Bush and Ashcroft in power. Furthermore, this Act would allow the creation of a DNA database on "terrorist suspects." And, of course, while this Act robs us of even more of our rights, it also allows the government to keep even more of its workings in secret. Patriot Act II would grant government officials further license to deny the release of material requested under the Freedom of Information Act. It took a whisteblower to expose Patriot Act II, because it had been kept secret from almost all of Congress, with the exception of Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and possibly a few key Republicans. Thankfully, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle opposed this act. But major portions of it were incorporated later in the year in a new version, the Victory Act, that was also met with considerable opposition. But that didn't stop the Republican Congress from passing a major provision of these Acts, which Bush signed into law on the same day that Saddam Hussein was captured. As a result, the FBI now has the power to collect all financial records of any law-abiding American. Meanwhile, Bush and Ashcroft have pushed ahead anyway with secret arrests, and with using the "enemy combatant" designation to strip citizens of their rights. The Supreme Court recently declined to hear a challenge to the Bush policy of secret arrests. On the other hand, the Supremes will likely hear the Jose Padilla case, since an appeals court ruled that Padilla can no longer be held as an enemy combatant - and therefore must be released. The Court has already agreed to hear the related Yaser Hamdi case. So even without Patriot Act II, Bush and Ashcroft are trying to make these Orwellian powers the law of the land, through the courts. But that's not all - a classified FBI memo was leaked revealing that the FBI is using the first Patriot Act to spy on non-violent anti-war groups. So Ashcroft and Mueller have in effect revived Cointelpro. Conclusion - So there you have it - the 5 Biggest Bush Scandals of 2003 - in a year that exploded with scandals and daily outrages. So when you watch Bush's State of the Union Address, ask yourself: Four More Years? Four More Years of this? And will it only be Four More Years? Or is the "American Dynasty" - described by Kevin Phillips in his powerful new book - a permanent regime that will simply refuse to give up its power? And while you are making up your mind, you may want to consider not just our 5 Big Bush Scandals of 2003, but also our list below of some of the other cute moves by the Bush gang over the past year (look 'em up with the Democrats.com search engine - we collected news items all year). And keep in mind that this is still just a partial list. Who knows what fresh horrors await us in 2004? ---------------------- 2003's Hall of Shame - Bribery of Members of Congress to pass the "Medicare" Bill that mainly enriches pharmaceutical companies - Record-breaking $400 billion deficit, and lies about future deficits - Bush and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's negligence over Mad Cow Disease - FCC Chairman Michael Powell pushing for greater Media Monopolization - Richard Perle's resignation as head of the Defense Policy Board (but not from the board itself) for influence peddling on behalf of Global Crossing - Perle's influence peddling through his firm, Trieme Partners - Perle giving a seminar on how to profit from conflicts in Iraq and North Korea, two weeks after a DIA briefing - Continued coverup of Cheney's Energy Task Force - Halliburton overcharging the US for gas imported to Iraq - to the tune of $61 million - **ear** Cheney's possible indictment by a French Court for Halliburton's Nigerian Gas scandal - Iran-Contra criminal John Poindexter's resignation from the Pentagon over his Terrorism Betting Parlor scheme -- that would allow traders to speculate on the likelihood of terrorist events - Poindexter's plan for Total Information Awareness -- a Big Brother database that would collect all records on everyone - Bush's failure to secure the infrastructure from terrorist attacks - or from a major power outage such as happened in the Northeast - Bush's refusal to provide California with emergency funds to clear dead trees and brush to prevent wildfires, in the months before the fires blazed in Southern California - Bush's failure to secure nuclear, chemical and biological facilities and other hazardous material sites - Underfunding first responders, such as firefighters - The failure to find Osama Bin Laden - Failure to find the Anthrax terrorist - The mess in Afghanistan, with Opium production booming since Bush's War - Fake terror alerts such as the Duct Tape hysteria - Underfunding Homeland Security - Pushing ahead with plans for mini-nukes - Bush's trashing of the Clean Air Act and the leaked documents of a similar fate planned for the Clean Water Act - Tripling the amount of Mercury that power plants can release into the environment - Logging 300,000 acres of Alaska's forests - Opening 9 million acres of Alaska for exploration and drilling - The AIDS funding hoax and empty promises about the African AIDS crisis - The underfunded "No Child Left Behind" mandate - Pressing ahead with the plan to undermine Head Start - Cutting Americorps in half after promising to increase it by half in Bush's 2002 State of the Union - Attacking overtime pay - Housing Bill lies - Politically-motivated manipulations with steel tariffs - The thimerosal vaccine (autism) lawsuit shield for Eli Lilly, where Bush Sr. was once on the board of directors - Gutting Veterans' and Soldiers' benefits - Abandonment of all efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - Appeasing China with anti-democracy statements against Taiwan - The Homeland Security Search for a Texas D's Airplane in the Texas Re- Districting battle - Dictatorial detention of prisoners without legal rights - The concentration camp at Guatanamo Bay -- where children are still being held - Sending suspects to foreign countries to be interrogated by members of the CIA's global torture network - The CIA's pursuit of a new Operation Phoenix-type program for targeted assassinations - Special forces units trained as death squads - The revival of Cointelpro, as John Ashcroft's FBI was revealed to be spying on anti-war groups, under the Patriot Act - Use of the Patriot Act for non-terrorist investigations... And then there is the fact of Bush's cozy relationship and acceptance of huge sums from: - the folks at Enron and Worldcom - the Oil companies that are currently gauging us - the pharmaceutical companies that screw Americans daily And on and on... But these Repugnicans are the same folks who brought us Watergate in '72, the 'October Surprise' in '80, and Florida election debacle in 2000. All treasonous criminal conspiracies to subvert the will of voters so that a Republican can be president. They manipulate the more simple voters with non-issues such as flag burning, abortion, defense of marriage, etc. in an effort to claim the moral high ground, all the while committing crimes that defy the constitution and that our forefathers would have considered treasonous crimes punishable by hanging in the public square! I firmly believe that it is immoral to ever again vote for any Republican candidate for ANY office! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jeff Demers Posted June 22, 2008 Report Share Posted June 22, 2008 The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover will convene a conference during September 13-14 to lay plans to prosecute President Bush and other high administration officials for war crimes. "This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," says MSL's dean Lawrence Velvel in a statement announcing the conference. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth." "This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth." "We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice," Velvel said. "And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s." Velvel said past practice has been to allow U.S. officials responsible for war crimes in Viet Nam and elsewhere to enjoy immunity from prosecution upon leaving office. "President Johnson retired to his Texas ranch and his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was named to head the World Bank; Richard Nixon retired to San Clemente and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was allowed to grow richer and richer," Velvel said. He noted in the years since the prosecution and punishment of German and Japanese leaders after World War Two those nation's leaders changed their countries' aggressor cultures. One cannot discount contributory cause and effect here, he said. "For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders," Velvel said. The conference will take up such issues as the nature of domestic and international crimes committed; which high-level Bush officials, including Federal judges and Members of Congress, are chargeable with war crimes; which foreign and domestic tribunals can be used to prosecute them; and the setting up of an umbrella coordinating committee with representatives of legal groups concerned about the war crimes such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, among others. The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover was established in 1988 to provide an affordable, quality legal education to minorities, immigrants and students from low-income households that might otherwise be denied the opportunity to obtain a legal education and practice law. Its founder, Dean Velvel, has been honored by the National Law Journal and cited in various publications for his contributions to the reform of legal education. # # (To attend or for further information Jeff Demers at demers@msl.edu (978) 681-0800; or Sherwood Ross, media consultant to MSL, at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Vincent Posted June 22, 2008 Report Share Posted June 22, 2008 The more time and money the batshit insane liberal professors spend on worthless pursuits like this conference, the less chance they have to do real harm in the real world. One more ineffectual article about impeaching Bush means one less op-ed about banning free speech on campuses for fear of offending someone. Now if only this conference took place on a remote island and it lasted all year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Nader for President Posted July 17, 2008 Report Share Posted July 17, 2008 NADER LAUDS KRISTOF TRUTH COMMISSION PROPOSAL, CALLS FOR OBAMA/MCCAIN COMMITMENT The Nader/Gonzalez Campaign today released the following open letter to Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, calling on them to support Nicolas D. Kristof's proposal in the New York Times for the establishment of a national Truth Commission: Obama For President Campaign Office Suite 1720 233 N. Michigan Ave Chicago, IL 60601 McCain For President Campaign Office Suite M 1235 S. Clark St. Arlington, VA 22202 Dear Senators McCain and Obama, In the July 6, 2008 edition of the New York Times, the courageously peripatetic columnist, Nicolas D. Kristof urged the creation of a Truth Commission on torture and other war crimes. Here is Kristof in his words: "When a distinguished American military commander accuses the United States of committing war crimes in its handling of detainees, you know that we need a new way forward. "'There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,' Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report on American torture from Physicians for Human Rights. "'The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.' "[W]e need a national Truth Commission to lead a process of soul searching and national cleansing. "That was what South Africa did after apartheid, with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and it is what the United States did with the Kerner Commission on race and the 1980s commission that examined the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. "Today, we need a similar Truth Commission, with subpoena power, to investigate the abuses in the aftermath of 9/11. "It's a national disgrace that more than 100 inmates have died in American custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. After two Afghan inmates were beaten to death by American soldiers, the American military investigator found that one of the men's legs had been 'pulpified.' "Moreover, many of the people we tortured were innocent: the administration was as incompetent as it was immoral. The McClatchy newspaper group has just published a devastating series on torture and other abuses, and it quotes Thomas White, the former Army secretary, as saying that it was clear from the moment Guantánamo opened that one-third of the inmates didn't belong there. "These abuses happened partly because, for several years after 9/11, many of our national institutions didn't do their jobs. The Democratic Party rolled over rather than serving as loyal opposition. We in the press were often lap dogs rather than watchdogs, and we let the public down. "Yet there were heroes, including civil liberties groups and lawyers for detainees. Some judges bucked the mood, and a few conservatives inside the administration spoke out forcefully. The Times's Eric Lichtblau writes in his terrific new book, "Bush's Law," that the Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, James Ziglar, pushed back against plans for door-to-door sweeps of Arab-American neighborhoods. "'The book recounts that in one meeting,' Mr. Ziglar bluntly declared, 'We do have this thing called the Constitution,' adding that such sweeps would be illegal and 'I’m not going to be part of it.' "The Truth Commission investigating these issues ideally would be a non-partisan group heavily weighted with respected military and security officials, including generals, admirals and top intelligence figures. Such backgrounds would give their findings credibility across the political spectrum--and I don't think they would pull punches. The military and intelligence officials I know are as appalled by our abuses as any other group, in part because they realize that if our people waterboard, then our people will also be waterboarded. "Both Barack Obama and John McCain should commit to impaneling a Truth Commission early in the next administration. This commission would issue a report to help us absorb the lessons of our failings, the better to avoid them during the next crisis." Mr. Kristof has put forth a strong case for a strong investigating Truth Commission. He asks for your commitment to establish such a commission should either of you become President. How do you respond to this prize-winning, eye witness-inclined journalist? Sincerely, Ralph Nader Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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