Double Standard Time

How long is too long? German doctors today cleared suspected Nazi death camp guard fit to stand trial as an accessory in the murder of 29,000 Jews. John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker was extradited from his Seven Hills, Ohio home in May of this year to stand trial even though he has bone marrow and kidney diseases.
The great irony here is, if Demjanjuk is guilty of the crimes he is accused of,while he certainly should be punished for them, they happened over sixty years ago. At the same time Obama was sending this 89 year old to trial, he was announcing his intentions not to prosecute anybody for the torture carried out by the Bush/Cheney regime, because, as he said, it was time to move forward.
So we're straight: Demjanjuk, a prison guard who merely followed the policies of the Nazi regime (if, indeed, he is guilty) and did not create the policies, gets prosecuted, even though these events happened in the past?
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, etc., don't get prosecuted for their crimes, even though they are the ones who created the policy that led to illegal acts being carried out, because, even though they happened within the past eight years, it's time to look forward?
So when it comes to war crimes, it's better to create the policy than to carry them out? Would Obama have given Hitler a pass as well?

Dick Cheney Vs. History

The term "history" is tossed around too much these days for my liking. Jay Leno's last show as touted on NBC as "going down in history". Last night's local news story on an American Idol contestant mentioned Season 8 as having "gone down in the history books". But does any one really think that at anytime in the future, they'll really be looking back at the viewing habits of one nation that may or may not be around one hundred years from now, let alone be reading books?
But is history the real reason Dick Cheney is afraid of prosecution for his war crimes? A lengthy trial, legal motions and appeals processes assure that Dick Cheney will more than likely be dead before he ever sees the inside of a prison. And after the evidence that torture memos don't show what Cheney claimed will be all the torture photos showing the horrific abuse of detainees authorized by Cheney himself.
Long after the fall of the Nazi regime and successes like the Volkswagen, the Autobahn in Germany what remains for history are all the atrocities, the death camps, gas chambers, soap made from humans, and lamp shades made from human skin. All of which make Adolph Hitler the most despised person in history. Right now, Dick Cheney stands as the most despicable person alive. Any trial that may expose his truly heinous crimes may in fact over time, lead to Dick Cheney knocking Hitler down to the second position.

The Continuing trend of No Change

The change that was to be the Obama administration gets further and further away when facing the realities of the political climate of the corpocracy. And so now, with word coming out that Obama is reversing his position on releasing detainee photos, they've become almost as inconsistent as the previous administration. Well, I mean, the previous administration did suck in a consistent fashion but other than that....
What we never will see are the videotapes out Abu Ghraib showing children being sodomized in front of their mothers, some perv at the Pentagon has that tape and probably needs it to discharge purity of essence. What did we get from all the abuse we heaped on Muslims? According to one ex-FBI agent, not a fucking thing.
The abuses that occurred under America's auspices need to be dealt with in a punitive matter. Laws were broken, treaties (among other things) were violated, and until we locate and punish those who authorized it, this will never go away. Sweeping it under a rug will just allow this to fester, and if the Democrats are just as responsible for letting this go on, then we need to dispose of them as well.
The United States is a nation of laws. We can not throw a man in prison for twenty five years for possessing marijuana because he is poor and black then turn our eyes to real and heinous crimes such as have been perpetrated by our own government in our name because the guys who did it are rich white and powerful. Equal justice under the law is a constitutional right under the law, and if we don't punish those who ordered the law breaking, then we might as well open up our prisons and let every other criminal out as well.

Our Torture Is Better Than Your Torture

Just to set the matter straight, when other countries torture it's bad. However, when the US engages in torture it's okay, because "if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture", even if that torture was not to save American lives but to attempt to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11.
Americans have been conditioned, Jack Bauer'd into thinking that torture is a good thing, because there are so many people out there who wish to do us harm. And rather than discuss the reasons that people may want to do us harm, because we are not the sainted country the rose colored glasses wearing, beer swilling, flag waving, television watchers think we may be (after all, we torture people to justify acts of aggression against nation states sanctioned into near submission), it's better to pretend that we don't torture children, run assassination squads, or bomb civilians.
America needs to grow up. Our moral high ground has been washed away by an ocean of blood, spilled in our name.

You Cried Wolf Once Too Often

I've been ho-humming the recent swine flu outbreak (or, as some people would prefer it to be called, the "Mexican" Flu) because I've heard this before. Remember the Avian Flu that was to going to kill millions of people? How about SARS? How about that Global War on Terror? Global warming Climate change? Gay marriages?
What these all are connected by is someone made money from it. Dick Cheney, and a host of Republican donors (i.e., Erik Prince) benefited from the war in Iraq, I mean, the Global war on terrorism, er, make that the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. Donald Rumsfeld, as the owner of the intellectual property for Tamiflu, stands to make as much from the Swine (a/k/a/ "Mexican") Flu scare as he did from the Avain flu scare. And St Albert of the climate change cult is making as much from the swine flu scare as he will make from carbon emission trading.
Knowing that the causes for war in Iraq were pretty much made up. And the reason the previous administration was so eager to use torture was to provide a non-existent link between Saddam Hussein and alQaeda. was the current flu pseudo-pandemic created in a bio weapons lab? Is it all somehow related to the 81 microbiologists who have died mysterious deaths since 9/11?
Or is it all just a coincidence, perfectly timed to distract the masses from the ongoing torture debate? Personally, I'll go for the latter.

Governed By Crooks

"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

-Lt. Gen. Antonio Taguba
Dick Cheney has been making the rounds lately, openly admitting he is a war criminal who willfully and wantonly violated the Geneva Conventions. There doesn't need to be any investigation by the DoJ, when someone confesses on national television, I believe that's all the evidence needed.
However, it's unlikely that Cheney will actually be prosecuted for being a war criminal, something that puts him in the same league as Pol Pot or Adolph Hitler, because he is wealthy, and a member of the corpocracy, the people who decide that you should go to jail for smoking a joint, but for someone who authorized the wholesale slaughter of 1,297,997 Iraq civilians, and the torture of people who may be in US custody because they were sold to the US for bounties as opposed to being linked to al qaeda, 9/11, or even are any kind of terrorist.
Take Bernie Madoff, who made off with $50 billion in fraud. His ass should be sitting in jail right now, but he's not. He's under "house arrest" in one of the mansions that his scams bought him. Poor guy!
That these people should go unpunished is unconstitutional. We are guaranteed equal protection under the law, but from where I'm sitting, things don't look all that equal. In fact, it almost would appear the bigger the crime, the more likely it is that you will see any jail time. This is to encourage our children to think big, even when it comes to crime.

Break The Law, Win A Prize

Torture works. That is, if your goal is to attract more foreign fighters to attack US troops in Iraq (last paragraph). It's a good way to ensure that a war continues in perpetuity.

Bill Kristol, chief neocon, editor of The Weekly Standard and probable defense contractor stock holder thinks that those who torture should be given the Medal of Honor. Because there's nothing more honorable than ensuring that foreign fighters and Iraqi insurgents continue to kill American forces in Iraq than torturing people.
Torture is a war crime, which would make those who authorized war criminals. So into the moral quagmire we ask can you pardon some one for committing a crime you authorized?

Gator!!!

The admiral in charge of Guantanamo Bay (or "Gitmo" to the Spanish impaired mush-mouthed soldier sniffing shittoheads) says that detainees there are pretty much living in a frat house. Yeah, I imagine there's lots of toga parties, beer busts, and riding of motorcycles up the stairs, with detainees visiting the local Food King to hook up with underage girls or the dean's wife. Surely that's what most Americans think of when they think of frat houses.
Never do they think of the Omega house, where brutal hazing rituals are carried out, pledges stripped down to their skivvies and paddled hard on the ass by a sadistic sergeant-at-arms who delights in inflicting as much pain as he can get away with under the parts of the Geneva conventions we still adhere to. But that is probably closer to the truth, something more suitable to the members of the Skull and Bones society than to your average television watcher's idea of fraternity.

A Torture Romance

The Senate has voted 51-45 to prohibit waterboarding and other harsh methods of interrogation (i.e., torture) with Sen John McCain voting against the measure. Surely this is a bid to woo the sick fucks that are conservatives and prove he's just as soulless and evil as they and their president are, so pretty soon the endorsements will come rolling in. Bush is already planning on vetoing the bill, because we need to get people to confess to crimes others have committed to enable the loss of our civil liberties in the so-called war on terror.

"True" Tortured Confessions

The Same Guy?

Nothing could be more embarassing to the Bush administration following the tortured confession of who they allege to be Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, than this story, which purports the KSM trotted out by the Bushites is in fact an impostor. The claim is that in fact the man we see in photos is actually Ahmed Abdul Qudoos,the man in the above photo on the left. I'm not saying they are the same guys, there is enough discrepancy for me to be doubtful, but then there is the story that KSM actually died in a shoot out on September 11, 2002. If this story is true (and really, who believes the lies of the Bush administration any more?), then who is the man that they claim is KSM?
Even more disturbing is the story that the CIA also has KSM's two sons,aged seven and nine at time of kidnapping, in custody, in case the waterboarding doesn't work, you can always torture the children because what parent would stand by and watch their children be tortured by the assholes who represent our country. Suddenly, it sounds like we're not the good guys anymore when we stoop to that level, in fact, it makes us downright evil, and how any free thinking citizen of the US could justify these acts in the name of "freedom" or "democracy" shows just how far we've strayed in the past six years under the Bush regime.
But all that is irrelevant, since the whole "confession" has backfired on the US (although it has got the beer swilling NASCAR watching tube jockey's attention away from the US attorney scandal brewing in Washington, as well as the Plamegate trial)since in any civilized court, any confession derived under stress (a/k/a torture) is inadmissable, (which is just as well, since one of his confessed "terrorist acts" was towards a bank that wasn't even founded until after his arrest) under new rules adopted by the Bush regime and it's rubber stamp Republican congress, it's all fine and dandy.