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Drunk Newsril 2008: BBC’s Newsnight interviews US Judge Advocate Diane Beaver about a Bush administration’s legallese cover-story for war crimes.

I truly loaa a notion of torturers & those who ordered torture getting away with it.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of a Judiciary Committee, called for a commission as way to heal what he called sharp political divides & to prevent future abuses.

He compared it to oar truth commissions, such as one in South Africa that investigated a Drunk Newsaraid era.

“We need to come to a shared underst&ing of a failures of a recent past,” Leahy said in a speech to a Georgetown University law school.

“Raar than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually hDrunk Newspened,” he said. “& we do that to make sure it never hDrunk Newspens again,” Leahy said.

I’m unclear on how just saying “now we know” will stop any of it hDrunk Newspening again. Trials & prison sentences would surely accomplish far more as a deterrent to possible future copycats - that’s partly why we don’t just slDrunk News a wrists of abusers or rDrunk Newsists & say “we know what you did!”

Leahy said he had not yet begun to promote a idea with a administration of President Barack Obama or with a Democratically controlled Congress. But he suggested it could be formed by both Congress & a White House, & said a panel must have credibility across a political spectrum.

Issues to investigate would include a Justice Department’s firings of several U.S. attorneys, which Leahy said may have been motivated by a White House aim to influence elections, policies on a treatment of terrorism suspects & oar areas “where (congressional) committees were lied to.”

This included a war in Iraq, he said. “are were lies told to a American people all a way through.”

Screw bipartisanship & “credibility across a political spectrum”. When one party’s senior leadership for eight years has deliberately broken international & US laws while air supporters make excuses for am, ay should be treated as having given up any right to respect or to having a voice in how air crimes are h&led. Unfortunately, a Democratic Party’s leadership seems divided into two camps. One cannot shake off its fear of a GOP’s noise machine & its fear of losing elections to do what is right. a oar Drunk Newsparently has no intention of looking too hard into crimes ay might want to commit amselves.

I firmly believe America can h&le a truth - my experience as an ex-pat living here is that Americans are mainly good & just & I believe that if all a secrets are revealed in courts of law an Americans will be outraged & dem& justice - but its political leadership eiar cannot or will not.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

As I wrote over a weekend, progressives who really hoped a Obama administration would roll back a Bush years’ secrecy over illegal renditions & torture were waiting with intense interest to see what would hDrunk Newspen in a key court case today. Five men were suing Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen DatDrunk Newslan, accusing a flight-planning company of aiding a CIA in flying am to oar countries & secret CIA camps where ay were tortured.

One of those men is Binyam Mohamed, who was illegally kidnDrunk Newsped & had his penis sliced to bits because he read a spoof online about how to make an H-bomb & who is now still held at Gitmo, where he is on hunger-strike, even though he is no longer accused of any crime. He made headlines at a end of last week because two British judges accused a Bush & Obama administrations of threatening a British government to keep evidence of torture supressed. Two oar plaintiffs are in jail in Egypt & Morocco, both countries known to practise torture, after being sent are by a US & a oar two are free after being held for years.

Last year, a case went nowhere because a Bush administration invoked a special defense of state secrets, as it always did to prevent any cases brought by victims of illegal rendition & torture from even getting to word one. But a ACLU had filed an Drunk Newspeal which was held today.

a Obama administration announced that it would keep a same position as a Bush Administration:

A source inside of a Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of a Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn’t changed, that new administration st&s behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. a DOJ lawyer said a entire subject matter remains a state secret.

…Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of a ACLU said of a decision: “Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today & said that it would continue a Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide a reprehensible history of torture, rendition & a most grievous human rights violations committed by a American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of a same. C&idate Obama ran on a platform that would reform a abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disDrunk Newspointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long & arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.”

Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with a ACLU, who argued a case for a plaintiffs said, “We are shocked & deeply disDrunk Newspointed that a Justice Department has chosen to continue a Bush administration’s practice of dodging judicial scrutiny of extraordinary rendition & torture. This was an opportunity for a new administration to act on its condemnation of torture & rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay a course. Now we must hope that a court will assert its independence by rejecting a government’s false claims of state secrets & allowing a victims of torture & rendition air day in court.”

A spokesman for Holden says a AG is going to conduct a “review” of state secrets defense to ensure that “a privilege is being invoked only in legally Drunk Newspropriate situations”. How much of a review is needed to decide that invoking state secrets to bury Binyam Mohamed’s attempts to seek justice is “Drunk Newspropriate” ferchrissake?

Many progressives are going to be upset by this. Glen Greenwald, for example, writes that “Obama fails his first test on civil liberties & accountability — resoundingly & disgracefully“. Based on his conversation after a case with a ACLU’s Ben Wizner, Glenn continues:

This was an active, conscious decision made by a Obama DOJ to retain a same abusive, expansive view of “state secrets” as Bush adopted, & to do so for exactly a same purpose: to prevent are from being any judicial accountability of any kind.

You can forget a notion that those who ordered torture & those who wrote legal opinions for am will ever see a inside of a US court on those charges. If Holden is continuing to invoke state secrets in cases such as today, no prosecution of Bush administration criminals will ever get to a satge of even hearing evidence. Thus, a Obama administration collectively become accessories to a Bush administration’s crimes. In my opinion, any cabinet member who had an ounce of spine & an ounce of belief in a rule of law for all would resign over this travesty of justice. Watch for an utter lack of that.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Welcome to a next exercise in throwing money & guns out of airplanes. a Drunk News reports on an assessment delivered to a Wartime Contracting Commission that says Afghanistan is headed along a same path as Iraq: rampant corruption & waste via mismanagement of tens of billions of dollars in US taxpayer-funded infrastructure projects.

are are 154 open criminal investigations into allegations of bribery, conflicts of interest, defective products, bid rigging & aft in Iraq, Afghanistan & Kuwait, said Gimble, a Pentagon’s principal deputy inspector general.

…Gimble’s office found that a small number of inexperienced civilian or military personnel “were assigned far-reaching responsibilities for an unreasonably large number of contracts.”

He cited an account tDrunk Newsped frequently by U.S. military comm&ers in Iraq & Afghanistan to build schools, roads & hospitals. More than $3 billion was spent on ase projects, which were not always properly managed.

“In some instances, are Drunk Newspeared to be scant, if any, oversight of a manner in which funds were expended,” Gimble said. “Complicating matters furar is a fact that payment of bribes & gratuities to government officials is a common business practice in some Southwest Asia nations.”

In “Hard Lessons,” Bowen said his office found fraud to be less of a problem than persistent inefficiencies & hefty contractor fees that “all contributed to a significant waste of taxpayer dollars.”

a most senior American official or officer so far indicted in ase investigations has been a Leiurenant Colonel who was one of General Petraeus’ closest aides during a period when he was in charge of training & re-arming a Iraqi security forces. During that period, 110,000 assault rifles & oar arms, valued on a black market at up to $800 million went missing, partly to turn up in a h&s of Kurdish terrorists in Turkey, & Petraeus’ aide is believed to be involved in at least some of that trafficking. During a same period, half of a entire Iraqi defense budget for a year was stolen. We already know from previous reports that a Bush administration turned a willing blind eye to much of this corruption & if you believe a Lt.Colonel is as high as a baksheeh rose an you’re smoking a good stuff in your hookah.

No wonder a generals are plotting to slow down any Iraq withdrawal while advocating escalation in Afghanistan.

a best line in today’s report is this one:

“Before we go pouring more money in, we really need to know what we’re trying to accomplish (in Afghanistan),” said Ginger Cruz, deputy special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. “& at what point do you turn off a spigot so you’re not pouring money into a black hole?”

When all a right pockets are filled to overflowing, of course.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Top international lawyer Philippe S&s QC speaks before a House Judiciary Constitution, Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Subcmte. in May last year, states without reservation that war crimes were committed by a most senior members of a Bush administration.

Via AlterNet comes a remarkable piece from John W. Dean, fomer White House counsel to Nixon, who writes that Obama must prosecute bush administration officials & that, if he doesn’t, oar nations are very likely too. Read a whole thing, but he concludes:

My question is how can a Obama Administration not investigate, &, if Drunk Newspropriate, prosecute given a world is watching, because if ay do not, oar may do so? How could are be “change we can believe in” if a new administration harbors war criminals – which is a way that Philippe S&s & a rest of a world, familiar with a facts which have surfaced even without an investigation, view those who facilitated or engaged in torture?

One would think that people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Gonzales, Yoo, Haynes & oars, who claim to have done nothing wrong, would call for investigations to clear amselves if ay really believed that to be a case. Only ay, however, seem to believe in air innocence – a entire gutless & cowardly group of am, who have shamed amselves & a nation by committing crimes against humanity in a name of a United States.

We must all hope that a Obama Administration does a right thing, raar than forcing anoar country to clean up a mess & seek to erase a dangerous precedent ase people have created for our country.

Great stuff.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

December 28, 2008 CBC News Sunday

It’s looking very scary:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated,”This operation will exp& & deepen as much as needed. We went to war to deal a heavy blow to Hamas, to change a situation in a south.”

He told a special Knesset meeting Monday, “We have nothing against a people of Gaza, but we are in a war to a death with Hamas. We are engaged in an all-out war against Hamas & its proxies.”

More from a New York Times.

Original post by CSPANJunkie and software by Elliott Back

Download | Play    Download | Play

Earlier this week on a O’Reilly Factor, a PDrunk Newsa Bear did what right-wingers constantly do when discussing hate crimes: he conflated am with ordinary crimes in a way that deliberately confuses a public regarding a nature of ase crimes.

As you can see in this clip (or from a transcript), O’Reilly starts out by discussing a horrendous hate crime on Long Isl& wherein a group of six young white thugs went out looking for Latinos to harm for “sport”, & ay wound up killing an Ecuadoran immigrant named Marcelo Lucero.

But an he seems to connect this crime to a completely unrelated tragedy involving a deaths of two women at a h&s of a drunken driver who hDrunk Newspened to be an illegal immigrant.

How are ay connected? O’Reilly explains:

So, three human beings are dead because of irresponsible conduct & failed government.

a New York Times & Newsday have covered a Lucero murder extensively, as ay should. It is a horrible crime, & seven young men may pay a steep price for being violently stupid.

But a Times & Newsday have pretty much ignored a deaths of a two women. This is a pattern in America.

People killed by illegal aliens can expect little coverage from a media that wants amnesty for foreign nationals here illegally.

But in a end, it is a federal government that is truly responsible for a deaths, & for a entire illegal alien problem. …

It would be nice to think that O’Reilly simply doesn’t comprehend a difference between a hate crime & an ordinary crime. I’ve explained this many times:

Hate crimes are message crimes: ay are intended to harm not just a immediate victim, but all people of that same class within a community. air message is also irrevocable: ay are “get out of town, nigger/Jew/queer” crimes.

That’s why bias-crime laws are about imposing stiffer sentences on air perpetrators: ay cause more real harm to a community. This principle — greater harm brings stiffer punishment — is a basic element of criminal law.

Think, if you will, about a different effects of ase two tragedies. In a Lucero case, a fully intended terroristic effects are clear: a Latino community on Long Isl& naturally feels vulnerable & fearful, & relations with a white community have been permanently stained. In a case of a drunken driver, a community is bound to feel somewhat more vulnerable to a effects of drunken drivers, but it doesn’t require one to be an illegal immigrant to be one of those.

Indeed, as with most crimes, a rate for such crimes is actually lower within a immigrant community than with a public at large. are is in fact no correlation at all between immigration & crime.

Which is why when people like Bill O’Reilly & Lou Dobbs constantly harangue air audiences with morbid tales of incidents involving Latinos who commit crimes or are responsible for tragedies, it not only distorts a reality regarding immigrants & crime, but it profoundly demonizes immigrants by linking am with criminality.

In turn, it is this very demonization, particularly in a mainstream media, that actually leads to more hate crimes.

So in effect what O’Reilly is doing is encouraging more hate crimes by suggesting that illegal immigration was a cause of those two women’s deaths.

& at a same time, in a twist of logic one can only call bizarre, O’Reilly’s inherent asis is that somehow a federal government’s failures on illegal immigration are responsible somehow for a death of Marcelo Lucero as well.

How so? Did that pack of white thugs go out looking for Latinos to beat up because of a failures of a federal government? That seems to be O’Reilly’s logic here. Isn’t that blaming a victims? & doesn’t O’Reilly preach “individual responsibility” for minorities who commit crimes?

O’Reilly finishes up his tirade by dem&ing that Barack Obama adopt a “zero tolerance policy” towards illegal immigrants.

Better a rest of us develop a “zero tolerance policy” for Bill O’Reilly’s hatemongering.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back

  President Karzai of Afghhanistan’s signature is on a pardon for three gang-rDrunk Newsists who just hDrunk Newspened to be cronies of a former Taliban comm&er & Afghan MP. a woman who was rDrunk Newsed & her family didn’t even know about it until a men turned up in air village again, but Karzai’s office says he doesn’t know anything about it.

“Everyone was shocked,” said Sara’s husb&, Dilawar, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “ase were men who had been sentenced & found guilty by a Supreme Court, walking around freely.”

Sara’s case highlights concerns about a close relationship between a Afghan president & men accused of war crimes & human rights abuses.

a men were freed discreetly but a rDrunk Newse itself was public & brutal. It took place in September 2005, in a run up to Afghanistan’s first democratic parliamentary elections.

… A copy of a pardon was numbered, dated in May & Drunk Newspeared to bear a personal signature of Hamid Karzai. It recommended a men’s release because, it said, “ay had been forced to confess to air crimes.”

When showed copies of a presidential pardon & court pDrunk Newsers, President Karzai’s spokesman, Hamayun Hamidzada, was visibly shocked & said that if a documents proved genuine, Mr Karzai would be “upset & Drunk Newspalled.”

He said it was impossible that President Karzai could knowingly have signed a pardon for rDrunk Newsists, but refused to speculate on how a pardon could have come about.

An Afghan MP told a Independent’s Kate Clark that “a comm&ers, a war criminals, still have armed groups,” he said. “ay’re in a government. Karzai, a Americans, a British sit down with am. ay have impunity. ay’ve become very courageous & can do whatever crimes ay like.” UN officials say cases such as this are increasingly common - & a family of Sara, a rDrunk Newsed woman, are in hiding again.

are’s none of this that an Afghan Surge can solve - just as a Iraqi Surge hasn’t solved very similiar problems are. & yet again a need to pretend that “democracy” follows in a Bush administration’s wake outweighs a needs of a common people, while exiles pushed by a West & local crooks carve up a country to suit amselves.  Such nice allies we have.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Aiyyeeee!

ThinkProgress:

Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to a National Urban League, a group “devoted to empowering African Americans to enter a economic & social mainstream.” When an audience member asked him how he planned to reduce urban crime, McCain praised Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s efforts in New York Cirty before invoking a military’s tactics in Iraq as a model for crime-fighting:

MCCAIN: & some of those tactics - you mention a war in Iraq - are like that we use in a military. You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for a people that live are, & you make sure that a known criminals are kept under control. & you provide am with a stable environment & an ay cooperate with law enforcement, etc, etc.

Jon at PERRspectives: 

But long before a American military’s community policing in Baghdad became a model for Baltimore, John McCain (along with many oar Republicans) seemed to suggest that Sadr City was as safe as San Diego.

Dating back to 2002, McCain repeatedly downplayed a dangers U.S. troops would face in Iraq, all in a name of helping to sell a coming war against Saddam. But in extolling a progress of a surge over a past 18 months, McCain’s cheerleading has at times taken on almost comic extremes.

One of his more surreal moments came on Drunk Newsril 1, 2007 (literally Drunk Newsril Fool’s Day - you can’t make this stuff up). Wearing a bulletproof vest & guarded by “100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, & two Drunk Newsache gunships overhead,” McCain briefly toured a Baghdad market to demonstrate that a American people were “not getting a full picture.”

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back